I find it sinister that the Business Improvement Association were early on the riot scene, commenting alongside the Mayor and Premier (both of whom spoke in comic book “bad guy” terminology which shed no light on the situation beyond “gasp, this is bad, and we gotta put the bad guys in jail). Yesterday I saw Mr Business Improvement Association on the news commenting on being consulted on appropriate punishment through the community court system (which is likely to be employed as a route for dealing with people who were charged with the disturbances).

How did the Business Approvement Association manage to inject themselves into the justice system? Why are they being consulted? Why are they giving comments? They are not elected by anyone. They’re self appointed one assumes and their knowledge if they have any is utterly irrelevant in this context.

If the Mayor is rolling out anyone for insight should it not be sociologists or social scientists or community leaders or youth workers? I find the sinsister presence of “business interests” so consistently represented in community affairs disturbing. If the business interests should be meeting with anyone it is with their fellow business interested at Rogers Arena, the owners of the hockey team who should be offering some financial reparation from their profits towards the repairs and who likewise should have had to fork out a contribution towards the security costs.

Since when is a privately owned sports franchise and the expenses incurred related to securing an income of $112 million dollars for it, the responsibility of the tax payers? If we look at cultural funding and the return on it we see a dollar invested brings triple to the economy in return and there’s little to no security costs incurred through the hosting of cultural events.

This leads me to another question: why did the rioters not inflict havoc on the very thing that is understood to have angered them? Why did they not vandalize the stadium where the match took place?