London Riots

Great. Just got text messages and Facebook messages from friends and neighbours saying Hackney is kicking off again... Gonna have to cancel our artist talk at the Gallery in Shoreditch tonight.
 
Deploying the army on mainland Britain would be a big step, what happened in Northern Ireland will keep that option as a last resort (not to mention what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Suprised Larky hasn't been out with his camera.
 
Jamie123 said:
You're right and this is very important to remember. While surely no one here would condone that kind of behaviour one still has to question a society where so many young people feel like they have to loot and create chaos. They might be scumbags and criminals but why are there so many young scumbags and criminals in London? Riots of this scale always have a political component and ascerting this does not mean that one supports the actions of the rioters.
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indeed Jamie. in the race to pick a side it would be foolish to not step back a moment and ask questions. we have seen it happen on a much larger scale recently and the question 'why' still remains. unless of course the ubiquitous 'terrorist' suffices for you.
 
Jamie123 said:
You're right and this is very important to remember. While surely no one here would condone that kind of behaviour one still has to question a society where so many young people feel like they have to loot and create chaos. They might be scumbags and criminals but why are there so many young scumbags and criminals in London? Riots of this scale always have a political component and ascerting this does not mean that one supports the actions of the rioters.
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Yes we have to remember they are a product of the society we live in and have created. They haven't just randomly evolved this way. Babies/Children don't begin life bad. It's the external influences of society that create these youths in a large part.
 
true, but they should know better than looting and rioting. UK is a democratic country and people can demonstrate pacifically in public spaces, as hundred of spanish young people did for days (los indignados de porta del sol in madrid for example). I have the impression that the arab spring was born under much heavier un-democratic premises.

emraphoto said:
indeed Jamie. in the race to pick a side it would be foolish to not step back a moment and ask questions. we have seen it happen on a much larger scale recently and the question 'why' still remains. unless of course the ubiquitous 'terrorist' suffices for you.
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The answer to the question "why?", is straightforward: because they think they can get away with stealing and burning and breaking things. Real protesters give a name and a face to a cause, they don't hide behind a mask.
 
Well yes everyone should know better than to loot, riot, rape, torture, etc, etc but they still take place in societies when something has broken down.
 
tritiated said:
The answer to the question "why?", is straightforward: because they think they can get away with stealing and burning and breaking things. Real protesters give a name and a face to a cause, they don't hide behind a mask.
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I don't have the answers but that is far too simplistic!
 
tritiated said:
The answer to the question "why?", is straightforward: because they think they can get away with stealing and burning and breaking things. Real protesters give a name and a face to a cause, they don't hide behind a mask.
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well i appreciate your feelings however i wouldn't be developing public policies on so simple an approach. otherwise the possibility of a repeat would be a certainty. that would be a policy failure.

pleased don't mistake my position as an endorsement of the behavior or as an excuse. i have very strong feelings about that sort of thing (violence).
 
I think they do it because there will be a stream of do-gooders on TV saying "There, there" to them and making lame excuses for them. These "communities" already get barrowloads of taxpayers money thrown at them and look what happens. These people are not living in "poverty" (especially after they've been to Cash Converters), check out the designer clothes.

Give 'em a lick of the cat !
 
Hey, if things keep going in this country the way they are, you'll have the opportunity to get those kind of photographs right here.
 
daninjc said:
true, but they should know better than looting and rioting. UK is a democratic country and people can demonstrate pacifically in public spaces, as hundred of spanish young people did for days (los indignados de porta del sol in madrid for example). I have the impression that the arab spring was born under much heavier un-democratic premises.
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They should know better but they obviously don't. I've seen some some youtube videos of interviews of rioters and they seem both very frustrated and incredibly ignorant. While I've lived in London for a short while a couple of years ago, I can't say I follow British politics closely but I do think these riots raise a lot of questions. Where does all this anger come from and why does the bulk of the rioters seem so uneducated?

AFAIK the core of the spanish 'los indignados' protesters were students and I think the revolution in Egypt also came out of a highly educated but disenfranchised youth.
 
I don't suggest anyone is making excuses or justifying this behaviour!

I'm suggesting that the looters are motivated by a confidence that they can't be stopped in such relatively well-organised, large numbers. A precedent has been set whereby communication is much more efficient and policing this is much more difficult. The flash points are less predictable it seems. And I'd say that this confidence will bring about repeats based on this precedent, evidence of this may be seen in copycat action occurring across other cities.

These guys were always scumbags I bet. And these girls give a little taste of the 'motivation'.
 
tritiated said:
I don't suggest anyone is making excuses or justifying this behaviour!

I'm suggesting that the looters are motivated by a confidence that they can't be stopped in such relatively well-organised, large numbers. A precedent has been set whereby communication is much more efficient and policing this is much more difficult. The flash points are less predictable it seems. And I'd say that this confidence will bring about repeats based on this precedent, evidence of this may be seen in copycat action occurring across other cities.

These guys were always scumbags I bet. And these girls give a little taste of the 'motivation'.
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So do you suggest that anyone in any society would start rioting and looting if they knew they could get away with it? I know I wouldn't. Sure they might be scumbags but why are there so many of them? Does the buck stop with them? They obviously can't put all of them (and the next generations) in jail so they should look for other solutions.
 
Jamie123 said:
. Where does all this anger come from and why does the bulk of the rioters seem so uneducated?

Why "uneducated"? Maybe cause they're have-nots? Dunno what Britain is like now, but in the England my mother grew up in, there was no way anyone from her background (working class) would ever see the inside of Oxford or Cambridge.

Why such anger? Could be due in part to Cameron's austerity policies. Reminds me of something I once read by an IMF member, discussing the austerity policies that the IMF imposed on various countries--that they were imposed "until the riots got too bad."
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