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?

Yeah, it's all our own personal faults - the rise of gig economy and zero hours contracts, the increase of unpaid 'internships' in order to enter certain fields of employment, shit private rental laws that lead to increase in housing instability, the widening gap between rich and poor. We just be respectful.

See what I mean?

I have lived in central London for 35 years and for a long time I loved living here. I liked the multiculturalism which only exists in a few large cities and the chance to make friends from lots of different backgrounds. I brought my children up here and thought I would never leave.

London has changed in the last few years. Street crime is up massively in my very mixed area and going to the local parks is an exercise in running the gauntlet between teenage gangs all smoking dope while the parks patrol drive past and pretend not to see them. Everyone I talk to is on edge.

I no longer feel part of a community.

I'm done with London. I'm just waiting for my youngest to finish at school and then I am moving out to the countryside. Apparently a lot of people are doing the same.

I know that is not a solution to London's problems, but they seem so vast and insoluble I don't know what to do other than look after myself.

I do agree that the combination of an education system which is not fit for purpose and is increasingly divorced from real life, lack of support for families and the knowledge that you will not get caught if you do commit a crime are all contributory factors.

I think we need to nail the austerity thing. Austerity was about reducing the increases in government spending. This had be growing out of control and the deficit was increasing exponentially. Some departments had cuts but others had their increases limited.

The met still found half a million quid to pay for first class flights, not economy, not premium or business, first class. 14 flights costing half a million quid. Yet they say they are cut to the bone??

No the problem is multi-faceted and also due to a change in policing methodology. The mayor wanted stop and search curtailed since it targeted young black males and was seen as detrimental to community cohesion. Curtailed it was, young black men can now carry and use knives with impunity.

Pressure on police and even lawsuits for chasing moped users without helmets who then get hurt. They stop being chased, they operate with impunity, often removing helmets and taunting police with them.

Police investigating hundreds of grooming gangs that were ignored in the sake of community cohesion and multi-culturalism over a number of years. Where the fear of being labelled racist allowed them to operate with impunity.

A focus on hate speech means precious resources are spent investigating hurty words on twitter rather than hurty knives in peckham.

Drugs. The war on drugs pushes up the wholesale prices of cocaine, thus making it vastly more profitable for people to fight over patches, over selling rights and over money. A lot of good research showing violent crime in some cities is directly linked to wholesale drug prices. Is it time to legalise, regulate and deal with the problem at source?

Immigration - when you import large swathes of an region, you import its problems. The allowance for large scale immigration without the underlying services and infrastructure - you build in problems for the future. This isnt about the rights or wrongs of immigration, this about not putting in place the mechanisms to cope.

This is not a simple problem, it will require a non-simple solution

To whoever asked, inequality in the UK is much worse than it was a few decades back, although I don't know if poverty is. And it's rising.

That said, I read a few weeks ago that the murder rate per capita in Manchester, where I live, is higher than London. And while we certainly have our problems, there isn't so vast a divide between rich and poor here- we don't have the global super rich parking money in the same way. And nor has the social ecology been effectively hollowed out in the same way as London. Which makes me wonder if there are other factors, though I don't know what they are.

We do all need to be aware that what happens in London gets reported more, so it looks like it's a bigger issue than what's happening elsewhere because it gets more coverage. Even if it isn't. I am not trying to undermine the importance of what's happening btw, just pointing out that we have a massively metrocentric media and that can sometimes lead to inaccuracies.

Good post Frustrated

Tory cuts

Where I live they’ve had to close the police station, the library, the children’s centre, the breastfeeding clinic, and the job Centre

How can people not see this is a recipe for social breakdown?

I don't recognise London anymore. It makes me really depressed. London has changed beyond all recognition in the space of about 20 years. It's just going to get worse and worse, more people, less police, the housing crisis, school places crisis and politicians don't seem to care about anything except for lining their own pockets for when they leave.

Expat Yeah, it's all our own personal faults - the rise of gig economy and zero hours contracts, the increase of unpaid 'internships' in order to enter certain fields of employment, shit private rental laws that lead to increase in housing instability, the widening gap between rich and poor.

Are MNers who are struggling with all these things off later to rob shops and stab people?
Or is it more than the crappy wider situation that makes people do these things?

I mean, I understand that we will always have a thicko bellend section of the population, so to address it we have to try to guide these people elsewhere. Plus for fairness, and doing what is right for other people suffering who don't take it out on others, we need to sort out the things you mention. But I can understand why people get frustrated - being poor doesn't make you turn into a violent criminal on it's own.

The end of stop-and-search has almost certainly got something to do with this, definitely.

Good post from Frustrated.

You can’t just sweep poor parenting under the carpet and pretend that it isn’t a factor because it makes you feel uncomfortable though.

It isn’t the only factor and it might not be the only factor in any one case but there are children who rarely see any sort of positive conflict management skills from home.

Combine that with austerity cuts to services that work with prevention, desensitisation to violence and the normalisation of knife crime or just carrying a knife and you get a problem.

sunny - that would be down to the council choosing where to cut. Did the CEO of the council take a pay cut? Did they lose head office staff or was it easier to close the library?

It trips off the tongue doesnt it - tory cuts. Easy to blame the faceless ones, the evil central government.

So when Manchester advertises a 40k job as a nuclear free facilities coodinator or windsor recruits a roller disco coach then you have to ask why local councils are seen as a target for cuts.

This is your taxes that pay - but the council decides where the axe falls. Easier to cut the library and blame the tories than get rid of the anti-obesity walks coordinator (islington 30kpa)

The punishments need to be hitting the offenders much more severely imho. They need to be made to think about the risk and consequence they are taking before they even attempt to do wrong. No more slaps on the hands, instead a good kick in the seat of their pants is needed , figuratively speaking of course .

Rafals I hear you but the support for those parents has disappeared- no breastfeeding clinic, closing down children’s centres, massively reduced health visitor services, and an absolute struggle for school places.

Like you say it’s more than one factor isn’t it, but people are really struggling and I feel a big economy like ours should be able and willing to invest in some support. Appreciate I’m a bit of a bleeding heart ;)

And another take on council spending

^The real issue is not exotic sounding jobs but the massive scaling up of pay and headcounts at local authorities, says Mr O'Brien. Between 2002 and 2009 spending on local authority payrolls increased by £67bn, he says.
About £4bn of that, according to the Policy Exchange, went on jobs like marketing and PR, but a much bigger increase - £14bn - has gone on paying for managers.
"There is a lot of waste," Mr O'Brien says. "But most of that is not in overtly weird jobs but massive increases in pay and staff numbers. The median hourly salary is now 30% higher in the public sector than the private sector."^

Frustrated yes I know how local government works but if their budget has been cut by central government so drastically then of course the local council has to actually be the ones to impose the cuts
And yes they have lost head office staff. I do understand your point that perhaps they sometimes get priorities wrong with the examples you’ve given.
Of course none of this is simple im just giving my own experience :)

I totally agree with frustrated.

And yet, the Met had £10 million (or the salaries of 4000 police officers) to spend on external training for their officers to find out which "colour" they are...

A report out today links it to the increase in drugs' income available.

If you put too many animals in one cage, they turn on each other.

Immigration from areas where such violence is already normalised.

Break down of traditional family structures.

Lack of appropriate male role models.

There's lots of associated and inter-connected reasons. It's a facile over-simplification to claim it's solely about police funding.

Utterly

but tory cuts - tory cuts tory cuts.

austerity

nationalise the railways

free stuff

Sadik Khan and Cressida Dick.

A man was murdered on Upper Street in Islington a couple of weeks ago in the middle of rush hour. It's a very busy street, lots of people around on foot, in cars etc. This is a major urban street, lined with indie businesses and upmarket chain (Ottolenghi, Toast, Space NK) and this guy was dragged out of a van, beaten and murdered RIGHT THERE IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. The murderer ran off down the busy road and nobody hindered him.

Not a police officer in sight. Anywhere.

I'm sure the whole thing was over very quickly, and there were certainly plenty of police around AFTER the fact, but surely basic police visibility would have helped avoid this terrible death of a young man with a partner and children? I know the police can't be everywhere at all times, but the brazenness of it was stunning.

So yeah. 10,000 uniformed men and women on the streets would be a major start. There is literally nothing Sadiq Khan can do without actual manpower.

Slightly ambivalent about the children’s centres. IIRC they weren’t all successful at trying to attract the families they were aimed at. Some of that money might have been better spent on a different intervention.

It’s many issues cuts lack of investment in areas that are deprived and widespread drug use, lack of positive role models particularly for boys, gang culture is enticing and drug money is easy money, lack of opportunities, expectations of particular groups of society,

So much can be improved with money being invested and it will have a knock on effect on other issues

Just heard a number of police stations are being proposed to close in London and Sadiq Khan is being taken to court over this. I hardly ever see police on the street anymore (see undercover police but for most they would go unnoticed so they don’t create a sense of safety)

A combination of factors; police cuts have had a huge impact, they are just not as visible and are overstretched. Shit parenting, and a serious lack of instilling morals in young people. Lack of consequences if they are caught, punishments are paltry and not a deterrent. Opportunism is also there, so many people walk around, phone in hand, that it is inevitable unscrupulous types will take advantage of that.

Never mind blaming the police and austerity, where are the parents in all this. They should be bringing their children up to be respectful members of society. The trouble is we blame everyone but ourselves for the problems

All of this, but especially the highlighted bit ... the many other factors mentioned may have some merit, but none are an excuse for violence and other criminality

There's also the issue of whether some really are offenders because they're "deprived", or whether they're "deprived" because they chose to turn to crime

Yep, there are cuts for the police, social services and mental health but the government is happy to pay billions for vanity projects like Heathrow3 and HS2.