WTF is happening in London?!

[AngeloMysterioso]

In the last few days alone, there’s been a stabbing outside Liverpool St station, two moped muggers punched a women to the ground for her handbag and phone, and Michael McIntyre was forced out of his car and had his watch taken off him by another pair who smashed his window in whilst his child was in the back!

Even where I live in a pretty boring zone 4 suburb two teenage boys were stabbed a few streets away last week.

I know it’s never been the safest of cities but it feels like it’s got so much worse in the last year or so. What the hell is happening?

I’m afraid it’s not just London. It’s no better out in the leafy green Home Counties either.
We’ve had some appalling crimes committed around here recently, our kids have been attacked in broad day light and the police did sweet nothing, our houses are being burgled one after another, our roads are falling apart, people are parking where they bloody well please, a drugs cartel is openly running a drug shop across the road from our house, and there has been regular brawls and mass bust ups outside my window...and nobody gives a flying f. I have seriously never been more disillusioned with this country. Our public services are a shambles, yet we have to pay shed loads of tax, for services we can’t even use, because our local health service and state school options, are simply so shite. I never ever thought I would see the day I’d think like this, but we are just so fed up with it all.
Rant over...time for a I think!

I think we're not experiencing the full benefits of Cultural Enrichment. I wondered when it would start to kick in down South.

"inequality doesn't cause higher crime" ... would be contrary to the vast body of research into the issue

IME that can depend on who's doing the researching. The poverty lobby has become a vast industry with funding to match and is hardly likely to risk its own income by acknowledging that, actually, the issue is more nuanced than that

It's hard to improve on WiseDad's excellent points, but for me too many confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome - and in a society where people have free choice the second will never be possible

So what evidence is there to the contrary? There is plenty of evidence from a vast range of sources that have no links to your frankly made up "poverty lobby".

WiseDad's comments are not accurate. Poverty limits any equality of opportunity and failure to recognise this is the self attribution fallacy personified.

I agree that in London people have every opportunity - transport, jobs etc etc. I just can't understand why every shop/restaurant/hotel is staffed almost exclusively with people who have come from abroad yet there is always this trumpeting about no jobs for youngsters.

No, there are not jobs for young people in Lowestoft (perhaps seasonal ones) and moving areas is not easy, but in London young people will be living at home (so no market rents to pay) and therefore be quite able to take a minimum wage/contract hours job at first . Not for life, but to start out with .

But as has been noted, many just won't. And I have experience of trying to offer entry-level jobs to young jobseekers. Except they weren't jobseekers at all. They saw working in an office or doing anything routine-based as the pits and above all boring .

Furthermore, in recent years there has been the pernicious creep of the worshipping of material goods. (Latest) iPhones and (box fresh) trainers don't come cheap. People aren't stealing for food or necessities, they are stealing to satisfy greedy and envy.

There seems little point in swapping reports from those who agree with those who don't as there'll never be a meeting of minds on that, but given the breadth (not to mention self interest) of the countless "poverty research organisations", your assertion that there's no such lobby is hardly accurate

It's so obvious that poverty can sometimes limit access to opportunities that it hardly needs stating, but what was being discussed was crime ... and whatever the background, committing a crime is almost always a choice

I've worked in forensic MH including in prisons for many years. I could count on a couple of hands the number of middle class, well educated, well supported in childhood, neurotypical offenders I've come across in 20 years.

People in London do not have "every" opportunity, there are massive areas of poverty and vast unequal levels of opportunity. Higher deprivation leads to lower life chances,

FYI London has a higher number of young people in education, training or employment aged 16 to 18 than the national average.

Personally, I blame the fathers. Or the lack of them.

It's a vicious cycle

"Whatever the background, committing a crime is almost always a choice"

But choices are shaped by an individuals environment, experiences etc.

Poverty and inequality play a strong role, and your use of the term "poverty lobby" was an attempt to discredit the studies that show this.

It's incredibly patronising to keep insisting that children from poorer backgrounds should be forgiven for turning to crime and violence because they didn't have parents taking them to Gymboree and tennis lessons. They go to the same schools as everyone else with the same investment and curriculum. Our schools are pretty fantastic compared to most countries in the world.

I know a great many young people from what you would consider to be deprived backgrounds who have done wonderful things with their lives. My own parents didn't have much growing up but crawled out of poverty themselves and knew right from wrong.

How hideously left-wing to consign all these people to the bin and turn a blind eye to their criminality because they apparently don't know any better.

They bloody do. It's a choice, made by scumbags, usually with scumbag parents.

People in London do not have "every" opportunity, there are massive areas of poverty and vast unequal levels of opportunity

Define poverty. And please explain the unequal levels of opportunity. Opportunity to do what?

Because I don't believe you and think you are simply trotting out stock phrases.

No one is saying that they should be forgiven for their crimes, looking for a reason why violent crime has increased ( murders have not long term) is a very different factor.

" I know a great many people" anecdote and survivor bias don't counter the academic evidence.

How hideously right wing to condemn people for their "choices" and ignore circumstances.

But they do have equality of opportunity, topcat1980. But something is stopping that opportunity. What is it?

Schools? Ime schools do their best. In fact I have seen real striving by schools in "bad" areas to help their pupils. Money? True, there might not be oodles of money at home, but we all know that the poorest immigrant households produce some of the most hard-working students.

So we have family background and peer pressure. Kids who are allowed to roam the streets, get involved with gangs, allowed (encouraged) to lose any moral compass, and given this idea that they have a "manor" and their horizons should not extend beyond it.

in London young people will be living at home ... and therefore be quite able to take a minimum wage/contract hours job at first

Not only in London, Irma; I've worked in recruitment for decades, and have seen too many clients despair over the unwillingness of British youngsters to work in a fairly paid, entry level position. As you suggest, too many just don't want to do it and consider themselves, often on the basis of very little, to deserve much more

And if they opt to exclude themselves from employment and choose the alleged get-rich quick-possibilities of criminality instead ... well, that's all someone else's fault for not giving them what they're "entitled to" isn't it?

Irma in London young people will be living at home (so no market rents to pay) and therefore be quite able to take a minimum wage/contract hours job at first.

Eh? Why in London more than anywhere else?

Equality of opportunity goes far further than the schools that people go to. The argument above that they didn't get taken to the "Gymboree and tennis lessons" is merely building a strawman in order to dismiss the very rovable point that inequality exists.

I'm not repeating soundbites at all, inequality is one of the factors causing the rising violent crime levels.

However looking at the data, long term violent crime, and murder and still lower than they were a decade ago, and throughout the 90s. It fell repeatedly during the 2000s, year on year till 2014, and has risen year on year since.

Austerity, cuts to the police force because of this, the fact that the poorest in society are hit hardest by it at a time of rapidly growing inequality have all led to this.

However the fact that we have a moral panic about it is because we know more about it, that we did when crime rates were higher for most of the last 3 decades

choices are shaped by an individuals environment, experiences etc

Shaped, yes, but not excused - except, it seems, by those who subscribe to the utterly unhelpful dogma of poverty of expectation

we all know that the poorest immigrant households produce some of the most hard-working students

Yet another inconvenient truth, isn't it? I don't want to stereotype, but it's hard to avoid thinking that family insistence on making something of yourself - even if that family originally had pitifully little - is a major factor

No one is excusing anything, but seeking reasons and causes, which means that in future you maybe able to find a way to reslove these issues. Dimissing this as excusing undermines your argument.

"those who subscribe to the utterly unhelpful dogma of poverty of expectation"

This is a naff argument, again putting all of the blame back for circumstance onto individuals and not recognising external factors. External factors are a major influence on outcomes.

TomMarkle Deliberately misunderstanding and misrepresenting other people posts is at best disingenuous.

Reasons are not excuses. Reasons need to be the starting point for solutions.

"Yet another inconvenient truth, isn't it? "

Not really, students from the poorest households in London out perform their peers in the rest of the country fairly significantly at GCSE. However this is the impact of the London challenge, which of course meant spending more money on schools.

how much power does a London Mayor have?

A lot. Khan is fundamentally the Police and Crime Commissioner for London. That means he sets policing priorities and staffing levels.

I personally believe the creation of Police and Crime Commissioners was severely ill-advised. I know what Cameron was trying to do, but it was inevitable that the roles would become political... and they did.

So if your local PCC is Labour and you live in a Tory safe seat experiencing a wave of crime, he's kinda doesn't give a shit. You don't vote for him. Same goes the other way.

Again, London is now a disaster in socio-economic terms. It was beyond stupid for successive governments from Blair onwards to allow the global super rich and the global wealthy to use the city to cheaply park their money in property.

Everyone feels poor in bloody Monaco or Silicon Valley unless they are a billionaire. So why the hell did government allow a similar situation to happen in London? A Labour government, no less!

Losing bobbies on the beat makes a big difference. It's probably tedious police work that many in the police are happy to abandon but if regular bobbies cover regular areas they know who the trouble makers are, they know who to stop and search, they can recognise and put names to faces on CCTV film. This is a staff numbers issue.

"Khan is fundamentally the Police and Crime Commissioner for London"

Yet he doesn't set the budget for the metropolitan police, this ties the hands on decisions somewhat.

"So if your local PCC is Labour and you live in a Tory safe seat experiencing a wave of crime, he's kinda doesn't give a shit"

So then the influence of a Tory mayor for the last 8 years would have had more effect on the levels of crime rising than one that has been in power for just over two years?