It's always other people...

I wasn't going to blog on the riots - this isn't a social commentary or political blog, just about life with the wobbles and doing the job I do, besides there is enough cyber space taken up with all sorts of theories and opinions.

But...

I am continually being hit by the the sense that it always has to be someone else, a different type of person, not us or our folk. 

Today the government talk about an anti-gang strategy, previously suggestions that offenders should have their benefits taken away, or be cast out of council housing, before that it was a race issue. Yet my understanding was that rioters came from all walks of life. There were those who had plenty at home but still looted in the buzz of those nights, there were those with jobs, at university, with prospects, there were older and younger, there are those egged on by family and those turned in by aghast family.

Yes some may fit the young jobless gang thugs profile but what about the rest? Ah but we don't want to think that 'people like us' could get out of control like that, it stops us feeling safe in our own little corners. Just as the drug problem is something for the inner city estates - not the cosy suburbs, but it is there too just because net curtains can be drawn discretely over it doesn't take it away.

It is scary to see stuff and think that people we know, people that we pass on the street and nod a greeting to could be a part of that - easy to blame it on the distant stereotype, on those who are different, those who are the problem.  No need to consider the problems on the doorstep.

Mental health is another stigma - the manic, the schizophrenic, they all live somewhere else and are a problem, maybe even a danger. But they are also serving you coffee, queuing up at the cash point behind you, they don't have 3 heads or foaming mouths. And those of us who live with depression, who sometimes you avoid in case we infect you, we are everywhere - one day, though I wish it wouldn't, it could be you.

But if  you sleep easier by believing that the scary things in life, the bad things in life, the ability to do wrong things is always somewhere else and about somebody else - well sweet dreams, you may be one of the few whose dreams do not end up shattered. If though you are ready to face reality - then welcome to the world of the wobbly ones, who know we will be knocked down but that 'weebles wobble but they don't fall down.

And to go back to the riots - lets not just look at the communities on the news, but dare to ask about our own community, what are the issues here and now and what does that mean to us. And making a difference is not always for other people either.