Tottenham Riots

[Atheist-Lite]

There's a pincer strategy here with people, of the same kind as the looters but wearing suits, on the floor of the stock exchange looting the pension savings of the same incompetant former middle class who foolishly spread a bet on a imaginary boom. As this middle class broadsheet shows.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml

[Rum]

Apologies for the cross/double posting from here:- http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... &start=270

Seems appropriate.
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Jim, as you know I have worked with kids and more latterly with schools and their systems and in my case with the more 'vulnerable;e' end of the spectrum, sadly not those up to doing physics or maths even up to the age of 16. The title of my last post before I 'retired' was (bewilderingly) 'Commissioning Manager, Access to Education - i.e. getting systems in place for excluded kids, those with behaviour issues, poor attenders and those with special needs (a separate case in most respects). Over the last decade and more I have seen a real change in young people in and around schools. Although the riots depress and alarm me, they don't in the least surprise me. The framework of values you and I and to be fair the majority of 'middle of the road' kids probably take for granted has gradually eroded. I see kids from families who are third or fourth generation unemployed who don't give a fuck abut anything or anyone, who have no aspirations, believe they have no future and don't care. Kids whose few beliefs are tattooed all over their bodies and whose only and primary goal is to get status objects, by any means and get drunk or high. They are almost universally poor as well, both materially and emotionally.

I have seen how this translates into behaviour and attitudes in schools and how these values (or lack of them) infect ordinary decent kids who find themselves wondering if there might be something in regarding lawlessness as 'cool' after all.

The issues are of course moral and political at heart. These kids are the result of the system and the creation, in this country anyway of (until now) an almost invisible underclass, who however hateful many of its individual members may be, are fundamentally victims of the system we have created over the past 50 years. This is not to excuse them, just to explain them.

These kids will probably stop rioting as soon as it rains or gets cold, but Pandora's box has been opened. They know that if 20 or 30 kids get together they can do almost anything they want to, from forcing open a retail centre, to terrorising a neighbourhood.

If there is one single image or scene that sickens me more than any I have seen it is this one, now on Youtube. This is one of the most symbolically immoral scenes I have ever seen.

[PsychoSerenity]

I'm getting really sick of hearing, particularly on facebook and youtube, that people "deserve" to be shot.

[Audley Strange]

Symbolically it reminds me of U.S. Foreign policy.

I don't have much more to add about all this other than a few news images scenes of youths with their heads cracked open on Sunday night would have partially decreased the escalation. That's not a solution to the problem, but it would have stopped the symptom quickly enough.

@Psychoserenity. That's appalling. Leave Facebook in protest, it's an insidious lifeleech anyway.

[Atheist-Lite]

I blame the digital camera(in part). Rum wouldn't be half as demoralised if the camera was not present. And I think worklessness is only half the issue(there was that in the eighties but the riots then did not spark organised looting) - there's relentlous violence on the media and through computer games nowadays, these are products of people with aspirations so the social malaise, which is very real, is across society. It is not for me to supply answers but I do think the media, the new social media and those in public office should all genuflect on the model of conduct they are setting the youth of today. We are engaged in countless dodgy military conflicts abroad and imagine this kind of rank behaviour on the international stage won't come home and haunt us?

[JimC]

I'm getting really sick of hearing, particularly on facebook and youtube, that people "deserve" to be shot.

They certainly don't deserve that, but they do deserve the normal criminal penalties for their misdeeds. "Everyone else was doing it, guv" is not a valid defense in law...

[Lozzer]

Well, three people are now dead, and all because they attempted to defend their community. Yeah, let's not shoot rioters; just let them kill and maim until they tire themselves out

[Pensioner]

Initial ballistics tests suggest bullet lodged in officer's radio during incident in Tottenham was police issue

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/0 ... ndon-burns
“Four days and three nights of riots later, the accounts attributed to a police source and the IPCC look misleading. It is now being reported that the initial ballistics tests on the bullet found lodged in the radio shows that the bullet was police issue, and therefore had not been fired by Duggan. Stafford Scott, a community leader, has also reported that the gun said to have been found at the scene "was found in a sock meaning it wasn't prepared for action".

In other death-in-custody cases the initial accounts put forward in the press have proved to be similarly misleading. Initial reports concerning the death of Tomlinson focused on the officers who went to Tomlinson's aid despite the "barrage of missiles from protesters". The inquest revealed that there was no such assault on the officers. A heavy emphasis in the press was put on Tomlinson lifestyle and health, notably, even before a postmortem had been carried out. Initial reports into death of Jean Charles de Menezes also proved to be similarly misleading, with accounts of the victim vaulting over the tube barrier and wearing a suspiciously bulky padded jacket later being proved untrue.”

[Cormac]

At worst, the damage of these riots will cost something along the lines of millions of pounds.

White-collar financial crime such as fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion is theft and looting of resources which costs the economy tens of billions of pounds each and every year.

If we're going to impose martial law in London, something which nobody seems to understand the implications of, the army also needs to be deployed in the City of London to stop these white-collar thieves and looters who systematically rob billions from the economy each year for their personal gain. We're all in this together, after all.

In point of fact, it is the City that pays for the lions share of public services.

Also, the Blair-Brown axis kissed the arse of the City right through their terms of office, and THEY followed very silly policies that certainly threw fuel on the fire of the rampant idiocy in the markets.

BUT, the accusation you level against the city is not correct.

The City was convenient to use in my analogy to make a point about the use of the military.

Do you not agree that financial crimes; fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion, cost this country billions every year? Do you not agree that is a form of looting? I was trying to highlight the disparity in policing and what the public expect from police. We're willing to crack down hard on rioters (rightly so in this instance), who maybe kick off once in a decade or two and cause a few million pounds worth of damage, but do nothing at all to crack down on the rampant financial crimes being committed in this country (and citizens of this country living in tax havens) on a regular basis.

I'd like to see the evidence that white collar crime costs "billions" "every year".

Yes, the financial implosion has required the state to bail out the banks. This is a current cost, that in most cases, has a chance of paying back to the British people. (For example, when RBS shares reach 50p per share (which it has come close to doing on several occasions over the last two years), the state will have made back its money. For EVERY PENNY above 50p, the British people earn £1 Billion profit.

(See my other posts on this crisis for where I explain exactly what fraud was committed to create this current crisis, and why those involved should be jailed). It isn't that I don't think there are white collar criminals. It is that I don't think it is as endemic as you think.

Citizens of your country are entitled to live in tax havens, if that tax haven will allow them to. Why should they not?

[Cormac]

This thread needs to be moved to 'Yes it is etc.' As could a number of threads that go the predictable route of being dominated by a few oft-repeated ideologies.

So what do you think, Bella F.? Do politics, sociology or economics offer any legitimate explanations for the rioting? Any thoughts?

Did I say that politics, sociology, or economics have nothing to say on the issue?

None of these three areas are locked into the left-right binary immaturity that is spouted by the left and right adherents.

When people rise above the left and right nonsense, and speak with practicality in mind in terms of history and economics, then there can be useful explanations, and more importantly - useful and practical policies that arise. (I'm not so sure about Sociology - it seems to me to be a pursuit hopelessly shot through with far left wing ideologies).

[Cormac]

Why don't these guys go down to the financial district and raise hell?

Be careful. Incitement, don't you know.

Although apparently it's ok to incite politicians to shoot the thugs, use baton rounds and plastic bullets to take their eyes out or taze them into cardial arrhythmia, but , you know, upsetting the financial district, that's just beyond the pale.

No, I meant what is the motivation for the location?

I know that the right finances and skin color mean you can get away with more crimes, but does that excuse criminality? If it were retaliatory criminality then I'd have a great deal more sympathy but as it stands, these fuckers are just acting like the investment bankers that screwed us all.

... but who also produce the lions share of the money that pays for Social Services in the UK, in addition to financing everything else in the UK.

[Cormac]

It's not all that roundabout. For those used to living on government handouts under socialism, the concept of private property becomes blurred and even seen as illegitimate and looting then does come to be seen as "getting their share of tax money". To the extent Rum doesn't see that, I agree with Exi5stentialist that he doesn't understand how socialism actually works.

Well yeah but I'd like to know where you think this concept of 'socialism' as you call it has been implemented. 13 years of Labour Government does not a socialist society make. Actually this Labour Party probably couldn't achieve it in 130 years.

Evidently it's been implemented in at least a few neighborhoods in London.

Oh I see - a joke.

Not a joke at all. It's an excellent example of what attitudes and actions, in practice, real socialism encourages.

It's capatalism. These are not looters, their the next generation of entrepeneurs removing stock from a weakened and incompetant former middle class. Starting small but this is The Big Society in action, the new middle class claiming what is theirs. Their main mission right now is to increase access, announce their presence, and help overcome the digital divide.

I think all this hatred of the Middle Class is hilarious, especially:

1. From people who are manifestly "Middle Class" and
2. Middle Class people produce all the money that pays for social services, in their (often low paid) jobs in Financial Services.

[Cormac]

There's a pincer strategy here with people, of the same kind as the looters but wearing suits, on the floor of the stock exchange looting the pension savings of the same incompetant former middle class who foolishly spread a bet on a imaginary boom. As this middle class broadsheet shows.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml

Did you read that while having your Middle Class coffee break?

[Cormac]

I blame the digital camera(in part). Rum wouldn't be half as demoralised if the camera was not present. And I think worklessness is only half the issue(there was that in the eighties but the riots then did not spark organised looting) - there's relentlous violence on the media and through computer games nowadays, these are products of people with aspirations so the social malaise, which is very real, is across society. It is not for me to supply answers but I do think the media, the new social media and those in public office should all genuflect on the model of conduct they are setting the youth of today. We are engaged in countless dodgy military conflicts abroad and imagine this kind of rank behaviour on the international stage won't come home and haunt us?

Why is it not for you to supply answers?

[Tyrannical]

When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:

"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

Ooops.

Makes me wonder how a population reproduces when the males have no balls.
Grow some balls, grab a club, and chase the looters away.