E-petition to axe rioters' benefits

[Tyrannical]

A plantation style labor camp would make for excellent rehabilitation.
Surely the Brits still have some nice suitable island possessions.

[Berthold]

A plantation style labor camp would make for excellent rehabilitation.

Like this.

[Cormac]

I think if you were to force the government welfare cases to work, you could accomplish more than forcing the rioters to work. How many elected officials have been caught stealing from their boss, only to find excuses and keep on going?

I suggest an e-petition to criminalize white collar crime to the extent that this rioting and looting has been.

White collar crime is already seriously criminalised. Are you familiar at all with penalties for such crimes?

To be honest, no. I was thinking of the number of convictions. I don't see all that many.

There's what's against the law, and then there's crimes. I'm thinking of cases in the US where banks gave out loans on nothing more than the word of the person that they could afford it, and then sold that debt as some kind of safe investment. They didn't break the law, but I'm hard pressed to say it wasn't a crime.

I'm not sure. There is "Statute of Fraud" (1634?), the root of all anti- fraud law in common law jurisdictions. In my view, a properly aggressive regulator would have the application of these principles at their operational core.

What you describe comes within the definition of Fraud under that statute.

[Cormac]

But the notion that there is a grand conspiracy of criminality in the Financial Services Industry that is robbing Britain of billions annually is just totally wrong-headed. The Financial Services Industry is the single biggest revenue generator in the UK, and therefore it pays for more social services than any other business - between corporation tax and wages (and the tax on wages etc).

okay, so the law, without ay conspiracy (agreed!) has made it easy to get away with white collar crime, for the rich and the poor. Very fair, in its way.
Does the law also make it difficult to get away with stealing food, or sneaking into public buildings to sleep, for the rich OR the poor?

Is it fair to prohibit begging on the street, while allowing it for anyone who can afford an ofice?

Where is the begging? The FS industry was given emergency lending. The UK is likely to profit substantially from it ultimately

But, I don't accept the suggestion that banks are private enterprises, and should therefore be free from public regulation and scrutiny. In a modern state, the people are the lender of last resort. This is necessary to keep economies from grinding Toa halt due to liquidity problems and risk profiles in the constant movement of funds and "assets" internationally. Consequently, when banks venture into riskier areas, they are not just gambling the money of shareholders, investors, and joe-soap depositors, but also the current assets and future earnings of taxpayers, (and other social stakeholders).

Therefore, banks must be effectively regulated.

Part of the problem in the UK and Ireland was that the governments saw huge tax harvests coming in from the financial and downstream sectors, and instead of alarm bells ringing, the govts assumed that the banks knew best. But clearly, this isa stupid assumption, and no responsible government should have pursued such a policy.

I think there should be aggressive investigations of the rating agencies, banks, and broker networks to identify Cass of clear fed, and then to prosecute those involved, no matter who they are.