I guess the rioters have booked time off work?

@5128gap

It's a huge mistake to imagine this is just some workshy mob of miscreants, as some of them will truly be walking amongst us in our day to day

It’s a really important point and I completely agree.

I suppose what sticks in the craw for some of us is that this belies the whole narrative perpetuated by some of the more intelligent elements among these thugs that this is justified because “immigrants have taken all the jobs” and they are “marginalised” and all this self pitying bollocks.

If in fact these people have regular enough wages to not only keep rooves over their heads but to keep them in beer and cocaine and train tickets to tour the country smashing stuff up it makes this narrative about the “betrayal of the white working class” even more contemptible. If anyone is betraying these people it’s themselves. Nor metropolitan elites or asylum seekers or whichever other convenient target they can leech onto.

We can’t have it both ways. If these people earn enough to sustain their dubious leisure activities they are certainly doing much better than a lot of the immigrants (legal and illegal) who they claim are benefiting from the largesse of the government and society in general.

But I agree that painting them all as benefits scroungers in unhelpful for several reasons.

The part where I said they believe themselves to be the “back bone” of society. Ie speak for us all and superior to “immigrants” yet “ are not fit enough to be occupied with any economic activity during the day.”

@SunQueen24 I’m not trying to target you. My last question was to try to understand you. You’ve made yourself perfectly clear so I’ll leave you to your derision of unfit people who are not economically active.

No. We despise racist rioters.

If anyone working for me was involved they'd be sacked in a heartbeat.
Absolutely disgusting what's going on. Innocent people's shops and property mindlessly destroyed. People attacked and injured.
I honestly need to see what Starmer is going to do about it?!

@Samarrange most interesting etymology, thank you!

I actually feel really sorry for them.

They desperately want to work but find it impossible to get a job when they’ve got criminal records, face tattoos which look like they’ve been drawn on by a 3yo, can’t spell the work GCSE, refuse to get up before 10am, hold racist views, need 3 pints of cider and a line of coke before getting out of bed and have poor hygiene.

All whilst some brown skinned man clicks his fingers and lands a job purely based on the colour of his skin and the fact that he’s worked hard in school, went on to FE and HE and spent years training hard, doesn’t have a criminal record, chose to wake up early and go to work/uni, chose not to take drugs or alcohol, isn’t a racist and doesn’t smell of piss or stale fags.

I guess life just isn’t fair for some people and their lives would absolutely be better if all of these immigrants (brown and black people) were shipped off to other countries.

Then ASBO Dave who’s never worked a day in his life because he feels that the world owes him a favour, may finally get his chance of becoming a neurosurgeon.

A lot in the building trade do have a limited company- they’d be mad not to tbh

Before maternity leave I used to work as a youth worker. Get to know these people. The majority of them have been abused, should have been diagnosed with a learning disability, missed childhoods, they never stood a chance. There’s a difference between working class and underclass.

Mock them for not having any GCSEs, or teeth, or having to live on £70 a week benefits, for not understanding how voting works, that it’s not their foreign colleagues fault for competing for the same zero hour shift (imagine turning up to work at 5am and being told that there’s no work today) but actually the shareholders/government policy for allowing zero hour ‘contracts’, laugh at the guy who blames foreigners for stealing his job when he’s got a criminal record (obviously got learning disability too but who cares), how do you expect them to be able to form a debate or understand how our government works as it’s not taught in schools? All they know is that they regularly don’t have hot water and have never stayed in a hotel but ‘those’ men are put up in ‘fancy’ holiday expresses.

Once upon a time we used to throw the British underclass into work houses and it was seen as charity work. The underclass was seen subhuman, children separated from mothers to be trained to go into service, men and women worked to the bone 6 days a week for literal gruel.

I wonder how many people on here have turned up to work and there’s no shift/sent home penniless? Been on the housing list for years? Not ever stayed in a hotel? Not got a working shower? Zero opportunity for social mobility? Live on £30 a week? Not supported at school? Never told to brush their teeth as a child? The only book they were forced to read at school was Shakespeare and wondering why they don’t value the only resource they’ve got?

You’re expecting a members of our society living on crumbs to share those crumbs nicely. And when they say ‘why are we having to share our crumbs?’ Or ‘I’m not racist as I’ve got friends that are foreign but my housing block is half foreign and my sister has been waiting for eight years.. and number 7 only arrived here five years ago’.

But nobody has ever listened to them. The only way they know to get attention is bad attention. Keir telling them that they’re all going to get thrown in prison for ten years if they don’t go back to their grotty little lives whilst the rest of society continues to laugh at them. It’s not the way to de-escalate the situation. It’s like telling the naughty kid that he’s going to be thrown out of school unless he start behaving, but he doesn’t care as he can’t read the worksheets, feels everyone hates him and told it’s a waste of time. At least he’s got some attention being told he’s about be thrown out. They need someone to put their hand on their shoulder and feel listened to. At the moment they’ve only got Tommy and Nigel.

People said the same things about climate protestors "Oh they must all have bohemian lifestyles funded by mum and dad" when a lot were retired, students or in the case of a lot of my colleagues, working in the environmental field and had taken last minute annual leave approved by our employer.

I don't condone the behaviour AT ALL, but saying they must all be jobless is a rubbish argument.

If true and I've no opinion either way, then benefits is all they live on, forever.

Taking away their only source of money will backfire massively. They will start stealing from anywhere and anyone.

It's cheap and easy to be a company director of your own limited company, hence why there are so many cleaners, dog walkers, handymen, gardeners, etc as well as joiners, plumbers, electricians, etc who set up their self employment via a limited company.

Year ago, it used to be harder and more expensive, but now it's been made cheap and easy (some would argue too cheap and easy). Just nip online, fill in a few question boxes, pay a nominal fee by credit card, and hey-presto, you can call yourself a company director.

Calling yourself a company director may be correct in law, if you run your own limited company, but most are still "one man bands" and don't employ anyone else, and are basically just the same as sole traders, just under a different legal structure.

Right. I'm going to get absolutely slated for this but I don't really give a fuck.

Something has clearly been brewing with the anti immigration rhetoric and the anti anti immigration other side going against one another. In a way you could say this was bound to happen, the riots, but I'm finding how they've come about really odd.

So we have 3 children murdered by somebody of unknown origin and background, who was 17. Before any names were released, the internet was going mental - "guess their ethnicity, wonder what true British names they have" type thing. Turns out the guy was actually 17, British, with parents who immigrated here before he was born, likely with mental health issues (I haven't seen this reported but I'm going to assume as he killed little girls for seemingly no reason). But this is the trigger that has caused riots? We see plenty of events that could be the straw to break the camels back so to speak, but this seems... Misdirected? The man/boy wasn't Muslim, he was born here, he wasn't a refugee, yet immediately we see far right protests pop up all around the country.

Basically I'm laying out things that everybody already knows but here's my out there theory - I genuinely think some of the people instigating the violence are paid actors who have been tasked with creating vicious riots, and then the weak willed, violent, no opportunity, disgruntled indivudlas with a chip on their shoulder about immigrants have piggy backed and joined in just as planned. I have never seen groups of people attack somebody for simply being black in the past 20 years, or anywhere near this level besides a couple racist scumbags having a moment. I CANT, as in I DONT, believe there are this many people willing to attack people on the street because they are a few shades darker than themselves. This is something I can imagine happening if instigated by a person, and the hivemind takes over the rest, but it's truly insane what we're seeing.

The catalyst of these protests is strangely an event that doesnt concern refugees or unfettered migration at all, when there are plenty of news stories that would make much more sense to instigate such a response from the public. (Not that would justify it, but that would explain it better)

This is a time where immigration is a very hot topic, and there appears to be quite a consensus that it is going too far when at the same time citizens are unable to have basic needs met, and find services available to them being reduced, GP wait times increasing, council waiting lists growing, needing to access food banks, so tensions are high. Now we're seeing an extremely violent "protest", or riots, all around the country, which I feel will be turned into "you don't agree with 1 in 30 people in the UK having arrived since 2021? So you're a racist on the side of the vile nazi rioters, then?" Type situation.

I was also baffled at the amount of men who look steroided up to the eyeballs, covered in nazi tattoos, yet they're on the streets and not in prison (I'd assume most of these particular individuals are stomping on brown people often, or commiting other violent and disgusting racist acts or the like), free to jump out and burn down hotels. This is a side note, but I was genuinely confused at how many have these vile tattoos head to toe are free men, instead of in prison for trying to "cleanse" the country of X Y Z. Of course that means nothing related to my main point, but it's something I noticed.

Not to say most of these rioters aren't real people from the dregs of society who blame immigration for their troubles, but I think something fishy is going on here. I'm calling false flag. There, I fucking said it. I think it originated with some paid actors to flare up some of the more serious actions, and the locals have jumped on the bandwagon. It just doesn't sit right with me. Not to say this wasn't brewing, but the severity of which I'm seeing gangs of people attacking random people in the street, I find almost unrecognisable.

Like I said Im ready to be slated for this but I do genuinely think something is amiss with how this has suddenly cropped up and decended into random civilians being beaten and attacked in the street - especially black people (all people, attacking anybody is disgusting but-), since when has there been strong bad feelings towards black people in the most recent decades? I only make the distinction because there is clearly anti islam rhetoric at the moment, but I don't see the same feelings or attitudes pointed towards black people, yet I've seen more videos than I can count on both hands of single people being attacked by mobs frothing at the mouth. Where the fuck have they found these men? That again, was just a side note. Anyway. As you were.

I think people are more concerned about accuracy and perpetuation of stereotypes. No doubt some of the rioters will be jobless wastrels. However there will be others who have jobs in all walks of life and income brackets, much as was the case with the football 'firms'. The thing these people have in common is that their hobby is violence and ( for some) a genuine belief in their agenda. It's a huge mistake to imagine this is just some workshy mob of miscreants, as some of them will truly be walking amongst us in our day to day. Its interesting when the cases come to court and the backgrounds emerge.

No self employed and operating as a limited company are two completely different things.

@SunQueen24 so why are you bringing up the rioters employment status if you don’t believe it reflects on their value/inferiority/superiority? What’s the relevance?

Pretty much any self-employed trader is a company director, shirley?

They are and don't call me Shirley.

Pretty much any self-employed trader is a company director, shirley? DC's partner is self-employed, albeit with ambition, and he is down as managing director at Companies House. Maybe they calculated that if they told the judge they were a company director, the judge would look more favourably on them than if they'd said "I'm a roofer", and it's not a lie.

Someone will be along in a minute to say that 🔔🔚 is misandric. 😂

One that was put in custody until his trial is a company director (well so the reports say).

Could prove interesting if he employs people.

That's it "riots" are planned for 8pm NOT peaceful protests or protests. Just let that soak in everyone. There's no use of the word peaceful protesting with any of the mindless acts that have been occurring. The importance of the victims and families of the awful Southport stabbing has been completely removed because these c have decided to plant violence and clear cut racism into communities who are otherwise at peace, getting on with their lives. I hate what is happening. I hate the people who are inciting all this hatred and violence. I want peace I want to live in harmony with all. I don't want to be scared to go outside. I have never done anyone harm and there are many many just like me. Leave us alone.

It's why I prefer blanket terms such as "bell-ends", it just gets to the point I feel and I enjoy saying it. Plus, there is also the use of the 🔔🔚 emojis.

It's not a really offensive swear and I feel can be enjoyed by most.
Of course it lacks maturity and probably wouldn't be ideal when writing a police report, but for chatting with fellow MNs I'm happy to call a bellend a bellend for the sake of keeping things fair 😀

It’s completely clear you think employed people are superior to unemployment people.