In context with the complicit support of the government, the banks looted the nation's wealth while destroying countless small businesses and brought the whole economy to its knees in a covert, clean manner, rather like organised crime.
Our reaction was to march and wave banners and then bail them out. These kids would have to riot and steal every night for a year to run up a bill equivalent to the value of non-paid tax big business has 'avoided' out of the economy this year alone.
They may not articulate their grievances like the politicians that condemn them but this is absolutely political. As for the 'mindless violence'… is there anything more mindless than the British taxpayer quietly paying back the debts of others while contributing bullets to conflicts that we have absolutely no understanding of?
It's mad, sad and scary when we have to take to the streets to defend our homes and businesses from angry thieving kids, but where are the police and what justice is ever done when the mob is dressed in pin stripe.
Massive Attack.
Our reaction was to march and wave banners and then bail them out. These kids would have to riot and steal every night for a year to run up a bill equivalent to the value of non-paid tax big business has 'avoided' out of the economy this year alone.
They may not articulate their grievances like the politicians that condemn them but this is absolutely political. As for the 'mindless violence'… is there anything more mindless than the British taxpayer quietly paying back the debts of others while contributing bullets to conflicts that we have absolutely no understanding of?
It's mad, sad and scary when we have to take to the streets to defend our homes and businesses from angry thieving kids, but where are the police and what justice is ever done when the mob is dressed in pin stripe.
Massive Attack.
That's where these riots are headed. Legitimacy for any disorderly act can be obtained by resorting to the same tactics that advocates of the "New World Order" used in declaring war on the middle class. The world would not have survived billions of years if imbalance had prevailed. Equilibrium may never come in its perfect handsome shape but it will remain a virtue for as long as 2 hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen to make water.
Have you ever been to London?
Further, your argument would make sense if half of these guys weren't robbing and looting their own neighborhoods and communities where people have no money. This is nothing but mindless rioting for the sake of rioting and protesting against "the system", whatever that system is to them. To stick and limit this to a certain social class is just ridiculous and your argument is refuted by the map and the areas where looting happened.
Fantastic. So by the same token, I could claim that as a fan of country music and "right wing anti social views" you are just doing whatever the fuck you are doing. hickerydickerydock. Wonderful...so you have no argument and take ad hominem attacks as a last resort.
Again, as said, the problem seems rather to be, that you have NEVER been to London or lived there for a significant time, are unaware of the city as a whole and the socio-economic situation of the city, probably don't even know anyone in London and when people tell you, which is a a usual reflex of yours, that your arguments doesn't stick to this case, you come up with the usual "your gangsta rap left wing fantasies"
The truth is that these are mindless riots against what they perceive to be "the system", riots that have happened before in major cities, riots that will continue to happen. These riots as the beautiful google map shows happen all across the city across all kinds of social classes but, as an example, not in the City(that's where all the shops are btw.). Besides, as a rule of thumb and stuff you learn from "gangsta rap", if you want to riot, you usually do this in your own area, because a) you know that place b) because of a) you can hide whenever shit gets though.
But please explain, there were barber shops looted by some kids. What were they trying to get? Shampoo? Scissors? No, really...
The fact rather seems to be that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about..
Further, your argument would make sense if half of these guys weren't robbing and looting their own neighborhoods and communities where people have no money. This is nothing but mindless rioting for the sake of rioting and protesting against "the system", whatever that system is to them. To stick and limit this to a certain social class is just ridiculous and your argument is refuted by the map and the areas where looting happened.
Fantastic. So by the same token, I could claim that as a fan of country music and "right wing anti social views" you are just doing whatever the fuck you are doing. hickerydickerydock. Wonderful...so you have no argument and take ad hominem attacks as a last resort.Again, as said, the problem seems rather to be, that you have NEVER been to London or lived there for a significant time, are unaware of the city as a whole and the socio-economic situation of the city, probably don't even know anyone in London and when people tell you, which is a a usual reflex of yours, that your arguments doesn't stick to this case, you come up with the usual "your gangsta rap left wing fantasies"
The truth is that these are mindless riots against what they perceive to be "the system", riots that have happened before in major cities, riots that will continue to happen. These riots as the beautiful google map shows happen all across the city across all kinds of social classes but, as an example, not in the City(that's where all the shops are btw.). Besides, as a rule of thumb and stuff you learn from "gangsta rap", if you want to riot, you usually do this in your own area, because a) you know that place b) because of a) you can hide whenever shit gets though.
But please explain, there were barber shops looted by some kids. What were they trying to get? Shampoo? Scissors? No, really...
The fact rather seems to be that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about..
The majority of these rioters are from the uneducated, welfare-dependent underclass. This is a fact. Now you can accept that reality and we’ll move on from there, or you can go on just seeing what you want to see and I’ll leave you to it.
To put your mind at ease, I don’t consider gangsta rap to be the cause of this underclass mentality but rather another product of it. It is the culture that is the root. And among its products are generations of illiterate, violent bums incapable of rational thought or behavior, without the education to get a good job or the personal discipline to even get a crappy one.
Now having read some of the other responses here, I think some of you guys are giving these idiots WAY too much credit. These illiterate yahoos wouldn't know the difference between David Cameron and Cayman Islands. How can they be protesting against the Rat Race when they're not even in it!?...They just want to get handouts at the expense of those who are. And thanks to social networks, it's just easier for them now to latch on to an excuse and arrange an orgy of theft and robbery.
These fools can’t tell me that the system holds them back when millions of Asian immigrants, often from working class backgrounds, have prospered and flourished under the same system through hard work and pursuit of education.
The son of the Indian cab driver becomes a doctor because he doesn’t grow up in a culture that tells him cool Indians don’t go to school or that education is only for corny rich people. He doesn’t grow up in a culture where men knock up multiple women and then abandon the babies to grow up without fathers. These brown immigrants are raised in cultures where education is a sought-after commodity that adds to your self-worth, and even if you don’t go to college, you still work hard to support yourself and your family. Fathers are revered while thugs are shunned and seen as the lowlifes that they are.
Ask most Asians, whether Indian, Persian or Arab, and they’ll tell you if you don’t go to school or work hard, you are a bum, not a “martyr”. That if you're an uneducated woman who keeps pumping out fatherless kids, you're an irresponsible skank, not a "martyr". This is because their cultures haven't yet been infected with the virus of Moral Relativism. Now ask most of these rioter-types what they think of a man who works everyday to support his children, and they'll call him a sucker.
When you contrast the prevailing mentality in the American and English underclass with that of groups like the Asian immigrants, you see why the latter thrive and prosper despite being minorities in every sense of the term, while the other, black or white, keep thrashing about in a sewer of poverty, crime and illiteracy while politically correct buffoons tell them they're only there because The System has done them wrong; that society owes them EVERYTHING while they proudly contribute NOTHING.
IZjan, your claim is true but if you expand the horizon you'll see where these yahoos' culture meets the rat-race crowd's. They are indeed different types, but maintain a similar gut-feeling towards the system. Interestingly enough, they need each other and sometimes unwantedly fight for each others' existence.
The rat-race crowd is programmed to worship peace and stability, so they give-in or even fight for government hand-outs and freebies to contain the yahoos. After only so long, they realize that the system is being unfair in making them carry the burden with the wealthier ruling class not contributing their fair share. At the same time, the yahoos get accustomed to the hand-outs while keeping an eye on the materialistic progress of rat-racers who are good enough to beat others. That's when the system gets questioned by both the yahoos and the majority of tired racing rats. That's when the plague of discontent and mistrust starts to take victims. That's when normal "well-to-do" citizens sympathize with the looters. Black and white mix to create gray and good becomes indistinguishable from bad.
That's where England is headed right now. I see potential for similar events in North America.
The rat-race crowd is programmed to worship peace and stability, so they give-in or even fight for government hand-outs and freebies to contain the yahoos. After only so long, they realize that the system is being unfair in making them carry the burden with the wealthier ruling class not contributing their fair share. At the same time, the yahoos get accustomed to the hand-outs while keeping an eye on the materialistic progress of rat-racers who are good enough to beat others. That's when the system gets questioned by both the yahoos and the majority of tired racing rats. That's when the plague of discontent and mistrust starts to take victims. That's when normal "well-to-do" citizens sympathize with the looters. Black and white mix to create gray and good becomes indistinguishable from bad.
That's where England is headed right now. I see potential for similar events in North America.
masoud jan,
As I said in the earlier post, the riots have nothing to do with religion and Islam. The rioters are not moslems and if there are moslems amongst them, they are not doing this in the name of religion. I think you have totally misunderstood what these riots are about. I know what you mean about mosques in England but as I say in this case they are unrelated.
In fact, the Pakistani community for example, who own and go to these mosques most often were among the people who defended their community against these mobsters. Many Pakistani shop owners were victims of these riots and lost their livelihood. Don't you think if the mosques had organised these riots they'd tell the mob to stay away from their own kind? Or do you think they attacked moslem owned shops too in order to cover their backs? If so then I really can't compete with your kind of thinking and there is nothing I can say to override your conspiracy theories because you will always come up with a new one!
Regarding the last part of your post, there are also white thugs among the looters and many of them have been arrested. So to say the white hoodies must be plain clothe policemen is not accurate. But of course it is more than likely that the police gathers information by sending plain clothed agents wearing hoodies. Even so, there is a big difference between this practice and IR's lebas shakhsi which I hope I don't have to explain.
Finally, there are many policemen in the UK of ethnic minority origin who do a great job. It is not a case of if you are white then you must be an undercover policeman or vice versa. If the police wants to send plain clothed agents into rioters they have plenty of black and moslem policemen to do that. The vast majority of black and ethnic minorities in the UK are law-abiding, decent citizens who help out their communities and the police in every way they can. They are not all disagreeable rioters against the system.
As I said in the earlier post, the riots have nothing to do with religion and Islam. The rioters are not moslems and if there are moslems amongst them, they are not doing this in the name of religion. I think you have totally misunderstood what these riots are about. I know what you mean about mosques in England but as I say in this case they are unrelated.
In fact, the Pakistani community for example, who own and go to these mosques most often were among the people who defended their community against these mobsters. Many Pakistani shop owners were victims of these riots and lost their livelihood. Don't you think if the mosques had organised these riots they'd tell the mob to stay away from their own kind? Or do you think they attacked moslem owned shops too in order to cover their backs? If so then I really can't compete with your kind of thinking and there is nothing I can say to override your conspiracy theories because you will always come up with a new one!
Regarding the last part of your post, there are also white thugs among the looters and many of them have been arrested. So to say the white hoodies must be plain clothe policemen is not accurate. But of course it is more than likely that the police gathers information by sending plain clothed agents wearing hoodies. Even so, there is a big difference between this practice and IR's lebas shakhsi which I hope I don't have to explain.
Finally, there are many policemen in the UK of ethnic minority origin who do a great job. It is not a case of if you are white then you must be an undercover policeman or vice versa. If the police wants to send plain clothed agents into rioters they have plenty of black and moslem policemen to do that. The vast majority of black and ethnic minorities in the UK are law-abiding, decent citizens who help out their communities and the police in every way they can. They are not all disagreeable rioters against the system.
Now just to lighten the mood here, look who was spotted looting amongst the mayhem:
Wenger will win the Premier League this year and you'll regret your post.
In other related news , looks like Chelsea are doing their fair share to keep the rioters away from Tottenham's White Hart Lane.Yossi will surely scare them off.
Chelsea to offer Benayoun for Modric
http://www.espnstar.com/football/pr...m653907/Chelsea-to-offer-Benayoun-for-Modric/
Good read here:
Meet the historical hoodies
New book by academic shows Manchester's historical precedent for knife crime and gangs, and may have some lessons for similar problems today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/22/hoodies-victorian-manchester-gangs
Martin Wainwright
Guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 October 2008
William Henry Brooks, Victorian Manchester street fighter
You could tell them by their bell-bottomed trousers, fringes and jauntily-tilted caps - and if you saw them, you were advised to cut and run.
They ran the grimy streets of Manchester and filled the city's courts and police cells, while the media described their codes and gang names in lurid detail - the Bengal Tigers, the Meadow Lads and the She Battery Mob.
But this wasn't another outbreak of modern gun crime, teenage stabbings or hoodie trouble-making. The 'scuttlers', as the whole of Britain learned to know and detest them, were a serious social problem in the 1870s and 80s.
Influenced by an empire almost permanently at war, from the Sudan to Afghanistan, they took over music halls, openly paraded with home-made weapons and staged fights where more than 500 young people took part.
Their history has now been chronicled by a Liverpool university academic, Dr Andrew Davies, after years in their company in the peaceful reading rooms of archives from Manchester to London. His research uncovers all the features of 21st-century concern about youth crime, but on a larger scale, and 140 years ago.
"There are so many records that it has taken me 15 years to pull all the material together," says Davies, whose book, The Gangs of Manchester: The Story of the Scuttlers, is published this month with public readings in the city and plans for a future play.
"Matching press reports with police, court and prison records gives a picture of relentless urban violence by young men going through the new, compulsory school system and out into the mills and factories of Manchester."
The staged fights also involved "scuttlerettes", girls as young as 14 who were accused of raising the level of violence by flirting with rival youths and egging them on. In Liverpool, according to Davies' researches, gangs were often motivated by robbery, carried out by way of a more vicious version of Fagin's pickpockets in Oliver Twist. But in Manchester, the motive was testosterone-fuelled excitement and a hunt for status.
"Each gang wanted to be recognised as the toughest in the city, and scuttlers would walk as far as five miles to take on rivals," says Davies. "Groups took possession of their favourite music halls and attacked any members of other gangs who came in, using sharpened belt buckles or knives as weapons."
Some example police mugshots of
Manchester gangsters, including
identifying features such as "left leg
much thinner than right"
Then as now, individuals were singled out by both police and media. One reprobate was John-Joseph Hillier, the Irish-born leader of the Deansgate Mob, who joined the gang when he was 14. He was repeatedly jailed for slashing members of the rival Casino gang with a butcher's knife and was nicknamed "King of the Scuttlers" by reporters.
Delighted with the notoriety, he had the name sewn on to the front of the trademark jersey he wore with his bell-bottoms and cap. The word 'scuttle' was coined by the boys as a term for street-fighting.
Davies says that one major difference from today's youth violence was that deaths were very rare. But the level of serious woundings - and the sheer number of young teenagers filling the newly-built Strangeways prison and other jails - led Manchester city council to petition the then home secretary for the return of flogging to punish violent crime.
In the end, with the authorities acknowledging the effect of the 19th century's catalogue of international violence - gangs in battles such as the Rochdale Road War called themselves either 'Russians' or 'Turks' - the answer was more thoughtful. A philanthropic movement to set up Lads Clubs took root in the worst-affected areas, including the core of Salford, which Friedrich Engels had described several decades earlier as the world's classic urban slum.
Church leaders and others, including the Manchester Guardian, recognised the role of status and competition in scuttler society and diverted it into boxing and sporting competitions, especially football. Davies says: "They were very successful in working with younger boys who might have been expected to form the next cohort of the gangs."
The book dwells on the parallels with today, and Davies says that he was fascinated by the unchanging role of dress and personal appearance as a sign of belonging to a gang. He details scuttler hairstyle, known in the 1870s as a "donkey fringe", which required close cropping at the back but an angled fringe at the front, with the hair longer on the right.
Differently-coloured scarves completed the uniform. Most scuttlers added brass tips to their clogs to add an intimidating rattle to the normal clatter of the footwear on the city's cobbles. Davies says: "You could well imagine a scuttler finding himself at a concert a hundred years later and blending right in."
**************************
Shocking images of Manchester riots, August 2011.NSFW/NSFC
[video=youtube;0cbVW_QS2eE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cbVW_QS2eE&feature=player_embedded[/video]
Meet the historical hoodies
New book by academic shows Manchester's historical precedent for knife crime and gangs, and may have some lessons for similar problems today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/22/hoodies-victorian-manchester-gangs
Martin Wainwright
Guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 October 2008
William Henry Brooks, Victorian Manchester street fighter
You could tell them by their bell-bottomed trousers, fringes and jauntily-tilted caps - and if you saw them, you were advised to cut and run.
They ran the grimy streets of Manchester and filled the city's courts and police cells, while the media described their codes and gang names in lurid detail - the Bengal Tigers, the Meadow Lads and the She Battery Mob.
But this wasn't another outbreak of modern gun crime, teenage stabbings or hoodie trouble-making. The 'scuttlers', as the whole of Britain learned to know and detest them, were a serious social problem in the 1870s and 80s.
Influenced by an empire almost permanently at war, from the Sudan to Afghanistan, they took over music halls, openly paraded with home-made weapons and staged fights where more than 500 young people took part.
Their history has now been chronicled by a Liverpool university academic, Dr Andrew Davies, after years in their company in the peaceful reading rooms of archives from Manchester to London. His research uncovers all the features of 21st-century concern about youth crime, but on a larger scale, and 140 years ago.
"There are so many records that it has taken me 15 years to pull all the material together," says Davies, whose book, The Gangs of Manchester: The Story of the Scuttlers, is published this month with public readings in the city and plans for a future play.
"Matching press reports with police, court and prison records gives a picture of relentless urban violence by young men going through the new, compulsory school system and out into the mills and factories of Manchester."
The staged fights also involved "scuttlerettes", girls as young as 14 who were accused of raising the level of violence by flirting with rival youths and egging them on. In Liverpool, according to Davies' researches, gangs were often motivated by robbery, carried out by way of a more vicious version of Fagin's pickpockets in Oliver Twist. But in Manchester, the motive was testosterone-fuelled excitement and a hunt for status.
"Each gang wanted to be recognised as the toughest in the city, and scuttlers would walk as far as five miles to take on rivals," says Davies. "Groups took possession of their favourite music halls and attacked any members of other gangs who came in, using sharpened belt buckles or knives as weapons."
Some example police mugshots of
Manchester gangsters, including
identifying features such as "left leg
much thinner than right"
Then as now, individuals were singled out by both police and media. One reprobate was John-Joseph Hillier, the Irish-born leader of the Deansgate Mob, who joined the gang when he was 14. He was repeatedly jailed for slashing members of the rival Casino gang with a butcher's knife and was nicknamed "King of the Scuttlers" by reporters.
Delighted with the notoriety, he had the name sewn on to the front of the trademark jersey he wore with his bell-bottoms and cap. The word 'scuttle' was coined by the boys as a term for street-fighting.
Davies says that one major difference from today's youth violence was that deaths were very rare. But the level of serious woundings - and the sheer number of young teenagers filling the newly-built Strangeways prison and other jails - led Manchester city council to petition the then home secretary for the return of flogging to punish violent crime.
In the end, with the authorities acknowledging the effect of the 19th century's catalogue of international violence - gangs in battles such as the Rochdale Road War called themselves either 'Russians' or 'Turks' - the answer was more thoughtful. A philanthropic movement to set up Lads Clubs took root in the worst-affected areas, including the core of Salford, which Friedrich Engels had described several decades earlier as the world's classic urban slum.
Church leaders and others, including the Manchester Guardian, recognised the role of status and competition in scuttler society and diverted it into boxing and sporting competitions, especially football. Davies says: "They were very successful in working with younger boys who might have been expected to form the next cohort of the gangs."
The book dwells on the parallels with today, and Davies says that he was fascinated by the unchanging role of dress and personal appearance as a sign of belonging to a gang. He details scuttler hairstyle, known in the 1870s as a "donkey fringe", which required close cropping at the back but an angled fringe at the front, with the hair longer on the right.
Differently-coloured scarves completed the uniform. Most scuttlers added brass tips to their clogs to add an intimidating rattle to the normal clatter of the footwear on the city's cobbles. Davies says: "You could well imagine a scuttler finding himself at a concert a hundred years later and blending right in."
**************************
Shocking images of Manchester riots, August 2011.NSFW/NSFC
[video=youtube;0cbVW_QS2eE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cbVW_QS2eE&feature=player_embedded[/video]
I don't think that I ever claimed that the majority is white middle class Brits or kids from Eton. My point is that it's not as easy as you make it seem. and try to analyze it.
Here's another example of a rioter..and there are more of her sorts
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...-grammar-school-girl-is-accused-of-theft.html
You can't just bring it down to 3 factors and say that's it...
People do all kind of shit for various reasons and as said, as others say, the level of disparity between rich and poor in the UK is right now at an all time high. Now that would in general be a reason for riots. As said, whenever there's a high unemployment rate among youth, there will be riots. Has always happened. Now this and that guy doesn't do it, this and that guy does it, the other guy made millions through hard work..cool..I really don't care, has little to do with this case. I'm not saying they are right or wrong, it's just as it is, was and will be. If you are more satisfied, this is some kind of nihilistic vandalism you are witnessing. Better?
Here's another example of a rioter..and there are more of her sorts
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...-grammar-school-girl-is-accused-of-theft.html
You can't just bring it down to 3 factors and say that's it...
People do all kind of shit for various reasons and as said, as others say, the level of disparity between rich and poor in the UK is right now at an all time high. Now that would in general be a reason for riots. As said, whenever there's a high unemployment rate among youth, there will be riots. Has always happened. Now this and that guy doesn't do it, this and that guy does it, the other guy made millions through hard work..cool..I really don't care, has little to do with this case. I'm not saying they are right or wrong, it's just as it is, was and will be. If you are more satisfied, this is some kind of nihilistic vandalism you are witnessing. Better?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/10/the_kids_aren_t_alright?page=full
The Kids Aren't Alright
What's really behind Britain's wave of youth violence?
BY PORTIA WALKER | AUGUST 10, 2011
"There's just a lot of very frustrated, very fed up, young guys around," reflected Logan Wilmont, an advertising director from Belfast, which has certainly seen its own fair share of unrest. "They're living at a time where they can't have anything. We're living in a broken moment."
British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson have characterized the recent events as wholly criminal. "This is criminality pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated," Cameron told reporters from outside his residence at 10 Downing Street. On a visit to the riot-hit south London suburb of Clapham, Johnson said to residents, "It's time we heard a little bit less about the sociological justifications for what is in my view nothing less than wanton criminality."
That's understandable language when leaders need to look tough, but elsewhere, questions are being asked about the underlying social and economic factors that could have prompted this unrest. Opposition politicians were quick to make connections between the social unrest and government policy. In an interview with BBC, Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, suggested recent cuts to government spending on higher education could have been a motivating factor in the violence. Johnson's left-leaning predecessor, Ken "Red" Livingstone, talked about a bleak world for many of London's poorest youths, "This is the first generation since the Great Depression that have doubts about their future," he said in an interview.
What happened in London -- and is now happening in Birmingham and Manchester -- is not an obviously political protest; there are no banners on display, no clear demands being made. But it's not simply a large-scale crime wave either. The perpetrators -- mostly young men and women (some as young as 11) -- acted in public. This was deliberate antagonism under the glare of media spotlight. They smashed windows and stole goods as the television cameras rolled, knowing that their actions would be captured on Britain's extensive network of closed-circuit televisions. So what touched off such wanton destruction?
Race certainly plays a role, as the violence spun out of a protest over the police killing of a 29-year-old black man, Mark Duggan, in the north London suburb of Tottenham on Aug. 4. Much of the subsequent civil disobedience was directed against London's Metropolitan Police, which in recent years has experienced prickly relations with the city's Afro-Caribbean community. But this was not a race riot; it included people from a range of backgrounds and ethnicities, who were without any unified ideological cause.
For many at both ends of the political spectrum, this was the latest episode in the slow unraveling of the social order in Britain. The police may have restored a modicum of order to the city, but the riots brought to the fore a small segment of society usually in the shadows: a troubled underclass wracked by bubbling discontent and growing lawlessness. Public opinion of the riots is increasingly polarized. Right-leaning newspapers in Britain regularly report on the anti-social behavior of what are often described as "feral youth": poor, unemployed young people often from minority backgrounds who conduct campaigns of petty crime and harassment within their own communities. But for others, the anarchic behavior points to a deeper discontent and raises doubts about whether the austerity budget recently introduced by the new coalition government is politically sustainable.
One million people between ages of 18 and 24 in Britain are unemployed, the highest rate since the mid-1980s. The district of Tottenham, where the recent unrest began, has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the capital, at almost double the national average. In the Independent, Camila Batmanghelidjh, a charity leader, wrote movingly about the growing number of young adults cut adrift from society, who are driven to form anti-social parallel communities of their own.
The growing inequality in the distribution of wealth in the capital has long been a source for concern. A 2008 survey by the OECD found that Britain had a bigger gap between rich and poor than more than three-quarters of other OECD countries.
But unlike many other cities with similar problems with inequality -- where the poor and ethnic minorities are ghettoized or pushed into outlying suburbs while the rich lock themselves away in gated communities -- London's communities exist alongside one another. Mansions worth millions of pounds stand on the same streets as concrete blocks of community housing. Poor, young, unemployed men take public transport alongside wealthy traders on their way to the banks in central London. Boutiques sell organic yogurt and chic secondhand furniture next to seedy stores stocked with cut-price liquor and junk food. This diversity has long been celebrated. The head of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, favorably compared London's policy of cultural integration with the divided cities of France and the United States, even as he warned that Britain was "sleepwalking into segregation."
But as the chill winds of austerity blow away the affluence and optimism of the boom years before the credit crunch, relations between rich and poor look set to sharpen as sky-high property prices and the inflated cost of goods in shops make life increasingly difficult and inaccessible for poor people in the capital. Today, many are looking back to the riots of the 1980s, the last period in which Britain experienced comparable civic unrest. Then as now, budget cuts were bringing Britain into a period of increased austerity, youth unemployment was high, and the economy's growth was slowing.
The coalition government in power today has seen sparks of unrest as its tries to tackle Britain's vast deficit though a number of sweeping cuts in spending and services. Last December, students in the capital demonstrated against a rise in tuition and the cutting of Education Maintenance Grants, a scheme aimed at allowing poorer students to stay in school over age 16. This March, half a million people marched against the cuts, and a group occupied Fortnum & Mason, one of the capital's smart department stores, protesting against alleged tax avoidance by big businesses.
Whether Britain is entering a prolonged period of unrest still remains to be seen. In the coming weeks, we will find out more about the people who tore apart London over the past few days. To date, over 1,000 arrests have been made across the country and many will stand trial in the next few months. Many simply appear to be opportunistic young adults, uninterested in the political system and lacking even the simplest economic or political demands. They seem to want nothing more than a release. But if apathy and opportunism can have such combustible results, Britain's politicians may want to pay a bit more attention to what's festering under the surface.
The Kids Aren't Alright
What's really behind Britain's wave of youth violence?
BY PORTIA WALKER | AUGUST 10, 2011
"There's just a lot of very frustrated, very fed up, young guys around," reflected Logan Wilmont, an advertising director from Belfast, which has certainly seen its own fair share of unrest. "They're living at a time where they can't have anything. We're living in a broken moment."
British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson have characterized the recent events as wholly criminal. "This is criminality pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated," Cameron told reporters from outside his residence at 10 Downing Street. On a visit to the riot-hit south London suburb of Clapham, Johnson said to residents, "It's time we heard a little bit less about the sociological justifications for what is in my view nothing less than wanton criminality."
That's understandable language when leaders need to look tough, but elsewhere, questions are being asked about the underlying social and economic factors that could have prompted this unrest. Opposition politicians were quick to make connections between the social unrest and government policy. In an interview with BBC, Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, suggested recent cuts to government spending on higher education could have been a motivating factor in the violence. Johnson's left-leaning predecessor, Ken "Red" Livingstone, talked about a bleak world for many of London's poorest youths, "This is the first generation since the Great Depression that have doubts about their future," he said in an interview.
What happened in London -- and is now happening in Birmingham and Manchester -- is not an obviously political protest; there are no banners on display, no clear demands being made. But it's not simply a large-scale crime wave either. The perpetrators -- mostly young men and women (some as young as 11) -- acted in public. This was deliberate antagonism under the glare of media spotlight. They smashed windows and stole goods as the television cameras rolled, knowing that their actions would be captured on Britain's extensive network of closed-circuit televisions. So what touched off such wanton destruction?
Race certainly plays a role, as the violence spun out of a protest over the police killing of a 29-year-old black man, Mark Duggan, in the north London suburb of Tottenham on Aug. 4. Much of the subsequent civil disobedience was directed against London's Metropolitan Police, which in recent years has experienced prickly relations with the city's Afro-Caribbean community. But this was not a race riot; it included people from a range of backgrounds and ethnicities, who were without any unified ideological cause.
For many at both ends of the political spectrum, this was the latest episode in the slow unraveling of the social order in Britain. The police may have restored a modicum of order to the city, but the riots brought to the fore a small segment of society usually in the shadows: a troubled underclass wracked by bubbling discontent and growing lawlessness. Public opinion of the riots is increasingly polarized. Right-leaning newspapers in Britain regularly report on the anti-social behavior of what are often described as "feral youth": poor, unemployed young people often from minority backgrounds who conduct campaigns of petty crime and harassment within their own communities. But for others, the anarchic behavior points to a deeper discontent and raises doubts about whether the austerity budget recently introduced by the new coalition government is politically sustainable.
One million people between ages of 18 and 24 in Britain are unemployed, the highest rate since the mid-1980s. The district of Tottenham, where the recent unrest began, has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the capital, at almost double the national average. In the Independent, Camila Batmanghelidjh, a charity leader, wrote movingly about the growing number of young adults cut adrift from society, who are driven to form anti-social parallel communities of their own.
The growing inequality in the distribution of wealth in the capital has long been a source for concern. A 2008 survey by the OECD found that Britain had a bigger gap between rich and poor than more than three-quarters of other OECD countries.
But unlike many other cities with similar problems with inequality -- where the poor and ethnic minorities are ghettoized or pushed into outlying suburbs while the rich lock themselves away in gated communities -- London's communities exist alongside one another. Mansions worth millions of pounds stand on the same streets as concrete blocks of community housing. Poor, young, unemployed men take public transport alongside wealthy traders on their way to the banks in central London. Boutiques sell organic yogurt and chic secondhand furniture next to seedy stores stocked with cut-price liquor and junk food. This diversity has long been celebrated. The head of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, favorably compared London's policy of cultural integration with the divided cities of France and the United States, even as he warned that Britain was "sleepwalking into segregation."
But as the chill winds of austerity blow away the affluence and optimism of the boom years before the credit crunch, relations between rich and poor look set to sharpen as sky-high property prices and the inflated cost of goods in shops make life increasingly difficult and inaccessible for poor people in the capital. Today, many are looking back to the riots of the 1980s, the last period in which Britain experienced comparable civic unrest. Then as now, budget cuts were bringing Britain into a period of increased austerity, youth unemployment was high, and the economy's growth was slowing.
The coalition government in power today has seen sparks of unrest as its tries to tackle Britain's vast deficit though a number of sweeping cuts in spending and services. Last December, students in the capital demonstrated against a rise in tuition and the cutting of Education Maintenance Grants, a scheme aimed at allowing poorer students to stay in school over age 16. This March, half a million people marched against the cuts, and a group occupied Fortnum & Mason, one of the capital's smart department stores, protesting against alleged tax avoidance by big businesses.
Whether Britain is entering a prolonged period of unrest still remains to be seen. In the coming weeks, we will find out more about the people who tore apart London over the past few days. To date, over 1,000 arrests have been made across the country and many will stand trial in the next few months. Many simply appear to be opportunistic young adults, uninterested in the political system and lacking even the simplest economic or political demands. They seem to want nothing more than a release. But if apathy and opportunism can have such combustible results, Britain's politicians may want to pay a bit more attention to what's festering under the surface.
ouch disturbing videos-news out of the riot. but as Mahdi said, this was bound to happen any day bc of hectic financial-economic situation in U.K. but it was great to 30 such a close alliance of diff ethnic community groups in London, with the Police.
heyyy hey hey!! The lato poot ppl from Tottenham and Manchester started the whole riot!
In other note, I hope with these developments Olympic officials change their mind quickly and let 2012 Olympic games to be hosted in Bride of the cities, "Paris"!
London Riots: Police chief praises community for help
Chief Superintendent Mick Smith met with business leaders, councillors, and community groups at Central Library today (Thursday, August 11) to reassure them about the police’s work surrounding the riots.
The meeting came after a week of high police presence throughout Havering in response to the London riots.
It saw some damage in Romford town centre on Monday night, but he reassured people that the actual crime in the borough was no more than an average week.
Ch Supt Smith, who was an officer during the Brixton and Tottenham riots in the 1980s, said: “I was appalled and sickened. I have never seen anything like it in my 29 years of policing.
“But believe me there will be a concerted effort to deal with everything robustly that we come across.”
Ch Supt Smith praised the community for their help and support adding, “I want to express my sincere thanks to people in Havering. Some of the information we have had from the public including youths has been invaluable.
“A lot of the intelligence we have been getting is from youths.”
Police said they started receiving information on Monday afternoon about potential riots and cancelled all officers’ annual leave.
Instead of the usual 60 to 80 officers on patrol up to 250 greeted any potential troublemakers entering the town and dispersed any trouble before it started. About 60 youths were in Romford town centre, but Mr Smith said most of these were there to spectate.
He said the police numbers will be maintained over the weekend and until Tuesday when it will be reassessed.
He did advise against any people patrolling the streets themselves, and said this would only hinder their work and asked parents to help the police by knowing where their children are at all times.
He added that police had not issued any advice to businesses to close at any time, and although it was individual business owners’ choice to do so, by closing it would add to the perception of trouble.
He reassured people by added: “There is no intelligence to suggest anything is happening in the borough.”
Now just to lighten the mood here, look who was spotted looting amongst the mayhem:
The lato poot ppl from Tottenham and Manchester started the whole riot!In other note, I hope with these developments Olympic officials change their mind quickly and let 2012 Olympic games to be hosted in Bride of the cities, "Paris"!
London Riots: Police chief praises community for help
Chief Superintendent Mick Smith met with business leaders, councillors, and community groups at Central Library today (Thursday, August 11) to reassure them about the police’s work surrounding the riots.
The meeting came after a week of high police presence throughout Havering in response to the London riots.
It saw some damage in Romford town centre on Monday night, but he reassured people that the actual crime in the borough was no more than an average week.
Ch Supt Smith, who was an officer during the Brixton and Tottenham riots in the 1980s, said: “I was appalled and sickened. I have never seen anything like it in my 29 years of policing.
“But believe me there will be a concerted effort to deal with everything robustly that we come across.”
Ch Supt Smith praised the community for their help and support adding, “I want to express my sincere thanks to people in Havering. Some of the information we have had from the public including youths has been invaluable.
“A lot of the intelligence we have been getting is from youths.”
Police said they started receiving information on Monday afternoon about potential riots and cancelled all officers’ annual leave.
Instead of the usual 60 to 80 officers on patrol up to 250 greeted any potential troublemakers entering the town and dispersed any trouble before it started. About 60 youths were in Romford town centre, but Mr Smith said most of these were there to spectate.
He said the police numbers will be maintained over the weekend and until Tuesday when it will be reassessed.
He did advise against any people patrolling the streets themselves, and said this would only hinder their work and asked parents to help the police by knowing where their children are at all times.
He added that police had not issued any advice to businesses to close at any time, and although it was individual business owners’ choice to do so, by closing it would add to the perception of trouble.
He reassured people by added: “There is no intelligence to suggest anything is happening in the borough.”
BT jan, I agree with you about the frustrations of the rat-racers. But apart from a handful of javgir idiots, I still don't see any signs that the looting and vandalism is the result of an overall union between normal "well-to-do" citizens and the bottom feeding scum. The former group is too busy running for cover, or in the case of Asians, taking to the streets to protect their livelihood from these animals. This has all the fingerprints of the same amoral underclass I described in my last post.
This is what you said: "Most of the guys are pretty white English guys." Except the evidence shows overwhelmingly that these are predominantly underclass blacks with some whites (mostly from the same background) mixed in. The girl in your link and the white dude in your other post don't nullify the overriding pattern.
It has everything to do with this case.
Why are there so few Asians, if any, among the rioters?...Are there no poor Asians in England?...There are no working class Pakistanis in that country?...Or could it just be that the cultural factors I pointed out are the main culprit.
It's not "protesting" that is the issue. It's what's being done in the name of it. People (poor or not) who understand the concept of work and civil conduct don't protest by robbing innocent bystanders and looting other people's businesses -- they protest against entities that actually have something to do with their perceived plight. Normal people don't protest by stealing TVs or burning down some poor schmuck's store while giggling like retards. Criminals do. And when the majority are from a certain background, it points to a cultural issue.
No aziz. The problem is, you too often approach issues based on what you like and dislike rather than what’s true or false. You think you have an affinity for blacks and underclass culture in general, so naturally any criticism that includes them in any way, no matter how fact-based, sends you into panic mode.
First you disagreed with me by saying some of the things I had already said, then told me not to talk about it because “it’s boring”, then it was “hickerydickerydock” and now it’s “nihilism”. TBH, you pretty much lost credibility when you insisted most rioters were white even when evidence clearly showed otherwise. That right there told me you’re not willing to deal with the facts. And that makes this another case where arguing with you is a waste of time.
My last post pretty much covered everything I have to say on the topic. I'm not going to go in circles where each side just keeps repeating themselves. It's summertime and there are much more fun things to do. Good night all.
This is what you said: "Most of the guys are pretty white English guys." Except the evidence shows overwhelmingly that these are predominantly underclass blacks with some whites (mostly from the same background) mixed in. The girl in your link and the white dude in your other post don't nullify the overriding pattern.
It has everything to do with this case.
Why are there so few Asians, if any, among the rioters?...Are there no poor Asians in England?...There are no working class Pakistanis in that country?...Or could it just be that the cultural factors I pointed out are the main culprit.
It's not "protesting" that is the issue. It's what's being done in the name of it. People (poor or not) who understand the concept of work and civil conduct don't protest by robbing innocent bystanders and looting other people's businesses -- they protest against entities that actually have something to do with their perceived plight. Normal people don't protest by stealing TVs or burning down some poor schmuck's store while giggling like retards. Criminals do. And when the majority are from a certain background, it points to a cultural issue.
No aziz. The problem is, you too often approach issues based on what you like and dislike rather than what’s true or false. You think you have an affinity for blacks and underclass culture in general, so naturally any criticism that includes them in any way, no matter how fact-based, sends you into panic mode.
First you disagreed with me by saying some of the things I had already said, then told me not to talk about it because “it’s boring”, then it was “hickerydickerydock” and now it’s “nihilism”. TBH, you pretty much lost credibility when you insisted most rioters were white even when evidence clearly showed otherwise. That right there told me you’re not willing to deal with the facts. And that makes this another case where arguing with you is a waste of time.
My last post pretty much covered everything I have to say on the topic. I'm not going to go in circles where each side just keeps repeating themselves. It's summertime and there are much more fun things to do. Good night all.