Riots

We spent most of yesterday trying to stop unconfirmed tweets regarding a potential riot in Greenwich, SE London. A look at the historical hash tag #greenwich will see that tweeting actually caused businesses in Greenwich Town Centre to stop trading and to board up their windows in prepartion for a riot that never and was never likely to materialise, although one orange shop did have its window broken.
Rumours abounded throughput the day of youths congregating in Greenwich Park ready to unleash a wave of terror on the town centre.
It is my opinion that unconfirmed and unverified tweets actually caused more harm than good and I would appeal to all twitter users to try and get evidence before retweeting about the current riot situation in London and beyond.
The reason that Greenwich wouldn't be a victim of the riots was that it simply does not have a JD Sports or any electrical stores, it only has two mobile phone shops.
Officialdom was also taken in by the malicious tweets, one of the river cruise companies were actually saying that a riot was expected later in the day and that all the shops were boarded up and that only locals should embark. The University also tweeted saying that whilst trouble was expected they were still open for calls and registration enquiries.
These tweets obviously caused a great deal of panic and I would urge twitters to think before they post.