LOCKED TOPIC
Carrying the Torch for London
There have been numerous competitions over the past few months for kids to enter..the prize is to carry the Olympic Torch for next year.
I don't think this is quite what they had in mind
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/in-pictures-l ondon-riots-1312800593-slideshow/
We are a nation of YOBS!!
Welcome to the London Olympics where we burn people out of their homes, loot the local shops, hurl bricks at the police, shoot people in their cars.
Take photo's of residents protecting their homes with pots and pans.
Hope you enjoy your visit.
Wondering if this behaviour will spread to Scotland, namely Glasgow...time will tell but I hope not.
Reason: Locked
Well it's spread to Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool, but they are still mostly talking about London on the news. We think some places up north are on fire or whatever, but have some more footage of London. It is horrible down there!
What planet is Home Sec lady on? The communities are begging for water cannons and for the army to move in, and she's saying they are still going to cut the polices budget because it's fine and theres more than enough police officers as it is. Really? Because this map of all the fires says otherwise.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msid=2071927 98388318292131.0004aa01af6748773e8f7&msa= 0&ie=UTF8&ll=51.536086,-0.056305&spn=0.39294,0.6 30341&z=10&source=embed
I feel so sorry for all the people who's homes and cars and livelihoods have been destroyed, and also so much anger at the ****s that have done it.
o.o
I have missed the news over the weekend becuase I had a guest and am just catching up.
The number of incidents in the map os frightening - did you read the one where a shop that was mugged called the police but nobody picked up??.
I'm getting a bit worried about my friends now. Some of them live in the most problematic areas.
It all just makes my blood boil! I actually feel a little sorry for the genuinely peaceful protestors that started this.Its now nothing to do with them whatsoever, and even if it was its no excuse. Its just people that have been brought up to KNOW that the police can't touch them and that they don't need to respect anyone or anything. And yet bizarrely they feel you owe them respect.
I was brought up on an estate in London and I worked my butt of at school to get out of that life and I'm proud I did. I've earnt everything I have. It is just so ingrained into some people now that working is optional, take everything you can even if its not yours and only look out for number one, screw everyone else.
Makes me so mad! So selfish. My heart goes out to all the families that lost their livelihoods during this.
Thank god no one has been killed yet.
How many arrests do you think will be made? Not many, after all we must respect the human rights of the looters!
Well, according to the latest news they made about hundreds of arrests but the prison cells are full so they have to cart people into the surrounding countryside.
I don't understand why they haven't used watercanons and/or teargas after night no. 1. Watercanons and teargas can be dangerous. This man was severely injured during a really rather peaceful protest against the expansion of a Southern german trainstation (they ned to chop down 400 trees to build it and it'll cost billions)
That police action was totally over the top and the chief in charge had to take his hat over this.
But looting and setting buildings on fire is a completely different ballgame than an environmental protest that had old peope and children attending.
The MET really needs to get their act together and target this mess with some heavier machinery.
But although I understand your anger, jwd, and you have oodles of my respect for escaping the Estate, I always have felt that the UK is one of those countries where it's incredibly difficult to escape from the bottom end of society. If you don't go to a good school you don't go to a good uni and without a good uni you just don't get very far (Unless you are a genius entrepeneur like Alan Sugar, but how many people really fall into the genius category? Not many). And having been in Hackney quite a lot I always felt that it's its own little universe. People just don't seem to leave that place - at all. Almost creepy considering they sit smack in the middle of London.
The English class system is incredibly rigid - at least compared to what I'm used to (Germany, where you belong to the upper 10.000 or the not-working class or the other 90% of society where it really doesn't matter if your dad was a postman or a professor. Our last chancellor came from a workingclass background and his second in command didn't finish uni and was a taxidriver for years)
I think if you have whole areas where thousands od people feel they have no future you have a real breeding ground for violence. And some of the cuts the tories are making are just insane. The tuition raise, for example (yet another obstacle that keeps people from building a cereer for themselves) Or the cut in rent support. Last time I heard from that over 20.000 households where hit by that - that is almost 20.000 families faced with homelessness in London alone. Quite a lot for one city.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not excusing any looting or rioting. Each individual doing this is a criminal and there is no excuse. But on a broader scale these riots tell you something about the state a country is in. The whole bail out of the banks where the really rich walked away unharmed while the rest of the country was plunged into poverty is not something that promotes stability.
I love the UK and I'm really unhappy to see this, but maybe the government has counted on the the general English attitude of 'keep calm and carry on' and 'don't make a fuss' a bit too long.
This is disgusting. From what I have read it looks like it was started by anarchists and other folks who are disgruntled about the state of their entitlements have joined in. Whatever the case, it reminds me of what happened a bit in Vancouver a while ago.
I honestly think this will spread to other countries. We have a serious global financial crisis and I think it will get worse. Countries that have high levels of entitlements (pretty much all of Europe) will have to cut severely. I also think the EU is pretty much done for with trying to bail out all these countries that cannot financially sustain themselves. I mean, the Germans can only do so much before they get fed up.
I don't really care what the reasoning is, there is no excuse for violence. They have no sympathy or empathy from me.
I can't say that I've ever felt glad that my grandparents are no longer alive... but I am glad they aren't around to see this.
It would break their hearts.
What I've seen on the news doesn't look like the England I know... It almost looks more like Children of Men. But I hope that's mainly because I'm just seeing the pockets of the worst of the situation and maybe the rest of the country is "normal"
I've read that "youths wearing masks" or "hooded youths" are the culprits and over 500 people arrested and 100 people charged so far.
Is all this really because of the police shooting on Thursday?
:`(
The whole thing is totally disgusting. There is no acceptable reason for that behaviour.
Crazi's about as as informed about the situation as I expect her to be.
The Tories are learning why that bleeding-heart liberal Otto Von Bismark started the first European social programs these many years ago - the Iron Chancellor was of the opinion that expecting young, strong and restless people to just grind out a miserable existence in abject poverty with no relief in sight or starve politely and quietly in the streets was a bit much.
When you cut youth programs and leave the gangs as the only option, when you cut jobs programs and leave petty crime as the only way to make a living, when you close down **** libraries and tell the poorest of the poor that society has no use for them - what the hell do you expect? Community spirit? Spontaneous outbreaks of happy dancing in the streets?
So it has nothing to do with the police shooting that kid?
That was sort of like tossing a lit match onto a gasoline-soaked ball of formless rage and frustration. It's not the first time the Met has shown themselves to be trigger-happy loons and the expectation after police killings is always that the murderer will get off scot-free, but the specific incident has probably become unimportant - rioting as part of a violent mob has its own psychology and group dynamic that carries the momentum forward is mostly divorced from the root cause.
Original Post by melkor:
Crazi's about as as informed about the situation as I expect her to be.
The Tories are learning why that bleeding-heart liberal Otto Von Bismark started the first European social programs these many years ago - the Iron Chancellor was of the opinion that expecting young, strong and restless people to just grind out a miserable existence in abject poverty with no relief in sight or starve politely and quietly in the streets was a bit much.
When you cut youth programs and leave the gangs as the only option, when you cut jobs programs and leave petty crime as the only way to make a living, when you close down **** libraries and tell the poorest of the poor that society has no use for them - what the hell do you expect? Community spirit? Spontaneous outbreaks of happy dancing in the streets?
Oh, of course. It's the thieving, looting hooligans who are the victims.
Silly crazi.
Original Post by melkor:
Crazi's about as as informed about the situation as I expect her to be.
The Tories are learning why that bleeding-heart liberal Otto Von Bismark started the first European social programs these many years ago - the Iron Chancellor was of the opinion that expecting young, strong and restless people to just grind out a miserable existence in abject poverty with no relief in sight or starve politely and quietly in the streets was a bit much.
When you cut youth programs and leave the gangs as the only option, when you cut jobs programs and leave petty crime as the only way to make a living, when you close down **** libraries and tell the poorest of the poor that society has no use for them - what the hell do you expect? Community spirit? Spontaneous outbreaks of happy dancing in the streets?
Love the passive aggressive comments. To respond to your "what do you expect?" comment, I have one of my own. When you have decades and decades of entitlements added on and on each other when a country is prosperous, what do you expect to happen when a country isn't prosperous? Although, it really goes further then that. I mean, this isn't a simple recession for one country. It's a global recession (some might argue depression) because our countries are so interconnected. So, countries that have all these programs are now overtaxing their governments and governments are forced to make harsh cuts that really hurt. Either that, or high taxes. Or both.
This is what is going on here. The government has set up so many years of entitlements and now people are absolutely dependent on them. So, when they take them away suddenly, people are angry and violence occurs. The government has set people up to fail by making them reliant not on themselves.
I feel really bad for not knowing that things were this bad there.
Half my family is over there (none live in London, though some do live not far to the south of London - and some live in Birmingham).
I guess I haven't been paying attention, because when this happened, I found it shocking. I mean, the first night, I could think it was an anomaly - after all, there have been soccer incidents and whatnot. But now... it seems far worse and I feel like I have no clue about the underlying causes.
But it clearly looks like the social fabric has come unraveled...
Original Post by melkor:
That was sort of like tossing a lit match onto a gasoline-soaked ball of formless rage and frustration. It's not the first time the Met has shown themselves to be trigger-happy loons and the expectation after police killings is always that the murderer will get off scot-free, but the specific incident has probably become unimportant - rioting as part of a violent mob has its own psychology and group dynamic that carries the momentum forward is mostly divorced from the root cause.
Yes this is very much like a small grass fire that spread and found cache of societal explosives. Instead of working toward growth and wealth for all, the politicians appeased the poor and catered to the rich. Economic growth sputtered and when the money for appeasement run out we have a huge portion of the populace that are so conditioned to getting things for free becoming angry because the free things are being diminished.
The US is not far behind.
Nomo, apparently what happened is the police shot a 29 year old gangster called Mark Duggan, who was armed, and wouldn't release any details about it. About 200 people went to peacefully protest and demand an explanation outside a police station, mostly his friends, family and neighbours. Then everything kicked of when a load of other people joined in and started setting fires and a real riot kicked off. After that it just spread, the violence is nothing to do with Duggan, it just an excuse for idiots and scum everywhere to go crazy smashing up the place and stealing new trainers. Most people have no clue who he even is. Or, at least thats what I can gather.
They should let the police have more power to deal with these ****s, they know they are in no danger from them so they have no fear, the police can't do their jobs. I'd hate to be a policeman right now.
One can understand the factors that go into triggering the riots and the massive pent-up reservoir of formless rage from Britain's Lost Generation without condoning rioting, looting and violence. Understanding the reasons and motives behind the actions doesn't translate into approving of them - there are legitimate grievances but looting Sony's distribution center for their Playstations isn't the way to address those.
But Crazi, you're still talking about the motivation for the student riots last year when the middle and lower classes discovered that their career paths to higher education had been effectively cut off. This is a different group of people, who've never had any of the so-called entitlements you're talking about.
From what I heard on the morning news 16,000 police will be on the streets tonight. They can use rubber bullets if necessary to control the mobs.
We understand the motives perfectly clearly.
What scares me is the age of these looters. Our local news reports the average looter is 14-16 years old... where are their parents? Is looting the new summer holiday activity for our children then?
Original Post by cajunrider:
Original Post by melkor:
That was sort of like tossing a lit match onto a gasoline-soaked ball of formless rage and frustration. It's not the first time the Met has shown themselves to be trigger-happy loons and the expectation after police killings is always that the murderer will get off scot-free, but the specific incident has probably become unimportant - rioting as part of a violent mob has its own psychology and group dynamic that carries the momentum forward is mostly divorced from the root cause.
Yes this is very much like a small grass fire that spread and found cache of societal explosives. Instead of working toward growth and wealth for all, the politicians appeased the poor and catered to the rich. Economic growth sputtered and when the money for appeasement run out we have a huge portion of the populace that are so conditioned to getting things for free becoming angry because the free things are being diminished.
The US is not far behind.
