Hang them, scum, take their kids, feral brats, stop their benefits, take away their rights, forcibly sterilise them...

[EricNorthmansMistressOfPotions]

are just a few opinions I have seen on this board in the last few days. AIBU to think that people who hold those opinions are a bit thick unpleasant and wrong?

Apart from the fact that plenty of the rioters were so-called productive members of society who apparently saw an opportunity to get some free stuff, we live in a democracy and if you take away people's human rights that extends to everybody - even you. If you stop benefits you send children into more poverty, which is a major factor in children growing up to become angry, violent and criminal adults. Remove children and do what with them? Place them with the thousands of suitable and willing foster carers who are hanging around twiddling their thumbs? And what about the consequences of removing children from their families - yes, more criminal, poorly educated and challenging adults. Parent and baby placements? Oh yes, we have so many of those! All well funded and easy to access! Never mind that the courts can and do place DCs in foster care over P&B placements because there aren't enough and that ShinyDave and his crew are doing nothing but cut social care budgets...oh yes, great idea.

It's not only our society that is fucked, it's the world. We are one of the most developed countries in the world and all people want is the opportunity to get stuff they haven't earned. Where does that impulse come from?

Ahhh, bless Clegg. When he was on here for the webchat and I blithely mentioned being dragged back to Thatcherite England, Clegg pretty much dismissed me as being slightly hysterical.

Well when you get a load of Bullingdon Boys who used to trash restaurants for fun and cause fear and mayhem in the area, running the country, what can you expect? Especially when those same people just help themselves to our money to furnish their homes and jet off on jollies abroad. Daylight robbery indeed.

The most despicable thing the Left have done over the past few years is to stifle debate. Mention harsher punishments for criminals? Oh, you?re a right wing DM reader. Mention the idea that Benefits culture has got out of hand? Oh, you?re a right wing DM reader. Essentially, anybody who dares to challenge the liberal orthodoxy that now prevails in our society is painted as a right winger.
The net result is that key issues ? law and order, education, immigration, the Welfare State ? never get properly debated. Progress on them and proper solutions to them ? as well as the riots ? will never be found because the Left will not allow a grown up, adult debate on them. The fault of all this lies firmly in the hands of Blair and his cronies who, when gaining power, quickly realised they could use spin to paint their opponents as hardened right wingers ? when in many cases, they were anything but.

didyousee I find this tendency a bit frustrating as well. I feel sometimes as though it's more trouble than it's worth to dare voice an even mildly conservative (with a small 'c') opinion about anything, because to do so brings instant accusations of being 'smug', 'judgy', 'reactionary', 'a Tory cunt' and so on. I don't feel that it does anything to foster debate, and feel that there's a type of 'tolerance' often promoted that is in its own way extremely intolerant.

Rhubarb, I take your point, and can't stand Shinydave & the Bullingdon toffs - their behaviour was vile. BUT, I think it's a bit harsh to draw a comparison between that incident and the riots. It belittles the suffering of the victims of violence to these riots. I'm not condoning the toffs at all, but it is a different kettle of fish to the widespread, indiscriminate criminal damage and violence of the riots.

Likewise the MPs expenses - it was shocking to discover what tax payers money was being spent on - immoral and wrong - but the MPs who actually broke the Law were prosecuted (and are now in prison). The system has been changed. Strangely enough, I don't remember an awful lot of liberal hand wringing about what made the Mp's act in such an way ? Not a lot of trying to understand the law breaking MPs!

In fact, 'string em up', 'sack the lot of them' - and a lot of intolerance that is precisely the subject of the OP -was more the sentiment as I remember.

And before anyone says the toffs and MPs weren't 'poor' or disadvantaged - well neither, it seems, were a significant proportion of the looters.

duckdodgers so your with labour in paying the protection money

Being homeless will not = more crime their are lots of rough sleeps in the uk they were not the ones looting I suggest if one has to worry about were you will be sleeping tonight looting would be the last thing on your mind

Their are families in the uk who work and are raising their children right but are poor and are in b&b why should they sit and wait for a council home when a work shy teen append their exuse for a mum live in a whimsy new ha house

Its all wrong

I haven't read the whole thread, but wanted to put forward my ideas. Working in schools, I am regularly faced with an attitude of 'the only things worth buying are things we don't need'. The pupils whose parents won't 'buy' an after school activity for their child but will take them to disneyland as it's more worthwhile are a good example of this. Education, food & bills come secondary to the bling trainers & treats!

This is the attitude that needs to stop. If families are on benefits, they should be given these benefits to live - if they want treats they should have to work for them!

And I grew up in a typical working class family who would have done anything to stay off of benefits.

Only on MN would you find the majority showing more empathy and concern for the the perputrators than the victims, who through no fault of there own lost their livliehoods and homes. This site is insane, people seem to be more outraged by a macdonalds or a child wearing reigns, than by people setting shops and houses alight. It's like it is a competition to see who can come across as the most PC/liberal.

In real life, everyone I know was disguted by events earlier in the week and no before anyone predicably suggests that they are middle class Daily Mail readers, they are not. Just decent, moral working class people. One of my very good friend is a lone parent of two boys, living on benefits -she is as outraged as anyone else, because shock, horror, despite living close to the poverty line, she has still takes responsibility for bringing her children up to know right from wrong and to have respect for other people.

And In the Night Kitchen - either you are bored and attention seeking or you really are a twat. Either way, I hope if you ever have the misfortune to have your business burnt to the ground and your house catches fire as a result (because obviously by your bizzare reckoning that makes a real difference) - I hope as you lead your poor terrified children out to the street you will still be as blase about what has happened.

Everything that bean just said. Everything.

What Bups said. FFS some of you need to get a grip.

"They come to the High Street and commit slightly more crime in a much more visible way for two nights running, and a lot of middle-class people who previously ignored their existence act like it's Armageddon

what a load of shite!
slightly more crime, SLIGHTLY!

Also stop fucking assuming everyone is MIDDLE CLASS! alot of the people that are so angry live with, work with, teach these people

and as for the armagedden comment. people are scared. do you despise them for that? as it reads like you do. I am scared as I cant afford to send my kids to private school, and I live in a working class area. so I want these issues to be adressed and I strongly suspect they wont be, not for a while. so yes. I am scared for my children

what a facist daily mail cxxt that makes me eh

"Also stop fucking assuming everyone is MIDDLE CLASS!"

At last.

I have two old schoolfriends on my Facebook. They are both black girls with sons aged between eleven and thirteen. They live in an underprivileged area. Both of these ladies sent their kids into Wolverhampton town on wednesday to help clean up and they did it. They were on the local news. Yeah yeah this is anecdotal, whatever, but don't give me the BS that being black/disadvantaged/from a single parent family is a recipe for disaster. It's an insult to people from these backgrounds.

bean - EXACTLY.

Everything Bean said.

It's possible to be socially conservative, ie feel that some social values are worth protecting, without being a daily mail reader or - shock horror - without even being middle class. I find the way debate gets routinely stifled by demonising anything less than an extreme 'progressive' attitude as fascist, bigoted (remember Gillian Duffy?) and evil deeply worrying, as it suggests that this 'tolerance' we're all supposed to aspire to is in reality enforced by some pretty unpleasant intolerance, underpinned in turn by contempt for those it accuses of bigotry.

There is a very, very wide margin between reactionary bigotry and simple, everyday social conservatism; refusing to acknowledge this polarises the debate in a way that has left a huge section of the UK population feeling utterly voiceless. The result of this polarisation is the rise of hardline right-wingers: when even a thoughtful 'right of centre' perspective is included in this denunciation, then an anger and resentment begins to build and people's views harden and become steadily more judgemental and less thoughtful.

This, in the final reckoning, is in my view Labour's greatest crime: its betrayal of the people it was formed to represent. Rather than speaking for the values of the working class, New Labour cloaked its contempt for those values - the values articulated by the red-top newspapers, essentially - in an increasingly shrill mantra of radical social change that has dubbed anyone who objected, however mildly, as vicious, hate-filled reactionaries.

Oh you are so right OTheHugeManatee. The growth in popularity of the Far Right under New Labour's watch was no coincidence. Blair and his mates have so much to answer for.

standing ovation for manatee.

what a mature and considered response inthenight

rather than even bother to respond to anyone, petty point stating

lovely

What? So all teachers are middle-class? You want to tell that to my cousin who teaches yet earns fuck all, lives in a "rough" area and has never set foot in a Waitrose?

Oooh having a degree immediately makes you middle class?

Not anymore, you foaming gimboid.

Only on MN would you find the majority showing more empathy and concern for the the perputrators than the victims, who through no fault of there own lost their livliehoods and homes. This site is insane, people seem to be more outraged by a macdonalds or a child wearing reigns, than by people setting shops and houses alight. It's like it is a competition to see who can come across as the most PC/liberal.

This.

I know what median income is, yes thanks.

My cousin is a he. He has a child. His wife is a SAHM. As has been discussed ad nauseum on MN, £24K goes a lot further in some places than others. Doesn't go all that far here, actually. Certainly not enough to afford you the middle-class trappings that you assume go hand-in-hand with a teaching job.

"Do you know what the median income is BupcakesandCunting?"

HAAAAAA

sorry thats made laugh, stupid bupcakes!