Tottenham Riots

[Coito ergo sum]

Cleaning is just one example of the many menial jobs I can't get. I have absolutely no idea what's involved in starting a business here. What I have heard from a couple of self-employed businessmen I worked for is that it's a lot of extra tax paperwork to fill in and it requires registration when you first start up. I think the legal mess in getting it set up and registered as a legitimate business and the tax involved puts a lot of people off.

If on the other hand I was just a one-man operation selling my services door-to-door, I'd have to register as self-employed and fill out the assorted tax returns if I made more than £7475 a year.

Well, then I don't know. Your description of what's involved in starting a business doesn't sound much different than it is here in the States. It can be very simple here, just file a "d/b/a" and get started, and pay taxes when warranted, and if you're in a relatively unregulated business like office cleaning, there really isn't much regulation or overhead. So, have at it. Beat the competition.

The interesting thing is when your business starts getting busy, you'll get to a point where you're like, "man, I'd really like to hire someone to help..." and then the much lauded "worker protections" will hit you right in balls (literal or metaphorical).

[Ironclad]

Starting up one-man business? I imagine one would first need to lay out quite a few quid; a van, stock (of cleaning aids), phone, advertising. Then there's a public liability insurance (or something similarly expensive and tedious). And much of this before you can walk the streets asking for work to even start.
Still, not impossible.
As for hiring a kid to lift crates.. really? With the USs (and UKs) litigious society?

[Coito ergo sum]

Starting up one-man business? I imagine one would first need to lay out quite a few quid; a van, stock (of cleaning aids), phone, advertising. Then there's a public liability insurance (or something similarly expensive and tedious). And much of this before you can walk the streets asking for work to even start.
Still, not impossible.
As for hiring a kid to lift crates.. really? With the USs (and UKs) litigious society?

You make due with what you have. You may not have a van, and you may have to work out of the trunk or hatch of a car for a while. Cleaning aids aren't too expensive. And, advertising could wait until you get a few clients by knocking on doors and handing out a printed piece of paper with prices that one could make on a library computer. People start businesses with next to nothing. Maybe it isn't the cleaning business - but, if it's between being on the dole and figuring something out, don't people want to figure something out?

Well, whatever the US's litigious society is, it is still relatively easy for high school kids to get part time jobs, many of them lifting things. I don't know why it is so impossible for teenagers to get work experience in the UK, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that it is virtually impossible. That, to me, is likely to be a huge part of this problem. If kids are 16 and 17 years old and they get used to being wards of somebody - living a privileged life being supported by their parents, and not expecting to contribute in any way even to their own upkeep, then they don't learn to be responsible adults before becoming adults.

I don't want to hire a 19 or 20 year old who has never held down a job before. That person is going to have to be taught not only the job, but how to show up for work on time, and that "no, it's not o.k. to call in sick once a week" and stuff like that. That person is not going to know that when you work for someone who is paying you by the hour, that you're supposed to work HARD and that you're not there doing anyone any favors. I'd rather not teach those basic things to an employee. I would rather they already have worked flipping burgers or stocking shelves, and not been fired, and have had a boss I can call and get someone to say, "yes, this kid shows up on time, isn't absent a lot, and works really hard." Some dick who is 19 and has all his clothes and food paid for by mommy, and is used to sleeping until 9am every morning is not someone I want working for me.

From what I've been told, that's what it sounds like we have rioting over there - a generation of layabouts who are used to having everything handed to them, and are jealous of other people who worked to get more.

[Coito ergo sum]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAC0YSm ... ture=feedu[/youtube]

[Robert_S]

And, fucking hell - if you can afford to buy and pay the monthly fee for a blackberry, then you're not fucking poor. End of fucking story, really. If I were poor, one of the first things I would cut would be unnecessary expenses and a blackberry or iphone would only be necessary if it helped you make money. Otherwise, one only needs the very basic communication service, which one could get by on a very low cost plan - far less than the $100 a month for a blackberry or iphone plan (after the monthly charge, taxes, and data package.).

I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the U.S., you lose many welfare benefits if you have more than $3000 or so in savings. The upshot is that the system encourages people to spend all their money and avoid saving.

That's the worst thing about US welfare. There are no rewards for getting into a better situation or being responsible. We had a huge number of absent fathers because being around threatened the child and mother's benefits. It isn't a plan, it is an appeasement.

So take more money from the white middle class suits and give it to the chavs, that's the obvious answer. They're not really bad, not really criminal or lazy, they just feel "disconnected" from society

Are there opportunities to make a contribution? It may have been my upbringing, but I more easily feel a part of something if I've made a contribution to it. Especially if I get some kind of recognition for it.

[MrJonno]

I would hardly say most 18/19 year olds have never had a job but they do exist , quite simply we have plenty of people who are just surplus to requirement. 50 years ago employing someone who was a little 'rough' in manual skilled and non skilled work was possible but those industries simply don't exist anymore. If you can't be middle class and work in an office you are pretty much unemployable. Britain is a country of offices and service industries we make relatively little and what we do make is high tech

You also have kids who were effectively so brain damaged by neglectful parenting than even by the time they enter school at 5 they are pretty much brain damaged beyond (economic) repair. I full support the welfare state giving them relatively small amounts of money to simply contain them. The idea that a lot of these rioters will ever work is absurd and do you seriously want to share a workspace with one?

[Coito ergo sum]

And, fucking hell - if you can afford to buy and pay the monthly fee for a blackberry, then you're not fucking poor. End of fucking story, really. If I were poor, one of the first things I would cut would be unnecessary expenses and a blackberry or iphone would only be necessary if it helped you make money. Otherwise, one only needs the very basic communication service, which one could get by on a very low cost plan - far less than the $100 a month for a blackberry or iphone plan (after the monthly charge, taxes, and data package.).

I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the U.S., you lose many welfare benefits if you have more than $3000 or so in savings. The upshot is that the system encourages people to spend all their money and avoid saving.

That's the worst thing about US welfare. There are no rewards for getting into a better situation or being responsible. We had a huge number of absent fathers because being around threatened the child and mother's benefits. It isn't a plan, it is an appeasement.

I certainly can understand that, but I'm at a loss for a solution. You certainly can't increase benefits as people's situations improve. The whole idea of government assistance is that it's supposed to assist those in hard times, and those in hard times are supposed to do what they can to get themselves on their feet. Something is wrong as soon as we have a system where people are foregoing opportunity in order to stay on the dole.

I don't know if anyone has ever seen the movie Cinderalla Man with Russell Crowe as a boxer in the 1930's. He was down on his luck, and after trying everything else, he went down to the welfare office and took welfare money. He kept track of every dollar he received, and then when he got back on his feet he went down to the welfare office with a roll of bills and tried to repay the welfare office. The couple times I've seen that movie, my eyes always well up at that point.

I don't know what the solution is, but perhaps a sliding scale of welfare where you can continue to get something on the dole as your income increases. But, I would think that once someone is given food stamps to buy food, and Medicaid for free health care, the rest ought to be up to the individual, barring a legitimate disability or handicap. Fucking go to work.

[Bella Fortuna]

Steal crisps from Poundland. It's the only solution that makes sense.

[MrJonno]

I certainly can understand that, but I'm at a loss for a solution. You certainly can't increase benefits as people's situations improve. The whole idea of government assistance is that it's supposed to assist those in hard times, and those in hard times are supposed to do what they can to get themselves on their feet. Something is wrong as soon as we have a system where people are foregoing opportunity in order to stay on the dole

But you are making the assumption that there are jobs for these people, we need to accept that plenty of people in society are pretty much surplus from requirement from the day they are born. You either let them starve/riot, kill them or pay them to keep them quiet its completely naive to assume you can just employ them with the right motivation

[Atheist-Lite]

We need to return to older 'sustainable' technologies. The trouble is a lack of imagination, about the only thing megamouth Pat Condell said which made any real sense to me. Older technologies are humancentric, employ people with a wide range of skills and mix them up so they don't self-isolate in gated communities. The difficulty is ratcheting back the 'world devouring' post-modern era whilst still retaining the positives of our time - thankfully these are very few on close inspection.

[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.

They've made an arrest - the bastard who did this. The victim, a Malaysian student was interviewed (here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14498193 ) and said he felt sorry for the rioters. He is only a little guy - worth ten of the rioter fucks.

[Atheist-Lite]

I bet he came from a good home and was studying political science Rum?

[laklak]

I think they deserve better. They've no education been fed a diet of crap TV and media fakery. Best we can do is let them channel their energy for change into overthrowing a rotten social order. I'm afraid this is necessary for true progress. They may be social scum now but put them in uniform and they'll develop a sense of pride and self worth. Let them destroy the 'consumer society' which is 'consuming the earth' and see how much I personally care if they burn your local High Street clone stores down. I couldn't care a jot. You, like they can shop in the cinders.

Oh, it's nothing to me if they burn down every high street in the UK. Not my problem, We gave up on the UK in 2006. Got tired of scumbag shitheels from the council estates pissing in the garden and generally behaving like ill-bred animals while sucking down the tax money we worked for. No, I prefer it over here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Heavily Armed. We do sometimes miss our old mates, so we raise a cold Corona at the beach bar. I'm sure you'll enjoy the whole Mad Max Under Thunderdome ambiance when the chavs take over.

[Atheist-Lite]

I think they deserve better. They've no education been fed a diet of crap TV and media fakery. Best we can do is let them channel their energy for change into overthrowing a rotten social order. I'm afraid this is necessary for true progress. They may be social scum now but put them in uniform and they'll develop a sense of pride and self worth. Let them destroy the 'consumer society' which is 'consuming the earth' and see how much I personally care if they burn your local High Street clone stores down. I couldn't care a jot. You, like they can shop in the cinders.

Oh, it's nothing to me if they burn down every high street in the UK. Not my problem, We gave up on the UK in 2006. Got tired of scumbag shitheels from the council estates pissing in the garden and generally behaving like ill-bred animals while sucking down the tax money we worked for. No, I prefer it over here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Heavily Armed. We do sometimes miss our old mates, so we raise a cold Corona at the beach bar. I'm sure you'll enjoy the whole Mad Max Under Thunderdome ambiance when the chavs take over.

It's just time before the US erupts in a similar fashion. But you'll be fine since there's guns over there.

[Ironclad]

I certainly can understand that, but I'm at a loss for a solution. You certainly can't increase benefits as people's situations improve. The whole idea of government assistance is that it's supposed to assist those in hard times, and those in hard times are supposed to do what they can to get themselves on their feet. Something is wrong as soon as we have a system where people are foregoing opportunity in order to stay on the dole

But you are making the assumption that there are jobs for these people, we need to accept that plenty of people in society are pretty much surplus from requirement from the day they are born. You either let them starve/riot, kill them or pay them to keep them quiet its completely naive to assume you can just employ them with the right motivation

Makes an awful lot of sense. Disturbing really, another Generation X? Perhaps these troubles we've seen are the tip of the proverbial; more to follow I mean.