When flash mobs go bad An open invitation on Facebook to hold a massive water fight in Leeds has resulted in thousands of pounds worth of damage to its prize winning public garden. Leeds City Council claims about 350 people with water pistols, buckets and water balloons trashed the Millennium Square garden on Bank Holiday Monday. The destructive …
This is Leeds, they have Bradford in it, are you in the little bit surprised -
It's like a Mad Max fall of civilization.
The word hellhole doesn't do it justice
Maybe HolyHead works.
We should just gather the contents of Leeds and farm them for organs.
Fire because
Burn them
Burn them all.
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We must ban water. It's about time. It's also the cause of so many drowning related deaths. And, what if these terrorists start building super power, long-range water pistols, and start targeting planes with them? And we thought laser pointers were bad!?
Think of the children.
Mind you, they did look like a bunch of students. Throw in a few bars of soap, and you've solved a separate problem. So, I suppose it wasn't all bad.
"This is Leeds, they have Bradford in it"
In the words of Squiffy Bovril, "No, I'm just not understanding banter at all well today."
Bradford isn't, thank [insert chosen deity here], in Leeds. And if you want my organs you'll have to prise them from my cold, dead... oh...
Mine's the one with a lack of civic pride...
Expect to see Jacki Smith spending £255k on a new initiative to monitor these flash mob activities. Police will be armed with "Wazooka Fun Blasters" and waterproof video cameras to put a stop to this type of anarchy!
Jacki is also looking to reclassify fountain water to Class A as it causes such social unrest.
"It's about time Face Book was banned. Everyone knows it’s a hub for organised social unrest. What with that and GTA4, its only our police state that’s holding things together."
I agree with everything in that statement aside from the words in it. Actually, banning Facebook isn't such a bad idea, but if they try and touch my GTA4 I'll steal their police cars and run over a large congregation of Hasidic Jews (that actually happened in game - one moment I was hitting a kerb and the next moment my airborne car was scattering a group of characters looking like Hasidic Jews).
*I should mention that I have no intention of ACTUALLY running down a group of Hasidic Jews in real life, I'd rather aim for a group of French people*
Actually, the Police were in attendance... watch this YouTube video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5ktlBzN8w
There were hiding in and behind vans. Unfortunately, they had left their personal protection equipment in the station for dealing with such incidents and health and safety preventing them from being put in harms way. Permission hadn't been given for the issuing of umbrellas and cagoules!
I can't really see all this mayhem that is being protrayed by the "man from the council". Perhaps some plants actually drowned through over watering!
Jacki will be working on a new Bill this morning to prevent such terrorism in the future.
luckily those fun goers have the rebuttal that at least they weren't responsible for millions of pounds of water damage because of mismanagement of floods. i reckon fun is more justifiable than idiocy.
don't the local council spend about a thousand pounds for each chewing gum on the pavement anyway...
There's a massive difference between destroying public property for 'fun' and causing a mess whilst having fun.
The council is right to be concerned about the property they maintain *for us* but I'm not sure that extends to using criminal law when there are far worse and expensive things these people could have been doing (think drunk, hooded yobs on night out flash mob).
Perhaps a water fountain park should be designed with fun in mind?
Jacki will be introducing into the new Soft Porn bill a clause for extreme water sports to prevent this sort of thing in the future with such definitions as:
sports that involve water pistols, balloons and other items that are being used for the purpose of intense fun. Whether this is real or simulated fun is not important.
sports that cause nuisance, with no definition of what constitutes nuisance being given. (Her overpaid lawyer mates will help define that in the courts later, or worse still the daily mail will decide)
Cynic moi? Surely not. (Better not speak to much french, there is an irate GTA fan above with a car poised and ready)
I'm astonished that this even passed off without some psycho bringing an ammonia-filled super-soaker, or getting so carried away that they committed violence upon another person. A testament to the good nature of flashmobbers.
As suggested, a mob of flash gardeners would be a good idea too.
...for the lot of them.
No, seriously!
The wanton destruction probably only deserves a small fine from each participant. But the stupidity of documenting yourself destroying public property, and then distributing it to the world via Boobtube, is so egregious, that these people can NOT be allowed to breed.
The gene-pool needs some chlorine.
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And it was lots of kids having a great time, just messing around and spraying water at each other on a lovely sunny bank holiday.
The Police were there but didn't seem to want to go in too heavy, and I think they were also a bit drier hiding in their vans. :-)
OK, it's a shame the gardens took some collateral damage from careless feet, but Leeds has suffered a lot from shrinking/elimination of public spaces for property development, so there aren't a right lot of places left for this kind of activity.
I think some people have forgotten what it is to be young, and a whole load of them seem to work in the press industry!
Ian
I agree with you totally; regardless of whether local residents *wanted* them or not; their tax money went on the plants/flowers/upkeep of that public resource and I'm sure most tax payers will be a bit peeved that even more of their hard earned cash will be spent on making good the reckless and thoughtless damage caused.
Surely there is more than one open space where these people could have had the water fight (which *did* sound like a lot of fun, if only other people didn't have to lose out as a result)
I do NOT believe that any of the above posters with gardens would cheerfully laugh it off if all the kids in their street had a water fight in their garden and trashed it.
..."frankly, the scripting was poor, the director needs more work on this genre and the actors all need to be thrown downstairs repeatedly... I mean, gently spoken to until they learn some discipline in their craft. Next week: we interview Tarantino in connection with the crime against cinema that was DeathProof. Evenin' all."
Paris: and why not?
2 things:
The police apparently knew about it, but were having resourcing problems due to the 'serious public disorder' issues from Call Lane earlier that morning. (The one where two polish gangs organised a ruck and 5 people were knifed).
A chap drove past in a convertible. I'll let you guess the rest...
Most people there are just having harmless fun, but there is a (small) nasty element who are there to spoil it for others.
Have a look at the Facebook photos for last year - there's one where they're ganging up on a cyclist, another they're spraying into a soft-top car. Not really on, that, and it makes everyone else look bad.
By the way, having lived round here since 1978, I can say that Leeds is infinitely better than Bradford. (Though that's like saying rabbit pooh is better than dog turd. I'd rather have neither!)
Leeds parks and gardens department are only annoyed as usually its them who are ripping perfectly good plants out and replacing them with almost identical ones.
I can promise you, whilst some poor plants may have been inadvertantly trampled, they would have been marked for termination by the death squad already, and probably only stopped some other poor plants coping it elsewhere in Leeds, at least they died happy.
I'll get my coat, as I can't afford to heat my house after the Leeds Council Tax hike this year.
The media needs to get a grip and stop sensationalising things for the sake of a story...the reason why there are no pictures or videos of the damage is that they wouldn't match the story.
There was always going to be superficial damage done at this kind of event. A lot of people cleaned up the rubbish afterwards and the next day the fountain was working and you could not see much at all. If the council cleaned that up it is the fastest thing the have ever done!
The council and police knew it was organised and were there, they only took action on 3 occasions. To stop people getting too close to Casa Mia restaraunt, to stop people going mad in the road, getting cars and to take a catapult after a water balloon was aimed at a police van.
Everyone regrets what did damage and dissruption did occur, but no one who was there caused deliberate damage to the garden or tore up plants. As usual these were a few people being idiots but mainly it was badly organised and should have been on a different weekend when the main square was available. But in this day and age it would never be offcially allowed for health and saftey fears!
As for calling Leeds a dump, you clearly haven't been there.
Leeds is the 3rd biggest city in England and as such has all the advantages and problems that come with it. If you think that makes a place a dump then you should rephrase your comment and aim it at all large cities!....By the way, Leeds is the second Greenest city in Europe after Vienna!
I have visited and worked in just about every major city up and down the country. Leeds compares very well among similar cities and is much nicer than anything in the nearby M62 corridor - Liverpool/Manchester/Bradford/Wakefield/Sheffield/Hull.
MarkM
I saw this on the 80s remake of Quatermass.
Aliens convinced Daft Yoof to congregate in certain places, then disassembled them down to the molecular level to harvest some of their chemicals leaving only a rather disgusting brown fog.
The story differed only in minor detail from this Facebook flash mob thing.
What we should be asking is: Facebook - Are UFOs involved? And if they are, how can we get them to cart off the ASBO generation before they vote again and do to the world what they just did to London?
All hail the Secret Alien Masters of the Universe!
Abundant video evidence shows the participants were genuinely having fun, John Procter, so any talk of "so-called 'fun' " is your opinion.
If the worst that happened was a few thousand pounds worth of accidental damage then this would be one of the cheapest public events in recent times.
If the issue of damage is of concern, then why not invite the organisers plus any other volunteers to make amends? It's their garden too, isn't it?
If the police were crafty, some of them would join in. Being a part of the community gives police the kind of intel that money cannot buy.
And Tux, for his natural love of water.
maybe next year the police and fire brigade will be able to organise the riot water hoses and "redistribute" the fire trucks in a security cordon around the event to totally Pwn everyone else and have a bit of a luagh along with it. look on the bright side, it would be the first time in a long time a team from leeds won anything....
mines the souwester with the footy rattle in the pocket and fasionable rain hat
and paris, cos she likes it wet
ta
The popularity of this and similar events (pillow fight in Manchester, sociology rallies) suggest a group of people from any area can be easily manipulated to do anything in the name of social networking fun.
That should definitely be harnessed until the point where it actually does go too far and the Government has to step in and ban social networking before it replaces the Government itself.
Obviously social networking needs to get organised and get rid of the Government before this happens.
The only thing that could previously have stopped this was recently reclassified and future alcohol fuelled flashes may not be pretty.
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