More Social Commentary

Yes, the Italians won the cup and yes, the headbutt by Zidane was disgraceful.

Walking home last night, Cornmarket St. was filled with a large group of Italians waving flags and singing songs, it was kinda cute.

And so ends my World Cup blogging, onto something more interesting.

I've been following this discussion on the BBC website...instead of rehashing it, I'll just copy and paste the first two paragraphs:

"Tory leader David Cameron will call for greater understanding of teenage “hoodies”, saying that they are trying to "blend in" rather than appear threatening.

Hooded tops are seen by some as a symbol of social disorder and have been banned at some venues including the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent."

Now what fascinates me is this:

In Canada, the US and Australia we don't have NEARLY the same prevalence of CCTV as there is here in the UK. In fact, I remember being freaked out the first time I went to London and seeing the 'You are being recorded" signs everywhere (and now I'm more disturbed by the fact that I seem to have grown accustomed to it!). Simultaneously, while we have our fair share of youth crime, there is absolutely no stigma in youth wearing hoodies. It's just what kids wear!

So in this discussion, there are all of these comments about how hoodies should be banned because they help to hide your face from CCTV cameras while your commiting a crime. Now, I'm not claiming that Canada, the US or Australia necessarily have better penal systems than the UK (they might, I'm really not familiar with them at all) but I find it interesting that in this CCTV culture, the answer seems to be "let's catch them on camera so we can punish them" rather than "let's look at the causes of their criminal behaviour, and prevent that from happening in the first place."

So in a political sense, I don't know if this will help Cameron or not...he'll alienate a lot of his traditional base who think hoodies are evil and that those who wear them are scum, and yet he might appeal to more moderate conservatives. But who else are the hardcore right-wingers going to vote for? I guess they could throw their support behind fringe parties like UKIP and BNP, but that would ultimately just give more power to Labour and Lib Dem. Interesting...

In closing, I'd like to share a picture (from a previous post) that I took in London a while back: