Sunderland police station set on fire

[PrettyFlyforaMaiTai]

It appears that the rioters have set Sunderland police station on fire

news.sky.com/story/southport-violence-stabbings-attack-riot-london-hartlepool-misinformation-sky-news-blogs-13186819

There are large numbers of males who enjoy stirring up trouble and inflicting violence, causing damage.
For years these men have been allowed to get away with it and now they have got the upper hand.
You only have to watch any of the Let Women Speak videos and see how huge numbers of men are allowed to break the law, scream, shout, threaten and harrass women while the police stand by and do nothing.
If there are no consequences the behaviour escalates.
There are laws covering public order, racist abuse, assault, criminal damage. The law is not enforced and here we are.
I always thought we had the right to peaceful protest. Not rioting and destruction.

The LA and private providers where I live have been advertising on Indeed for healthcare assistants for the local residential/nursing homes for at least 2 years - no experience required

Pages and pages of jobs unfilled and presumably some very understaffed homes

Last week I met a Nigerian woman [who along with her husband] was recruited in her home country to fill one of these jobs

It's really not as simple as immigrants taking all the jobs

I agree. However, the so called educated are aspiring not to work in a carehome?

If the only choice is unemployment or a care home job that does not sound like a prosperous country.

The Nigerian woman I mentioned above had her own business and her husband has a legal qualification - neither of them are without aspiration or education

Like I said it's not simple

This is the attitude isnt it, people think its beneath them to work in care or hospitality, stacking shelves. All jobs I did as a teen and then young adult. And nothing wrong with those jobs in later life either.

Who do you think should do those jobs then?

Absolutely. One of the protesters were asked why they were rioting last night and apparently it was to protect ‘our’ women and children.

There are thousands of jobs- they don't want them because they are low pay jobs. They prefer lying around doing nothing in their grotty little, contained worlds and blaming other people.
I grew up with them. I saw the families who tried hard and made something of their lives and moved on and those who didn't- it is to do with how you bring your DC up, your attitudes, having some grit and determination. My parents worked hard (my mum never had much of a job but she worked and contributed to the family pot). We lived in a council house that she and my dad kept spotlessly clean, decorated and looked-after. I never knew them to take sick days- you went to work. They saved- whatever they could manage. I never missed a day at school apart from when I had whooping-cough at 7. Never. I did my homework. I wasn't allowed out on the streets at night. They did activities with me. Neither of them had any education past 14 but I knew school was important because they showed me and their actions showed me- they looked at my books, helped me with homework, came to parents' evenings.
They were clean and tidy- as people. Our clothes were clean and looked after.
We didn't have a car, or a huge tv, or lots of kitchen gadgets that some of my friends had in their houses. We didn't have holidays abroad. We went to a UK seaside resort every year and had a great time. My aunt had a caravan in Northumberland and we all went up there for weekends occasionally- caravans in the 1980s were not posh in anyway .
All of the adults in my life behaved kindly, with respect, none were in trouble with the police, they all wanted to do better (none were educated past 14). Those are choices. You make better choices for yourself.
You don't go out burning and ransacking your community and behaving like a complete thug.

To some extent I agree with you, my Northern WC grandparents were the same and the net result was my Dad was the first to Uni (cambridge) etc BUT these people aren't traditional WC because they don't work. First of all because of the closure of pits/heavy industry and then by 3 generations of not working this becomes the norm.
I am not excusing the behaviour, I'm trying to point out that the educated, MC posters (mainly London based) just shutting these people down as thugs doesn't solve the situation because they are failing to understand the reasons why people turn to Reform et al in the first place.

And to some extent I agree with you. I am a teacher who is now a School Improvement Advisor for a local authority in the North-East. I work in behaviour, exclusion, attendance and I see these families every day. I understand the issues.
My point is they can make much better choices- that might be harder daily to live with- but they choose not to. They blame everyone else. Successive governments spend billions on these groups one way or another- some governments more than others. Not much has any effect long-term, partly because another government comes along and changes the policies and spending so we never get to long-term.
Blair/Brown did make a difference and there was a real sense of hope and had some of those policies been continued we may have seen genuine longer term change but, as ever, most were chopped as soon as the government changed in 2010.
However, I still believe we have choices, all of us. Many people could make much better choices every single day to help themselves and for the future of their children.

No it’s not

it’s because people can’t afford a safe secure home (renting, buying, council).
because they can’t get a doctors appointment and waiting lists are ludicrous
because the police are leaving in droves so they are struggling
teachers and school struggling
Everything is hard right now. Everything feels relentless and the future, bleak.

And so the extra people coming in are blamed for seemingly taking what little share there is.

sort out the issues and it will feel like there’s more to go around.

realistically, climate change is going to make immigration a much much larger issue

FFS

Sunderland Citizens Advice Bureau offices completely gutted by fire last night

Who's against free legal advice?

Lawyers. Maybe it’s a gang of unemployed solicitors looking to stimulate the legal services market?

...but it's not 90 year old former milkmen in these riots, is it? It's people who chat shit about foreigners taking their jobs.

The amount of excuses people are making on these threads is shocking to me. It's like reading the daily mail comment section in places.

No one is making excuses. Some of us are talking about the underlying causes of the riots, if you don't treat the causes you won't manage the symptoms. It really isn't as simplistic as many are making out and the language Starmer is using is only serving to pour fuel on the fire.

Yes there’s no point in burying heads in the sand

Getting it wrong means increasing violence over successive summers and risk of losing control of the situation

What language exactly do you object to?

I don't personally object to his language because I completely disagree with the actions being taken but you only have to look on SM to see the #FarRightThugsUnite trending with photos of "normal" people posting that.

Do you mean then that the far right don't like to be called far right?

So what should Starmer have called them then?

I think far right is accurate, tbh I think ‘thugs’ is too but I think it’s unprofessional in the sense prime ministers shouldn’t really use ‘insults’ to describe the public. I can’t think of any other context when this happens.

I agree X has become horrendous and appears to have been infiltrated by the far right. A lot of hate speech on there and has escalated massively since Southport.

Exactly and that's why there is now a massive backlash

He is not using thugs to describe the public, he is using thugs for the group that displayed violent thuggish behaviour.

How else could he have described them?

I think this is a really complex issue because of course it stems from social issues and a lot of these people didn’t wake up one day and decide to be racist. The problem with acknowledging the other issues like lack of jobs, housing etc. is you signal to others with these issues that this is a mechanism to make their grievances known. It’s a careful balance to strike but ultimately the analysis of the social issues that have precipitated this violence needs to be done when there is no danger of encouragement.

I agree with @twistyizzy that Starmer inflamed the situation but his other problem is now having been hardline in a press conference riots are still happening