Recently in London Category

It wasn't just in Clapham that people pulled together in the aftermath of the riots:

[via 853]

A burned-out car not far from my Lewisham flat, from a photo set by Tom Royal.

A rough night in London, as looters smashed up and burnt high streets all over the capital.

Morning has dawned, with the #riotcleanup hashtag, promoted early on by Dan Thompson, helping people co-ordinate themselves to clean up the damage of the night before. Proof, if you want it, that social media is inherently neutral, and that people can use it for good or ill.

Some links:

• Brixton yesterday morning, before the next wave of riots.
• Riot damage in Deptford
• The night the looters stole from us all
• Matthew Taylor explores the Prime Minister's challenge
• Good to see student journalists doing live coverage of the riots
• Bad to see journalists being attacked
• Brockley Central has a time-line of attacks in the south east of London
• Google map of rioting locations
• The story of what's rapidly becoming the defining image of last night

Clapham looks shut this morning:

[via @greencourier]

More as I find them.

Update: 10.10am

• Guardian news meeting, with a map of London
• Brockley Central lists damaged shops in south east London

People waiting to join #riotcleanup in Clapham, via Simon Parsons

Update: 10.20am

• A first person account of a restaurant being attacked last night
• Facebook page in support of the Police
• Remember you're a #riotwomble

Update: 10.45am

• The Times is reporting that London's cells are full [£]
• At times like this no news can be news.
• A tumblr for photos of looters

The Great Harry pub in Woolwich (via @darryl1974)

Feels like a miracle that no-one's been killed in the riots yet, especially when you see this:

Update: 12:01pm

There's been a definite shift away from recording the damage and arranging positive action, into blame-storming and political posturing, which I'm less interested in chronicling.

Here's a last link for now, channeling the positive vibe of this morning.

However, if we are looking at north vs south, one thing stands out: when it comes to blogging, the south wins hands down,and the south-east in particular.

The main reason is because this corner of the capital has, frankly been ignored by the rest of the media for decades. The Tube network barely touches it, so it may as well not exist to the kind of closed-minded north/west London media type who gets a nosebleed more than a mile off the Underground system. I get as pissed off as anyone with tedious misrepresentation of south-east London in the media, and most of it's down to sheer laziness and ignorance. The South London Press (no coverage east of Deptford) aside, local media's a bit of a joke so it's quite easy to tell a story that, simply, isn't being told.

London May Day Protests 2009 from Adam Tinworth on Vimeo.

If I'd had my MacBook with me, I'd still have used iMovie and edited it much more tightly. Trimming clips isn't that easy in the Flip's own software. But in terms of getting good stuff up quickly, the Flip hits the spot...