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Video from YouTubePushing past the Tuesday night commuters at the station, returning late from work, and uniformly looking miserable, I was aware that this could be my big moment. I'd been too young to bring hard-hitting reporting to your screens from the student protests of 2010. The riots of 2011 had been really far away from my suburban family home.But now it sounded like I'd be at the center of an uprising, standing alongside disaffected young people who'd had enough of the perpetual inequality that neoliberalism has provided us. The right-wing press would paint these teens as hooligans, but I'd be embedded within the vanguard to tell it how it was. As I sprinted up the escalators at Walthamstow Central, my slot on Newsnight defending our lost generation played out in my head.
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Video from YouTubePress card in hand, camera switched on, my notepad and pen were ready to go. Shit. My phone battery was only half full, which worried me. What if I had to be patched through to the studio and my iPhone died?Then I was on the mean streets of Walthamstow, just outside McDonald's. There was a police car. It was raining. Some people were sitting in chicken shops; some people weren't. Nando's wasn't on fire. I was too late; the revolution was over.But I'd traveled a way to get there, and frankly I was pumped. The people of Walthamstow might no longer be on the streets, but Twitter seemed certain there was some rioting going on.
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