The East

What has happened to the east? I won't regale you with the annoyance of the posers, the disgust at the proliferation of drugs or sadness at the deluge of big name brands with big name price tags.

  This is anger. Ire at the violent hatred permeating its streets. The east has become swamped with hating youths who are guilty of causing a carnage where those who fall victim are sad, depressed and afraid. I speak for myself amongst this wronged group.

But it’s for my nearest and dearest whom I have been sent to the pen. I hope the pen is truly mightier than the sword.

Occurrences on the streets of the east are not random, solitary events that cannot be helped. They are regular and known. The culprits are known. To be honest they are not hard to find; in their nondescript hoodies and tracks they penguin walk with their rear on full view spitting bile at those who dare to clothe themselves in cloth and natural fibres. They are kids who are acting the big man when there is nothing big nor manly about them. Brandishing a poor vocabulary comprising of racist, homophobic and sexist terminology, they roam. Congregating in parks and on street corners they consider themselves the arbiter of acceptability: "you need to sort dem jeans out." Why should I? Since when did I take a fashion critique from someone wholly ignorant of the Paris catwalks?

  Mentioning fashion has me sounding trivial but let me inform you, it is by ones raiment they will begin their tirade of hate; violence will ensue. Physical violence to me and my friends, our person and property is simply unacceptable. When someone attacks my dog I will consider them lower than scum. They are the dregs of society and like all vermin, intense extermination must be carried out.

Here I sound like a supporter of eugenics and may I enlighten you as to my own lower middle-class, mixed ethnicity. This is not racial or class prejudice, this is the candid reporting of events and opinions held by my circle. A circle comprising of various ethnicities, class and creed, we are united with creativity, allied with freedom, a cohesive group accepting and respecting. We are being singled out for being such, subjected to the vileness of grotesque nobodies who will not amount to anything more than a drain on the government and a burden to the justice system.

I cannot tell you what is to be done with them; national service, education, financial support, social work – why give them more attention and money? Surely this could be used to fertilise new talent, young people who want to achieve something with their lives. Young people who don't go wielding vicious tongues and weapons cocked ready to harm.

I cannot either hypothesise as to the origins of their animalistic hating. Some may say it is a result of ingrained cultural prejudice, religious bigotry or an ignorance fuelled by poverty and lack of hopeful aspiration. And to that I say boo! Utter rot – we all have the ability to think, comprehend, take stock of our lives and yearn for better. For fear of sounding the ideal American, we all have dreams and we can all try to attain them. I know I did as have my friends and acquaintances and not one of us exited the womb with a silver spoon in our mouth, no cutlery in fact was to be found on our newborn person. We grew up with a handkerchief in tight grasp mopping a sweaty brow. Working and finally attaining what we longed for. To be a somebody.

Yet we are now being degraded to somethings, objects to be ridiculed and assaulted, by those unknowing of the toil we have made, the studying and expense committed so we could elevate our person, our minds.

Let these beasts be relegated to what they are, nobodies, nobodies of the east and as they try to degrade us let us stand together and with our success, degrade them. For that is what they deserve. Their just desserts of nothing as we gorge on the Eton mess, we the successful.