London looking like Mogadishu...

[Sloan]

 

As for the rioters - again, I'm reserving judgement until I get more facts. There might actually be some truth in what a local shopkeeper was saying on the BBC about people looting because they're poor.

For once I'm actually compelled to use a smiley to sum up my reaction to this statement = :lol:

 

The naivety is making me laugh.

[Phoenix]

Good post.

 

The reason we won't have the debate though is because the Government don't want the answers. It's the same when they talk about youth crime, knife crime, the health divide between rich and poor, and binge-drinking - the reason we never have these debates are because the problems are all caused by the financial system itself. There's probably not a city in the world where the injustices created by that system are as open and obvious as London. On one street you'll find a rich banker on a million pound a year wage, on another you'll find a single mother trying to bring up a teenage kid on a shit cleaning wage.

 

 

 

 

Is it the government that doesnt want to know or is it the public/electorate?

 

In an individualistic society the culture itself is to blame to a degree.

 

You can talk about all the inequalities in the country but the nothing better than there being self responsibility.

[Lee909]

I take it the locals couldn't be arsed going to the effort of putting a subway sandwich together.

[Trumo]

What is it with black folk and looting? First Katrina, now the Tottenham riots. This is a very bad reflection on the Afro-Caribbean community of London.

 

I don't think you can blame the post-Katrina looting on them though.

 

What get's me is that these rarfs smash the place up, set fire to the cars, burn down the houses and leave the place looking like a right shit hole.

 

However it's their place, their own cars and their own houses and shops they are destroying. And who's gonna have to live in that shit hole ? They are !

 

I often think something similar when I see the devastation caused by civil wars in various countries. The side that (eventually) wins is left with a rubble-strewn hell on earth lacking in even the most basic of amenities, often having driven out any peace-keeping forces or organisations tasked to help provide rudimentary medical assistance. Basically anybody that could help provide a leg up. Great! You won! What the fuck did you win exactly? You've decimated your entire country and infrastructure, and given no thought to what happens next. Excellent!

[clangers]

What is it with black folk and looting? First Katrina, now the Tottenham riots. This is a very bad reflection on the Afro-Caribbean community of London.

Okay it wasn't just blacks, Turks, Albanians and other assorted ethnicities as well as white chavs were also involved. But the TV pictures were pretty damning and captured mainly black youths running amok

[Section_31]

Is it the government that doesnt want to know or is it the public/electorate?

 

In an individualistic society the culture itself is to blame to a degree.

 

You can talk about all the inequalities in the country but the nothing better than there being self responsibility.

 

Cultures are engineered. You only have to look at how much our society has changed in the last decade or so. Celebrity obsession, people in town carrying themselves like they're famous, the villification of the working class as an 'underclass' and the way we dismiss them with words like 'chav'. (the one-worder is invaluable too for dehumanisation, like nigger and spic, it makes someone an object rather than a person which means you can then ignore them or deride them to make yourself feel better, depending on the situation)

 

The Reagan/Thatcher era ushered in indivisualism as it's seen now, and most of the people you meet think along the lines of 'career, home, car, kids' probably in that order, they don't really invest their thoughts or pursuits in any kind of higher ideals or things they can't physically own, this is why there's no ideology underpinning politics, and the reason you can only win an election by pandering to the so-called 'middle classes', as New Labour had to do, and as Obama has to do. Talking about the poor is simply not going to cut it because, quite simply, nobody cares.

 

It's shortsighted though, because if we built proper communities and gave people a decent standard of living, the kind of problems which blight our society would solve themselves. Anti-social behaviour, low level crime, vandalism, arson, would be drastically reduced because you wouldn't have a whole section of society who feel cut adrift.

 

You build communities around good quality 'working class' jobs, if you have that 'social glue', you have people working and living together, eating and drinking together, playing sport together, marrying and befriending each other, bringing their kids to work as apprenticies, then you get a collection of people who look out for one another, they help each other with their kids so they don't need the state's support - they don't need the state to pick up the bill - they also give each other a slap when they go off the rails, so a good proportion of low level crime is taken out of the equation.

 

There's also the intangible effects of building a society based on individualism. Depression and sucicides - especially anong young men - are higher, and people are generally more disconected.

[PestiRed]

Tweet from Dep Editor of the Police Review

Front line contact tells me: 'With the government cuts to policing we are heading into a very uncertain and dangerous era.' #tottenham

 

Translation: You think you can cut our pay, make us redundant & still expect us to protect you from this? Fuck you Mr Cameron

[Paulie Dangerously]

 

Laptops looted due to socio-economic conditions

[Redder Lurtz]

Do we care that a KFC and a maccy Ds or any major retailers/food stores got burnt ? smashed up ? really ?

 

 

Yes Jon. Yes we do. Because people, normal people who work hard to make a living work in these places. People who take pride in their work and who like their jobs and enjoy providing the service they provide. I work for a massive company and if I went under a bus tomorrow they wouldn't miss me but if I went in tomorrow to find that some shitstains had smashed up my workplace I'd be fucking annoyed as I take pride in what I do.

[Pony Princess]

Should have known the afro-carribean rioters would target the KFC first. Bet there wasn't a fried chicken wing left.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I don't think you can blame the post-Katrina looting on them though.

 

Sloan can. He's a fucking moron, so he could blame it on them being black.

 

 

For once I'm actually compelled to use a smiley to sum up my reaction to this statement = :lol:

 

The naivety is making me laugh.

 

 

Not everybody can be as smart and worldly as you, Sloan.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

the villification of the working class as an 'underclass' and the way we dismiss them with words like 'chav'. (the one-worder is invaluable too for dehumanisation, like nigger and spic, it makes someone an object rather than a person which means you can then ignore them or deride them to make yourself feel better, depending on the situation)

 

I don't know if you've read it, but a friend of mine wrote this book. You should check it out.

[Section_31]

Tweet from Dep Editor of the Police Review

Front line contact tells me: 'With the government cuts to policing we are heading into a very uncertain and dangerous era.' #tottenham

 

Translation: You think you can cut our pay, make us redundant & still expect us to protect you from this? Fuck you Mr Cameron

 

I'm sick of shit like this from the police. They've got the tools to do the job, even if there are cut, they just don't like doing it - and I'm not talking rank and file here, I'm talking senior officers. "less bobbies on the beat". There ARE no fucking Bobbies on the fucking beat, there hasn't been since I was about 15.

[PestiRed]

The police (senior officers rather than those actually get injured doing this work) will be the only winners from this. They're already making sure that the press are fully up-to-date on every police injury & every report is mentioning their lack of resources in dealing with last night. Another couple of disturbances & Osborne will be making concessions in their cuts. If I was hugely cynical, I might predict a few more controversial arrests in high-risk areas over the next couple of weeks

[Unrighteous]

Yes Jon. Yes we do. Because people, normal people who work hard to make a living work in these places. People who take pride in their work and who like their jobs and enjoy providing the service they provide. I work for a massive company and if I went under a bus tomorrow they wouldn't miss me but if I went in tomorrow to find that some shitstains had smashed up my workplace I'd be fucking annoyed as I take pride in what I do.

 

Fucking seriously.

[J-V]

Is that in anyway related to anything I said?*

Yes, it is related. You're the one mentioning people already doing there own investigations and "everyone on the streets also should have been shot" despite no one even saying that. People mentioned shooting looting/arsonists and you didn't need an investigation to see who they were as pointed out by Redder Lurtz.

Edited August 7, 2011 by J-V

[J-V]

 

Laptops looted due to socio-economic conditions

 

Couldn't get those iMacs though

[Paulie Dangerously]

Couldn't get those iMacs though

 

Preferred Big Macs

[RedKnight]

They only like Windows. For operating systems and smashing.

[Phoenix]

The Reagan/Thatcher era ushered in indivisualism as it's seen now, and most of the people you meet think along the lines of 'career, home, car, kids' probably in that order, they don't really invest their thoughts or pursuits in any kind of higher ideals or things they can't physically own, this is why there's no ideology underpinning politics, and the reason you can only win an election by pandering to the so-called 'middle classes', as New Labour had to do, and as Obama has to do. Talking about the poor is simply not going to cut it because, quite simply, nobody cares.

 

 

I dont think this mentality/culture will change unless major event like world war 3 involving the uk occurs.

 

People have got used to the wealth/or have aspirations to get to that level.

[chrisbonnie]

I just got a message from my mate who lives about 500 metres from the High Street where it all kicked off

 

He said he was at home all night, he didn't hear fuck all about it until he turned the news on this morning,

 

So perhaps sky news have glorified it just a wee bit??? Unlike them to do that

[Guest davelfc]

I just got a message from my mate who lives about 500 metres from the High Street where it all kicked off

 

He said he was at home all night, he didn't hear fuck all about it until he turned the news on this morning,

 

So perhaps sky news have glorified it just a wee bit??? Unlike them to do that

 

Riotproof double glazing, now you didn't realise Everest were doing that now did you?

[King Emlyn]

The Leftzis will blame anybody, anybody other than criminals that is, the jackbooted right wing will want everybody shot or hung. As ever we're crying out for some sane middle ground common sense thinking. We'll never have it though. Fashion, turn to the left....fashion.....turn to the right.

[Dougie Do'ins]

Jean Charles de Menezes

Cressida Dick

Mark Duggan

 

Bit of a pattern developing here.

[Guest barralad]

While it cant be denied that the majority of the rioters were black I am a bit uncomfortable with some of the comments made on this thread.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion but it only takes something like this for peoples true prejudices to rise to the surface.The same is true of the apologists who defend these scum with ludicrous sweeping comments about upbringing,lack of role models and exaggerated claims of the lack of opportunities.

On a lighter note I found it fucking hilarious for some reason on one piece of footage from yesterday showing a "gang" of laughing hasidic jews among the rioters running away from the police towards the camera in their religious garb.

It looked like a fucking Monty Python sketch.