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I removed some posts.
For f#@#’s sake people, grow up.
This should be a discussion about a very real, very current and very tragic series of events that have no one simple answer or cause and room for opposing but reasoned views.
It is not the time or place for Internet Oneupmanship 101.
The Mothman, he is wise.
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I removed some posts.
For f#@#’s sake people, grow up.
This should be a discussion about a very real, very current and very tragic series of events that have no one simple answer or cause and room for opposing but reasoned views.
It is not the time or place for Internet Oneupmanship 101.
The Mothman, he is wise.
Thanks for the crap moderationjob as always Ross.
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Has the officer involved ever claimed he was fired on? I thought it was a feared for life shoot first situation.The firearms officers has never claimed they where fired on.
However, information was packaged to imply it. The implication in much of the media has been that it he did.
It is interesting because it has started to change the narrative of his death.
Ahhh - I haven't been reading the local news.
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IIPCC: No, evidence that mark duggan opened fire on police officers. Bullit lodged in police officers radio was a through and through, from another officers weapon.
That's what I heard. However, for those who don't know it, British police do not routinely carry firearms - in fact, only specially-trained police are allowed to use them. For there to be firearms police there suggests that an operational decision was made, in order to protect the public and/or the police themselves, for firearms officers to be there. Which suggests that Mr Duggan was considered a pretty serious threat, rather than just a random bloke they picked off the street for a stop-and-search. And he was, indeed, found to be carrying a firearm.
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This whole situation frightens and makes me sad all at the same time.
Frightening because of how easily something like this can happen. I love London and hate to see all the destruction and people taking advantage of a bad situation and making it worse for other people trying to make a living. I am all for protesting against situations and poverty and helping people in life. But when people use their current situation and make other peoples lives worse ... I am not on board with that. Looting and burning is not helping anyones cause and it just causes heartache and ruin and makes me sad.
It is also sad to watch people here use the situation as forum to spew vitriol at one another. I think we could all do a better job at trying to discuss things in a more civilized way. Perhaps even pause and wait before responding to something ... just my 2 cp. Take it or leave it. Here is to hoping that the troubles in London are resolved soon and some changes and good come from all this current tragedy.
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This stuff, I like.I have friends involved in the clean up. Wish I could be their to help.
Slight downer, it seems to be being used to coordinate the rioters too.
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I think they should just start shooting. Criminals are criminals, after all.
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For f@+!’s sake people, grow up.
This should be a discussion about a very real, very current and very tragic series of events that have no one simple answer or cause and room for opposing but reasoned views.
It is not the time or place for Internet Oneupmanship 101.
You are correct.
A good quote I saw that helps encompass why this riot happened:
...If youre born poor in a deprived london borough, the odds are instantly stacked against you. I'm not saying it isnt possible to escape, but statistically its unlikely. As a thought exercise, assume you are one of these poor children. Your family dont have much money since theyre either working minimum wage or on the dole. You yourself go to an average at best set of schools, but since theyre inner city london theyre probably going to be the bad side of average.
In your neighbourhood you have problems with gangs. To try to combat this problem, a number of youth centers are set up so the kids have something to do with their time instead of hanging out on the streets and getting into trouble. With very little warning, their funding is pulled and the kids are back on the street. Tensions rise. A few people you know get stabbed in gang fighting. Maybe one of them dies from their injuries.
Schools finished. You did the best you could, but didnt get very good GCSEs. Because your family's poor you have to get a job as quick as you can, but since you dont have much in the way of qualifications its probably going to be minimum wage, which at 16 is a paltry £3.64 an hour. You might have gone to college, but since the £30 a week EMA's gone, you and your family simply cant afford it since you wouldnt be able to keep your heads above water. When youre older, the minimum wage bumps up to £4.92, then £5.93. At london prices, this doesnt go very far.
The recession comes along, and you lose your job. Your manager says its "downsizing", more likely he's going to hire a school leaver to save on labour costs so he in turn doesnt lose
Yeah, but...
It's funny how there's "no work" yet the place is full of Polish people. Y'know, working. How come they come from a different country and are able to find a job, yet these lads from the estates, who one might imagine might be closer to the ground in the job-finding stakes, can't? Is it because they aren't looking very hrad?
There are reasons whey they don't have jobs, but London is booming (still) with money from the City. There are loads of jobs. Trust me, I work there.
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I think they should just start shooting. Criminals are criminals, after all.
There seems to be a lot of ignorance on these riots, even here in England. People have been telling each other that the police fired on the young man unprovoked, or with little provocation. The facts AFAIK are that the man pulled a gun on the policeman as he was approached, and the police only returned fire once one of them had been shot at (the shot hit his radio so he was unharmed). I was always under the impression that the police force over here are quite conservative and rarely fire first.
I'm not really sure how immigration ended up part of this topic. Theres been no reports that immigrants are playing a large part in the riots IIRC.
Yeah, but...
It's funny how there's "no work" yet the place is full of Polish people. Y'know, working. How come they come from a different country and are able to find a job, yet these lads from the estates, who one might imagine might be closer to the ground in the job-finding stakes, can't? Is it because they aren't looking very hrad?
There are reasons whey they don't have jobs, but London is booming (still) with money from the City. There are loads of jobs. Trust me, I work there.
Are you sure it isn't just because certain people just want to hire Poles? Maybe they're willing to work under the table for less money or something? I know that's been the issue with certain ethnic groups over here.
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All the polish people I have met actually work bloody hard at their jobs. My father is in the motor trade over here and the one polish fitter we have has been nicknamed 'The Machine' because he is so efficient.
Plus it is true that plenty of people in this country don't really want to work when there are benefits available...
That and a lot of the immigrants we get over here are actually skilled rather than unskilled. Immigrants from outside the EU have to pass tests showing their grasp of English and have to meet a points rating in order to apply here that includes money and education as two big criteria.
All the polish people I have met actually work bloody hard at their jobs. My father is in the motor trade over here and the one polish fitter we have has been nicknamed 'The Machine' because he is so efficient.
Plus it is true that plenty of people in this country don't really want to work when there are benefits available...
That and a lot of the immigrants we get over here are actually skilled rather than unskilled. Immigrants from outside the EU have to pass tests showing their grasp of English and have to meet a points rating in order to apply here that includes money and education as two big criteria.
Hm. Interesting.
Has the officer involved ever claimed he was fired on? I thought it was a feared for life shoot first situation.The firearms officers has never claimed they where fired on.
However, information was packaged to imply it. The implication in much of the media has been that it he did.
It is interesting because it has started to change the narrative of his death.
That's the media for you - never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Police report that a loaded illegal firearm was found at the scene. Firearms officers are permitted to fire should they feel that "life is endangered" - this was probably the case here.
He was a known criminal and had a loaded weapon... so hardly a law abiding citizen, martyr or loss to society - just an excuse for the opportunistic thugs and looters to riot.
@Gark: Would you stand by as an officer of the law - individuals who serve and protect us [the law abiding majority] was brutally assaulted? Know I wouldn't and in a 3 on 1 situation I wouldn't mess about either.
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Are you sure it isn't just because certain people just want to hire Poles? Maybe they're willing to work under the table for less money or something? I know that's been the issue with certain ethnic groups over here.Yeah, but...
It's funny how there's "no work" yet the place is full of Polish people. Y'know, working. How come they come from a different country and are able to find a job, yet these lads from the estates, who one might imagine might be closer to the ground in the job-finding stakes, can't? Is it because they aren't looking very hrad?
There are reasons whey they don't have jobs, but London is booming (still) with money from the City. There are loads of jobs. Trust me, I work there.
The Poles are not illegals - they are entitled to be here, so they don't have to work "under the table", they can just apply for jobs. It is hard not to be served by a Pole in many pubs for example, and there is the cliche in the UK of the Polish plumber. Virtually the entire staff in our staff canteen are Polish (apart from the Moroccan). They are good workers with a strong work ethic, plus if they are going to cross a continent to get a job you can assume they are motivated.
Now, bear in mind that I work in Canary Wharf, an enclave of the city surrounded by some of the poorest parts of East London. And not a single native is there, working in that canteen. Where are they all?
I don't agree that these riots have anything to do with "protest" or "poverty". Unlike with Broadwater Farm, the police had invested in community policing, but they didn't get an inkling about this, suggesting that it doesn't really represent anything much in the community at large. Quite the opposite - it is a spontaneous event driven by gang subculture that has been facilitated by modern electronic communications. Most of these kids probably don't really want a job (I was unemployed for a while once - it was great, no on telling me what to do) and it's funny how their means of protesting involves nicking wide-screen tellies. This is just criminality.
There are, of course, broader issues underlying this, particularly the collapse of educational standards in the UK and the breakdown of family life. It is a scandal that an unemployable underclass has been created in this country. But oddly enough it strikes me that the primary causes of these stem from a left-wing meddling thirty or forty years ago by the same sorts bleeding hearts who are now going on about poverty and exclusion as "reasons" for what is happening here.
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It sounds to me like Poles enjoy some positive stereotypes in England, then. Which would go a long ways towards explaining why they get hired and others don't.
I know here in Seattle an African immigrant will find it much easier to get a job than an African-American born in the city. Because a lot of (white) employers in Seattle think African immigrants are hard-working and don't complain, but that African-Americans are lazy and criminally minded. Never you mind that there are lazy African immigrants and hard-working African-Americans.
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Sure, lazy Poles exist - but they probably don't bother driving across Europe to work in British pubs, for example. So we get the good ones. Immigrants generally speaking will have more get up and go because, well, they have already got up and gone. With the local talent, you get the gamut of the motivated and the lazy, since it is less of a big deal to go for a job in your local area.
@Gark <snip>
It's also interesting that you assume I'm law-abiding! <Starts liberal fire.>
The Poles are not illegals - they are entitled to be here, so they don't have to work "under the table", they can just apply for jobs. It is hard not to be served by a Pole in many pubs for example, and there is the cliche in the UK of the Polish plumber. Virtually the entire staff in our staff canteen are Polish (apart from the Moroccan). They are good workers with a strong work ethic, plus if they are going to cross a continent to get a job you can assume they are motivated.
Now, bear in mind that I work in Canary Wharf, an enclave of the city surrounded by some of the poorest parts of East London. And not a single native is there, working in that canteen. Where are they all?
I don't agree that these riots have anything to do with "protest" or "poverty". Unlike with Broadwater Farm, the police had invested in community policing, but they didn't get an inkling about this, suggesting that it doesn't really represent anything much in the community at large. Quite the opposite - it is a spontaneous event driven by gang subculture that has been facilitated by modern electronic communications. Most of these kids probably don't really want a job (I was unemployed for a while once - it was great, no on telling me what to do) and it's funny how their means of protesting involves nicking wide-screen tellies. This is just criminality.
There are, of course, broader issues underlying this, particularly the collapse of educational standards in the UK and the breakdown of family life. It is a scandal that an unemployable underclass has been created in this country. But oddly enough it strikes me that the primary causes of these stem from a left-wing meddling thirty or forty years ago by the same sorts bleeding hearts who are now going on about poverty and exclusion as "reasons" for what is happening here.
Oh no, don't get me wrong, friend- I'm not saying anyone is anywhere illegally. I'm just wondering if they wanted to hire Poles because they had a different work ethic, especially when it's related to the possiblity that they may be willing to work for less- black people experienced this in the northern US in the 40's and 50's. There's the issue of skin tone as well, but I'm not seeing that here so much, although there seems to be hostility towards many north Africans and Middle Easterners.
An article from Camila Batmanghelidjh, who founded Kids Company:
Shops looted, cars and buildings burnt out, young adults in hoods on the rampage.
London has woken up to street violence, and the usual narratives have emerged – punish those responsible for the violence because they are "opportunist criminals" and "disgusting thieves". The slightly more intellectually curious might blame the trouble on poor police relations or lack of policing.
My own view is that the police in this country do an impressive job and unjustly carry the consequences of a much wider social dysfunction. Before you take a breath of sarcasm thinking "here she goes, excusing the criminals with some sob story", I want to begin by stating two things. First, violence and looting can never be justified. Second, for those of us working at street level, we're not surprised by these events.
Twitter and Facebook have kept the perverse momentum going, transmitting invitations such as: "Bare shops are gonna get smashed up. So come, get some (free stuff!!!!) F... the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! Dead the ends and colour war for now. So If you see a brother... SALUTE! If you see a fed... SHOOT!"
If this is a war, the enemy, on the face of it, are the "lawless", the defenders are the law-abiding. An absence of morality can easily be found in the rioters and looters. How, we ask, could they attack their own community with such disregard? But the young people would reply "easily", because they feel they don't actually belong to the community. Community, they would say, has nothing to offer them. Instead, for years they have experienced themselves cut adrift from civil society's legitimate structures. Society relies on collaborative behaviour; individuals are held accountable because belonging brings personal benefit. Fear or shame of being alienated keeps most of us pro-social.
Working at street level in London, over a number of years, many of us have been concerned about large groups of young adults creating their own parallel antisocial communities with different rules. The individual is responsible for their own survival because the established community is perceived to provide nothing. Acquisition of goods through violence is justified in neighbourhoods where the notion of dog eat dog pervades and the top dog survives the best. The drug economy facilitates a parallel subculture with the drug dealer producing more fiscally efficient solutions than the social care agencies who are too under-resourced to compete.
The insidious flourishing of anti-establishment attitudes is paradoxically helped by the establishment. It grows when a child is dragged by their mother to social services screaming for help and security guards remove both; or in the shiny academies which, quietly, rid themselves of the most disturbed kids. Walk into the mental hospitals and there is nothing for the patients to do except peel the wallpaper. Go to the youth centre and you will find the staff have locked themselves up in the office because disturbed young men are dominating the space with their violent dogs. Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped. The border police arrive at the neighbour's door to grab an "over-stayer" and his kids are screaming. British children with no legal papers have mothers surviving through prostitution and still there's not enough food on the table.
It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped. Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.
Our leaders still speak about how protecting the community is vital. The trouble is, the deal has gone sour. The community has selected who is worthy of help and who is not. In this false moral economy where the poor are described as dysfunctional, the community fails. One dimension of this failure is being acted out in the riots; the lawlessness is, suddenly, there for all to see. Less visible is the perverse insidious violence delivered through legitimate societal structures. Check out the price of failing to care.
I got a call yesterday morning. The kids gave me a run-down of what had happened in Brixton. A street party had been invaded by a group of young men out to grab. A few years ago, the kids who called me would have joined in, because they had nothing to lose. One had been permanently excluded from six schools. When he first arrived at Kids Company he cared so little that he would smash his head into a pane of glass and bite his own flesh off with rage. He'd think nothing of hurting others. After intensive social care and support he walked away when the riots began because he held more value in his membership of a community that has embraced him than a community that demanded his dark side.
It costs money to care. But it also costs money to clear up riots, savagery and antisocial behaviour. I leave it to you to do the financial and moral sums.
Another look into the causes of the riots from the Guardian
"Just be ready with your shutters, yeah?" It was 1pm outside Hackney Downs train station and two police community support officers were offering advice to the manager of the Tesco store next door, who had popped out in his shirt sleeves for an update, looking fretful.
Hackney had largely swept up the broken glass and cleared away the melted wheelie bins of the night before, the result of hundreds of masked youths fighting running battles with rows of riot police in several locations. But while the burnt-out cars were gone, leaving blackened, bubbled oblongs on the road, the mood was tense and strange, all the stranger given the dazzling lunchtime sunshine.
On Mare Street, the main thoroughfare a little to the south, almost every shop had already shuttered, while people stood in pavement huddles, looking out in case anything was about to happen.
The PCSOs, their radios crackling on their collarbones, had heard the same rumours as everyone else, that things might kick off in London Fields at 2pm, but seemed to know no more than the worried business owners. "Well, you know, it can all happen in two minutes," one said to the manager, smiling. "Just be ready."
It was a nervy day all over the capital. From Woolwich to Clapham Junction, Croydon to Enfield, Londoners had watched in dismay as familiar and well-loved streets were turned, for a time, into alien, frightening battle zones.
Monday evening's riots were shocking because of their speed and unpredictability, but also because of their geographical and socioeconomic scope.
If off-licences and newsagents in poor east London were trashed and looted, so too were luxury goods shops in monied Notting Hill. At the Michelin-starred restaurant the Ledbury, near Westbourne Park, chefs surged from the kitchens wielding frying pans to charge at rioters, while homes and pubs in the leafy Ledbury Road had their windows smashed. Disturbances that many Londoners felt had some roots in the capital's inequality also managed to unite much of the city in victimhood.
"I am having a look to make sure we don't get caught by any rioters tonight," said Neil Clifford, who is chief executive of the shoe chain Kurt Geiger but, for now, was sipping a cappuccino outside the Joseph store in Notting Hill. "It's pretty shocking. We look an embarrassment to the world. I think we probably either should have a massive influx of police or the support of the army to deal with this."
Pat Burn, a retired social worker who has lived in west London for 30 years, said she heard the sirens and feared for her and her elderly husband's safety.
"I think everybody around here is very worried. It feels as if things are out of control." She too thought military support might be needed. "The police should get the water cannon out and use the army if they can't cope.
"I'm not sure how it will all end. This area will be a target because it is wealthy. The problem is that in this country we live in extremes of rich and poor. We need to live in the middle, like they do in Scandinavia."
No one in Hackney was calling for the army. On Clarence Road, scene of some of the most dramatic and frightening rioting of the night, many said they felt the police had been alarming enough. All along the street, neighbours gathered in threes or fives, some talking discreetly among themselves, some debating noisily the cause of the disturbances. A few teenagers on low BMX bikes wheeled slowly along the street, looking at strangers with suspicion. No one was talking about anything else.
"The police were hanging at the bottom of the road, hundreds of them, waiting for trouble," said one man in his early 40s, who had stood on his doorstep until 2am to protect his front windows. Like most people on the street he would not give his name.
"Their priority was to protect Mare Street … the banks, the post offices. That's what their priortity is. Not us. Taxpayers are supposed to serve and protect the community. It's a joke."
But the young rioters' grievances with the police, he and his friends agreed, were much more deep-seated. "When you have police officers jumping out of vans, calling 18-year-olds b$##*es and n@%!~*s; I'm a youth worker, I see it all over.
"That's what's happening. They are thinking, who the f!#+ are you? And so it starts," he added.
"You have a generation of kids now that don't respect their parents or the police," chipped in his friend. "When we were youngsters we were made to have respect for the olders. Now if an older was to slap a youth that kid is going to pick up a hammer.
"I was one of these kids but it's bloody hard for them. There's nothing to do at all. University fees have gone up, education costs money. And there's no jobs. This is them sending out a message."
The same depressing picture – a mixture of alienation, anger at the police, boredom and mischief – was reiterated by locals across the Pembury estate. "They just want to be heard," said a young black woman. "This is the only way some people have to communicate."
Were cuts in services a factor? "Course they are. They cut our youth project by 75%. We used to work with gangs, run a workshop that brought police and young people together. Gone.
"That Cameron doesn't know what he's talking about. He's lucky he can get a holiday. These kids don't get a holiday."
Plenty of local young people, of course, were not involved – and many had little sympathy for the disturbances. "I think it was opportunism," said Sarah, 17, who lives behind the Pembury. "I can understand why people would riot in Tottenham but here? I just thought it was a chance for them to cause havoc. It's just an excuse."
"But there is a problem," interrupted her friend Ally, 21. "Growing up here, a lot of young boys, they are constantly harassed and stop and searched. The people, not just young people, they don't like the police. They don't get along with the police. They say the police are no good. They feel like they don't help them. So what was happening, they were just trying to give the police the runaround. Just to piss them off."
Both young women are currently looking for work, without success. "My dad talks about his generation, it was hard for them, but I think it's worse for us," said Ally.
"Definitely some people are just taking a riot that was for injustice and turning it to something that hasn't got anything to do with it. But maybe it's a cry for help as well. People are doing it to be noticed, because there's a problem."
Behind a low gate inside the Pembury complex, around eight 20-something men were sitting in a huddle in a children's play area around 3pm, some sitting on a low wall, one or two perched on swings or rocking toys, talking earnestly and quietly among themselves. Most had their hoods up, one was wearing a scarf wrapped around his head, concealing his face. They stopped talking abruptly, and two got up immediately to leave, when approached by the Guardian. "Nah," said one, barely glancing up. "We don't want to talk."
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Thanks for the crap moderationjob as always Ross.
I thought he did you a favour to be honest.
So, anyhow, overnight someone has now been shot and killed.
Innocent people (downtrodden disadvantaged included) have been bashed and robbed, and those in the poorest sections of life are now even further kicked in the guts through the cowardly action of people who 'want to be heard'.
So now who is the occupying army doing the oppressing?
They aren't robbing a Marks and Spencer because they are 'disenfranchised', they are carrying on like this because the gravy train of Gov't handouts has been cut back, and these people thought they had an entitlement to handouts for life. The eternal passengers have been told to get off at the next station so they are acting up.
The UK needs to fix it's crushing debt problem, which means everybody needs to put in to get the country fixed. These slackers are not only choosing not to do that for themselves, but they are getting in the way of people who DO want to do the right thing.
That said, cutting back things like Youth Centres is entirely counterproductive, money needs to be spent in these areas to maintain the links of communication amongst many stakeholders.
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These rioters are what you are going to get after raising generations in a relativistic, value-less, multicultural, consumerist environment in which everyone feels entitled to whatever they want just for the great feat of being born. Prevent access to the consumer goods they need to fill the holes in their souls, images of which they are bombarded with constantly, and when economic realities set in and they can't have those things they are going to simmer in rage.
Do bad economic policies need to change? Certainly. But the heart of the problem is that Western civilization is sick and rudderless.
Why should backward and/or medieval immigrants to the West change their practices or worldviews once they get here and see how empty and hollow our societies are?
Europe will be fully part of the Islamic world by the end of this century, and the US will be a strange, little Byzantine Empire.
I think I'll have a margarita!
Edited for spelling but not pessimism.
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These rioters are what you are going to get after raising generations in a relativistic, value-less, multicultural, consumerist environment in which everyone feels entitled to whatever they want just for the great feat of being born.
Absolutely -- how dare people think they have a right to be rich. Just because they have money doesn't mean they deserve it -- and instead of actual generosity and trying to show good will they cut labor, cut wages and send their profits soaring without regard to their work force without health insurance or a day off in two months.
It goes all directions -- including the smug and self-righteous that don't actually do anything but forecast doom and look smug when they are right. It's loathsome the fact they can see it coming and then do nothing but say, "I told you so -- this is because you tolerated gays -- God chose you to suffer!"
Or
"How dare you have helped other people and not done both more and less at the same time!"
or
"My world views are so superior that if we followed them we wouldn't be here!"
Hubbish, rubbish and trash the lot of it.
I think I'll have a margarita!
Better hurry up and drink it now, because if you are right about Europe it will be illegal :p
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Europe will be fully part of the Islamic world by the end of this century, and the US will be a strange, little Byzantine Empire.
I almost hope this happens. Think of the Democratic talking points....Now think of the islamic talking points....
You say conservatives are crazy?
Wait till a liberal thinking woman says something. You wont because they are not allowed to speak in public in Islamic.
Awe the death of liberalism... Praise Allah.
Since we think that robbing from the rich is ok. If I mug and steal from Micheal Moore, Is that considered mining since he is a natural resource.
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This thread just took a sharp right turn into pure crazy town.
They aren't robbing a Marks and Spencer because they are 'disenfranchised', they are carrying on like this because the gravy train of Gov't handouts has been cut back, and these people thought they had an entitlement to handouts for life. The eternal passengers have been told to get off at the next station so they are acting up.
Typical FYGM sociopathy. Eternal passangers on the "gravy train?" Tell us more about those lucky ducks in miserable poverty.
More ACTUAL news on the source of the riots
Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.
The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.
One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.
Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)
Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.
As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.
Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.
Tell us more about those lucky ducks living in the developed country with the worst social mobility.
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They aren't robbing a Marks and Spencer because they are 'disenfranchised', they are carrying on like this because the gravy train of Gov't handouts has been cut back, and these people thought they had an entitlement to handouts for life. The eternal passengers have been told to get off at the next station so they are acting up.Typical FYGM sociopathy. Eternal passangers on the "gravy train?" Tell us more about those lucky ducks in miserable poverty.
More ACTUAL news on the source of the riots
...Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.
The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.
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In britian is it true that in the school system where you have to take a test and they tell you what you can be. I thought I heard that some where.
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These rioters are what you are going to get after raising generations in a relativistic, value-less, multicultural, consumerist environment in which everyone feels entitled to whatever they want just for the great feat of being born. Prevent access to the consumer goods they need to fill the holes in their souls, images of which they are bombarded with constantly, and when economic realities set in and they can't have those things they are going to simmer in rage.
Do bad economic policies need to change? Certainly. But the heart of the problem is that Western civilization is sick and rudderless.
Why should backward and/or medieval immigrants to the West change their practices or worldviews once they get here and see how empty and hollow our societies are?
Europe will be fully part of the Islamic world by the end of this century, and the US will be a strange, little Byzantine Empire.
I think I'll have a margarita!
Edited for spelling but not pessimism.
Methinks you've been reading too much of Anders Breivik's manifest...
That's how far out I think this line of reasoning is.|
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Methinks you've been reading too much of Anders Breivik's manifest...
That's how far out I think this line of reasoning is.
Yeah, anyone who mentions values is a dangerous lunatic, but the people who see this as a purely material problem are just full of humanity.
The Right serves those who are really looting the West and doing more damage than rioters can ever do, and the Left just pleads to provide more comfort in the cages of the poor.
Until we figure out who we are and what we believe in there will be no solutions, and Europe will probably be mostly lost to a different way of life that will provide tradition and a connection to the sacred.
But by all means continue on with the right versus left chatter. It has solved so much.
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They aren't robbing a Marks and Spencer because they are 'disenfranchised', they are carrying on like this because the gravy train of Gov't handouts has been cut back, and these people thought they had an entitlement to handouts for life. The eternal passengers have been told to get off at the next station so they are acting up.Typical FYGM sociopathy. Eternal passangers on the "gravy train?" Tell us more about those lucky ducks in miserable poverty.
Miserable poverty? All these poor saps with internet access and fancy mobile phones, living in subsidised accommodation? There is no real poverty in this country, just people who don't want to do a day's job. And rioting is a fun thing to do on a light summer's evening? Like I said, there are lots of jobs. Quite a lot of those arrested, oddly have one - maybe not a great one, something like burger-flipping, but a job's a job and if you didn't bother paying attention at school you have to start somewhere. London is a very wealthy city, there are plenty of jobs. The issues are much more about education policy and social policy and what it has done to turn what was the working class into the underclass.
And you keep quoting The Guardian. It's a paper for left-wing intellectuals, and therefore quoting it for "truth" is incorrect. They (and you) are entitled to an opinion but it won't be shared by, well, lots of people.
Welp
"The Independent Police Complaints commission says ballistic test results so far show no evidence that a handgun found at the scene of the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan had been fired. It says the Forensic Science Service is carrying out further tests to confirm this."
Have some more links rather then crap Tory opinions. From me, the only one here actually linking to things! Things from the BBC, MSN, the Independent, and yes, one or two from the Guardian.
Journalist attacks black veteran
The response to "b-b-b-ut cell phones!"
All this just reminds me of how during the katrina flooding in the US (and rioting) there were right wing morons claiming that the poor there obviously weren't poor because they saw so many obese people.
More on the social causes of the riot.
More on the underlying economic problems in the UK
The UK is tied with Lithuania in terms of the income inequality in society as a whole.
UK has the worst social mobility in the developed world
I'd like to point out these last few links are statistics. People do make it out and I'm sure you all have anecdotes of people that succeeded against all the odds. The thing is that if you're born poor, the deck is stacked against you: to even keep up with a child of similar talent born into a middle-class family requires you to work far, far harder.
As the statistics for inequality and immobility demonstrate, things needn't be this way. In large portions of Europe, things aren't this way. In Denmark for example (as seen in the earlier graph) your parent's wallet is an almost negligible influence on future success.
In all, while I don't condone the violence I can certainly understand where it's coming from. If I had my hopes and dreams stolen from me by chance of birth, if I was discriminated against by the only agents of society I have any contact with, I'd want to lash out too. Looting and burning things certainly won't improved the situation, but who cares? Things have been steadily getting worse for decades, it's hardly like they'll turn around now.
More than anything I'm shocked it's taken this long for them to snap.
In britian is it true that in the school system where you have to take a test and they tell you what you can be. I thought I heard that some where.You heard wrong.
GCSE's.
GCSE's.In britian is it true that in the school system where you have to take a test and they tell you what you can be. I thought I heard that some where.You heard wrong.
How is the GCSE fundamentally different to the US High School Diploma, or the Australian HSC (in NSW), or the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme?
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The Right serves those who are really looting the West and doing more damage than rioters can ever do, and the Left just pleads to provide more comfort in the cages of the poor.Heh, this is happening in the UK. There's no real Left party to speak of.
Hardly.
In britian is it true that in the school system where you have to take a test and they tell you what you can be. I thought I heard that some where.You heard wrong.He's probably talking about the Eleven Plus, you guys still have that right?
I know it doesn't tell you what can be, but it tells you what kind of school you can go to, doesn't it?
No, we don't, or only in a very, very few areas. The idea of the 11+ was to give bright kids a more academic education in a grammar school and less-bright kids a more practical education leading to something like an apprenticeship via secondary modern schools. (I should declare an interest here - I went to a grammar as I was fortunate enough to live in an area which still had them.) They were laregly abolished in the 1970s as the system was considered elitist by some, mainly left-wing, politicians. However, interestingly, following their abolition, social mobility declined as bright, poor kids no longer benefitted from the excellent education you got in a grammar school. Whether a secondary modern school can really provide what a modern economy needs is moot, so I don't think that the selective system is necessarily a panacea. There's the issue of whether it is right to segregate kids on ability (though the practical outcome of not doing so is pretty poor, so it's not an argument I buy). But certainly the large-scale abolition of the system was, broadly speaking, bad for the country's educational standards and for providing people of all backgrounds a leg-up. They don't have grammar schools in Central London, for example.
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GCSE's.In britian is it true that in the school system where you have to take a test and they tell you what you can be. I thought I heard that some where.You heard wrong.
GCSEs? They are just exams. You take them at 16. And what you do after that is up to you (including whether you go on to do A levels or not at 18). Certainly they don't determine your future. They only really determine your future if you don't pay attention at school and don't have any. But the state doesn't look at what subjects you did and then robotically assign you to a particular role for the rest of your life. Nor would you expect it to happen like that in a democracy anyway.
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"The Independent Police Complaints commission says ballistic test results so far show no evidence that a handgun found at the scene of the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan had been fired. It says the Forensic Science Service is carrying out further tests to confirm this."
I knew that already. Since it doesn't have any bearing on what is going on riot-wise, it doesn't strike me as having much bearing.
Have some more links rather then crap Tory opinions. From me, the only one here actually linking to things! Things from the BBC, MSN, the Independent, and yes, one or two from the Guardian.
As opposed your crappy Democratic views? I disagree with you but let's not get into name-calling, unless all you have to offer is insults and then tranches of other people's text. You don't appear to offer any opinion at all, and certainly no thought about what is causing it, and what should be done about it. In fact, I'm not even sure you have views. I don't need you to link stuff for me as I'm perectly capable of searching the interent and reading the papers myself.
I'll deal with just one of these things, since I'm at work. Yes - Britain has poor social mobility. It got worse since the 1970s and large reforms in education policy, which I mention above. Those reforms were driven by a Labour government. I don't disagree that there are broader problems. But how these issues are addressed is not by simply mouthing platitudes, and a lot of reforms aimed at making things "fairer" have in fact led to options being closed off for the very people these refoms were intended to help. But then that is what happens when left-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them.
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How is the GCSE fundamentally different to the US High School Diploma, or the Australian HSC (in NSW), or the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme?GCSE's.In britian is it true that in the school system where you have to take a test and they tell you what you can be. I thought I heard that some where.You heard wrong.
I don't know, knowing little about what those exams involve.
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I think they should just start shooting. Criminals are criminals, after all.There seems to be a lot of ignorance on these riots, even here in England. People have been telling each other that the police fired on the young man unprovoked, or with little provocation. The facts AFAIK are that the man pulled a gun on the policeman as he was approached, and the police only returned fire once one of them had been shot at (the shot hit his radio so he was unharmed). I was always under the impression that the police force over here are quite conservative and rarely fire first.
Latest report from the IPC is that the bullet in the policeman's radio came from another policeman's gun.
Mark Duggan didn't fire. The gun was not found on him, it was described as being found 'at the scene'.The police take an intelligence-led approach to this stuff. Which means that they decide beforehand if someone is a threat and act accordingly. That is what happened to Charles Jimenez as well.
We have no idea if the police are right or wrong in what they did. However, we do know that every time a policeman fires a gun in the UK it is investigated seperately to whatever operation the police were involved in.
For the benefit of non-Brits.
Policemen need special training to carry guns in the UK and never carry firearms as a matter of course. If a policeman fires his gun then rules specify that there must be an independent investigation.
From 1993-2005 there were 30 fatal shootings by police officers.
The majority of gun violence in the UK is from drug gangs shooting each other.
In 2009/10 reporting period there were 40 fatal shootings in the UK.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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But then that is what happens when left-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them.What happens when right-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them?
Removal of limits on "the market", corporations bribing their way to immunity from prosecution, destruction of trillions of dollars, centralization of wealth on an enormous scale, the masses treated as imbeciles or ignored, and let's not forget kept frightened, while the few, media-controlling (or owning) right-wing intellectuals, party and flaunt what the rest can't have.
Something like that?
Never mind the intellectuals, just make society as open and transparant as reasonably possible, with plenty of support for everyone who wants to work or learn.
But then that is what happens when left-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them.What happens when right-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them?
You're watching it happen right now.