London riots

[BlackHole2006]

Even the seagulls are at it!

[rexclark]

EDIT: Why is going for a walk in the park sneered at ?? When I was 15/16 I bloody did like going for a jolly walk in the park... Just like I do now...

[The Nal]

Shit parents... Broken Families... Lack of marriage and faith... Single parent families with a lack of male role models...

Edited August 9, 2011 by The Nal

[jump]

Should I go home now? My work is at St Pauls and my home is near Gatwick. I'm travelling by train.

[radish]

like the privileged classes?

[jump]

Shit parents... Broken Families... Lack of marriage and faith... Single parent families with a lack of male role models...

[Benj]

you got something right anyway. Be thankful.

Edited August 9, 2011 by Benj

[ralph250]

Because due to the rise of the internet your chances of finding a porno mag in a bush in the park a slim to none.

I worry about future generations.

[eFestivals]

I'm not sure I entirely agree particularly in this situation, with what's been going on and who has been involved. The interview with 2 girls proud of what they've done because they can do what they want and the rich can't control them - they just sound so much like a number of people I know who are symptomatic of the way large chunks of society seem to have gone. It's not that they're revolting against oppression and hopelessness, it's more that they're jealous. They don't want to have to work to get what they want, they want it given to them. They don't want better times through hard work, unless somebody else is doing the work. Not wishing to sound all daily hatemail, but I'm getting a bit fed up of some people whingeing on that they don't have what I have, but then moaning that the council won't give it to them. Not going out and getting a bucketload of qualifications to try to get some kind of foothold in the job market, not getting 2 or more jobs to earn enough money to save to be able to get somewhere to live, no, just bemoaning the fact that nobody has given them what they want.

sadly, it's only open to everyone when there's jobs for everyone. When there's not enough jobs, those qualies only get you to be a very qualified dole claimant.

I don't doubt that there's some who want it handed them on a plate - after all, it's the example they see in front of them, becoming ever-more-so if the stats are to be believed about the rich getting richer and lower social mobility. And of course we have our silver-spoon Prime Minister who has never got a job off his own back in his life.

I'm not saying everybody involved in the riots is like this, but these disturbances don't seem to have the same basis or reason behind them as, say, the riots in Brixton, St Pauls etc. in the late 70s/early 80s. I'm not saying I can sympathise with someone who riots because they feel oppressed or abused as as group, but I can understand it. I feel nothing but contempt for idiots who resort to violence and disorder as a method of getting what they want without earning it.

These don't have anything like the same concious political basis, of course they don't. But the hopeless situation they feel they're in will be the backdrop all the same.

And while I don't condone their burning and looting, I see it as an inevitable consequence of the situation they believe themselves to be in - once a critical mass has been reached with a feeling like that, it'll kick off sooner or later.

Yes, there is an underclass that's been created in this country (and others) and we're all to blame, although some more than others thanks very much all the bastard politicians. But it's been the shift to expectation of being given everything that is the core of the problem. Right down to the X Factor shite, too many people just take it as read that it's their right to have things, success, stardom, big tellys, a mobile 'phone, a big car, whatever. There's been a shift away from thinking for yourself and towards being told by some (rich) twat what it is you want, and accepting that as fact and waiting for it to happen.

and those things will increase their feelings of hopelessness, because nothing like that is likely to fall into their laps. Their expectations have been built up - by society. When society doesn't then deliver on those expectations or even far lower ones, then they're likely to take it out on society, aren't they?

The fact of them being force-fed instant success when they can't even see any hope of long-term averageness is going to perhaps take them to the edge that bit quicker, but ultimately they're both a part of the same thing - society saying "you can have these things" while they can't see any way to have anything that's on offer without resorting to abnormal means.

Although there is hope - the whole twitter clean up thing is heartening. It'd be a far better result if that lead to the revolution instead of the riots themselves.

absolutely, I couldn't agreed more.

Sadly, what will be uniting those people will be Daily Mail style hatred for the rioters, a thing which will be over time no less destructive than the riots.

[radish]

broken families? what's a broken family?

marriage and faith... no

single parent families? rubbish

male role models? there are plenty of crap male role models

shit parents...? for some, probably

[jump]

Just because we have exceptions does not destroy the argument...

[the real new messiah]

If I'm so wrong, then please do explain why this has happened now, and not last year, and not the year before, and not the year before that, and not the year before that, and not the year before that, and not... etc, etc, etc.

Robbing and burning can have happened any time. But it's only happened now. And you believe the smart answer is nothing at all. OK.

[Kowalski]

Even the seagulls are at it!

[eFestivals]

Just because we have exceptions does not destroy the argument...

how about your total lack of evidence? Does that destroy your argument?

There's certainly no proof that having religious faith makes for better people ... unless, that is, you use the argument that those of faith use, that those of faith who commit crimes didn't actually have that faith, they were just pretending. Very convenient.

There's certainly no proof that being a kid of a single parent makes you a 'badder' kid than others.

There's certainly no proof that lack of a male role model makes for a 'badder' person.

Just because there are examples that are worse doesn't prove anything more than the examples who aren't - because the examples of those things which aren't worse (and they're not rare examples) get to prove that being of a single parent, or having no faith, or lacking a male role model, doesn't mean the child will be worse.

The only think that can be proven is that bad parenting makes for 'bad' children.

[5co77ie]

Looks like 180 of community policing could come to an end tonight, the Met have said will deploy baton rounds of plastic bullets against looters.

Surely there are two paths we can take on this - wash our hands of a section of a generation or try to work out ways to get them back into society, it seems most here are in the former camp. Shooting them with plastic bullets and locking them up is just going to give us more trouble down the line when they're adults, unless we just lock them way for ever. The Big Society my arse.

[Benj]

there's that 'control' word again...

People don't need to be controlled, they need to have something to do and to look forward to. The people who don't go around looting and/or rioting aren't controlled to not do it.

[eFestivals]

It's happened now because people realise that it can be done now, The tottenham riots on saturday made people realise that the police were powerless. Maybe the minority were disillusioned youth but the majority are just opportunist thieves who don't give a shit about the people or surroundings they live in, which has nothing to do with the economy/lack of work/any other liberal excuses you wish to spout they are just purely and simply thieving rioting scum

Ahh, right.

Were they born 'scum' then? Or if they weren't, how did they suddenly turn into scum with the knowledge that "police were powerless"?

I love the simple views, I do.

[radish]

but they're in charge

[sifi]

I work down the road from you, I take it you're getting the 1st capital connect through Croydon? If so it'll probably be fine (there's some over crowding on the trains as the trams are down) but I'd use the excuse and leave early anyway as I don't to work in general.

[eFestivals]

Nice selective quoting, a good way to show you have lost the point.

I've not picked up on that at all, I think we may perhaps be arguing the same point here then!

yeah, I have to resort to admitting I've lost the argument to someone so ill-informed that they've not even read what I've posted to be arguing against what I've said.

My very first words of my very first post in this thread (/index.php?showtopic=165866&view=findpost&p=3676230">here)

yep, it's defo kids looking to loot.

Edited August 9, 2011 by eFestivals

[sifi]

So whats your best guess at the problem

*gets some popcorn

[eFestivals]

(there's been loads in Bristol over the years hasn't there?)

You can thank us Bristolians for it whenever you like. The rioting here got you the vote!

Well, eventually it did. Rioting in Bristol is what brought about the very first Parliamentary reform in 1834.

That rioting was kicked off by the voting down of a milder bill of reform - which gets to show just as much today as it did back then: if you want something to really change there's only one thing to do. History proves it so!

[5co77ie]

This makes for worrying reading:

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/08/09/648126/edwards-says-this-has-nothing-to-do-with-that-downgrade/

Societe Generale's Albert Edwards the macro economist says:

We are now entering the third phase of the Ice Age when another cyclical failure combines with a secular de-rating of equities and re-rating of government bonds. I and many others have been pointing out for a long time now the simple fact that the global economy has been living way beyond its means for years. A massive transfer of income to the very rich has occurred while middle class real incomes stagnated. The middle classes only tolerated this because Central Bankers created housing booms to keep the impoverished middle classes borrowing and spending to give them the illusion of prosperity and stop them from revolting.

I believe the Fed and Bank of England, in particular, were wholly complicit in this 'daylight robbery' (see link). These unsustainable private sector, debt mountains were transferred to the public sector in 2008 to prevent the adjustment to the depression-era reality that the debt unwind would undoubtedly have brought about. Yet, those debts are as unsustainable in the hands of the public sector as they were in the private sector.

Central bank polices haven't changed though. Print and print and print. And if that doesn't work, print some more. And as London burns, the point I have always made is that the US and UK are not like Japan in one very special way. Although Japan suffered a decade of pain it is a very homogenous, equal society. The UK and US are not. Some readers may not know that rioting and looting has broken out around London. While I hear the UK politicians denounce the looters as common criminals (which of course they are), I can't help but think that Louis XVI in 1789 and Tsar Nicolas II in 1917 might have said the same thing.

[Benj]

yeah, I have to resort to admitting I've lost the argument to someone so ill-informed that they've not even read what I've posted to be arguing against what I've said.

My very first words of my very first post in this thread (url=/index.php?showtopic=165866&view=findpost&p=3676230%5Dhere">http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=165866&view=findpost&p=3676230]here)

Edited August 9, 2011 by Benj

[eFestivals]

Lets just blame the government and the rich... Much easier...

Your fooling yourself... Unless you view your own role in your own family as expendable...

I guess it's going to hit you hard, but your role in your own family IS expendable. If you snuffed it tomorrow and left your family nothing, your family would carry on much as before. Your daughter wouldn't even think of you every day.

Your views often get shattered don't they?