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.

YANBU its bloody discusting.

Bimbo - I was talking about before the riots. Before all of this kicked off Britain had a few protests about the cuts but generally we've just taken everything the government have thrown at us.

Do you really think that it serves a purpose to blame individuals instead of looking at the root cause? Do you think it helps to call these kids, some as young as 11, scum and feral rats? Do you think it helps when facebook sites are set up to hound people suspected of being at the riots? Or to post hate filled messages about them?

You cannot solve this situation with blame and hate.

Rhubarb, what a superb post. You've summed up in one post what I've been thinking for days but struggled to articulate.

And yes in an ideal world people would take responsibility bubbles but if you're uneducated/undereducated, demoralised, poor, harrassed and see no future for yourself I think you'd find that pretty hard to do.

I'm excusing nothing as what's happened is disgusting, but now's the time to start proper discourse on why our society has broken down so much that this is now happening.

Yes it is, individuals have a CHOICE how to behave, its called personal responsibility. Kids are feral these days, and in their case it is their parents fault yet every day I work with useless idiotic parents who have a small amount of 'support' from social services and are sent on their merry way usually breeding more kids they didnt really want and cant cope with who then end up like these little sods causing upset and dispair on the streets.

Rhubarb... I agree with many of your points, I was just thinking that your post would have brought a balance to the other thread, which is really quite bonkers.

Society has broken down because there are no consequences for this kind of behaviour. People know damn well they can act like this and they will get a ridiculously lenient sentence so why the hell not? And what can parents who even care do about it? Nothing- they have too many 'rights' and use them whenever they can.

DO you actually believe that most of those rioting were aware that the PM was on his holidays though?

Good post Rhubarb.

My FB is full of idiotic messages from wealthy individuals fulminating in their own self-righteousness. A twat journo from the Daily HateMail was on the Today programme talking about beasts and Boris Johnson is mumbling incoherently.

This is a complex situation and ratcheting up the violent language and retributive rhetoric will only plunge us into further chaos.

But how did they get that way? Honestly, if you don't make any attempt to understand how and why these things happen, how are you going to prevent them happening again?

Its all about distancing yourselves from it. Make them different, make them other, less human than you, and they you don't have to worry about you and yours. You can throw blame and hate around and not address the actual issues. We all share collective responsibility for our society,and the sooner we realise that the better off we will all be.

I think some of these 'rioters' would be rubbing their hands in glee reading this. 'Aww look they think its not our fault- yeh man its our society to blame, now lets go and torch a police station becuz its nuffin to do wiv us isit?'

The violence that went on in my town had absolutely nothing to do with protesting and everything to do with pure greed on the part of the looters. You only need to look at the shops targeted to realise that.

bubbles, you cannot live a decent life on benefits, I've tried it. To be honest it's even worse for those just above the threshold for benefits, who receive no help at all, who've had their tax credits cut and childcare taken away. Is it any wonder that so many people decide to claim benefits when they cannot make ends meet by working?

That depends on your definition of a decent life.

I'd say that being able to access healthcare, education, a roof over your head and enough money to feed yourself is actually is decent standard of living, especially when it's just being given to you because you are lucky enough to live in the UK and you don't have to work for it.

If you believe that a decent standard of living means being able to own ipads, expensive trainers, clothes that don't come from charity shops and primark and the ability to go abroad on holiday every year, then you have to work for it. If you find yourself in the situation where you simply can't work for it because of a bad upbringing or other ways that life can and does shit on people, then you teach your children that if they work they can achive better. You don't allow them out at night when they are 10 years old. You don't slag off the government that is providing every expense you have and complain that you can't have more. You teach respect for yourself and for others. You look at the expensive lifestyles of others and work to achieve something simelar for yourself if that's what you want.

Then when the PM goes off to Tuscany, the deputy PM is off on his hols, Osbourne and Boris Johnson too you realise that those people making the decisions, those people who are responsible for this hand to mouth living, don't actually give a crap

Or you realise that those who have got a career in politics may have had a financial hand up that you haven't got, but they have still had to work, from the time they were at school, all the way through their higher education, right the way through their jobs, they have put in effort to get elected as MP's and that they are still working all hours when they are in their cabinet positions.

But of course it's easier to say 'they don't give a crap' so I'm just going to take what I want.

Bimbo, analysing societal contribution doesn't negate personal responsibilty. It's not an either/or equation, I really wish people would realise that.

Superb post Rhubarb.

Understanding is not justification.

Well allegedly its because they cant get jobs. However whenever ive been skint my priority has been paying the rent not helping myself to a camcorder/ipad/52" flat screen

Im with you 100% bubbles. I think society is in such a mess due to negating personally responsibility for ones actions all the time.

I agree that very little of this violence has anything to do with protest.
But it is clear we live in a society where large numbers of people (of children) feel they have absolutely nothing to lose. It's fucking tragic.

If this was genuine political protest, I would agree. But it isn't. It is criminals seeing that the police are too weak to stop them, using the opportunity to steal.

It's not a question of these 'kids' (many of whom are in their 20's, so hardly children) being called feral and scum and so living down to the name, it's more a question of them actually behaving like feral scum and then being called it. If the cap fits.

You are right about the gap between rich and poor and about the lack of prospects and hope for people in this country and about our hopelessly out of touch politicians, but truthfully I think these people would be the same no matter how much money gets thrown at them, because some people just take what they want, when given the opportunity. There are plenty of very poor people, with no education/prospects who didn't go looting.

Agree. Brilliant post OP. Further reading here from Camila Batmaghelidjh:
well said

The violence that went on in my town had absolutely nothing to do with protesting and everything to do with pure greed on the part of the looters. You only need to look at the shops targeted to realise that

That's exactly what I was going to say.

They just jumped on the bandwagon..turning it into an excuse to fill their rucksacks with trainers and T.Shirts, knowing there was little the police could do about it

Bimbo, take your hatred elsewhere.

I was brought up in a very working class environment and would have been called a feral kid by your kind. One of 6 from a mother on benefits, living in a council house. I left school with nothing. I struggled to find work and I felt no connection to the rest of society at all. I felt alienated and worthless.

I managed to break out of that cycle but not without a struggle and the help of many other people. Just recently my work contract ended and I spent a year looking for work. I applied for jobs that I was qualified to do and had experience in but I didn't even get an interview. I had not known it so difficult to find work since the 1980s. There were on average 45/50 applicants for every job advertised and there was a chronic shortage of job vacancies, most of them seemed to be for market salespeople.

Some of those rioters came from professional backgrounds, some of them were in their 30s. Are they scum too? Do you not want to know what broke these people?

I feel so so sorry for the people you work with if that is the attitude you give out to them. If you cannot relate to these people and are unable to see past your own bigotry then perhaps you should give the job to someone who can and see for yourself what it's like living on benefits. Because it's not just a financial struggle, it destroys you. You fall into a pit of despair and hopelessness and it is this that alienates you from everyone else.

But if you insist on treating these people like scum, don't complain therefore when they behave like scum.

There are some wonderful people out there who run organisations that really do make a huge difference to the lives of disaffected youths. There was one documentary a while back on a gang member who had turned his back on his background and devoted his life to saving other teenagers from the life he was very nearly dragged into.

How dare anyone give up on our young people and dismiss them. They have been let down by their families, by the government and now by you bimbo. But the easiest thing in the world is to blame. The hardest thing is to look closely at ourselves and what our priorities are. This government and this society needs to change and only when we stamp out corruption and bridge the gap between rich and poor will we see the humanity brought out.

Oh dear...these people act like scum even if you give them all the human rights they deserve, you cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear and all that...sorry you think im so horrid about all these misunderstood unpriviliged little idiots but im not about to lie about what I believe to be the root cause to appease the woolly liberals

I'm afraid society has created this.

The me me me generation of 'baby boomers' to be precise and their offspring.

AND! This forum is littered with far too many 'it's my right' type posts on this forum. Yes, people did die in two world wars so YOU could have 'rights' - YOU may want the right to shag around, have multiple children with multiple partners, to live on benefits, etc etc - but YOU ultimately have been utterly selfish; deprived your children of stable upbringing; removed fathers from their lives; YOU allowed moral deprivation; YOU devalued teachers, doctors, police and created a must-have-it-now society that some of us don't particularly like very much.

So next time YOU want a little rant because your child has been reprimanded by someone in authority (ie a teacher) just remember - its YOU undermining the fabric of society by openly undermining authority. Next time YOU think the rules are wrong, remember the majority of us know what the rules are and abide by them.

Then, next time YOU bemoan the break down of community please dont YOU come on here holier-than-thou having a snide dig because the woman down the road fed little Tarkers non organic cous-cous either.

PS - we all know a YOU!

If they wanted to protest, if they wanted to make themselves heard in this democratic country that they do live in, they could organise peaceful protest. They could march to parliament. I have no doubt they would get some support, even from the middle classes in the shires.

They weren't protesting. They weren't saying that they feel harrased by police and downtrdden by a lack of education and opportunity.

They are beyond that. They don't even have the decency and common sense to see that they are harming their own communities. The shop they are setting on fire probably has one of their own sisters living in it. They are making people more suspicious of them and perpetuating the problem. They were stealing and hurting people without any thought or care in the world.

I realise that we do need to look at the roots of these problems, but actually, I don't think that people who are ok with destroying the lives of others are worthy of understanding. Why should we treat them with sympathy when they have shown none to their victims?