Parliamentary Debate on Riots

[working9while5]

Anyone watching?

Hear, hear, Cogi.

Oh and by the way, can someone please explain to me, to whom does practically half the world owe money to? Also, how can councils keep pleading poverty? I suggest to everyone out there to do what I done via the freedom of information act, that is, request info on how much money they hold in bank accounts both overseas and at home. When I asked Hackney council this very question, I finally got the answer:

Country
Organisation
Amount £m
Australia
National Australia Group (Clydesdale Bank)
£5m
Spain
Santander Group (Abbey National)
£18m
UK
Various UK banks / building societies / other local authorities / central government

£277m
Total

£300m

Call me naive, but that hardly warrants the savage attacks on services.

I'm going to have to call you naive, I'm afraid. Councils get a lot of their money - grants, council tax, business rates etc - in one hit. They put it in banks so that it generates some interest and then have to make it spin out the whole year paying wages and rent and all the other regular costs of running a borough. They also have to keep something back for emergencies, lawsuits, and other irregular payments. So there will be times of the year when they look flush for cash but, by the end of the year, there will be a lot less in the pot. .

I don't think it's true that we know the full demographic yet. We know the demographic of the first 56 only. I think it's pretty clear from the footage and from the reporting from local communities by people local to those communities that there were quite a number of youth who were local to the areas of rioting, and a large proportion of very young children involved. There will always be some opportunists and anarchists etc who tack onto any riot, it does not mean that there are no inequalities worthy of discussion here.

The info I posted on Hackney council was from Feb, so that is near the end of the tax year. Imagine what the interest on £277m alone? I just cannot understand where all that money is going? Also, any answer to whom the deficit is owed? It seems like every country suddenly owes everyone else?

There are inequalities but it's a different discussion. The lawlessness has to be tackled first. The people in those poor areas have been held to ransom by thugs for a lot longer than the last four or five days. They have been terrorised for years by these people, frightened for their children, frightened for themselves and literally caught in the crossfire.... remember little 5 year-old Thusha Kamaleswaran who may never walk again after being shot? Remember lovely Agnes Sina-Inakoju, just 16, shot and killed whilst eating a takeaway? They're just two names in the most shameful roll-call ever... the innocent teenage dead of London. The people of those poor areas are good people, they have opportunites and want their kids to do well for themselves. But how can they when they are held down by fear?

"Also, any answer to whom the deficit is owed?"

Quite a lot of it by the Chinese and other nations that are still experiencing high growth. They buy bonds... other governments' debt... and those are the people we technically owe money to. The 'deficit' FWIW is the difference between the money we have coming in from tax and investments.... and the money going out paying public sector wages, funding the NHS, equipping the military etc. Right now we are spending far more than we are bringing into the exchequer. The 'national debt' is what we owe elsewhere. All the time we run a deficit the national debt increases. When an economy grows a government can opt to run a 'surplus' and pay off some of the national debt.

It's not a different discussion, it's the same discussion. The inequalities create a culture in which gangs flourish, where violence is glorified, where social mores are eroded and eventually annnihilated... you can recognise this while also condemning and coming down hard on lawlessness, imposing custodial sentences, reforming welfare, looking at the police etc. I don't know why it's seen as either/or.

It's not an either/or, but it is two different jobs..... if you have rats in your basement you first need pest control to kill the rats and then you need a builder to make your basement rat-proof. The police have to clean up the area first and then the neighbourhood stands a chance of flourishing. Invest in an area where gangs operate and, as we've seen this week, all your work goes up in smoke.

Is there any evidence that the initiatives that have been funded haven't worked for the young people who weren't looting, who were out with brooms the next morning? It's a bit of a leap to say that investment in areas with trouble just "goes up in smoke": we could easily say that no one should become a postman or go to university or that teaching assistants are not to be trusted. If we're going to talk about the demographic of the 56 processed so far, three quarters of them were not even from the areas that were looted etc.

Our police don't have guns, we can't "do a New York".. there isn't going to be serious "pest control". The kids in the riots can all get chucked in jail and there will be plenty more to fill their shoes. And in the meantime, there are young kids that are at risk for becoming involved in this kind of life and that needs to be dealt with. If you want to wait until there are no gangs in London, we might as well just write off an entire generation.

The young people out with brooms are the ones trying to take advantage of the opportunities open to them. It might have been difficult before, but where are they going to work now the place is like a bomb-site and no-one will invest? It may not be possible to remove gangs completely but if they can be rendered ineffective then kids will be less at risk of getting involved with them and less at risk of being shot in the back when standing in a shop.... don't think that's asking too much.

It's not either/or. You need to tackle gangs and create opportunities.

Cameron is only cutting police budgets by 6%.

Currently, only 18% of police are on the streets at any given time. The government simply wants to release the vast majority to walk the beat, and employ private individuals to do the paperwork.

I really don't see how anyone can argue with the logic of that.

I find it quite exasperating that anyone would.

I watched the entire debate, and the reduction is 20% which Cameron argues amounts to a "6% cash reduction". The HMIC said 12% was sustainable over the lifetime of the parliament.

Are they really going to employ private individuals to do the paperwork? Didn't hear this mentioned yesterday, not quite sure how training people who are not in the force to keep paperwork for the force will be more efficient.

Removing paperwork is usually much welcomed by public sector workers, but in the cyclical nature of these things, as soon as paperwork is removed, there will be some sort of travesty where a criminal gets away with something heinous on a technicality and everyone realises that this could have been avoided with better paperwork. I am a public sector worker and I hate paperwork, but it is a product of a litigious society and the actions of previously corrupt individuals. It's frankly naive to buy into the spin that they are just going to do away with paperwork and have police on the street with no repercussions.

There are going to be swingeing cuts, we all know this, but protecting the streets should be a pretty high priority given what we have seen over the past week.

As usual, I agree with pretty much everything Cogito has said. I also love the fact that so many are blaming the Conservative govt for the rioting. Hilarious and incredibly shortsighted/wilfully blind.

Sorry, that should be Coalition govt, though of course you're not blaming the coalition, it is Cameron who comes in for all of the attacks.

I don't think anyone is blaming the government? Just saying that given these developments, perhaps these cuts should be reviewed. I am not particularly sure why it's "hilarious and incrediby shortsighted/wilfully blind" to suggest that governmental policy needs to be reviewed in the light of developments.

I was quoting Cameron's speech, which is why I have used his name.

The cuts will have to stay at the same level overall or we will struggle in the global market the way the Eurozone countries are struggling and criticised the way the US has been criticised. We have to be seen to be in control of our spending. The Spending Review determined where the cuts should come and various departments and organisations have had to make adjustments for their new budgets.

If the cuts were now reviewed and the police (for example) were given a bigger budget all it would mean is that some other sector would get less. Which would be a huge blow for all of those organisations, already struggling to find the savings and having to make difficult choices.

The police are bound to use the events of the last few days to pile on the pressure with the government and increase their budget. That is their perogative, of course, but hasty reactions to short-term difficulties should never dictate long-term strategy.

There weren't enough police on the street to maintain civil order.

There haven't been enough police on the street to prevent the constant drip drip of antisocial behaviour over quite a number of years that has led to youth and criminal elements seizing an opportunity to gain control at the first available opportunity. The kids on the streets said things like: "what are they going to do? give me an Asbo?" and "nothing will happen, it's my first offence". This is not a short-term difficulty by any stretch of the imagination and it requires a long-term strategy that doesn't involve erosion of the force.

The cost of inaction on the part of the police in the early stages of the riot due to fears that they didn't have the numbers to face down the crowds is going to run into hundreds of millions of pounds which isn't exactly going to help the deficit problem any.

I am a public sector worker and there is huge waste and overmanagement in most public sector work. I have no doubt there is likely to be room for efficiency savings in the police, but 20% is a steep figure and I simply wasn't convinced by the case put forward by the government. Cuts have to be made, yes, but having assurance of civil order on the streets is pretty fundamental to a society. I read this week that all the intelligence analysts in the met have been offered voluntary redundancy. We need these people, quite a lot more than we need other services in society which, while important in their own right, are not as crucial for our everyday existences. I love the library, I don't want to have to wait more than 18 weeks for a knee operation, I certainly don't want to see waiting lists in my own professional area go back to 11 and 12 months from their current 8 weeks... but no one is going to die if these things are less than optimal. I would give up quite a lot to feel safe in my home. I do not want to be encouraged to arm myself with a baseball bat to protect my home or my community and have this lauded by the prime minister as evidence of the Best of British. I want the police to protect me.

I lived in NYC from 1986 - 1995, and had a very different experience to the ones described here.

During the beginning of my stint there, crime was rife. Times Square and the surrounding area was scary, and the 'borderline' neighbourhoods were truly 'no go' areas. Gang activity was common, and crack cocaine was beginning to be a big problem for many on the fringes of society - it was plentiful, cheap, and many people became addicted and so muggings (to fuel the habit) became common.

The mayor and police began a 'zero tolerance' policy. The thinking was that enforcement of the 'petty offense' laws would lead to a huge reduction in crime overall. There was robust enforcement for fare-dodging, for breaking windows, for loitering, for drug possession, etc - basically any 'minor' crime was punished harshly.

The officials believed that petty crimes often led to bigger crimes and that the petty criminals were often the same people committing the more serious crimes. By arresting and incarcerating people for petty crime, the more serious crime rate dropped significantly. And, it seemed that the criminals quickly began to think the punishments were so swift and harsh that it simply wasn't 'worth it' to commit low-grade offenses.

What I can't tell you is what became of that generation of young offenders - did they eventually decide to 'go straight'? Are they in jail for different offenses? Who knows.

What is true is that NYC is a much safer place since the policy was implemented.

This week everyone wants more money spent on the police because of the riots. Back in the winter everyone was protesting against the rise in tuition fees and asking for more money to be spent on further education. Just a few weeks ago they were marching through the capital demanding more money be put into public sector pensions so that people like yourself don't have to pay more contributions. Next month it'll be something else that is top priority. All public services are crucial for someone and if we left it to the vagiaries of public opinion we would reach no consensus. We employ governments to decide where the lines are drawn

The other thing that went hand-in-hand with zero-tolerance policing was a big increase of foot-patrol policing teams in every area. The police were much more visible and present in the local neighbourhoods. They were often able to observe petty crime as it was being committed, and to apprehend the offenders.

It (generally) made the communities feel a safer place for citizens. And the criminals knew it wasn't going to be nearly as easy to go unobserved and unpunished. Crime dropped significantly.

Tuition fees and public sector pension cuts are very different to enabling basic law and order to be maintained and really, as I have never had any degree of support for protests against public sector pension cuts (and was pretty vociferous on these boards about the selfishness of these protests), it is irrelevant that this action was taken by people in the same broad sector as me.

We don't employ governments, we elect MPs. Quite a large number of them were, in my opinion, rightly concerned about these cuts. In any case, we certainly don't cease to have an opinion or a voice because a government has been elected, that is contrary to the whole concept of democracy!

It is unacceptable, in my opinion, that public sector figures are congratulating men for taking to the streets with baseball bats to protect temples etc simply because there weren't sufficient police to rise to the challenges faced by these events.

I do not want to live in a society where anyone is expected to buy a bat from Amazon to do the work of the police. I would very much like to see petty crimes met with a zero tolerance approach, in conjunction with maintaining and developing work to prevent very young children becoming involved with gangs, even if this is costly and I would happily sacrifice other areas of public funding to see this happen. I would rather have no job than be in a position where lawlessness and vigiliantism is encouraged. I am not persuaded or reassured by David Cameron saying that there will be sufficient numbers for a surge in the event of an emergency, I want to know that the law is operating and enforced at all levels and that antisocial behaviour will not be tolerated.