Be Excellent To Each Other

Yup, your post above was spot on too.

<narrows eyes>

Bated breath.

I'd like to think that I may have had a more balanced view on this, until last night as I walked up my street and a group of 10 youths (I hate that word) of mixed race, all appearing to be under 18, were walking down the road discussing where they were going 'shopping'. Tooled up. Unfortunately for them, the petrol station had just turned off the taps.

What happened in many cases last night (in my view) had nothing to do with the police, or the guy being shot. It was to do with the realisation that after Tottenham, and then Brixton, enough bodies operating in the same area could do so with (immediate) impunity, as the police would be overwhelmed. I don't think either, that 100% of us condemning this could say with absolute certainty that if we had been 16, and in that place at that time, that we wouldn't have joined in under the circumstances. I refer to the Lavender Hill looting at Clapham Junction for potential evidence of that.

Also, although it is difficult to believe, there were not that many people involved, in the context of the number of Londoners below the poverty line or of that age set. With sporadic events occurring all over the city, it will have been relatively easy to overwhelm local forces who wouldn't have been able to call in reinforcements from surrounding areas, due to the level of incidents, both real and misreported. This isn't a populist uprising, even of one social group.

Also, if you read the Telegraph live feed last night, they were publishing the BBM calling out messages that they received. Again, these weren't messages of anger or protest, they were opportunism at safety in numbers.

Tonight will, I fear, be worse. I think individual areas will be spurred by last nights events and a game of one-upmanship.

Bizarrely, this was one of my first thoughts after waking this morning.

I have confirmation that the bull still has his head from a lawyer. So we can trust her.

Some very interesting posts in this thread folks, thanks. I don't have much to add, but just hoping everyone is safe.

That does look like a photoshop, to be fair.

I don't know if it is or it isn't but this is certainly real.

Griffin was being his usual vile shit of a man all yesterday.

http://errorlevelanalysis.com/permalink/32f077f/

Heavily compressed, but evidence of tempering around the neck

edit: also, the window behind is a clone job

Yeah, I think I was saying something similar to that a page or two back, and I completely agree.



No, actually I can. I certainly would never have got involved in that sort of thing. Ever.

I’ve always been a law abiding person, other than underage drinking, but even that I did with the right level of fear of being caught, which prevented me from getting plastered and wandering around causing fights like teenagers do these days.

There was something in a Terry Pratchett novel about how when you compare the number of people to the number of police, it seems miraculous that people don’t realise they have the weight of numbers and could, if they wanted, do what they like. Vimes put the miraculous control down to the little policeman in everyone’s heads, looking over their shoulder as it were, and when that fear of authority disappears, the people realise how little power the state actually has to control them.


As to why all of this is happening, I think DavPaz has hit on part of it, but the "me too" opportunism combined with the growing lack of giving a shit seems, at least to this admittedly partial observer, to be the main reason. Kids have been growing ever more happy to commit fairly horrible crimes - witness the rash of stabbings in London a couple of years back, the happy slapping broohaha (although I accept that may not have been as prevalent as oportrayed) and so on.

However, why that may be is another question. As someone said earlier, SA maybe, or Grim..., the parents are certainly to blame here, but who's to blame for those parents being shit?

I dunno.

I also don't see how this is going to end well. This isn't like the poll tax riots, where there was a civil uprising in relation to a specific issue (albeit the straw that broke the came's back after Thatcher's years of beating the working class), where the government can just say, “Okay, we give in, here’s all the money”. This just seems a massive underlying malaise, and a realisation that there’s a potential outlet for it.

And on a more practical level, I really can’t see what the police can do to prevent this happening again tonight, given that they’ve already been doing all they can and are overstretched. I just hope Cameron doesn't get all gung ho in his cobra meeting to show that he was thinking about all this really hard while supping his cappucino in Tuscany.

I don't think that the police are doing all they can. I think that they have deliberately (at a high level) decided to stand back, mostly out of fear of escalating things by being filmed beating up rioters and then there being an outcry about how mean they were to the poor little looters.

Or, more cynically, to show people what happens when the police are not allowed to stop these things physically, to allow them to be granted more of a mandate to use non-lethal weapons and crowd dispersal tactics.

I have suspicions that tonight will be the nasty one, where the authorities realise that just forming walls and observing won't stop this happening over and over again, so will look to try more aggressive actions.

Who do you think swung that axe? Thatcher? That's a very common view, but it's not one I share. I think that long before Thatcher closed mines and shipyards, those jobs had already (economically speaking) moved to cheaper countries abroad; for any individual government to hold back globalisation is like trying to bail out the rising tide with a bucket. All you can do is roll with it as best you can. I'd also argue that the loss of a few million Brits led to an enormous improvement in the working conditions and standards of living for hundreds of millions of Chinese, and that's not a net loss for humanity.

This put me in mind of something from earlier in the thread:It's true, I'm well off now, and I have two degrees. But my parents didn't have two O-levels to rub together; my father was, for many years, a chemical technician and my mother worked as a bingo caller and later an assembly line worker (all these places of employment are still operating, incidentally). I went to a state-run comprehensive school and sixth form. I'm the oldest of all the cousins on my father's side, so I was the first person of my immediate family to go to university -- and I left with the typical modern chunk of student debt, which I have since repaid. I received zero financial help from my father at university, although I did receive a little bit from my mother's pension fund after she died.

And remember, I'm 33 -- so all this happened less than 20 years ago. I'm unclear what, exactly, you believe has changed so radically in the intervening less-than-two-decades that has apparently shut so many doors so as to justify this behaviour.

A side issue is that with other places kicking off, local police might already be in London, causing further manpower issues.
Whilst order has to be restored, I would feel a bit uncomfortable if they brought the army out.

Oh you big cynic. I'm amazed you didn't mention the fact that the 20% cut to the police budget is about to hit, as that doubtless has nothing at all to do with any of this.

May on Today this morning seemed to suggest that police had been doing all they could, mind. I'm not sure how well that went down with Godwin.

Cras - Yeah, possibly, then again maybe not. The fear of provoking more widespread uprising may be a factor - fine, break out the rubber bullets, but then the bugger misses and hits an old lady.

How's Catford looking this morning?

It's a good job most of the senior police officers haven't just resigned over what suddenly seems like a mere trifle.

Overheard by the tea machine

"Now that the Prime Minister's back, he should make a law against all this rioting"

A couple of burned out cars and smashed in windows. Lewisham council are bloody good a clearing stuff up though.

Just discussing this at work. We think the Army could be a bad idea, but what options are left?

You have a tea machine with an eavesdropping setting?

Nuke London from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I'm pretty damn sure that I wouldn't have got involved. However, my mind does turn back to 'safety of the mob' and things that happened around me that I would hear about on Monday morning in sixth form. People trashing all the wing mirrors on cas parked on a given road, jumping the counter in McDonalds on a saturday night when the guys back was turned, organised stealing. These people are largely now successful middle class people from the middle class families they were brought up in, but given safety in numbers, acted like dicks. Crasters comment that people were queueing up outside a shop waiting for someone to come along and break the window made me think of that.

I think the worse I ever did was join in with the 'Who can steal most stuff from the petrol station outside the school gates - Winner Takes All challenge' and I'm appalled that I did that.

We send Craster out into the streets wrapped in tinfoil and hope people think he's Robocop. And don't have grenades.

It's safer to fight the police than it is to fight the mob.

Used to it aren't they?

Riots aren't that big a deal. Riots in these numbers are. When my dad was a fireman, they used to have a nightly fire on an estate round the corner from the firestation where they would be met by 50+ kids with rocks and other weapons, that happened with such regularity it wasn't reported.

Not everyone is academically minded and the lack of opportunities for those who aren't is the problem. The exceptional few will always be fine.

I'm not claiming to know why it happened, but rather just stating that the loss of the jobs ruined many people's lives. As I said at the start of my post, it's an observation of my own home town and the people within.

Jobs are available to those who are willing to work. Sadly the education system has raised a generation of cosseted, unrealistic teenagers who've been told their entire life that they can be whatever they want to be. These kids won't do the shit jobs as they see manual work as beneath them, even if they are a barely literate drop out with 'interesting' hair.

/sigh

Blair lost more jobs to India than Thatcher did with the mines and so on, difference is that you can see the mines

Certainly true, and I've banged on here about vocational qualfiications being given more prominence in this country.

However, despite that, the choice isn't between "academic success" and "being a cunt".

Darcus Howe is being very angry on BBC news.

"A police officer blew [Duggans] head off" he said. "[The police]..stopping and searching young blacks for no reasons at all"

He doesn't call it rioting it's "An insurrection of the people. it's happening in Clapham, Syria (etc)".

Yes, the people who went out to smash stuff up did so through their own free choice and should be dealt with accordingly. However none of that absolves society of its responsibility to figure out what the fuck is going on and why.

No, I agree - I was being unhelpfully facetious.

Can the rozzers do him for incitement? The twat.

Jesus fuck -

#block-41">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/ ... e#block-41

"This deeply unpleasant YouTube video appears to show a couple of opportunists stealing from an injured and dazed boy. The person who pointed us to it adds:

"A poor lad, obviously in distress, sits bleeding on the ground. He is 'helped' up and then robbed. This is bottom of the barrel, I hope who did this get what's coming.""

Darcus Howe is a coco shunter.

Also, that shop isn't there anymore.

They've just showed that on BBC news. Not terribly nice.

I had no idea there was any rioting until now. Maybe I should read the news more?

Bloody looters!

Indeed. That Thatcher's a bitch.

I... what?

Everyone's probably seen it already but:

I demand you go and watch 'Brass Eye'.

The response to the riots in terms of the @riotcleanup account, the #riotcleanup hashtag and the #riotwombles one has been quite heartening. Apparently most places have had everything cleaned away already!

If more stuff gets broken tonight I'm half tempted to take a day off and help out.

Feex

Oh, dear. Oh, dear oh dear oh dear.

Ahem...

Riot Wombles is quite funny

Are you proud of what you've done?!

Pity they didn't loot waterstones.