It's okay Mumsnetters slagging the DM off - but it's the only paper that has nailed it re the rioters...

[didyouseewhatshedid]

A few quotes below from Max Hastings - says it all really...

^So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable
...Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential.
...this is nonsense. Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline ? tough love ? which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.^

I do read the DM online, usually with a sense of horror, as part of my research involves negative press coverage of mothers- and by god does the DM deliver on that one.

Also being an academic I actually read an awful, awful lot. And the DM is right wing propaganda of the worst order.

Lady I don't really think it is you that needs to grow up tbh.

Abra, I should think that applies far more to the middle class and rich than it does to benefit claimants' children, who to be fair can't really expect much when their mum's money runs out after the basic shopping. This excuses none of their behaviour of course. But you can hardly call it entitlement to a life of luxury. It's more like a poverty of expectation imho: trying to grab the accoutrements of the 'cool' lifestyle everything in society tells them should be theirs, and which they can't have cos they will always be poor, having failed at school etc, unless they turn to crime. Thus glamorising crime too. Horrendous cycle. And I am not 'excusing' anyone btw. A few hundred people did this- the few million or so rest of 'the poor' and benefit claimants sure didn't.

Breaktime, certainly you have the arrogance of an academic, if not the intelligence.

hehe jane. Yep we're all 'arrogant'. Ever met any?

er...and if I didn't have the intelligence to be an academic I wouldn't be one. They don't actually hand jobs out to unqualified people in this country, unless you work in finance, as I used to when less qualified.

But of course we all only do made-up research on Madonna etc don't we, as you no doubt know. Being so intelligent yourself and all that.

breaktime - sorry to break it to you love but it was more than a few hundred.

I fail to see what's arrogant about expressing a well researched, passionate and reasoned opinion.

Spouting 'opinions' based on utter ignorance is arrogant. Remind you of anyone?...

ta, I've been in hospital today so haven't been keeping up with the figures...so was it the whole of the 'underclass' then?? in London yesterday they were reporting a few hundred out of several million 'underclass' (god that term is repulsive)

Breaktime -"part of my research involves negative press coverage of mothers"
So...who actually benefits from this research? Seriously?

Life, I am an academic paid for by the state ! Dontchaknow we are all arrogant lefty scum who only do research on madonna and (gasp) teen mums (guilty as charged on that one) and what is more don't check the DM for rioter numbers before making our points....

Can ya answer my Q next Breaktime pls.

who benefits from this research? Seriously? Mothers do! If this stuff remains un-challenged it damages everyone and the only way it can be challenged effectively is to have the research data to back up our claims that women are treated badly by the press.

I am sorry if you think this is a waste of time. I, for one, am grateful for it.

But, say your research shows mothers get badly done by. What then? You cant change what the press says. And how on earth would you challenge it?

Another candidate for Fascist's Corner... Next!

well didyousee, not DM readers that's for sure, or anyone who admires Max Hastings. I published on it already and a fair few people found it interesting. Just not right wingers.
Heard of the Welfare Reform Bill and the American Welfare to Work programmes? My research involves that; and the media have an important part in misinforming people like yourself about how single mothers in particular have ruined the Western world. But tbh I really don't care what you think of it, as insulting me and indeed entire disciplines e.g. sociology and media studies (not the disciplines I work in btw...you'd be surprised at what I teach and the other subjects I research :D) will not stop me and others being interested in that part of what I do.

No doubt when you and your cronies finally abolish tertiary education (apart from Maths and Science, of course, which are Useful, although it makes me laugh that most rightwingers don't actually understand what's useful about higher level maths at all, they just think it's a dead hard manly subject with proper Right Answers) lefty softies like me will get what's coming to us. In that case I'll have to content myself with privately tutoring rich kids. But hey, guess what a lot of them are not as blinkered as Daily Mail readers either, so I think I'll be OK thanks.

Read your history Spansiwick. If you do, you will realise that the values Hastings is espouting are those the old Labour Party used to also support.

quoting Max Hastings..with no sense of irony at all?

OP - you are such cannon fodder.

Breaktime - I or the column I alluded to didnt criticise single mothers once. I was brought up by one ffs so would hardly start doing them down. This is what I mean when I mentioned people judging things before actually having read them.

what Pan said

agree pan.

I'm sure Max 'Hitler' Hastings has plenty to say about single mums, didyousee- you might want to check the rest of his dubious oeuvre. People who talk about the 'underclass' generally have a fair bit to say about them as they are thought to be the 'breeders' of undesirables. However point taken re. your mum and I hope indeed that you don't share that particular very prevalent bit of rightwing nastiness.

Max Hastings?

Ha ha ha

I think it's cultural and political. I think it's symptomatic of a greedy materialistic culture , the idea that you can take what you want. Ultimate individualism of a kind which much of the rest of the world would not understand.

btw the Hitler tag is an old private eye thing before you accuse me of bandying about further accusations of Nazism :D

absolutely Norman. Individualism without the 'brake' of a restraining social contract. These kids know they are seen as 'scum' in a world which worships only material things, which they lack and lack the means to acquire.

breaktime73 : Hit the nail on the head, I applaud you.

OP - have you ever considered that the rioters are looting as they have nothing to lose and something to gain? The only reason you don't see bankers and business men out there is because they have something to lose and very little to gain. In other words perhaps solving the wild inequality in our society might stop things like this happening.
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