Why aren't we discussing the kids running riot in London and Birmingham off the back of a TikTok trend? [title edited by MNHQ at user's request]

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

If there’s already a thread I couldn’t see it.

This.

Sadly.

Teenage brains are different. The problem is theres no where to go that isn’t controlled by someone. Every town and city is massive housing estates and a bit of parkland with scruffy linked pathways.
Stop building without leaving wild area they can just be feral teens safely.
We had raves in old buildings, meet ups in fields etc. Still annoying but without actually affecting day to day life.

Maybe because its more of a local news story? There's dodgy goings-on on high streets up and down the country every week, it's not unreasonable for a national newspaper to not cover them all. The BBC covered it under their local news for London but the Guardian doesn't have local news sections.

I'd say that because London hasn't been the only city recently to have these louts running riot it is more than a 'local story'.

Why are people making excuses for this feral behaviour

I think the same. Inflation is linked with civil unrest. The less money people have in their pocket and the less likelihood there is of the situation improving anytime soon the more likelihood there is of people starting to take to the streets.

Of course that’s not why the Guardian doesn’t want to report on it. Let’s not play the faux naivety card. Right now the pockets of poor behaviour in London look to be being perpetrated by a minority demographic and the left wing media organisations are paralysed with fear. They felt exactly the same way about the recent grooming gang debacle and no doubt countless other things such as immigration. Safer to act like it doesn’t exist than wrote about it.

My god!!! That’s mad! So free bus travel that was meant to benefit people societally is now being used as a way to facilitate crime and cause bedlam. If the people doing this are kids the parents need to be held criminally responsible. It’s the only way to get someone to take responsibility.

Agreed. I was a teen in the 80s/90s. This stuff was rare though. I can remember the ASBOs on the young kids who were commitibg crime really early and when the papers revisited those kids to see if they had ever broken the cycle most of them hadn’t, they were habitual criminals who were in and out of prison as an adult.

I think the internet and mobile phones have enabled vast amount of young people to gather at short notice and that causes problems.

Cost of living indeed! What a pathetic -PATHETIC - excuse for this. Let’s see what these kids are wearing before wringing our hands that they are poor starving urchins.

It’s social media, compounded by zero consequences.

It's the complete lack of consequences and the complete lack of policing.

Sod the COL excuses.

COL, you say? Strange, then, that the shops that bear the brunt of the looting seem to be jewellers, electronics and fashion retailers. They don't seem to be looting laundry powder and baked beans, do they? You'd almost think they were motivated by greed rather than need.

Nothing will happen!…you only get arrested now a days for freedom of speech

Since kids were shut in at home with no oversight etc all over the country, you might expect to see this behaviour replicated all over the country too. But no: it seems that certain areas are more riot-prone than others. As with 2011, Birmingham and Clapham have been hit so far and I suspect Croydon, Manchester and Liverpool may also have problems over the coming days.

Is hat to do with disfranchised communities do you think?

They are like feral rats. All dressed the same. Clueless, dragged up and destined for nothing more than drug dealing or the dole office. Utterly depressing that we have such people living alongside us.

I mean

This isnt new in society - i remember schools meeting up to fight eachother when I was young

And the happy slapping

Teenagers are cruel little beings, they scare the shit out of me

I live up in Scotland, same thing is happening in towns and cities here too. I'm on quite a few different community facebook pages as I've moved around a lot and every one of them reports similar over the past few months.

Time to get the water cannons out

I've barely seen anything about it. The news seems to mainly be Iran, Trump and ever increasing costs. Is it just a tiktok trend, or is there more to the story? Maybe the press doesn't want to highlight it incase it causes a spiral across the rest of the country?

It’s not far from me.

They are clearly bored & have nothing better to do.

Parents either don’t care or occupied with working.

Clapham is now generally a very posh area with multi million pound houses, deli's, cafes etc, restaurants. There are however a few very rough spots still in the area. Its generally safe though. You wouldn't however hear of these mass teen gatherings and lootings in a lot of other countries...poland, latvia, lithuania, hungary...if they did occur they would be dealt with by riot units and consequences would be really tough.

Parents either don’t care or occupied with working.

Working? I think that's a rather Pollyanna-ish point of view.

Oh please! You’ll be dropping neurodivergent into the mix next.

@Herewegoagainandagainandagain Maybe there is something to it but this group don’t need any influence from TikTok to act the way they do, between some of them setting catastrophic fires last year, to daily anti-social behaviour in the town centre/bus station, threatening and assaulting members of the public and staff in the shops - it’s never ending.

I had experience of them last year on the bus back from Glasgow where they were throwing small rocks at the bus windows and passengers, and culminated in my DD and her friend (and other passengers, including a young child) being hit with bottles - thankfully plastic and not glass.