You have to laugh or you wouls cry

[newwave]

You Tory scum voters were warned but did you listen ? oh no you new better now society is being badly damaged the same as during the bitch Thatchers years.

Will Ghost Town be number 1 again because it seens like 1981 has returned with a vengance.

One question, the financial crash must be the Tories fault after all they blamed Brown for the last one, or maybe the Tory filth is wrong about Brown as they are in so very many things.

No where is my "I didnt vote Tory" badge.

14 year old looters don't need to watch the news. Politics isn't an abstraction to them, it's real life. Politics for them is tripling tuition fee costs and cutting EMA, it is housing and public transport costs which are unaffordable, it is growing up in a dingy neighbourhood with drug dealers on the corner while being harassed daily by the police and your friend or neighbour murdered by the them. It's about having a poor education and anyway not jobs to go to and little hope or prospects for the future.

All sounds very nice but then if they wanted to protest....protest. The student riots were a "protest" albeit one which descended into violence. This is nothing of the sort. Smashing up JD Sports and stealing all the tracksuits isnt a protest, it's just thieving plain & simple.

To say this is some sort of austerity protest is giving these mindless yobs too much credit. Most couldn't even spell the word.

Does this look like a protest?

Does this girl sound like she's protesting inequality?

No.

Incidentally, did anyone catch the news that among the first rioters charged there were an army recruit, graphic designer, youth worker, college students, and a graduate, some with addresses outside London? Now do we think they're representative of the oppressed masses with no job, a poor education and no hope for the future.... or do we think they're thicko chancers, taking advantage of the situation to get themselves some free stuff?

NG2 FYI I have not been posting because I was up to my neck with two major projects/tenders and all the associated meetings and w/e working, we lost both jobs on price one of which was costed so low by our competition that we would have made a minus margin on the job.

Still no bonus/commission on those jobs but an 18 day holiday in the sun helped to drown my sorrows in many ways.

I see the Tories on here still need educating.

Yes of course we do - please feel free to go ahead and educate me - I do so need to correct the error of my ways.

gk, I am sure you do but I suspect you are so blinkered as to be beyond my meagre abilities.

That said however I will put to you my theory of the selfish Tory voter which is as follows:

We vote for people/parties for many reasons, you may vote Tory because you like for instance their housing policies or maybe their financial policies but voting Tory for what seems good reasons always results in "the nasty party" screwing the poor and needy, they always have and always will hence a Tory vote is a selfish vote.

Just remember the Tories always rule for the benefit or the priviledged elite not the majority of society you only have to see their kid glove treatment of the bankers to see this is true.

Before Dave became PM he said "no banker in the bailed out banks shall receive a bonus of more than £2500 which was a blatant lie. He condems "gold plated" public sector pensions (average below £4k hardly gold plated) yet says not a word when the feral capitalist Bob Diamond claims millions in salary and bonuses.

The top people in finance are averaging 18% plus pay increases whilst the average wage earner is getting next to nothing and the PM's silence is deafening.

Thresa May even admitted that the Tory party was the nasty party, you have to admire her honesty.

Ok Thanks for that very objective and well considered lesson. I shall of course be taking further lessons in socialism to understand this unique concept because I'm clearly an ultra selfish, privileged, blinkered idiot who wants to screw the poor and needy, whose received an extortionate pay rise, whilst my colleagues have received next to nothing. Intriguing indeed!

GK, my pleasure but I think you are missing the point. Unless you are one of the ruling clique this hardly applies. It is hardly unique concept nor in truth very original but true nontheless.

The point I was trying (badly it seems) is that a Tory vote is a selfish vote because the outcome of a Tory government is suffering amongst those at the edges of society. You may consider inflicting "austerity" on those with the least a price worth paying to have the Tories in power who knows, well you do of course.

If you think my critique of the Tory/selfish vote is wrong I would be glad to hear your opinion of where I am wrong.

BTW I have never voted Labour (new or old) in any election, I was until Clegg sold out a staunch LD voter.

Here is a map of reported riot locations occurring in the London area, overlaid with a social-deprivation index:

maptube.org/map.aspx?m=ol&s=bBHFGlAlRcsKCSaXwRjAplwcCnYMClA9&k=http%3A%2F%2Forca.casa.ucl.ac.uk%2F~ollie%2Fmisc%2Flondonriots_verified_20110809_1514.kml

You'll note the correlation there.

What areas were better when Labour was in government? Is that as "selfish" a vote as Tory?
I'm pretty sure that Britain's citizens have been in a far worse economic situation than they currently are. Post-WW2 people had very little economically but were rich in community spirit, I'm not saying that is a good thing but they did not turn against their neighbours in protest of "not having anything to do in the evenings". I am a (relatively) young person and am disgusted by the sense of entitlement that the "youth" seem to have. People don't seem to see that you have to earn things in life, both material and also in terms of respect, trust etc. No, there are not a lot of jobs around but are all of the people complaining literally applying for every job that they are able to do? I doubt it. State education is free yet many do not attend out of choice but then feel they should be able to have free further education if they decide there is something they'd like to do.
If the rioters really cared at all about the state of our society, they would not be causing millions of pounds worth of damage to it. This will not make their, or anybodies, situation any better.

I figured you'd be busy working NewWave. Can I ask a question though? Do you ever see the irony of having to work for a large company, the product of a capitalist society which you despise so much? That you are merely a small cog in the big capitalist machinery, earning money for the "rich fat cats" whom you wish were taxed to the hilt to pay for the poor? So in fact you are contributing to the very system which is keeping the poor downtrodden?

Perhaps you could ponder those questions the next holiday which the capitalist pigs of your employers have paid you enough to be able to afford?

@Ttosca. I thought one of the focal points of the looting was Ealing which is described as a "leafy affluent area" in the news. Certainly Manchester city centre isn't a socially deprived area. Nor the bullring in Birmingham. These are retail areas which have been targetted by thieves. This is not a protest about social injustice. It's just thieves taking the opportunity to steal. Please don't look deeper than that because there simply isn't a deeper reason.

This is about a moral vacuum, a breakdown in respect for the law and other people - things that the Daily Mail always said, and which all the public are now coming to realise, apart from socialists like Ken Livingstone and his ilk. Even many of the blinkered left are having their eyes opened.

nothing to do with poverty. There are poor people, much worse off with no state handouts, all over the world, but they don't act like these thugs who force people to strip in the street, so that they can rob them of their clothes.

'If you think my critique of the Tory/selfish vote is wrong I would be glad to hear your opinion of where I am wrong.'

What do you think the outcome of this will be? Who do you think the public will vote for now - the party of law and order, which understands the reasons behind events and knows that it is criminal thugs and 9 year olds in balaclavas, with a sense of entitlement encouraged by long standing left wing policies, or the socialists like Livingstone whose usual solution is to throw more taxpayer money at the problem.

Old style socialist dinosaurs have no answers because they don't understand the real reasons it is happening. The public understand what is going on and have seen the socialist explanations for what they are. The public aren't selfish, they just want to be safe and they want respect for the rule of law. That's one reason that they vote Tory, because they think they have the answers and that the left's policies created the moral vacuum of entitlement and rights without responsibilities, which leads 9 year olds to loot everything they can get their hands on.

In fact, newwave, instead of thinking that millions of Tory voters are selfish and that Tory politicians are scum, the best thing for you to do to get your moral compass back pointing in the right direction, is to start reading the Daily Mail. Ken Livingstone probably doesn't read it, which is why he also hasn't got a clue.

Right. So you're really just a pathetic troll.

Shame I wasted time addressing your posts in the past...

'Right. So you're really just a pathetic troll.'

Are you referring to newwave or myself?
In either case, that is unacceptable behaviour and against MN rules.
I am seriously considering my first ever
Calling someone a troll is bad enough, but to call them a "pathetic troll" is beyond the pale and constitutes progressive behaviour.

Haven't read whole thread, but can't see the problem in being a socialist and not agreeing with the riots. I believe in wealth redistribution, but not grab and run.

Well said ilovemydog. I was simply objecting to socialists like Livingstone who blame the thievery, arson, looting, thuggery and forcing people to strip in the street to rob them of their clothes, as having anything to do with government cuts. Not all socialists think like that, but unfortunately, some do.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024001/UK-riots-2011-London-Birmingham-people-forced-strip-naked-street.html?ITO=1490

Having read this I will not take posts by newave or ttosca seriously in the future given the madness they have posted here and I have no political axe to grind. If you actually believe that the riots have something to do with Tory policies then you are deluded. Just listen to the looters who are stupid enough to be interviewed, the overwhelming message is that this is an opportunity to acquire goods that they want - it is not any more complicated than that. Many young people would struggle to name a cabinet minister apart from the PM and to them politicians are all the same (along with most other authority figures). They would laugh at well meaning people like you who try to understand and sympathise with them, and then I expect that they would exploit your good intentions in some way.
The deeper questions to me are;

Why do they feel so entitled that they can behave like this?
How has respect for others in our society broken down so much that this can happen?
What is an appropriate, measured response to this?

The worrying thing is that with parliament and the Lords being recalled, I am wondering whether some new legislation is being prepared 'on the hoof' to be unveiled tomorrow. Any such legislation is bound to be ill conceived and probably unworkable in practise. I would not be surprised as like the looters, many politicians (e.g. Cameron) are opportunists.

Haven't read whole thread, but can't see the problem in being a socialist and not agreeing with the riots. I believe in wealth redistribution, but not grab and run.

There isn't a problem with being a socialist and not agreeing with the riots. Explaining the context of the riots, and what contributed to them happening is not the same as 'agreeing with them'.

Furthermore, socialists realise that unfocused anger like this, while symptomatic of the malaise of capitalism, will do very little on their own to change the conditions which caused it.

It is only the right, and the ignorant, who confuse explaining with justifying.

Secondly, it's not just 'socialists' (i.e. most people apart from the Daily Heil crowd) who believe the context of the rights need to be understood.

The best thing to do is to go in to the communities and ask the very same people what's going on.

Here's a young black man, telling Boris what he thinks of the riots:

Dacus Howe interviewed on the BBC:

No, socialists always seek to blame the actions of others on the "system", the "rich", the "powerful". The "poor" masses never are at fault. It's not them, it's the system.

Sorry that just doesn't cut it and I think people are realising that now.

These are not looters because they are downtrodden poor who are being victimised. They are just opportunistic wankers.

ElBurro-

Having read this I will not take posts by newave or ttosca seriously in the future given the madness they have posted here and I have no political axe to grind. If you actually believe that the riots have something to do with Tory policies then you are deluded.

Christ. It's not just a Tory issue, although the slash and burn cuts have obviously made the situation worse. This isn't a party issue; the policies of New Labour and the governments before that contributed to this situation as well.

We have had three decades on neo-liberalism. During that time, the wealth gap has increased to levels not seen since the 1930s. Wages have stagnated, and in some cases fallen in real terms. The price of living has continued to climb. Corporate profits are astronomical. Housing is now unaffordable, many people live in a without any job security - if they have any jobs at all, and recently health is being privatised and education made too expensive and out of reach of many. Meanwhile, social support structures like welfare and the EMA are being scrapped or attacked.

You have huge numbers of inner-city poor kids with no jobs, no prospects, no future. There are no jobs available, they are poorly educated, Univ is out of reach, and now their youth centres are being closed. They are angry, resentful, and bored. You cannot expect these kinds of social conditions to no effect.

Just listen to the looters who are stupid enough to be interviewed, the overwhelming message is that this is an opportunity to acquire goods that they want - it is not any more complicated than that. Many young people would struggle to name a cabinet minister apart from the PM and to them politicians are all the same (along with most other authority figures). They would laugh at well meaning people like you who try to understand and sympathise with them, and then I expect that they would exploit your good intentions in some way.

Yes, it is a lot more complicated than that. Of course there is a lot of opportunism out there - that is not in doubt. But the riots are a political act. I'm not saying that the rioters are explicitly political. Apart from the initial riots reacting to the way the police treated the family of the shot man, the rioters have no explicit political demand.

That doesn't mean that the riots are not political. Of course they're political. What else are they? Individual? Are you saying thousands of kids simultaneously decided 'why not' and started rioting out of the blue? It's political because we have a society where thousands of young people feel ready to riot so easily and with impunity. These same kids come from deprived backgrounds, as I have repeatedly said, and shown on the map. We must ask important questions as to how this can happen, rather than feeling superior in our condemnation and actually changing nothing at all.

The deeper questions to me are;

^Why do they feel so entitled that they can behave like this?
How has respect for others in our society broken down so much that this can happen?
What is an appropriate, measured response to this?^

The answer lies in that they have nothing to lose. You have thousands of kids who couldn't give a crap if they go to jail, because they have no jobs and no future anyway. Do you think if all these kids had decently paid jobs and were intending to enroll at a good University that they would be rioting like this? Of course not.

They don't respect others because a) They are not respected themselves. They are constantly demonised, and society treats them like they don't matter. If you say you're not worthy of any jobs, you're not worthy of EMA, you're not worthy of University, you're not even worthy of a youth centre, then why should they return respect to others? and b) Because our institutions are crooked and corrupt: politicians, the police, the media, corporations. Why should kids respect these institutions? I don't. Do you?

The appropriate response is a) first regain control of the streets. b) fair sentencing for those convicted (not making an example of people) and c) a serious look at how we can change the social conditions which contributed to these riots, including the way the police treated the family of the man who was shot.

You say you want to ask questions why this is happening. You think you have teh answers, you think it is social deprivation. You think the blackberry brigade, the 9 year olds and 14 year olds are socially deprived and demonised. What if you are wrong and what if the black youth worker, Shaun Bailey, and the Daily Mail and others are right, that this is the result of family breakdown and lack of respect and authority and a system that is too lenient with criminals and forever bending over backwards to excuse anti-social behaviour; a system that hands out money and expects nothing in return; a system where many young people laugh at authority, stick their fingers up to the system and in their own words loot and burn because the police can't do anything about it; where concerned citizens are now forming their own protection because the police can't be everywhere.

The Turks who formed their own protection are just as poor as the looters, in fact probably poorer and more law abiding. We heard the youth lecturing Boris about how the government was taking food out of the babies' mouths, but the public no longer believes it, they hear about the blackberrys, they see the trainers and well-fed Big Mac Double Whopper and chips brigade and they say that something doesn't add up. The hard working shopkeepers looted of everything they have built up and the public have heard all the excuses, but they no longer wash.

In 1922, when Lord Northcliffe died, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper. (The Daily Mail)

Lord Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them during the 1930s.[28][29] Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them.[30]

? The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing on Germany (1933).?

?Lord Rothermere, publisher

Rothermere and the Mail were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.[31] Rothermere wrote an article entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine".[32] This support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia later that year.

secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Daily_Mail

There are some really poor people, homeless and living in cardboard boxes, but you don't find them looting plasma TVs. They don't have cars to transport their booty or blackberrys to communicate with and they don't have any warm homes to go back to where they can plug TVs into. Don't insult the public's intelligence that this is political or about government cuts or poverty. The public can see this for what it is.