a depressing sign of the growing rejection of reading?

[winterbadger]

from BBC reporting about the London rioting
 

 

The main problem was broken glass from shopfronts but not all the shops had been targeted. While the looters had cleared out the stock of Currys, Claire's Accessories and Phones4U, nearby Waterstone's had been left "without a scratch", she says.

Comments

[tysolna]

I have obviously not been among the looters, because man, I would have looted the hell out of a Waterstone's.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

I could see that either way: people not seeing bookstores as having anything valuable, or people not looting bookstores because it would be like looting a church.

[winterbadger]

From what I've seen of this looting, they would loot and burn a church if they could find one. In urban Britain, they are vanishingly rare apart from city centres, which the rioters haven't been venturing into, preferring as rioters always do to destroy the places they live instead of venturing afield.