Why?

Any insights?

I thought this was a good write up: http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html

While the write-up linked was well written, it didn't really say much of anything. I'm confident that if you asked 100 people about the rioting (including those rioting) you'd get 100 different reasons.

I don't really have much to say on the subject, except that it's tragic and sad. I did try to brush up on the facts yesterday, but even after a half dozen articles I was nowhere. Everything I read on the BBC's site was just composed of little bullets that contained a fact here and there but didn't really explain anything. Even when reading about the shooting that took place before the riots - couldn't find any good reportage at all. It was all just a summary sort of like this: passenger in a minicab shot by police during a scheduled operation.

I don't think there's a single cause. In Tottenham and Croyden it can be traced back to the shooting -- the local police having garnered a slight reputation, no doubt solely from a few bad apples, of being unduly trigger-happy and/or a bit racist. (Jean-Charles de Menezes, Stephen Lawrence.) If you think you're being treated as an second-class citizen, that's a fair enough reason to be a protester, and protests over less have turned to riots in the past. (Though that was before the IPCC was invented; in this case the IPCC have already refuted the original story that Mark Duggan had shot a policeman before being killed.)

Everyone else's rioting, though -- Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds -- is fairly clearly a response not to political or civil-rights issues, but to media coverage of looters gleefully making off with large televisions and not (immediately) getting arrested for doing so. That's straight-up-and-down crime, and is also tragic and sad but in a different way. And in fact you have to wonder whether it's being over-reported: to what degree is a total of two burned-out cars and a slightly pillaged footwear shop, in excess of the average daily amount of crime in a city the size of Manchester? Is it only news because it seems to make some sort of pattern with everyone else's crime? It'd be wrong to not report the rioting, but the very existence of the reporting, however dispassionate, itself can feed back into further unrest.

Incidentally, there are a lot of police mooching round Cambridge this evening.

Peter

One of the few good stories to come out of the mess.

On the other hand...

Woot's post visualized that pretty well...

Peter has pretty much summed it up succinctly. If you want to hear from one of the actual fucking retarded morons themselves, have a listen to this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9560000/9560646.stm

I genuinely weep for the future.

I don't think the people doing it really understand why they are doing it!

If there had been a media blackout (including online social) it wouldn't have spread outside of London, there is no reason for it. Just straight up crime by people who think they are untouchable. I think in the long run they will be proved wrong. For me a new set of trainers would never be worth the risk of 10 years in jail !!!

Cheers

Cris

One of those little pricks did have a point, they'll either end up with a caution or an ASBO, neither of which they seem particularly fussed about.

It's the fact they have the cheek to try and blame it all on government cuts!

All my support to you friends in the UK. I hope this stops soon. It was shocking to listen to the audio link Andy posted. Some people are just totally out of their mind.

A former MET police chief summed it up for me when he was commenting on why people were wondering why the police were apparently not doing anything.

"With the fear of being prosecuted themselves, it's safer for the actual officers to stand there and accept that bricks, bottles, etc will be thrown at them" (paraphrased)

The stockwell incident for example ended with probable use of "excessive force", but, the guy ran from armed officers, you have to accept culpability...if you run from armed police officers, you're probably going to get shot.

The bloke at the G20 protests who got pushed over and then died later of a heart attack, again, if you're going to walk through a riot, you have to accept that something may well happen. You know what, if I turned a corner on the way home and saw people rioting, I'd turn around and go the other way, regardless if it was taking me away from home.

There has to be guidelines and clearly taking someone down and beating them to an inch of their lives is not right, just or legal - but it's sad when you see scrotes on the TV inches away from cops goading them and unable to do anything.

In the last 25 years the balance of power has shifted from adults to children. You discipline your child, you run the risk of having social services involved. I'll join the group of 30+ somethings who got a slap on the backside when they did something wrong and yet turned out fine.

The law needs to change to accept that children in this century are no longer the innocent darlings that they once were, you can blame social and economic reasons all you like, but if you don't fill children with a sense of right and wrong, then you're on a loser from the start. There are plenty of young adults who have had the same struggles as those who feel "wronged" yet work hard, pay taxes and live law abiding lives.

Children now live in a world where their actions have little or no consequences.

"Don't put your hand into the fire.......I'll do it if I fucking want to"

I agree with the spirit of what you say, but disagree that the only way to raise a kid with sense in their head is to give them spankings or whatever you're suggesting. I know punishments like this are a hot topic, but I wasn't raised this way and I'm an extremely law abiding individual with only a couple entitlement issues

In no way did I suggest (or mean to) that "the only way to raise a kid with sense in their head is to give them spankings", I merely said that having the odd slap on the arse didn't do me any harm, I had a good notion of right and wrong when I was a kid.

Whilst parents still (supposedly) "legally" have this option in the UK, the law is such that if your child decides to throw your favourite vase on the floor and you smack them and tell them off, you could well find social services knocking on your door when the child tells a teacher at school, even if the measures you took were within the law. (I know somebody who is a *good* single dad who smacked one of his childrens bottom recently and ended up with a visit).

If children have no respect for their parents, how on earth can you expect children to have respect for anybody else or their property.

I was trying to get across the point that the balance of power that once was firmly in the hands of adults is now in the hands of children, it's no wonder that they feel that they can do anything when the threat of a single made up allegation is enough to strike fear into adults. I mentioned smacking to try to illustrate this point.

In the various articles I've read the word 'respect' seems to mentioned by a lot of these people, that they don't get respect from the Police and members of their communities. Now for me there are two sides to it. For some of these people I think they're confusing it with fear. That other people should really fear them, not respect them.

The other issue is that I've always thought respect is something that should be earned. Why should a hardworking Police officer on his 14th hour of duty that day respect a kid trying to loot from a shop?

My parents tried to tread a very fine line with regards to discipline, I'd hardly say my brother and I were a bunch of hooligans, but the times when I did get a thick ear or a smacked arse, I really deserved it.

Understanding why someone does what they do is not the same as justifying it, and that's a little of the tension I seem to get reading through comments about this situation (not in this thread, but on blog entries, etc).

I am too far removed from this situation to have any idea of what the real dynamics are, but in a general sense I think it's true to say that people's actions are often heavily influenced by their environment. This, however, does not negate the personal responsibility an individual has with regard to his or her behavior. In the extreme case, you may feel you have to go to war in order to stand up for yourself- this may be the right choice, but it IS a choice that has consequences. I doubt rioting ever falls into this category, though.

From the standpoint of society, you cannot really control another person's behavior, though you can set boundaries to protect yourself. You also can work toward creating a supportive environment that allows those willing/capable of making positive choices to flourish.

From what I've read, it seems like life has been hard for a lot of people in this situation and they could have been treated better. This response is certainly not positive nor justified, and I'd guess it's likely that many are taking the actions they are not in an effort to improve the situation, but because they feel they can.

I don't believe there is any credible evidence that the victim of the Stockwell incident ever ran from armed police. Everything I've seen says he had no idea there were any armed police anywhere near him until they dragged him off the train and shot him in the head. It is highly likely he didn't have a clue what was going on.

Okay, I missed the point about "shot him in the head". I had thought it was an accidental shooting or a mistaken assumption about him being armed.

That said, I thought only select groups of policemen were allowed to carry guns in the UK. Has that changed, or was this one of those special groups?

Yes.