Be careful what you wish for you totalitarian tw~*ts

[Tortington]

becuase that freedom that you want taken away...might very well be

g'night

This is interesting.

I found that very interesting time

I am white middle class very well educated (enfranchised) woman who has just learned her wage for (need a degree for) job has been cut in half. I bought into whole 'work hard, earn well' culture. I was lied to. However, have not much urge to riot. Or more honestly, go out with my mates and nick what I can. Because I was brought up with a moral code which does not include setting fire to other people's, who I do not know,property.I have no prospects. I am also a lot older than these people, so have less chance of 'new starts' I do not need to imagine having no hope, I have none, and have 2DD's to bring up. Who I acknowledge and pay for btw.
There are victims here, not necessarily those who think they are, and feel entitled to other people's 'stuff'.

Most Sense Spoken on 1 Thread Award goes to....

Al0uiseG

It is morals. How is it correct in any way to set fire to, and loot ,and destroy things belongign to someone else? How do you know what they are living through? How do you know you 'deserve ' more than they do?

Not 'You' personally, obviously!

If the rioters/looters/whoever really were disenfranchised and upset at the government, the council - the people in power, they wouldn't be attacking their own communities, would they? They wouldn't be breaking into the Sony Centre, or Currys, and running off with TVs. They wouldn't be attacking harmless innocents. They're just mindless, selfish cunts.

I've not read all the posts on here so forgive me if someone has already said this but people are talking about why theses youths are rioting and how they must feel hard done by etc - now obviously there is a political root to all of this but at the end of the day these horrible little f*ckers have no respect for authority, and all they are doing is looting and taking an opportunity to nick some nice stuff - you only have to look at the shops that have and haven't been looted - electrical shops, phone shops designer shops and sports shops seem to be the target, Waterstones in Clapham was untouched - they didn't want the books!!! This isn't about them making a stand in order to improve their chances. Somebody needs to take it in hand and show them behaviour like this will not be tolerated otherwise it will continue to happen because these "youths" think they are untouchable.

Abs - it isn't their community. They don't see it as such.

So we are back to - "badness"

They are just bad.

We produced these young people - what happened?

To be honest I don't know, I think it will take a long time and a lot of hard work from lots of people - someone on here said it was a lot to do with the parents and I think that is right, parents must take responsibility for their childrens actions and make the children take responsibility for their actions too.
I went to school in Hackney almost 15 years, me and my friends would hang about on the streets and cause trouble back then - nothing of this sort obviously but you can see now that those of us who had much stricter upbringings grew up and went on to have succesful lives, those that didn't became dealers, went to prison and lived on benefits (not that living on benefits is a crime!)
I'll get flamed for this I know but something like national service would help, I remember back when I was learning german they had a version of national service where you could either serve in the armed forces or go into voluntary work for a year - even when I was a young 13 year old I could see the benefit in that. It would give people focus and responsibility something that is lacking.

Yes these people are just bad, but they are not born bad they have been made bad by society, by bad parenting and many things - my point was that they are not doing this to get back at capitalists, they have no political motive they are doing it because they can. I hope it's not too late to change them but I think more worryingly it will be the future generations we need to worry about imagine what the children of these yobs will be like if they don't change.

Cogito, you speak my branes on this thread. But better informed and more articulate.

Completely agree about the long, long build up and entrenchment of gangs and alienated subcultures.

Also completely agree with what you said elsewhere about youngsters living in a world where young people being stabbed and killed is a normal part of life. Not just in specifically "bad" areas but across the age group.

Compared to that, destroying property must seem like petty fun. Dear god.

tsc is right.

There may need to be emergency measures to resolve this but shooting someone for stealing/looting/civil disobedience is NOT what this country is about. Of course the people looting and rioting don't care about the society they're hurting - they have no investment in it.

I do not condone what they are doing. I am angry, sad and scared but unless we try to understand why and try to do something about it (and I don't have the answer, I wish I did) it will continue.

Finally, with regard to shooting (not that there's been much mention of that on this thread, thank goodness) if the police/army start shooting at them, they'll shoot back. It's not hard to get hold of a gun.

It may be too late to do something about it rather than 'fight'. What makes you think any of the gangs want to change and integrate?

Perhaps this is how civil wars start. A gang is just another word for group or community.

Maybe this community is going to try to takeover from the current one.

Law of the jungle, it always comes back to it always.

but there's no job that pays as good as drugs pay

Interestingly, that is quite possibly not true for low-level runners and street dealers. The writer Tony Thompson wrote a very interesting book (whose title escapes me at the mo, unfortunately) about gangs and reported some research and statistics showing just how little the rank and file got out of it (less, in most cases, than the kind of unskilled jobs for which they would be eligible). That is why the gangsters need to inculcate the kids into the gang culture early: few people would live this life as a logical, better choice than mainstream life. They need to be indoctrinated, cajoled and threatened (and of course, generally speaking they need to have family lives so disastrous that the gang life is preferable). The chances of injury and violent death are high, as is the prospect of someone coming up and taking away from you all you have earned.

I don't think that the disturbances are a response to racism or deprivation in the way they were in the 1980s, except in the sense that in part because of those things, the people doing it have or feel they have no stake in wider society, so they don't care what harm they do.

There seems to be a very macho gang culture at work here, with boys and men effectively holding the rest of us (including their own kith and kin and neighbours) to ransom while they get their kicks and their TVs. It's a smash and grab and a power trip rolled up into one very exciting, adrenalin-fulled package.

There will be a reckoning, when police act on the CCTV and intelligence and all the tweets and messages to make arrests. A lot of the rioters are so young the idea of these kind of consequences don't occur to them. In the meantime, stealing from looted shops is not a capital offence, and we need to keep a sense of proportion. That said, I hope the arsonists get the very long sentences their actions deserve. Arson is terrifying.

My husband comes from a country where there army are on the streets, there are military checkpoints in the roads. The army influences the political process, corruption is not challenged and ordinary people lack rights. His country has been through a rumbling civil war / insurgency in the 90's and there was a state of emergency for nearly 20 years.

Be careful what you wish for. All of the calls for army on the streets, restrictions on human rights and civil liberties damage the whole of society not just the couple of 1000 people involved in the rioting. Those involved in the rioting involve less than 0.1% of the British population so I don't want to see changes to human rights and civil liberties due to the actions of a very small minority of the population.

Dandy, I realised that afterwards, am at work and thought I'd posted wrongly in haste

Was listening on radio to a woman saying that the majority of the youths carrying out these crimes had zero empathy with local businesses and communities because they didn't feel part of it. That they had no one in their lives with businesses to compare to. She also blamed aspiration and greed culture for luxury goods. And just the fact that this is all exciting for some who have nothing else much in their lives.

Is that too simplistic? I don't know. I am ironically trying to empathise and understand what would lead to such lawlessness, when really I am very far removed from that life.

So greed, poverty, lack of good example and boredom?

There's also a complete lack of empathy for anyone - it's how they're able to rob a man that's lying on the floor with facial injuries.

If you see them they're completely dead-eyed.

If you grow up in a home environment where nobody gives a fuck about you - then you never learn to care about other people.

somebody has got something you want? you take it.

Somebody has pissed you off? you hit them - or worse.

I agree Nancy.
It's not just people's livelihoods they have no empathy with.

Fuck.