What is astounding about the American Apparel Rummage riot, in which too many people desended upon a Brick Lane warehouse where the popular clothes brand American Apparel were trying to host the latest of several worldwide sale events, is that it really isn't that astounding if one understands the London, and particularly the small area around Brick Lane, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, in these recession hit times.

The sale turned into a small scale riot (footage can be found on youtube) peopled by screaming fashionistas, bored artsists, off shift dj's and local youth's. Looking at video footage, it seems that what London manages in multicultural diversity (people of every race are seen to behave equally brattishly here) it loses the sheer glibness of its values. American Apparel fashion items are not essential products one needs in order to live, yet the recession, and the sense that such items are out of reach for the average wage earner (or non-earner) most of the time, together with the value system held by many young people (arguably forced on them by the media) who live in London, is accountable for the chaos caused by this event. Relative to the perceived needs of the individual there was a genuine motive for the aggression unleashed at the start of the sale yesterday. This is the equivalent of Londoners chasing a UN food truck, and this is how odd things have become. Why did the governments bail out the banks? Because if they hadn't these scenes would be magnified several hundred times over, for the want of genuine essentials.

Frightening, when you think of it.