Just been on a course about new benefit system

Yes. Of course he should not have been shot but I have limited sympathy for his family.

The police aledge he was a gang founder. DP runs a primary school where children as young as 9 joins gangs. an ex pupil murdered someone when he was 15. so yes I have less sympathy for people and families involved in gangs.

His maternal uncle was a criminal. How does that make mark duggan deserving of no sympathy for being shot dead by police? Or his family?

You have more sympathy for people affected by rioting than the family of someone who was killed? Why? Because his uncle was a criminal?

We do need to investigate police shootings thoroughly but MDs family were heavily involved in crime (read about his uncle in Manchester).

I have much more sympathy for everyone who suffered from the rioting and looting.

The whole Mark Duggan affair was one big fuck up from beginning to end...and it is time the IPCC actually admitted that so the family can move on.

Waves at 2old

Yes he wasn't arrested dur!

Remember how it was at the time? Lie after lie. They knew full well he hadn't shot that policeman because he never held a gun at any point yet the story was they shot him dead after he shot a policeman.

He wasn't arrested. He was shot instead.

Righto. A gun was found about 10 feet from the minicab. Inside a box. Mark Duggan's fingerprints were not on it, nor his DNA, so there is more than a little doubt as to whether he was armed.

Will that do?

His fingerprints were on the box. He was arrested on suspicion of 'planning an attack'. So his prints and DNA wouldn't be on the gun, or the sock it was wrapped in while it was in the box, because he hadn't used the gun yet. But his prints were on the box, which is where you'd expect them to be.

So no, it won't 'do'.

Dahlen

BTW flatpack, just because someone finds something empowering, doesn't mean it is.

Yes, I bet they don't know what's empowering. Maybe they need someone to run an awareness campaign so that they're quite clear about how wrong they are to see the world they way they do.

Well said Amberleaf we are so quick to blame black kids and benefit scroungers for the ills of this country

I don't live in Tottenham but there was rioting and looting very near to my home.

The shooting of an unarmed man and the subsequent lies from police sparked it off. Some of the people that joined in on following days were those who feel very much disenfranchised from society.

Many though were not in any way poor or disenfranchised. But they still went out and stole (but easier to focus on the poorer/black kids)

My teenage (black) son was out when I heard it was happening in our area so I called him on his phone to come home, he was about to board a bus right into it as he was running an errand for me.

He came straight home where he stayed all night despite coming from an 'entitled' benefit scum home but that's because he's been raised with morals like many families in my position.

The same reason there were poll tax riots in the 80s. The Brixton riots, the Toxteth riots and other riots since time immemorial, people have become disenfranchised, sometimes it's the only way to demonstrate dissatisfaction with a regime that appears to offer no solutions and disempowers peope by removing hope, chances etc. Which successive governments of all hues have done. There are very few places for people to go now, fewer jobs, little chance of affordable housing, social or otherwise. If you remove hope and replace it with fear, you reap the consequences.

the police do shoot unarmed people. i heard this shooting of my neighbour & was interviewed as part of the investigation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Stanley

over the years many unarmed people have been shot/died in police custody in strange circumstances.

but it was only the recent Tottenham shooting that triggered looting. i thought the man's family/pastor asked for calm.

so why the looting? Oh NT - so was there looting near you?

Thank you!

My reply wasn't to you Dawndonna, 'twas to Flatpack. Like yourself, I try to back up my points with proof. Anyhow, I agree with the rest of your post.

Sorry Nicholas
Did check,but got it wrong. Everything else I said still stands.

Duggan was armed.

Righto. A gun was found about 10 feet from the minicab. Inside a box. Mark Duggan's fingerprints were not on it, nor his DNA, so there is more than a little doubt as to whether he was armed. BBC linky

Will that do?

We need a real mixture of socialism and capitalism but most of all common sense

Also agreed!

BTW flatpack, just because someone finds something empowering, doesn't mean it is. Of course giving women access to contraception in India is a great idea. It doesn't 'empower' them to say 'no' to the men in their lives though, nor get their husbands to acknowledge the information those women have been given or 'allow' them to take the contraception. I would say that as much money should have been spent educating the men actually. Indeed, this is being seen in some African countries where it is now recognised that the aid being given to women to improve their sexual health is being undermined (often deliberately) by the men.

Duggan was armed but the police were unsure at the time. They released no information and did everything they could to cover their arses. The family did not find out for sure that he was dead until the day after his death. They found out from television reports. The Met finally got around to apologising in February, this year.
We are dealing with the disenfranchised here. People who have little hope and few chances. Flatpack and Jupiter, you only care about your own sorry little arses, your taxes are being used by the feckless. Your taxes are also being used by education services, health services etc. But you're not querying the spending on that, just where you perceive there to be idleness and lazyness. Not everybody on benefits is like that, there are some, but the government is picking up on these to punish the majority, and that majority includes disabled adults and children. In your pursuit of removing the feckless from society, you are including the disabled among them by supporting the government picking on the weak. You are bullies in the same way that the government are.
Like most bullies, you appear to be proud of it.

I thought the Tottenham riots (and those elsewhere) were caused by opportunists who wanted free expensive trainers without having to pay for them with the excuse that someone had been shot by the police?

We need a real mixture of socialism and capitalism but most of all common sense

I know! Why do people (including those in Parliament) find this so hard to understand??

Nicholas - so i take it the riots happened on your streets?

Tilly the first night of rioting in Tottenham was caused by the shooting of an unarmed man, and the subsequent lying by the police. The lies that they were returning fire, that he had shot an officer etc. Also, it was a reaction to the callous disregard shown by the Met for the family and the surrounding community. I don't condone looting in any shape or form, but I understand completely why they felt the violent action of the police merited such a response.

I thought investigators found no forensic evidence that Mark Duggan was armed when shot by police? The bullet in the second policeman was from the first one's firearm.

Dahlen so MPs duck ponds were responsible for looting family run shops?

We need a real mixture of socialism and capitalism but most of all common sense. It makes no sense to pay people to have children they cannot afford. It also makes no sense to let Topshop and Amazon pay no tax on profits they have made from selling to UK customers. No government will address both ends as all governments have a vested interest in being re-elected and getting party funding.

Dahlen

Do you have any idea how unbelievably sexist that sounds?

It's funny, but I was listening to a World Service programme about India and how a charity there is teaching women about contraception and how to limit their family size. For the women, it was empowering and set them free.

Why is it sexist in the UK but empowering for poor women in India?

We do not live in a world where it is the female of the species who has control over sex. Porn featuring violence against women is everywhere and 1 in 9 women will be raped.

I'm not sure this is the place to get in to a discussion of pornography and its influence on sex.

That doesn't even consider the women taken advantage of or coerced into having sex without using a condom. Research is showing that young men particularly are abandoning condoms and that young women are falling for the justifications they use.

It takes two people to make a baby Both are jointly responsible.

And sometimes the father disappears and the woman is left alone.

As you say, women face the consequences by suffering financially and giving up their freedom. Why should it be all down to women? Perhaps if more feckless fathers were forced into living up to their responsibilities, they'd be a bit more keen to use condoms. If they knew that they'd be hounded for maintenance for the next 18 years without exception perhaps the men could stand up and say 'no' too.

I'm not saying it should be down to women. I'm saying that, right or wrong, it is. I don't think feckless fathers should be able to get away with leaving a pregnant woman and avoiding any responsibility. I'm saying that they do, so women have to stand together and deal with it.

I'm sorry if you think that's sexist.

Partly that was to do with wider economic principles.

If you mean 'socialist ideology', then I agree.

It's not as simple as saying spending doubled. It certainly didn't double per head of the population.

No indeed. Spending on the poorest, when we take in to account extra money for schools in deprived areas, extra money for sink estates, new hospitals and schools built overwhelmingly in Labour areas, and so on, increased far more than double.

Much of the spending was on bureaucracy rather than at grass roots level, and certainly didn't benefit those most in need of it.

This is true, and a dreadful failure on the part of the government. It was also inevitable, thanks to the very particular ideology of the Labour Party, which is top-down "We can fix it".

Indeed, if you want to be cynical about it, much of it was aimed at the middle class rather than those in poverty, in a bid to convince them that New Labour weren't card-carrying communists.

I agree that some of it was aimed at some of the middle class. Rest assured that in this MN's middle-class Tory stronghold, the precise amount of spending was zip. I understand, though, that Holland Park Comprehensive, the '"Socialist Eton" in Islington, has had a £40m upgrade.

Secondly, we have an ageing population and this has massively increased welfare spending. It's not actually the feckless single mothers and the unemployed doing that.

I agree that there has been, and will continue to be, a hefty burden on the taxpayer to pay for care for the elderly.

Likewise, Labour made a huge mistake in eduction. IMO they are responsible for the start of the postcode lottery trend in education and their idiotic notion to get everyone at university rather than just the brightest from any socio-economic background has actually reduced social mobility IMO and laid the foundations for the latest massive fees hike.

I agree with most of this.

NicholasTeakozy

You're so right, oh wait. The Tottenham riots were caused by the Met's belief they should be allowed to shoot an unarmed man and have massive disregard for the truth.

Duggan was armed.

If you're going to deploy facts, at least get them right.

Hmm.