to be utterly sick of protests, marches, rallies, and riots

[NameChangeMay2026]

What happened today in Belfast was dreadful. Of course it was.

When Sarah Everard died, there were marches. But a day before she died, an Indian woman Sarah's age was knifed to death in the street in Leicestershire. It was an "honour" killing, I think.

Where was HER lantern on the doorstep of Downing Street? Where was HER march?

My point is, dreadful things happen every day and I am so sick and tired of news items sparking so much public rowdiness. It used to be that the media could report on current events without starting a riot. I know that we have always had riots, but they were the occasional one. And because they were not common, they helped effect change. They were a desperate measure reserved for when nothing else had helped.

Now, together with marches, rallies, and protests, society is constantly disrupted, and I am so, so sick of it. I live in a major city and I can't go anywhere without checking what march, rally, protest, or riot is happening, especially at the weekends. And they are so common that they don't help effect change anymore.

The riots are terrible. Thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of lost property in fires, injured bystanders, police calld away from other duties to attend them. And there are "professional" rabble-rousers who travel to marches, protests, and riots. It's not because they're passionate about a cause. They're just passionate about causing trouble.

I travel for work to major American cities and it's even worse over there. Another day, another riot/protest/march/rally.

They have become a feature of today's society, and I wish they would just stop.

Edit: I actually stay in more because of them. I don't go out of my hotel as much when staying in America, and I don't go to the city centre where I live as much. It's so bad when regular people are put off from walking around city centres because of all these annoying dickheads.

I think it is worse in America, and I'm tired of feeling scared to go out when there, in case I run into an uncontrolled crowd - where the police have guns, and the protestors might, depending on the state.

The burning buildings in Belfast are a disgrace. It's not the owners' fault that this happened.

I’m not sure of his name, I don’t know if they’ve released it yet. I’ll have a look.

There were several men involved.

I believe that name above is a man who is from Belfast.

I believe he’s also from the travelling community which people seem to hate, so I’m sure he’ll be downplayed in the media soon enough.

Young men in general are scary, but can also be brave and courageous- the man who fended off the attacker was amazing but now that courage is lost amidst the men who love a riot.

Men, men, men. Their claiming to do it 'for their women' rings ever hollow. I'm scared of these men and the other men; all of them are scary for family-oriented law-abiding citizens. I'm sure decent men are scared of them too just as I am.

Not all immigrants commit more crime, there is credible evidence Afghan men commit more crime but also they exhibit massively anti-women and children behaviour and beliefs before you even get to crime. It depends where they come from. Not all immigrants should be lumped in together, some come from countries with broadly similar values to us. Some, such as Afghans, come from a country where there is no age of consent for children, girls as young as 9 are sold as sex slaves, and women are treated worse than dogs.

Also young men commit more crime in general (in both native and immigrant populations), however illegal immigrants skew heavily towards being young men.

We do have lots and lots of violent crime and sex crimes which are going up massively among the native and legal immigrant population and not enough prison space - we have enough problems with little positive change for the better. Therefore allowing in greater numbers of exactly the demographic by age and sex that are likely to commit the most crime when they've already committed the crime of arriving illegally seems pretty stupid to me. We could choose to just let in women and their close family - inherently a much lower risk and probably also those who are more vulnerable in their home countries and in greater need of refuge / asylum.

Also, it's a choice to let in potential criminals. We don't have to and as the figures show we have more than enough problems here, why add to it with obviously risky additions?

https://news.sky.com/story/fact-checking-farage-are-foreigners-more-likely-than-britons-to-commit-sexual-offences-13407029

The data is likely very poor so there is a lot of debate but you'll note that even in the article above, there is a suggestion that Afghan men have offending rates much higher than the native population. The Casey report into grooming gangs said that 2/3 of perpetrators did not have their ethnicity recorded. Why not? It's a choice.

All the choices seem to head in one direction which is prioritising people coming into this country illegally over those already here (both legal immigrants and British citizens).

Again, there seems to be an idea that if stats are not collected and published then something doesn’t exist.

We're all going to have to get used to the protests, marches and riots because the government are never going to do anything about the migrants. This is what they want. People aren't allowed to discuss this issue at the depth it needs to be discussed at, so don't expect any progress to be made. It's just more and more of the same until we're forced to accept it by whatever mechanism they can put in place to prevent objections. Or perhaps by giving us something bigger to worry about.

Someone made a decision to give the Sudanese man who attempted to behead someone a visa for 5 years (I presume after he came to Ireland illegally). That was a choice. They didn't have to and it turns out that was the wrong decision. So will we have any scrutiny of how that decision was made? Did they look at the risks he posed or just his 'rights', despite having already broken one law by having come here illegally in the first place.

How can you prove it’s happening?

This decision was made years ago.

It was a full on excuse to mindlessly riot.

Burning buses, cars and houses made no real statement at all other than we are thugs in balaclavas.

Any kind of protest with regards to the attempted beheading was quashed by senseless rioting.

Honestly, you probably can't... and that's the problem. I mean it's not rocket science to consider that a young traumatised male, from a place where people have been executed by crucifixion and stoning, might behave oddly.

It was Suella Braverman apparently. Now in the Reform party.

How can you prove it is not?

Unfortunately we now live in a world where people have lost critical thinking skills. There is lack of analysis that is completely acceptable within society whereby, if you do not support the most surface level understanding of any subject, you are a lefty loony.

Clearly, there is an issue with immigration that most of the general public seem to accept. The government does need to and is attempting to tackle however, the general public really need to understand that the UK desperately needs quite high levels of immigrants for this country to function. The vast majority of asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors or legal migrants come and contribute significantly and positively to the functioning of the country. Turning that tap off will negatively affect the country’s functioning very very quickly.

Instead of encouraging riots and thuggery in response to tragic incidents, why don’t we spend more time encouraging and supporting white working class males, the most under performing group, to go into society and do something positive. Home grown talent starts at home, instead of joining a protest, why are you not getting up to go to school/college?

There is a massive issue with the criminal justice response to violence against women and girls, no matter who the perpetrator is. That is a problem with our system that we need to sort out. How can it be accepted that men can come to the UK and so easily exploit, rape and abuse women without fear of our justice system. Or men with significant criminal history are routinely bailed or get a suspended sentence and coming serious violence against women and girls. That is an indictment on the Uk and something to get angry about. Perhaps if we did that, sexual harm rates would go down!

We cannot ban people from certain countries from claiming asylum, that is illogical and immoral. How would we even police that. Ukraine for example is more corrupt that most African countries, Brazil has one of the highest rates of violence overall across the world. How would we assess which countries are safe enough? Whose data would be using to make that assessment? It’s a disproportionate response to the issues.

We need a more robust and quicker immigration system in this country. Too many people wait too long. We also need to crack down on crime committed by those who are going through the immigration process. There should be quicker and more effective deterrents around criminality but this goes back to the effectiveness of our systems.

The issues are not linear. Serious violence is on the rise, people are angry and unhappy which doesn’t help however, burning other people’s homes down and going back to racist rhetoric does not address the issues. Too many people are being too easily manipulated into fighting each other instead of addressing the wider systemic issues that have got us here in the first. Which all governments over the last 20yrs have responsibility for.

It was the civil servants and Blair’s Human Rights Act.

You could look at offending rates for young men and say 'hmmm, maybe our immigration policy means we're getting a hugely disproportionate number of exactly the demographic that are going to commit these crimes from countries known not to value women's lives, I don't know, maybe we should change that;.

We could just allow in women and their families, that would instantly cut the risk to native residents and also mean that we're taking in more vulnerable refugees in need of asylum and not just the fit young men who've abandoned them.

I’m not the one making the assertion so I’m not under the obligation to prove anything.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/people-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/

193000 people “detected”, predominantly from certain countries. It is 0.3% of the total population of about 70 million.

I am not sure about “misinformation”. 99% of small boat crossings are seeking asylum on arrival. They are documented to be predominantly from certain countries, those are facts (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Albania)
Like I said men who helped the UK/US from Afghanistan may be threatened back home, but not men more widely. It is women who should be given asylum. Yet majority of small boat crossings are of course men, because it is dangerous.
For Afghanistan, as we do not recognise the Taliban formally I am not sure how and where they propose to return them - and I guess that needs sorting.
People should be specific as to what they want the government to do. I think Mahmood proposed to return to Afghanistan but the Left and humanitarian groups were up in arms about it. I think Germany has been returning Afghani criminals to Afghanistan (from memory).

the general public really need to understand that the UK desperately needs quite high levels of immigrants for this country to function. The vast majority of asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors or legal migrants come and contribute significantly and positively to the functioning of the country.

This is very much not true. The majority of illegal immigrants do not bring any skills with them and the majority of immigrants were recently found to live in poverty which means they are not making a net contribution to the country.

Agreed OP - the pro Palestine ones are the worst/most prolific and why the government hasn’t clamped down I don’t know. Always disruptive & violent.

And the Just Stop Oil preventing people from getting to work. Disgraceful.

Disingenuous. It’s not the result of “one crime”, it’s a result of a build of pressure after too many horrific events have occurred against a background of people demanding the political class do something. What do the political class do? Nothing effective. At times, they can’t even put a stop to lawyers preventing dangerous migrant criminals being deported. And if you’re Starmer, you wring your hands about the “the far right” and indoctrinate public institutions to the point that Nowak was handcuffed having been stabbed to death.

Oh give over, you literally said on the other thread last night that the man who saved the guy being attacked “is a migrant his name is Maitiu Mág Tighearnán“
That is literally what you said, I responded to your post! I’ll go back and find it and copy and paste on here if you like…. So stop backtracking

I mean you could've said after WWII that Jewish people immigrating to other countries had lived with nazi rule, people shot in the streets, concentration camps, medical experiments, ghettos. These traumatised young people moving to other countries. Maybe they should've been preventing from moving out of their original countries of origin in case they may behave oddly.
I believe there was some backlash back then about them moving into other countries. Now we look back and think that of course they should've been allowed to move to other countries and people who tried to prevent this were horrible

Yes, we’ve already had 7 million immigrants since the year 2000 and yet our economy and NHS are still ‘on their knees’. So clearly it’s not even working.

Did they 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

To make a net contribution financially every person in your household needs to pay close to 19k in tax. So most people are not contributing financially and that includes most immigrants too.