Damn you Eunoia. You beat me too it. It seems like the 600+ arrests are doing just was is needed. So far.
I agree some people are doing it because this is their opportunity to cash in - I've been hearing from people who have been approached by people selling laptops for £20! It looks like this has been a long time coming - with the job cuts, mass unemployment there's been alot of unrest Lol about the Prime Minister (aka Mr Burns) isn't great and his second in command, Nick Clegg (aka Smithers) is pretty awful too
Children? Define children. Because to me that gives an image of 80 boy scouts threatening to tie funny shaped knots at the police.
There was an 11 year old boy arrested for looting. Everyone's calling them "youths" - I'm thinking at 21 I'm probably older than half the people causing this trouble ><
There were also photos of some of the rioters they were looking for on the news, and they all looked young and poor - as many white as not, which backs up what I've been saying from the start that it's not all race. It makes me really sad for them.
Yeah, it's not all about race. I hate how people are throwing racist remarks around. Some people are just so stereotypical. I read a comment on my local news website, and they said that basically any kid wearing a tracksuit is going to cause trouble. Ironically, her name to comment was '16 yr old with head screwed on'. Yeahhh. :/
White British person causes trouble. Other white person writes in the Daily Mail that it's the fault of immigrants. This is what I predict will happen.
Seems to be happening (cars attacked/fires etc.) in Birmingham and Manchester at the moment from what I've read on BBC's live text and:
@Dante - it's a shame that this will happen. Obviously the problems in areas like Hackney and Tottenham are a combination of social deprivation, and cultural attitudes; but some people will just look at the TV and say 'It's the blacks, we should never have let them in!'
I'm affected in that sense that all my friends think it's profoundly hilarious. Suddenly everyone thinks that the riots 'have been building up for years.'
Sadly, those two things are synonymous for many people. You're black, therefore you're foreign, therefore we don't want you in our country. I like to call the people who think that way racist c***s.
They mostly are, Dante, but ignoring underlying social issues does no-one any favours. That attitude will be found to have a lot to do with this situation.
As someone who spent more than twenty years (yes, I'm really that old) as a police officer in the south of England, my sympathies lie with the thousands of officers who are being ordered to put their lives quite literally on the line whilst being handicapped by our country's determination to show that we "police by consent", and not being given the proper tools to carry out the job in the most effective way possible, for fear that it will somehow show England in the wrong light. Already, more than a hundred of them have required hospital treatment. Let our frontline riot police have access to water cannons, rubber bullets and anything else that will help them to disperse rioters more easily, and I wouldn't rule out putting soldiers out there alongside them. Are we really so worried that these idiots who think it amusing to terrorise innocent people, to loot shops and to burn people out of their homes, might get a little too wet or bruised from turning such weapons on them? Try asking a woman living with her young child in a first floor flat while rioters attempt to set fire to the shop underneath her if she would prefer the police to stand off or if she would prefer them to come in hard using all available resources and protect their lives and property. This is no protest with an underlying political or social cause. What type of protestor with a conscience and a sense of morality would think it acceptable to cause millions of pounds of damage, burn people out of their homes and mug innocent people who just happen to be in the wrong place? For those who are determined to understand the rioters motivations - no problem - we can begin the process when order has been restored, when calm has returned to our streets and when the main troublemakers have been dealt with by the courts. But until then, let's get tough and reclaim the streets, so that ordinary people can go about their daily lives again without fear.
Football firms are organising protection in some areas, some are actually coming to the capital to protect family/friends in London. Kicking off in Nottingham now near me, Derby seems ok but some businesses are already closing for the fear of what might happen. The people are rising up, but surely the army need to be called in. Water cannons, jeeps, something like that. We can't have this. (I know lethal force wouldn't help, and rubber bullets would do little, but something has to happen). Oh, and a close friend of mine knocked out three of the c***s atleast. Hopefully the Police pick them up at some point.
Agree with everything Halcyon said. No government will do that, though, as it does not conform to PC and the dictatorship of the civil service that we now labour under.
I think they said it best on the news - this is what happens when people are no longer afraid of the police. Anyways, as someone American on one side and sort of Jewish/Scottish on the other, I have pretty much just the colour of my skin keeping me from having racist remarks thrown at me - there are many many more immigrants here, mostly Indian/black/Chinese since I think (?) those are the ethnicities that have been migrating here longest whose families are probably a lot more settled in Britain than mine are. My closest relatives aside from mum/dad/brother are a million miles away in New Mexico So to me the "immigrants" thing is just plain ridiculous. I've got to respect their right to live on this land if I want them to respect mine. Hence why I'm getting just so annoyed about people saying that sort of racist thing about the rioters. Not like I want to defend them - I just hate the attitude everyone else is using too. Gods this thing sucks from every angle.
My uncle's working in Birmingham right near the rioting. He says he's seen looters and thugs running by his bedroom window carrying LCD TVs freshly plucked from the shops they just broke into. =/ Thankfully it hasn't all broken out where I live now, but it's all hell right where I was living just a few months ago. The cinema and shops I frequented whilst at uni have been attacked and the rioting is unbelievable. I still technically rent the place so I could very well have been in the thick of it. Anyone living in the targeted areas, please, for god's sake be safe. I can't believe our own people are doing this.
Not to cause offense, but if I were the PM, I'd unleash every law enforcing organization from the police to the military on these rioters. They do this because they think the law can't stop them. I wonder how they'd react if they saw tanks and armed men and women running at them. Especially if on the other side are the police.