Riots

[Mr Pee]

Once again- and as at least some on these boards have acknowledged- the elephant in the room is the ethnicity of the rioters :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/katharinebirbalsingh/100099830/these-riots-were-about-race-why-ignore-the-fact/

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, I do keep an eye on them.

The first point they make is that they feel the countryside isn't being protected. They then want a reduction and a cap on the public sector's senior executives' salaries. You could say that they are beginning to "position" in a way that sounds "nice and cosy" to the ordinary decent citizen. Even I can feel relieved to hear that some support my views on those and it is downright scary that it has to be them. I wrote in a state of apoplectic fury yesterday morning to my local councillor, who has a lot of connections:

"Please pass on my congratulations to your Conservative colleagues for their great work. They are really connecting with Middle England.....at this rate, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will go over to the BNP while further hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will form the long-term view that rioting and looting is an easier way to achieve fairness than democracy".

Obviously, I haven't had a reply.

[Lateralthinking1]

....To be courteous, I do have some further comments on this evening's posts. When you put all of these 160 odd together, it becomes clear that this isn't a question of why it has happened. There are just so many parts to it and the last thing that it should have done is created shock. There has also been a trend today. The hard working, decent, people of ethnic background in Hackney, on World at One, many in tears, were speaking about the need for tougher action. So it has been with those who naturally lean to the left, as well as right, intellectually on this forum. Personally, I feel that if Government started to combine a bit of old-style conservatism with a bit of old-style socialism, it would be "getting there". Again, I return to the 60s, probably because I'm getting on a bit.

#125 Panjandrum - "Primary objective is excitement" - Yes, this is depressingly a part of it. I think it was the second Woodstock festival, that took place sometime in the last decade, which was effectively torched. So much for "we are stardust, we are golden". Football hooliganism was always a male domain. Now we have scenarios in which the "chores" are divided 50/50. In the absence of steady authority at every level, young men and women both aspire to a masculine ideal. The need to succeed is also a driver. The problem is that it isn't ideal and actually it isn't male. Basically, it is thuggery.....

....One senior police officer believes that games like "Grand Theft Auto" promote violence. I could hardly believe when I looked at it today how crass it is technically and artistically. Frankly, the thunderbirds were more modern. However, this kind of thing sells in its millions. On one level, it is little different from a western or a war film. On another, it is poles apart. For a start, the killing is as rapid as falling raindrops. Then you have the inner city context. What shall we do today? Go to Next or shoot a few shoppers? You choose. And, of course, it is also interactive and competitive and draws in. People are clearly losing comprehension of the dividing lines between reality and fantasy. We looked at this on "The Verb". Ban it now!

#128 Freddie Campbell - "This has to be orchestrated" - A complex area. The implication there is a long timeline but orchestration with technology is fast and so the lines between planning and spontaneity merge. This is not to say that a variety of factors in the longer term and the overall structure of society are irrelevant. Both help to brew it.

#129 Brassbandmaestro - "Reducing the right to chastise" - Yes, this could be the moment when those of us who can see some positive virtues in human rights legislation decide that good intentions have backfired. If it means that we start fantasising over dinner about groups of middle aged folk rounding these people up and chucking them over Beachy Head then clearly it isn't working. I have totally changed my mind. I'm really not bothered now if a mother smacks her offspring hard on the head. Sad isn't it?

#132 frenchfrank - "This....a mirror image of amoral bankers". Yes, I'm sure this is right. And the girls interviewed will never be women. That is how big their problem is. #143 - "Lose their moral identity in a large group" - Yes, and in many cases, I am in absolutely no doubt that the "large group" is a surrogate for adequate family.

#133 Simon - "A moorland pub....two different planets". Yes, I can identify with this and it is in many ways reassuring. Wish I had been there. #144 "We don't have these problems in villages" - Regrettably, we do. While the entire media focus on Croydon has been on the main areas, I can confirm that in Coulsdon, Caterham and the surrounding villages in the south of this borough - huge Conservative vote, among the biggest in the country, green, pretty much the North Downs, more expensive properties than almost anywhere else - shops have been trashed and looted.

#135 Donnie Essen - "Gotta envy those kids a touch....cool memories" - Always something slightly unnerving about your posts Donnie. It is their honesty and the way in which they hit on uncomfortable truths.

#137 Stillhomewardbound - Government has "reduced costs all round". Yes, like the human rights point, this is one that is particularly on the minds of the victims in Hackney. Who would be a policeman, a paramedic, a teacher, now?

#140 Anna - "Police can't win" - Yes and again this represents a shift. I don't think heavy policing will get a bad press for a very long time. I think we all feel that it is needed but don't want to see it in the case of ordinary demos and public events.

[Simon]

You have some interesting ideas Lat and it's good to see such differing views expressed. But for me your contributions are largely negated, I'm sorry to say, by the strange philosophy that seems to underpin so much of what you write. Your #157 para 3 is a case in point and is ill-conceived, if I may say so. Nor is it rational to lump together Nike, Apple and the PM in the way you did.

Where I think you stray into common sense is your implication that it is marketing and what has, in many people's view, become the "creation of greed". OK, so it can be resisted, and many do - but those who sit for 8 hours a day in front of a TV, have not been brought up with adequate standards of morality and who are part of a sub-culture that most of us know little about clearly find such resistance more difficult.

[Simon]

(Sorry posted last post before I'd seen your own #161. Glad to say that I agree with many of your comments in that one! :-)

#144 "We don't have these problems in villages" - Regrettably, we do. While the entire media focus on Croydon has been on the main areas, I can confirm that in Coulsdon, Caterham and the surrounding villages of the south of this borough - huge Conservative vote, among the biggest in the country, green, pretty much the North Downs, more expensive properties than almost anywhere else, shops have been trashed and looted.

Well, I don't know how big such places are, I'm afraid! But they are near London aren't they? Do they retain old families, community spirit and much history?

I really meant the little villages that I know, near to me and the other places I'm familiar with around the country. :-)

[Lateralthinking1]

In fairness, they are not villages in the standard sense - we have many more here in this "village" than a lot of towns. But it has the components. We also have a lot of youngsters sent up to here to college from central Croydon by bus. They are 90% black and we are 90% white, with a high percentage of senior citizens. We were in Surrey until 1965. The area, which desperately tries to hold on to its woodland and commons against fiercely destructive developers, is characterised by being the second highest point in Greater London. Surrey actual is about a 10 minute walk away and you can do that wholly on footpaths. -

[PJPJ]

#135 Donnie Essen - "Gotta envy those kids a touch....cool memories"

I would hope when middle-aged, crimson with shame and guilt.

[PJPJ]

And if Charlie Gilmour's mother thinks his sentence is going to be reduced after the events of the past few days.......

[scottycelt]

Yvette Cooper MP, who, unlike her rather shifty and appropriately-named husband Ed Balls, generally seems to be a relatively honest politician, said yesterday that this is not the time to be searching for convenient 'reasons' for the current murderous violence in our towns and cities but a time to devote all our energies in attempting to quell it. I suspect she speaks for the great majority of the population, and certainly most people to whom I've recently been speaking.

I've previously referred to the 'dark side' of human nature and it's now heart-warming to see the other side emerging from the rubble in the form of thousands of mainly young people (of all races) getting together in London and cleaning-up the streets affected. One of them said 'what is our country coming to?', which had me smiling for a moment, and it clearly demonstrated that this is not a generational (or racial) thing but more a simple choice between good and evil behaviour.

IMHO, it is not really any more complicated than that.

[amateur51]

Not all members of the underclass are looters or subhuman scum who don't deserve to be treated with basic human dignity. After all, are you so certain you'll always be fortunate and privileged enough to have the "prospects and a future" you enjoy today? You make good choices and haven't been struck by disaster-- are you so certain your winning streak will last? Every single one of us is about three or four really, really bad decisions (or bad breaks) away from being homeless ourselves. Poverty and destitution is closer than you think.

After tonight's concert-- like I would after any other concert-- I walked down to the dumpsters behind the High Street Kensington Tesco and gathered discarded day-old packaged food to give away to the homeless people I come across on my walk home. These aren't antisocial criminals out to burn down the world: for the most part, these are dazed, hopeless, mentally-ill alcoholics and addicts fighting their own inner battles who gave up on life and whom society forgot about.

When I walked up to one sad old man slumped on the pavement in a filthy sleeping bag and gave him an enormous bagful of day-old cakes and muffins, he was so taken aback he started to cry.

There but for the grace of God go you or I.
And if that strikes you as being a rather peculiar sentiment coming from an atheist, then so be it.

Very well put, cavatina! Thanks

[old khayyam]

Oh dear, my one post one this thread appears to have been deleted. I remember pointing out that these riots are not senseless criminality, as i have seen with my own eyes the graffito in the Hackney riot zone that mentions Cameron; And saying something about these 'kids' being tired of getting shot by policemen who never see the inside of a prison.

Consider the parrallel: My post is deleted without recourse or explanation, i get angry at the indignity, i post more to get my voice heard; i become a bit of a pest; i get shunned as an outsider by the community; i end up banned from taking part in the forum. The doors to the temple thus locked, my chances of creative expression denied, i am forced to take my unchanneled energies elsewhere..

[Lateralthinking1]

It is still there - Number 114 - but maybe you are being wholly analogous. I do accept the point from cavatina about homeless people and the one in your post ok too.

Here though is a thought. Supposing every parent made a point of saying repeatedly something along these lines - "Those trainers, they are actually worth about five quid, the price they are selling them at, and the glamour, are just one big con supported by David Cameron. He wants you to think they are like gold dust and to have them". Wouldn't that completely devalue them and remove any aspiration to acquire them?

I think there is an issue here about many parents actually believing in their value too - "I'm really sorry, if only I could afford to buy them for you". What they should be saying is we can't afford them and actually they are a load of old tat. Course it would only work if huge numbers of parents made it their mission to present it in this way.

[doversoul1]

Originally posted by cavatina #151

Not all members of the underclass are looters or subhuman scum who don't deserve to be treated with basic human dignity.

Does any of the 160 plus posts say they are?

After all, are you so certain you'll always be fortunate and privileged enough to have the "prospects and a future" you enjoy today? You make good choices and haven't been struck by disaster-- are you so certain your winning streak will last?

This seems to be your (unfound) opinion on the other posters which I find it rather out of place. You don’t seem to understand what it is that is so disturbing about this event to those who live here. I suggest you read through the thread again.

[ed] What is so disturbing is that we are seeing our own young people turning into some kind of alien creatures whose minds we cannot comprehend. We are trying to understand how this has happened. It is nothing to do with how charitable we should be or how we should be thankful for our good fortune.

[french frank]

Oh dear, my one post one this thread appears to have been deleted. I remember pointing out that these riots are not senseless criminality, as i have seen with my own eyes the graffito in the Hackney riot zone that mentions Cameron; And saying something about these 'kids' being tired of getting shot by policemen who never see the inside of a prison.

Consider the parrallel: My post is deleted without recourse or explanation, i get angry at the indignity, i post more to get my voice heard; i become a bit of a pest; i get shunned as an outsider by the community; i end up banned from taking part in the forum. The doors to the temple thus locked, my chances of creative expression denied, i am forced to take my unchanneled energies elsewhere..

Could I confirm that no posts have been deleted on this thread (or, at least, not by me - and that should mean they haven't been deleted!).

[Stillhomewardbound]

LAST NIGHT'S 'NEWSNIGHT'

* I wasn't sure if I was watching On The Hour or Not the Nine O'Clock News as some badly jafaican white 'rapper' testiculated in a most random and incoherent way watched in complete beusement by a real black person.

* Is it the case as I heard suggested last night that most of those arrested during the riots are released after being charged pending prosecution?

* Best moment of the prog. Michael Gove laying in to Harriet Harman for another 'you're going completely the wrong way around sorting out the utter mess we have made of things, though it suits me to persistently play the denial card' appearance.