I went out for the evening and came back to find reports that Canning Circus police station — which is 30m across the road from my flat — had been "firebombed".
On personal inspection I found a mildly shattered window, a thin stretch of cordon and two police officers standing guard at the entrance. No sign of fire damage, though it is dark and I have been drinking slightly.
I did notice that a Toyota dealership half a mile away had moved its entire stock of vehicles to a secure compound, but otherwise I can't see anything particularly interesting going on here. Frankly, for all the rap the Nottingham gets for crime, when it comes to mass organised unrest like we've seen over the past couple of days, I can't envisage anything particularly damaging going on here.
Nottingham is still very much a city where major crime is restricted to a specific few outlying areas. The media usually like to ignore this for reasons of sensationalism, but given what's going on elsewhere this week, these usually overblown activities are completely outdone by events elsewhere, and I don't see that changing tonight.
Update (midnight) Captions like this make me wonder how hyped-up the mainstream news is being. Honestly, there's not that much going on here.
(Though the live video report is from Manchester, the caption does relate to Nottingham.)
Update (00:23): There is quite a lot of siren action going on outside, but from what I can tell there's still not much going on here.
