British Riots Rage; Authorities At A Loss+

Penguin wrote:

This seems to be running off of the assumption that rioting is legitimate behavior. Somath seems to be coming from the angle that if you're pissed off enough to be violent over something, your violence ought to be directed at the source of your anger, instead of just random people who haven't done shit to you. Which, I gotta say, is completely reasonable.

Somath Cegem wrote:

And [rioting] is okay how?

I'm not condoning the riots the slightest bit [shops within a 5 minute walk from my house closed early today and I had to walk home through groups of people on corners/in parked cars acting aggresively towards other people including myself - of course I don't think this is legitimate behaviour, Penguin]. However, they're happening, and there's nothing we can do about it right now. Rather than point fingers and blame the victims of 30 years of mistreatment from the government, I'm trying to understand why rioters are rioting. It seems pretty obvious, but for some reason people don't seem to grasp it! Hence my vitirol.

Somath Cegem wrote:

People are wrong for wanting this to stop why?

[/quote]
People are wrong for demonising rioters and refusing to try and understand the causes for their actions. People are wrong for brushing said problems rioters have with bullshit like "Oh, they're just poor because they're angry because they're poor!"

People like you are wrong because you think rioters should have at least carried themselves like decent folk, without giving a single thought to their circumstances, upbringing and future. You are showing no empathy and are not in the educated position to comment on these people.

Quote :

So basically what you are saying is that these people just don't give a shit about anything and just want to make a mess as revenge against the world, even if the people they are attacking are only guilty of just trying to keep there own head above water and working each day to do so.

Imagine you are living in poverty in a deprived part of the country. Say, for instance, a city/town that once had a thriving industry-driven community torn out of it by Margaret Thatcher destroying any power the unions had. There are 50 people on the dole for every job that is available. Most of those jobs are short-term contracts in places like Argos, or a call centre. Your parents [if you were lucky to have them both around!] were unemployed or worked mininum wage, meaning that they couldn't provide for you. In the media is nothing but representations of smug pricks living the high life, bankers getting millions of pounds, politicians lying and cheating and taking time off to go to Tuscany/Florida/whereever. The majority of people who report on this are middle-class and had a relatively normal upbringing. Of course, you don't know this because you were taught poorly by your school and didn't have an adequate role model around to teach you, so you have no awareness of the class divide. You blindly aspire for what you see. These people wo run the media have been comfortably raised for enough generations now that any semblence of down-to-earthness has all but been rubbed out, so that the only time they experience actions from your kind gets represented in the media through criminal reports. Social critics comment on how this is all-too-common amongst the "underclass", and you have no means of telling them otherwise because most of the means of contacting people who matter (i.e. Union reps) don't exist any more because Thatcher erased them all. Even then, you can't contact a union because you are unemployed. You don't even know how Unions work, because nobody taught you how.

You are made fun of endlessly in television shows and music and books and everything else by people who are better off than you for, all for a cheap laugh, yet you see those elements within your community day-in day-out but with all humour removed. You try to protest yet are ignored by most people because your problems aren't interesting to them and they have been conditioned to believe that they shouldn't care about you. The media, through newspapers like The Daily Mail/The Express/The Sun and through sketch shows like Wayne & Waynetta Slob/Vicky Pollard have tried to encourage the belief that poor people bring their poor circumstances upon themselves. You get laughed at, and get told to get a job. But there aren't any jobs! All of the jobs that you qualify for only pay mininum wage and you would just make more money from benefits any way. People already make fun of you and don't care about you, so why should you care what they think? But then the government start cutting your benefits. They tell you to get a job. There aren't any. You get sanctioned, and have to either go homeless, or return to your unemployed parents and get called a failure/get told to get a job. You have no money. You have no opportunities. You have no education.

What would you do?

Spoiler:

edit: shut up, Harley.

edit 2: here is a good piece on why the riots in Tottenham kicked off

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

You're insulting Mark Duggan's family, Reep. They totally denounce this violence.

I am not really sure what that has to do with anything I said, Harl.

Coming out of my lurkdom to give my views.

I'm living in a part of London where these riots are happening. A bunch of supermarkets got hit last night, so food's a problem. Worse, all the local shops on my nearest street have been smashed. These aren't big business, but shops run by single families living above them.

Do you want to know the shops being hit most? Sports shops, electronics shops and places that sell alcohol. I've watched people walking down my street back to their houses toting big flatscreen boxes. A workmate was telling me how he'd passed JD Sports and saw the hoodied crowds gathering round. Now the police are stretched and people are in the mood for disorder, I'm hearing of women being mugged in the day.

It started off as a riot, but in this part of town it's obvious people are jumping on the bandwagon to get themselves some new shoes while everyone else is.

Okay Chip.

1. I live here the site of the world famous steel works that was all but decimated by the thatcher government and have done since I was 11.

2. Have have spent my entire working life either in crappy ass minimum wage jobs or unemployed.

3. My benefits have been slashed by 40% in the last week.

And you know what I'm fucking doing about it? I keep looking for work, I'm clawing my way through an OU degree and educating myself and I am still living at home and desperately aware of the fact that I'm rapidly reaching an age where that will not fly socially.

That enough info for ya Chip?

Somath Cegem wrote:

That enough info for ya Chip?

No. You haven't told me about your circumstances, to begin with - what the quality of teaching you had at 6 years old was, or if you went to suitably-funded youth clubs in your pre-teens, or if your parents had well-paying jobs and their parents before them gave them a decent life to learn from and pass on. You haven't told me if you have any strong role models who influenced you in your life. Did they take part in Right-to-Buy? Have they even owned a council house? These are just as essential to a person's development as much as what I've mentioned already, if not more so: to boot, there are countless more deciding factors from places outside the areas of one's direct upbringing, and chances are you cannot answer for most of them them because from the day you are born these are making an impact on what you grow into, and many are kept from common public knowledge. You basically described where I would be had I not have found a short-term job contract at the beginning of the year. I can't for the life of me describe why I'm one of the lucky few to have got to where I am, but I'm aware that these many elements of development exist and chances are one of them smiled at me at the right time without my knowing. Hence me not prancing around tutting at those nasty underclass for not acting to my dignified and strategic standards when it comes to knowing how to kick off and smash shit up.

Either you're leaving something out that is detrimental to your development and circumstances (option A), you're unaware of what helped you develop in the first place (B), you're unfortunate enough to have fallen into the New Labour trap of "We're all Middle Class now except for the dumb uneducated peoples!" and let that mindset make it impossible for you to care about people less well off than you (C), or you're just an uncaring stupid asshole(D). What is it? Personally, I'm going for a mix of option B + C, considering your first post itt was essentially "sure there are a few good'uns but everything is being ruined by dumb uneducated people wanting to nick things and offend me", with a side order of "hlorf blorf rioters should just think like rational decent human beings like myself".

If you ever want to know if you've provided me with enough information on how to crack the enigma of why some people in poverty riot when others don't, then you better write me a fucking full-length autobiography and then fetch me the 100+ page memoirs of every other poor 20-something who exists. And a fountain of youth. Maybe then I'll change my answer

Godzilla wrote:

It started off as a riot, but in this part of town it's obvious people are jumping on the bandwagon to get themselves some new shoes while everyone else is.

I accept that to a degree, but it's too easy to demonise and ignore what is happening on the ground in these dreadfully deprived areas. This problem has been fuelled by years of neglect by successive governments and local councils, and taken up by young (mostly) men who have no stake in the system and no prospect of any.

I just wish it wasn't happening in my city. I live about halfway between Tottenham (scene of the first riots) and Walthamstow (scene of subsequent trouble). I'm really scared they'll start on the high road near where I live tonight. They probably won't, but it's obviously a worry. Having said that, I still don't think people can ignore what's causing it, and it's not just greed.

Just, Chip, be safe, yeah? I'm always worried enough about ZoZo as it is. :/

Understanding that years of buildup to this doesn't mean that actually doing it is because of it.

Please, try to remember that these people aren't just rioting against authority by petrol bombing a police station or turning on the police. WAY too many of them are simply looting stores - and not just dashing out but sending messages around to all their pals "Let's loot shops, start some fires, get free stuff".

Does that sound like Chip's lecture on social deprivation and poverty?

No, that's not what happens when bad neighbourhoods get angry with their being treated badly by the authorities, that's what happens when natural born assholes get active, and then more people join them.

Chipper is basically trying to say that people getting angry has a deep-seated decades old cause.

Which may be true, but you know what? I just want the looting to quit, and then we can get onto fixing that boiling pot.

If these creeps were angry at the police, there'd be some major confrontations in London, but the strange thing is that more police has resulted in relative CALM.

You know, like when cops come down on criminals, not people with a cause.

Harley, didn't you say (repeatedly) that you have Asperger's? How could you possibly be qualified to speculate on people's reasons and mindsets?

You seem to think that being pissed off at the police and looting are mutually exclusive, that people who are REALLY angry at the police would be fighting with them, and not stealing from electronic stores. But why would anyone willingly engage with the police when they know it's going to get them killed? Even when they have a cause, most people aren't willing to martyr themselves for it (they may have cildren or loved ones, they may have elderly parents to take care of, or hey, they might just not want to die, which isn't a character flaw in my book). So these people are getting their revenge in other ways, aiming their anger at bystanders, because they're afraid of the police. And why wouldn't they be? The police killed a guy. They beat up a sixteen-year-old in front of peaceful protesters. They're corrupt. The police are dangerous. So they pour out their resentment on the higher classes. They steal electronics and sports equipment because, what the hell, it's not like they'll ever have the money to afford this stuff legally. They'll never have nice homes or own stores, like those higher up the social ladder. Depressingly, this is as good as it gets for many of them. Think about that: the only way to improve their lives just a sliver is by looting.

I think Chip is absolutely right, and I take Chip's side in this debate.

Azzandra wrote:

I think Chip is absolutely right, and I take Chip's side in this debate.

Yup.

Also: Why expect the poor to behave themselves, when The rich, The police and the Government have been at it and getting away with it for years?

From the horses mouth.


It ain't just the poor who loot.

When I first heard about this, all I could think of was that episode of Bottom where Richie and Eddie are leaning out their apartment window watching the Hammersmith riots, waiting for the front window of Curry's to blow before they go looting.

By the by, is it true that a hoodie nicked a plasma screen TV from some department store, then waited patiently at the pedestrian crossing with the stolen TV under his arm for the light to turn green?

Azzandra wrote:

But why would anyone willingly engage with the police when they know it's going to get them killed?

That is what I was going to say. You srsly think that the fact that the areas with more police have less rioting is proof the rioters do not care about police brutality, Harley? WTF? You really are incapable of seeing anything from any perpective other than your own, huh?

Azzandra wrote:

Harley, didn't you say (repeatedly) that you have Asperger's? How could you possibly be qualified to speculate on people's reasons and mindsets?

Someone with AS can speculate on people's reasons and mindsets just fine. Harley can't do it because she's a delusional fuckwit.

Quote :

You seem to think that being pissed off at the police and looting are mutually exclusive, that people who are REALLY angry at the police would be fighting with them, and not stealing from electronic stores. But why would anyone willingly engage with the police when they know it's going to get them killed? Even when they have a cause, most people aren't willing to martyr themselves for it (they may have cildren or loved ones, they may have elderly parents to take care of, or hey, they might just not want to die, which isn't a character flaw in my book). So these people are getting their revenge in other ways, aiming their anger at bystanders, because they're afraid of the police. And why wouldn't they be? The police killed a guy. They beat up a sixteen-year-old in front of peaceful protesters. They're corrupt. The police are dangerous. So they pour out their resentment on the higher classes. They steal electronics and sports equipment because, what the hell, it's not like they'll ever have the money to afford this stuff legally. They'll never have nice homes or own stores, like those higher up the social ladder. Depressingly, this is as good as it gets for many of them. Think about that: the only way to improve their lives just a sliver is by looting.

I think Chip is absolutely right, and I take Chip's side in this debate.

I dunno, Chip at least denied condoning riots while trying to understand them. You seem to be condoning it, with the same logic that someone who is bullied should kick a puppy.

Christ, this is scary. Riots are never good times. I'm hoping y'all don't end up with your very own L.A. Riots. Six days of mayhem, with thousands injured and fifty-three dead. So far, you all say no one has died, which is likely due to the fact that we in the United States have more access to firearms than you do. (No I'm not bashing the second amendment, I'm saying that guns in the hands of angry people = dead people.)

And the thing is, I agree with Chipper. I can absolutely see how this happened, the same way we can look back and definitely see the tipping point for L.A.

It's also absolutely terrifying. I hope Somath and Chipper (And Godzilla, even though I don't know you) stay safe.

Also, Harley. Please be shutting the fuck up now.

Lapin wrote:

Christ, this is scary. Riots are never good times. I'm hoping y'all don't end up with your very own L.A. Riots. Six days of mayhem, with thousands injured and fifty-three dead. So far, you all say no one has died, which is likely due to the fact that we in the United States have more access to firearms than you do. (No I'm not bashing the second amendment, I'm saying that guns in the hands of angry people = dead people.)

Only when your cops are chickenshit and leave the citizens to fend for themselves.

Penguin wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Christ, this is scary. Riots are never good times. I'm hoping y'all don't end up with your very own L.A. Riots. Six days of mayhem, with thousands injured and fifty-three dead. So far, you all say no one has died, which is likely due to the fact that we in the United States have more access to firearms than you do. (No I'm not bashing the second amendment, I'm saying that guns in the hands of angry people = dead people.)

Only when your cops are chickenshit and leave the citizens to fend for themselves.

Maybe I'm just having poor reading comprehension, but I'm not understanding why you're linking me back up the page.

I don't know what country Azzandra is living in, but police aren't supposed to kill people in the UK. Also Aspergers has nothing to do with lacking empathy. I see Azzandra lacks a brain but it doesn't stop her from typing.

Also, it's high-goods businesses being hit by looters. As soon as the police come down the street, they run for it. Because they're thieves, not protestors. Walking about with their hoods covering their faces and wearing so that they can attack shops. Does that sound like somebody I want to excuse?

WD40 is right - it's not just poor people looting. A lot of these people steal these things to sell them off later, or look big in front of their mates. Nothing to do with being poor or feeling victimised.

Oh, look at those poor oppressed people!

I'm feeling a little oppressed by the government myself right now, with their cutbacks to social services and so on, but you don't see me smashing up the high street.

Penguin wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Christ, this is scary. Riots are never good times. I'm hoping y'all don't end up with your very own L.A. Riots. Six days of mayhem, with thousands injured and fifty-three dead. So far, you all say no one has died, which is likely due to the fact that we in the United States have more access to firearms than you do. (No I'm not bashing the second amendment, I'm saying that guns in the hands of angry people = dead people.)

Only when your cops are chickenshit and leave the citizens to fend for themselves.

Well, what are they meant to do, Penguin? This whole thing kicked off because they shot a guy. Should, should they baton-charge the rioters now, see if that makes things better? Maybe they've been told "let the fucking scum burn their own places to the ground, better than us getting sued for cracking their heads open".

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

WD40 is right - it's not just poor people looting. A lot of these people steal these things to sell them off later, or look big in front of their mates. Nothing to do with being poor or feeling victimised.

I think his point was that the upper classes, banks, etc pp, do a lot more financial damage and have a lot bigger personal profit than any of these people stealing TVs.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Christ, this is scary. Riots are never good times. I'm hoping y'all don't end up with your very own L.A. Riots. Six days of mayhem, with thousands injured and fifty-three dead. So far, you all say no one has died, which is likely due to the fact that we in the United States have more access to firearms than you do. (No I'm not bashing the second amendment, I'm saying that guns in the hands of angry people = dead people.)

Only when your cops are chickenshit and leave the citizens to fend for themselves.

Well, what are they meant to do, Penguin? This whole thing kicked off because they shot a guy. Should, should they baton-charge the rioters now, see if that makes things better? Maybe they've been told "let the fucking scum burn their own places to the ground, better than us getting sued for cracking their heads open".

Nothing happened because a guy got shot. That's still being looked into. Scumbags took advantage of a peaceful protest to have an excuse to smash windows and rob places. They would have used a protest about daisies to start their violent antics. Some people go to football matches just to start football riots.

Lapin wrote:

Maybe I'm just having poor reading comprehension, but I'm not understanding why you're linking me back up the page.

Ugh, copypasta fail. Should've led here.

Lapin wrote:

It's also absolutely terrifying. I hope Somath and Chipper (And Godzilla, even though I don't know you) stay safe..

You missed me off. Should I be concerned? (Though actually, tonight's shenanigans seem to have taken place in Birmingham and West Bromwich. I can understand anyone rioting if they're forced to live in West Bromwich.)

Hey, I live in the Midlands too. How come nobody's concerned about me? A police helicopter flew over a couple of hours ago.

Aw, I hope you are OK, Lex.