Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 15 August 2011 issue)

Dear Kam,
What is going on with these riots in England?
Running Scared

There has been lots of rioting in England. London, Manchester, Birmingham and many other towns have seen gangs of youths fighting with police and looting shops. I grew up in England and I lived in many different parts of London (England and London are in fact two different countries) so it has been interesting watching the news and seeing the burnt remains of shops that I used to walk past every day. I was watching the news when I saw a very large supermarket in the Tottenham area of London and I knew that one of my closest friends lives right next to it. I sent her a message to ask if she was OK (actually I asked her to loot a flat-screen TV for me). She called and told me what had happened.

She was in her house on Sunday night when she heard several cars pulling up outside. The cars were full of young men of various ethnic backgrounds. They were talking on their mobile phones, coordinating their movements with others, seeking out targets and working out escape routes. There were riots all over the place and there were no police around, so the youths moved quickly to the supermarket, which is closed on Sundays. They broke in and carried out TVs and hi-fis, and then they drove away on pre-arranged routes. It sounded like they knew what they were doing, they certainly knew the area well and they had very little fear of being caught.

At first my friend was scared but she soon realised that the youths were only interested in stealing from the supermarket and not ransacking houses. So, she went outside and watched them pillage. She is an anthropologist (she is not Malaysian but she did her PhD on Malaysian education) so she could not help but try to get closer to the action. After the youths had gone, her neighbours went out onto the street. As is common in any big city she had not met her neighbours before — she had not even seen many of them before — but they all stood around talking and joking for the first and possibly last time.

Afterwards, she walked over to the main road to see if the small shops were OK. She lives in a very Turkish/Kurdish area of London and the local Turkish men were standing guard outside the shops — you wouldn’t want to mess with them. Greeks, Turks and Kurds do not generally like each other very much but in north London there is one long road with first Greek, then Kurdish and then Turkish shops. There are ethnic dividing lines that an outsider can barely perceive, although some political graffiti on the walls help. A few years ago, the Turkish football club Galatasaray beat Arsenal in London and the local Turkish youths drove around blaring their car horns in celebration. This might seem ungrateful on the part of recent immigrants but the Greek shops lie in Arsenal’s territory and the Turkish shops are in Tottenham Hotspur territory, and the two football clubs are bitter rivals. London is very big and very tribal.

My friend said that the looting youths appeared to have no agenda beyond opportunistic theft but she was struck by the communal spirit among her neighbours. Otherwise, like most people, she found it all confusing. The rioting has been very widespread and very sudden, and nobody saw it coming. Anthropologists and sociologists will be gainfully employed for years trying to understand what it all means.

Personally, having grown up there, I think it is not so surprising that it happened but that it does not happen more often. English history is full of riots, at least one big one every century, and they always happen during summer. While the people of continental Europe might spill onto the streets for a revolution, the English might have a vague political objective leading to a basic riot. There is violence each and every day on the streets of England but it is diffused so the police can usually handle it. On this occasion, it has happened all at once so the police have been overwhelmed. These rioters look like feral youths, too young and poor to be football hooligans — it can cost £100 (RM490) to watch a football match. They are mostly bored teenagers, obnoxious and scary, with a poor level of education and poor employment prospects. I knew them when I lived in England and I steered clear. I did not like them then and I do not like them now. I am glad to be away from them.

But it has been amusing to see how some people in Malaysia have tried to spin the news of the riots in England by saying that it shows how brilliantly our police handled a recent large demonstration in Kuala Lumpur. Apparently water cannons and tear gas on the streets of KL saved us from English-style looting. Er, what?!

Dear Kam,
How can the recent share-swap make life better for me as a frequent flyer?
Eagle Eye

AirAsia has come a long way in a short space of time. It was an upstart that has been tolerated but squeezed, almost punished. The low cost carrier terminal is unnecessarily shoddy and hard to get to. It is as if you are doing something wrong if you want to go there and you must be punished. The official attitude towards AirAsia reminds me of the way our pedestrians are treated. Pedestrians usually are not given a pavement alongside a busy road and if they can find a pavement then it has got holes in it and they begin and end abruptly. It is as if the pedestrians had done something wrong and so must be punished (presumably they did not buy a Proton).

But AirAsia has been a big success and now it has done a share-swap with MAS. I am not entirely sure what this means but either MAS is going to gradually take over AirAsia, or AirAsia is saving MAS. I am guessing it is nearer the latter. I am just hoping that a share swap will lead to a terminal swap, so that MAS moves to the LCCT and AirAsia moves to the main KLIA building, which has a direct rail link to KL. I do not know why the LCCT does not have a direct rail link because building rail lines is not exactly rocket science. Perhaps AirAsia users need to be punished. But it looks like that might change. Interesting how things can turn around. Maybe other things can change as well. Maybe they have already changed. Hmm, there’s a thought.

Reprinted with the kind permission of