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?

This is really about young males all scrambling over each other trying not to be left on the bottom of the pile. The desperation is clear to see.

These are boys who are probably never going to 'make it' by working hard at school. This idea that all children are even capable of doing well at school needs to stop. Some people are just not intelligent enough to succeed in our education system. Even with interested parents and lots of support, they will be lucky to scrape through. Lots of these kids realise early on that school is not designed for people like them and they disengage. There has to be a real alternative for the kids that school doesn't work for.

Then we need to stop with this idea that we can all be anything we want to be or can have anything we want if we just work hard enough. The fact is lots of us have to accept that we are destined for a life of minimum wage and shit hours and hoping housing benefit will make up the shortfall in our rent.

For there to be a successful top of society there has to be a struggling bottom. It's just the way the world works. The bottom used to be kept quiet with generous benefits, free courses, clubs etc. It kept them in their place and they felt satisfied they were at least getting something out of the system. Well, take all of that away and unsurprisingly the males in the bottom are angry and they are fighting. They aren't fighting the 'haves', they are killing each other! From their point of view, they are only robbing from the ones who can afford to lose it.

The tories, rise inequality, lack of funding for youth clubs.

These things always happen once the Tories get into power. The Thatcher years were insane. Noticed how riots seem to only happen under tory rule.

It's a facile over-simplification to claim it's solely about police funding.

The overall picture - the 50 year plan - has to take lots of other features into account, starting with more home support for families (social workers as "helping hands"), doubling the number of teachers in classrooms, raising teachers' salaries, attracting more men to the teaching profession to increase the number of positive male role models that boys have (and girls too), to ensure that young men in particular (because these stabbings aren't being done by girls) feel drawn in, nurtured and valued.

And shifting the focus from test scores to happiness and creativity.

But all that could take a generation to implement (and to see the results from). Governments moan and wring their hands about poor young men of all races getting drawn into crime and drugs and the low attainment of poor white boys, but then turn the screws even tighter on the schools who could be helping these future young men when they are 8 years old, 11 years old, 14 years old BEFORE they come to harm.

The Conservative Party - lack of funding police and for youth programmes and education. That's it (& given the massive support for labour in London that is clearly recognised. Until the rest of the country get's it head of it's arse then we should clearly expect more of the same, I hope by the time that happens it isn't too late for our children..).

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

Do you mean London when you say "cage" and us Londoners when you say "animals"?

excellent post happy
For there to be a successful top of society there has to be a struggling bottom.

this needs to be understood more. i don't believe it is the only way but it is certainly how it is now. london would fall apart without the underpaid workers. people are sold a lie. the adverts, the reality tv. if you don't have it it it is your fault because you didn't work hard enough/ want it enough/ take the opportunities they were offering you. but it is in the interests of the rich to keep the poor poor.

If it’s down to austerity how come crime was so low in the depression years of the 1930s when poverty was far worse for some groups and there were hardly any benefits?

paxillin

Do you mean London when you say "cage" and us Londoners when you say "animals"?
I think we all know what this ukipper/Tory is trying to say.

The thing is we can no longer say 'work hard and you'll be rewarded'. Teenagers know that simply isn't true.

Young black (or Bangladeshi) males are the least likely to be offered employment, even upon graduation from higher education.
Where does that leave the ones who against all odds managed to pass their GCSEs but couldn't afford to enter higher education?

If we want young people to have aspirations there has to be something plausible for them to aspire to. A support network to help them. They're barely more than children yet they are being expected to make difficult decisions like experienced adults.

As others have said, more police, longer sentences, building more prisons etc are only a short term fix (if a fix at all).

It would be interesting to see the crime stats between countries with an unfair distribution of wealth (USA, South Africa, parts of south America etc) compared with stats for fairer countries (eg some of the Scandinavian countries).

Yes to all the above.

I also think that people just aren't scared of the consequences.
When i was a teen 20 years ago I was shit scared of the police just like most people were.
Nowadays people aren't scared of them and why should they be. When people are spending 90 days in jail for murder or a caution for doing a robbery on a moped they think it's a risk worth taking.

Then prison itself isn't a deterrent because you get tv and Xbox in there, phones, drugs and let's not forget all the rights they have in there

I mean who in all honesty 'when uc has sanctioned you for sneezing and you don't know how your going to put food on the table tonight' wouldn't think of crime? Is that where it starts?

Take this whole police won't chase moped if they take helmet off? What the actual fuck? I'm sorry they committed a crime if they got hurt that's their problem the police were doing their job.

Stop giving power to the criminals and give it to the police. Stop all their excess paperwork that keeps them tied up for hours, if there's a problem hotspot at a certain time send a crew down there to interact with them. Build up a rappour so we can talk to them freely.

The current thing is bagging...ie stabbing in such a way that the victim will need a stoma rather than killing them That's terrible! How depressing and sad!

Abra1de

Because everyone at that point was struggling. Right now we have the rich getting richer and the poorer getting poorer. We have people extending their mansions in London while others are being kicked out for struggling to pay rent. There isn't enough jobs leading to many young men getting into the drug business which leads to other crimes etc. There are so many things tha have caused this 99% of which is due to the Tories

Blue yes...they feel hopeless. Literally...no hope! They don't care because the risk for the gain is worth it to them.

The only thing I'd add to the already excellent points made is the cancellation of EMA. That pulled the ladder up for any kid that wanted to go to a local college to train for a practical job or resit GCSEs or take A levels. Cutting EMA took away any chance of escaping through education or training.

The ban on police pursuit of moped/motorbike riders without helmets is national, as are the cuts. The CPS have also had up to 50% of their budget removed, so even if the police do catch criminals, the CPS may not move to prosecute as there simply aren't enough admin staff to prepare and collate case work.

Prisons are overcrowded and cuts mean there is next to no education or rehabilitation activity.

But yeah, lets blame immigration and lone parents. It's all their fault.

My DCs grew up in a quiet suburban part of London. Crime was negligible. Recently very near to where we lived there was a shop keeper stabbed because he refuse to serve cigarettes to two boys because he judged them to be under age.

I know someone (older man) who still lives near there and he won't walk in certain parts of the area after dark because of racial attacks (he's been verbally abused) and where he lives they employ a private security company to patrol because so many people have been burgled.

So glad none of us lives there any more.

OMG all the handwringing, lefty apologists on this thread.

Blaming everyone except the perpetrators.

@paxillin - it was shorthand (I'm on my phone which has no predictive test so everything has to be typed as an individual character) to say that over-crowding in the animal kingdom ends with "violence" and killing. It's not surprising that similar competition for space results in violence also in humans, surely?

The UK is the most densely populated country in NW Europe, and London must be the most densely populated part of the UK. There's over-crowding in homes within that, whether through lack of funds for bigger homes, lack of larger council/HA homes, issues concerning commutes or whatever. So people will be both over-crowded in their homes and their cities, and this places an additional cause of strain on each individual.

Of course, not everyone in shared or over-crowded accomodation is going to turn to violence, any more than they will turn to crime - but it's another exacerbating factor to add to the mix. Plus, you can aspire to raise your family in a home to yourself all you like, but if your minimum wage job won't allow you to afford the rent of a house to yourself, what option do you have apart from a room in a shared house? It's all very well saying that children make you a priority with the council, but if there isn't a home big enough, they don't let you move to one bigger than you have that's still too small for your family's needs.

Waiting lists in London are years long, so now imagine you are the son of that family. It's hard to get peace and quiet, so maybe you blow off doing your homework. You can never get any privacy, so you might as well go out. You can hang out on the street for free, so you do that. You see your dad working all the hours God sends and still not being able to afford a decent standard of living, and you think- "Fuck that, what an idiot" when you've seen how your older "mates" have the latest 'phone or whatever. Just by being runners for gangs/pretty crime/whatever.

Those types of pressures surely play a part also in the crime rate rising, and are also affected by over-crowding and lack of alternatives to solve this.

Don’t want to hijack the thread or particularly start a new one and whilst I feel sorry that it happened to him and his child, I was not impressed with the outpouring of concern over Michael McIntyre’s recent car robbery. There were countless reports of how “This is now() a very serious epidemic” and one report said “This is a crisis when celebrities are being targeted”. WTF?

I think there's some rose tinted glasses going on here. I was a teen 20 years ago and wasn't scared of the police, not even slightly. No doubt some people were but to suggest everyone was, is inaccurate.

Many of the perpetrators are children

Are we to ignore the impacts of society and environment their live in on them and just blame them for choosing a path that they are often too young to understand the full consequences

I’m not sure British society has heals a widespread belief that if you work hard you’ll be rewarded for a while has it? Certainly not for the last 20 years.

Isn’t it supposedly one of the reasons why poor white British children do worse than just about any other group at school.

OMG all the handwringing, lefty apologists on this thread.
Blaming everyone except the perpetrators.
Agreed, but it's always the same on here. Any excuse for a bit of Tory-bashing instead of taking a long hard look at what individuals are doing in their own homes and societies to sort out the problem. It's that attitude, the whole 'we'll blame someone else', that creates the issues because they're telling their children that everything is someone else's fault and you don't need to take any personal responsibility.

The police dropping back from a pursuit isn’t just for the safety of the moped rider, it’s for the safety of anyone else around. If they chase them they are going to speed up, take shortcuts through pedestrian areas and public land etc.

It is only going to get worse in this country. The generation of 16-25 year old males that we have now is nothing in comparison with what is coming up behind them. It is a ticking time bomb. There is nothing for these boys/ men to do. They have a poor education, no hobbies and rubbish prospects. It's like having a Springer Spaniel and keeping them locked up in a cage all day.

Imagine what could have been done if all of that energy could be harnessed and put to good use.

Shame on our politicians who have FAILED our children and created a complete mess that will take decades to rectify, if anyone even bothers.

I agree with many other points on here, but will add re drugs: there's a lot of middle-class, middle-age cocaine use, with some treating it as something to bring out between cheese and dessert at dinner with friends on a weekend. And I think people like to pretend that there's no link between this and the stabbed/dead 17 year old on a street corner in Peckham/Holloway/wherever, but really it's the same supply chain, gangs, goods etc. If you buy drugs you're contributing to the problem.