British working/lower class only

[TinklySnail]

I’m personally not okay with rioting but understand why it’s happening.
What is the best way to fix this issue and do you think it is mass immigration that has caused it?

But they were wrong to vote to leave the EU ? Why can’t it be said ? It was an incredibly short sighted choice.
You’re turning it into a class issue (middle class v working class) when it wasn’t. Just maybe people with expertise understood the issue better than those without ? Nothing to do with higher incomes. More to do with an actual understanding of the decision to be made and how damaging a vote to leave was for the economy. Included business owners who predicted how it would negatively affect their ability to trade. Michael Gove essentially told us to ignore those experts. Which sadly people did.
Why you’ve brought arrogance and entitlement into it, who knows. I saw a lot of crowing about salty remainer tears, so much glee that the businesses could be destroyed. We won you lost. Went on for years. And ironically the ones who did win were the millionaire hedge funders and press barons.

I’m highly educated and a high earner and people still take the piss out of my mild working class northern accent and assume I’m thick. Imagine if I wasn’t bright and resilient how hard it would be to break past that prejudice. It’s easy to say pull yourself up by your bootstraps but there are always barriers that some people can’t get past either from inside or from other people’s perceptions of you. It is shit for them because living on the state is shit, being involved in petty crime is shit. Working and earning your own living wage is loads better.

I remember the national front in the 90s, these types of ideologies will always find an audience where people are poor and for whatever reason find it hard to get on their bike or go into cyber or whatever the latest thing is that poor British people are meant to be doing that wealthier British people don’t have to give 5 seconds thought to.

That said, I can’t see anyone bettering their lives with racially aggravated rioting on their cv but I believe from the news reports it’s only a tiny minority of idiots involved. I’m not in the country so I can’t witness it with my own eyes which unfortunately seems to be the only way to get the actual news anymore.

There was some expert on tv the other day saying why it was happening.

It always takes one single incident.

Its always when a government is relatively new.

It’s always after a period of underinvestment.

I'm working class and felt ignored and resentful. I didn't go round smashing things up, I "got on my bike" as someone once said, and went to live abroad. Then Brexit happened, and people like you started whining about how I mustn't complain about losing my rights or call the Faragists stupid, that Brexit was effectively my fault for thinking I was better than a bunch of knuckle-dragging racists. Well you 'won' so get over it, and stop expecting your victims to fawn over you and take some bloody responsibility for once. Enjoy your broken society.

@Leniriefenstahl

"But they were wrong to vote to leave the EU ? Why can’t it be said ? It was an incredibly short sighted choice.
You’re turning it into a class issue (middle class v working class) when it wasn’t. Just maybe people with expertise understood the issue better than those without ? Nothing to do with higher incomes. More to do with an actual understanding of the decision to be made and how damaging a vote to leave was for the economy. Included business owners who predicted how it would negatively affect their ability to trade. Michael Gove essentially told us to ignore those experts. Which sadly people did.
Why you’ve brought arrogance and entitlement into it, who knows. I saw a lot of crowing about salty remainer tears, so much glee that the businesses could be destroyed. We won you lost. Went on for years. And ironically the ones who did win were the millionaire hedge funders and press barons."

Genuinely don't get what you're arguing about. I'm not debating the merits of Brexit. I'm saying there was a section of society remain-leaning which were significantly patronising about anyone even considering other arguments. Significant amounts of supposed moral superiority. If anything, I'm saying this contributed to losing the referendum and it was embarrassing some people sunk to that level, it just made leave result more likely. You don't change someone's mind by saying they're thick.

There were riots and looting in 2011 when a new government was in power. I was born and brought up in one of the most deprived towns in the North, I still live in the neighbouring deprived town with high numbers of ethnic minorities and asylum seekers.

This latest unrest is the result of far right agitators like Tommy Ten Names given legitimacy by being re-platformed on Twitter and brainwashing by Reform/hard right Tories that everything is the fault of immigrants.

There is no excuse for desecrating Muslim graves, attacking mosques, arson attacks no hotels, looting Shoezone, Lush and Greggs. Shoplifting from hunger I can understand, but going to prison for filling a basket with bath bombs or attempted murder by arson or throwing bricks at police horses is not going to improve the life chances of anyone from a deprived town.

Having a criminal conviction makes it far more difficult to get a job, whatever your class background or race. Being on remand is seen as making yourself intentionally homeless and when they get out of jail, those involved in violent disorder will find their life circumstances are worse than before they decided to join a racist mob.

@AngelusBell I live in a deprived northern town too, in fact we had some rioting on Sunday night. Agree with you.

I've just looked up bricklaying courses.
You get up to nvq level 3 and each course costs money
The cost of this bricklaying course is £995 INC VAT. You only need to bring yourself, work clothes and footwear and your lunch, we will provide everything else. We ask for a deposit of £150 to secure your place on our bricklaying course and full payment 4 weeks before the course start date.13 Jun 2024

Just imagine you live on jobseekers allowance at
age under 25 - £71.70. age 25 or over - £90.50.

How are you going to find, or maybe when, are you going to find a thousand pounds plus travel. I looked up my nearest college that does bricklaying and for me that would involve travel of the cheapest I could see £11 a day.

And plumbing is even longer and roofing is longer still. With equivalent rise in costs.
And youd think people might have some affinity for these roles, not just get on a course for the sake of it especially like roofing if you can't stand heights.

I looked recently at a more local college to me for a friend who wanted to learn more about computers. There is a drop in that's free, just drop in any time, that's great. But if you need a certificate, well those courses start at £600 and only go up from there.

How are people supposed to afford these courses? You want the layabouts to get off their arse and do some kind of job, they need training. Training costs money, bring back free courses, local.

@Summerflames

An excellent explanation which identifies the underlying causes of poverty and discontent. It's also important to note that such deprivation destroys ambition and hope which in turn leads to anger. And yes some direct that anger against immigrants and others direct that anger against the "rich" or capitalism.

Absolutely yes that anyone breaking the law and causing destruction or violence should be arrested and prosecuted.

But to label everyone who raises concerns about levels of immigration as a far right racist thug is counterproductive and leads to a belief that the intolerant left are just ignoring their legitimate concerns, this then leads to violence by a minority.

Again, this accusation of moral superiority and patronising is weird….People just didn't like being told they were making the wrong decision, a fact reinforced repeatedly by ‘experts’ who they dismissed as out of touch elites when in fact they knew what they were talking about.
And much of the name calling was from brexiteers, crowing incessantly that they won. Went both ways.
The whole ‘middle class = patronising lefty do gooders’ just fits in with the metropolitan elites trope that people like Farage spouted all the time. Along with him being anti establishment, as if 😂 just part of the divide and rule plan.
Fwiw my partner voted leave, regrets it now, is as working class as they come. Even considered voting for UKIP at one point. He didn’t know anything about the EU or even the British parliamentary system. Admits it now and agrees it was a decision that shouldn’t have been put to the general public.

They’re rioting because Labour are seen as a soft touch. That’s why they’re rooting now and not then.

I agree

They rioted in 2001 in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, in that order. They stopped when the Bradford rioters got long jail sentences. They rioted in 2011 when there was a new government and Keir Starmer was only Director of Public Prosecutions. There were people who got jail and criminal records for looting bottles of water. If they think Starmer is a soft touch they’re in for a shock. There were grown men who thought it was funny to riot at the weekend who cried in court yesterday before being remanded for jury trial.

We shouldn’t write them off as “thick, racist and lazy”. They might be those things, but we need to understand why they have ended up that way.

It’s so complex. We read threads on here about mothers who are seen telling toddlers in a buggy to “Shut the fuck up” if they make a noise. Those parents will no doubt have been parented the same way, and don’t know any different. Our hearts go out to these kids, but we lose all sympathy the second they become adults and expect them to miraculously undo the damage and become functioning members of society.

These men often won’t just have grown up in poverty, they’ll often have had no love or parental support or encouragement. They’ll be ‘lazy’ because they’ve never seen anything different. When everyone around them is long-term unemployed, that’s just ‘normal’ to them. How can you have aspirations unless you see something to aspire to? Of course they’ll know that people can get good jobs and live in nice houses, but they’re not people like them. They’re for the “others”.

They’ll have attended shit schools where staff don’t have any expectations of them, and they’d be shunned by their peers (or beaten up) if they worked hard.

By the time they’re adults they’re still psychologically like children. They’ve never been given the tools to grow. And I’ll get flamed but I’ll say it anyway - most of them couldn’t get a job, not just because the jobs don’t exist, but because they’re frankly unemployable.

They’re truly at the bottom of society’s pile. They don’t want to be, so they’ll look around for someone they can deem to be ‘lower’ than them. Often that’s ethnic minorities, and they’ll focus their anger on those people because they don’t understand who it is that’s really keeping them down.

Prisons are full of adult males with MH problems, substance abuse issues and attachment disorders who don’t know how to behave. It started with their parents telling them to shut the fuck up.

This is what we need to tackle if things are ever going to change.

2001 was a Labour Government

2011 riots were in London and not related to this issue

There's a difference between problem and solution. Brexit was the wrong solution, it doesn't mean there wasn't a problem. Riots are obviously the wrong "solution", getting angry with Them (whoever that might be...defined as "not us") is also definitely not the solution - but it doesn't mean there isn't a problem. The real problem is probably poverty, feeling ignored and hopelessness. It is patronising and unhelpful to say there is no problem because you don't experience the problem.

There are many subsidised courses. I looked up and bricklaying and plumbing course in my local area and they are free for those out of work/ earning under a certain amount. This has been available for years

At an FE college you won’t pay fees for your first level 2 or level 3 qualification. You will get free or reduced course fees if you are on a low income. On benefits, you will also get money for travel and for childcare. Even on a higher income you can get a student loan for a level 3 course. The main problem is that while you’re studying you can’t always work. But further education is generally affordable, though we need much more of it.

But equally moaning about how hard faced they are depriving some wealthy pensioners of benefits they don’t need. And taxing a luxury like private education 😂

I thinks it’s odd how the tories are keeping schtum after all the incendiary outbursts before the election. Who knows, maybe it was all just to gather votes and purely for effect.

These were people the right wing press have demonised for years. The irony. But now they are cattle fodder for disrupting a new government’s plans.

Indeed. I’m sure when they read the headlines about “Workshy spongers” they’ll feel rage towards benefits claimants (who in their minds are probably immigrants) without even realising they’re the people that the press are talking about.

Yes!!!!

You think these people are rioting because private schools now have to pay VAT?
When you punctuate with an emoji, we can see that it’s not a great argument. You proved that point.

As someone who has been on JSA you would get funding towards education that improves your chances of employment. Your first level 2 or 3 course is free, if you’re on certain benefits you can receive additional funding to do an additional course. You can also take out a loan for a level 3 course.

I grew in a flat that was shared with another family, we had very little money, I was then completely independent from the age of 17. I worked and used that income to fund my a-levels, I could have used it to fund a vocational course instead if I had wanted to. I worked nights and evenings in a food factory and I worked early mornings cleaning at a local secondary school.

It seems that three little girls weren't stabbed by an autistic boy of colour so they had noone they could specifically blame.

You might be right about the perception of softness, but you know what? When the army is brought in people like you will weep and wail that that's not the right solution either. Oh and there riots, just not that right wing in comparison.