to think some people's attitudes are disgusting?

[TheRhubarb]

A thread about a thread and a sense of despair. There is a thread on mumsnet suggesting that babies be taken from parents at birth if the parents are, in her words "scum". Is this what we have become?

As much as I loathe and detest what the rioters have done let's take a step back here. There have been riots in Greece over cuts, protests in Ireland, Italy, France and Spain. All we've had so far are a few half-hearted protests whilst the government pisses off on yet another holiday and banks and energy companies publish record profits yet again. Were these riots not predicted at all?

You have generations of children born into families who have never worked and who live in a cycle of poverty. The charities and organisations that worked tirelessly to keep youths off the streets and give them hope have been disbanded due to cuts. So far 2,220 charities have been directly affected, the largest number in Birmingham and the second largest in London. Research also shows the the most deprived areas are those which are hardest hit.

When you live in a society that bombards you with images of footballers wives sunning themselves on holiday and you have a government that decided to all take their holidays at the same time whilst many families are forced to cancel their holidays then you can have some understanding of the hotbed of anger and resentment. Job losses are huge, benefits cut, the maintenance allowance to enable youths to go to college is scrapped, petrol prices are huge, energy prices up again and everyone is blaming each other.

I'm sorry but when a society breaks down you have to look deeper than just parental influence, you have to look at what help there is available. Because as a society we are all responsible for what happens. We all have a part to play and just pointing the finger of blame at so called 'scum' is offensive and narrow minded. If there are scum out there then we, as a society created them. This country is in danger of becoming as corrupt as Italy. The energy companies get away with murder, no-one now bats an eyelid at petrol price hikes, the banks are still making huge profits and the government are targeting the poorest to make them pay for the mistakes of the rich. Where there is corruption on this scale there will be riots.

There is no excuse for tearing apart people's businesses or burning down homes, but just pointing the finger of blame at each other will not help.

Rant over.

How are all the poverty apologists feeling now that a 31 year old classroom assistant has been one of the first to be found guilty of looting... sort of skews your argument a bit, wouldnt you say...

I think she means expressing the 'scum' view, or having it come out in unprofessional work would be sackable.

I am not a poverty apologist, I just want to understand why it happened so we can address it.

A TA could be on about 9K a year pro rata, so I would class that as working poor. That does not excuse him and he deserves to be punished and sacked. I don't think anyone is defending these people, they just want to understand.

The saddest thing about the whole situation from my perspective is the way that it has polarised people's perspective apparently lead both sides to take extremist stances.

It has become clear to me that I do not understand the people who were rioting. I do not know why they have a complete lack of respect for others who live within their own communities. I do not understand the sense of rights without corresponding responsibilities and I most of all do not understand the basic lack of empathy that they seem to have.

Of , I equally do not understand the hopelessness and alienation that may people facing jobless futures must feel.

Whilst at an intellectual level I agree with all of your arguments Rhubarb, I am finding it hard to find a willingness within myself a willingness to engage in debate as to the causes of these riots and to rememdy my lack of understanding. I know that to live within the compassionate, liberal, free society that I want to live in I should try and do so, but in the absence of any indication these people want to understand me or engage in any kind of debate on how the problems could be fixed I am unwilling to make the effort. I am sad that I feel like that.

If people were sacked for having such views about people/families etc we would be in even more dire need of police/teachers/doctors/nurses/social workers/lawyers.
Oh Em Gee- professionals in having an opinion shocker sack them all, never mind the sheer amount of good work they do in everyday life...

I don't think anyone is defending these people, they just want to understand.

The impression I get, is that too many bleeding hearts are desperately trying to find a reason to "excuse" this behaviour.

Rhubarb - I would never characterise children as scum. When young children get involved in violence i.e. 8/9/10 year olds, I think there must be a reason in their family background that lead to this. I am not talking about an 8 year old picking up a looted pack of crisps from ther floor, but the children throwing stones, etc at police. I work with some children like this and they all have horrendous family backgrounds.

But I can understand people personally affected by the violence calling children scum. I would be absolutely terrified to be in a flat with my children while outside people, including children, were rioting and looting. A natural reaction to feeling very afraid is anger. Getting angry helps to stop us being paralysed by fear.

And I do blame parents whose young children are outside rioting and looting into the early hours of the morning. With older teenagers I think it is more complicated. Sometimes their behaviour is partly down to poor parenting, but there are other things that can influence older teenagers to get involved in criminal behaviour. But with young children, every decent parent should be able to prevent their child getting involved in this kind of behaviour.

Watching "24 hours in A&E" I see no loathing, just a lot of compassion and patience even when they are threatened and abused. Not one of those interviewed gave any hint of hatred or resentment of those they cared for. I would not like someone in a caring role to judge me or my children based on their preconcieved and misplaced opinions

To be fair though, what you see in front of a TV camera and what those people really think could be 100s of miles apart. They're hardly going to put their jobs at risk by voicing any judgements they may secretly make.

Squeaky, perhaps the teaching assistant is fighting a wage cut atm, the ones in our county are, they don't get paid alot to start with.

Goosey - There are people who are quite happy to grab what they can get from society with no thoughts of others. There are also those who enjoy terrifying people as it gives them a sense of power.

We should not excuse these people at all. But there will be others who will have been pulled into the looting who would have never carried out a crime like this without the encouragement of the mob. The former will be well known to the police. The latter need the law to come down on them so they don't take part in anything like this again.

Now come on- in Rhubarbs cloud cuckoo land everything you see on the TV is gospel. And all the looters/rioters/arsonists are just misunderstood unloved products of society......

What exactly is a poverty apologist?

And why is everyone going on about this TA as if it proves any kind of point? The fact that its such a big deal means that they are unusual, not the main demographic. Not that it makes any difference, unless your TA's are highly paid and highly educated?

'Bimbo admitted that she thought some of the people she is paid to care for are scum. That is a sackable offence and not without reason.' Show me a contract that says you are not allowed to think what you like, as long as one maintains a professional façade, you can think what whatever you want.

I don't think that hate has spilled over here - people are disagreeing with your point of view. A thread will go where it goes, this is AIBU after all, and yes, people will disagree with you. There is no compunction on any of us to agree with you or to comply with taking the thread in the direction you wanted.

People have also pointed on here what they consider the cause to be, myself included. There has been 13 years of money being poured in to solve these problems, and it hasn't worked, so who is to blame, the govt we have had for 15 months, or the ones before who were in power for 13 years? If you read the blog Busty linked to, the cause of this is very well explained. Being touchy feely and understanding hasn't solved the problems, it has exacerbated them. These kids have no boundaries and that is what they all need.

Society is a broad church and you can't shape it to how you would like it to be; there will always be bigotry and hatred as long as society is composed of humans and not robots, as humans think and feel these things. You may be able to put a veneer of civilisation on the top, but the past few nights have shown how thin that veneer is. The rioters showed hatred and bigotry imo, and yet you want us to 'understand' them. Have you explained to them that hatred and bigotry have no place in society?

People have read your views and evidently don't agree with them. The anger felt is not misplaced, it may well give rise to some surprising outcomes from this.

And the parents I refer to as 'scum' will be judged in as much as if they have been deemed as unfit parents by social services they will not have residency of their kids, they will not be allowed unsupervised contact if allowed on the ward at all. They are 'judged' for the good of their child. As a social worker said to me if we didnt make these judgements in our everyday work many more kids would be in great danger.

Goosey I think a lot of people much more qualified and experienced in these matters are also at a loss. There was a manchester youth worker on the news at lunch time saying that she had no idea why this was happening and that she had phone calls from many young people in her community all living in similar situations to those rioting expecting her to know why they were doing it. There will be many reasons I am sure but there is a very basic lack of respect and I do think if we make too many excuses we will be feeding the smart ones with excuses to use in court.(her words) That is why this thread won't work it promotes one view and there are a million reasons. I must say though I live in Brighton v liberal etc and I have been surprised that a large % of the people that I would have expected to be hand wringing and excusing are quite the reverse. It seems that when it is really serious like this and fear sets in people do become less concerned about the perpetrators and focus on preserving their own lives.

I can understand professionals thinking some people they work with are scum. I wouldn't call them scum. But there is a small number of parents who are not going to change the way they behave no matter how much intervention and support they have. And they are going to carry on making lots of people's lives a misery.

I really think we need to take their babies away and break the cycle.

And this is totally separate from the larger group of parents who need help and support to be good enough parents. These are the parents who need to be taught how to feed, discipline, play with their children as they don't honestly know how to do it. Most, if not all, have come from abusive or severely neglectful backgrounds so someone has to teach them what a good parent does.

I think this second group of parents need more input when their children are very young. But these parents are different from the first group of parents.

So can understand WHY this happened from the rioters own words:

If you're down for making money, we're about to go hard in east london tonight, yes tonight!! I don't care what ends you're from, we're personally inviting you to come and get it in. Police have taken the piss for too long and to be honest I don't know why its taken so long for us make this happen. We need a minimum of 200 hungry people. We're not broke, but who says no to free stuff. Doesn't matter if the police arrive cos we'll just chase dem out because as you've seen on the news, they are NOT ON DIS TING. Finders keepers and we all look after each other so if you see someone getting grab by feds then make sure we help stamp out that fuking PIG. M.O.B money over bobbies =D broadcast this to everyone you know and let's get paid!! RE SEND. LONDON MESSAGE" - Blackberry messenger

So the reasons; money, entitlment, greed, hatred of police & authority, knowledge they won't be punished.

"There has been 13 years of money being poured in to solve these problems, and it hasn't worked"

I'm not sure I agree with this. Because although there has been 13 years of money poured in, it hasn't actually been in the main poured into really tackling the problems with parents who don't know how to parent.

When Sure Start as set up all the rhetoric was about intervening early with parents and babies so that any issues were dealt vwith early on, including knowing how to parent effectively. But very quickly Sure Start centres were pushed to work with large numbers of parents and children. So Sure Start centres concentrated on pulling in those parents that they could easily get to use their services.

Teaching parents to parent, who don't know how to, is a time intensive activity where you have to work with a small number of parents over a fairly long period. This hasn't been funded. Alongside this there needs to be ana cknowledgement that you are never going to change some parents and you seriously need to decide whether teh children should remain with their parents or not.

Rhubarb - excellent OP.
All I can say is that some people act like scum because of society. Some of them act like scum in spite of it.

Society does share some of the blame but individuals cannot escape blame either.
But blame is not going to get us anywhere.

What makes this current outbreak of riots SO different is that there really is NO reason for them and no justification or foundation for them...unlike the Poll Tax, Student Protests etc
What we've seen is just mindless violence and the wreaking of havoc and destruction.

So there is little understanding...and a LOT of anger. In cases like this I believe that police should have the powers to restrain these individuals by use of water cannon, curfews and any other means (that will not endanger life) because there is a need to regain control so that the liberty and safetly of law abiding citizens is not affected...and so that the homes and businesses of individuals are protected.

Those communities affected are our communities, we will ALL pay the price in one way or another.

There is NO excusing such behaviour....

Oh it's true, Adamschic, I can assure you. I am sat in the middle of it right now.

The level of administrative chaos is breathtaking and the overall situation seems to be being used as some sort of carte blanche for irrelevant factors to be brought up in court, evidential holes to be plugged with speculation about what further evidence may be forthcoming, the list goes on. My jaw has hit the floor at least three times this afternoon.

Breakdown in law and order is no excuse for a breakdown in the proper administration of the law. If anything, proper process should be adhered to even more stringently to send a clear message about the view this country takes of the status of the law.

Yes I have read that they are referring cases to Crown Court as Magistrates can only hand out a maximum of 6 months.

Of course we need to try to understand why this has happened. If we don't the poor innocent victims will suffer again, when it happens again. So it is not about excusing it, but understanding it to end it. It is hard for many of us to understand, but there are children who have no chance. I'm not really thinking of just poverty, but the more complex things that go on. What I find most frustrating is that there is a way out for so many - it's called education, and we get one for free in this country! Yet in so many parts of society, rich and poor, even here on MN, school and teachers and learning are treated as if they are interfering nuisances. Yet it would be the single most beneficial thing for so many of the disaffected we are seeing. But the support has to start really young.

I agree with bubbles, however we also have to look at gang culture and drug influences. Wether we are rich/poor we still have to take responsibility of our actions. Rubarb is right there are different factors which cause people to behave in such a way and a couple I have mentioned.

Especially the children doing this, they are a product of their parents and environment