I hope so. But where Murdoch is concerned I can't help but wonder whether it's just a white-collar version of the same thing.
Watching the morons attacking the Arndale Centre last night, my dad looked up from his magazine, raised an eyebrow, and said "The IRA did a much better job of destroying that place." (For clarification: I was born and grew up in the north west, and my dad worked in an office at the Arndale centre until the IRA blew it up)
of course, but it makes you wonder what kind of community would riot in the name of a man that was as nothing more than a lowly thug and gangster. I may not need to. I searched Wikipedia for tottenham, England, where these riots started. Apparently it has the largest afro-carribean community in England. The U.K., in my opinion, is the most politically correct society in the western world. I feel this way just from watching things like the BBC and passively following its politics and independent reporters. A politically correct establishment does its best to simply sugar-coat or deny the many problems of society that are ethnic/social. The worst is when the attempt to overshadow the real problems by grossly exaggerating something like white racism to keep divert people's attention. These riots seem fueled by an mix of social and ethnic angst amongst the U.K.'s lower class, likely the Afro-Caribbean community in particular. I can only imagine their economic condition when lower-income jobs are being held by over-educated whites, and their locked into poverty by the welfare trap. This clearly started as a race riot to me. As its grown though it does appear to have evolved into entirely something else, and I'm not there personally to make an honest assessment. I'm getting a sense of a kind of mass, hysterical chaos perpetrated by the morally decrepit in economic stagnation; random, materialistic hate and violence that I'm afraid one day will be a common occurrence in the western world.
I must say I am puzzled by Digitig's assertion that rubber bullets and water cannons would prove ineffective in these riots. Where a group of rioters are determinedly breaking into shops or setting fires to buildings and thus endangering lives, then these are ideal weapons for forcibly removing them. I'm sure that if we again see riots on the scale of those from a couple of nights ago, then these weapons will be utilised, and rightly so. As for not publicising where the next trouble-spots are predicted, I'm afraid that this is absolutely essential information. Can you imagine innocent members of the public being seriously injured or even killed because they unknowingly wandered into a war zone, and then it being revealed that the police knew that there was going to be trouble in that location, but had decided against telling anybody? As for trouble spreading to Scotland, let's be clear that this is currently an English problem, and that there are no credible predictions for disturbances on anything like this scale north of the border. Scotland has its own culture and its own set of problems, but one advantage of having very few blacks is that it severely limits the opportunity of instigating a riot on the spurious grounds of police racism.
I'm sorry, you can't make sweeping statements about this from reading an unconnected wikipedia article. There might be a large afro-caribbean population in Tottenham, but a) there were plenty of white and asian people involved too, and b) their grievance was with the police and their poor communication. Maybe you class any disorder involving people of an ethnic minority as a race riot, but that seems daft to me. Having been watching this the whole way through, and being very close to it geographically, I can categorically say that this is in no way a direct issue of race.
You can tell that by looking at him? In England we have things called "courts" to make that decision. So from the fact that most of the rioters were black in an area where most of the population is black, you conclude that it was a race-riot? Would you make the same inference if most of the rioters were white in an area where most of the population is white? You seem to be assuming that black people can only riot on racial grounds, which would be a rather racist assumption. Possibly the most politically-correct English-speaking society in the Western world, although I think the USA could give us a run for that title. Certainly Scandinavia makes us both seem very politically incorrect. Political correctness is not about sugar-coating or ignoring problems, it's about not giving needless offence. The last thing Brits are going to do is gloss over problems -- our national pastime is moaning about how bad everything is! I'd be interested to know how you know more about what the real issues are in the UK, more than a Brit living in London in a mixed-race marriage. My wife is non-white, and the racism she and friends of the same race have suffered at the hands of white people vastly outweighs the racism I or any other white people I know have suffered. In fact, the only racism I have ever suffered was antisemitic, and I'm not even Jewish (I look a bit as if I might be). My wife has been told by one employer that she would never get promotion because the employer (a major national charity) said that they would never consider having a non-white in management. She sued another company for telling her in writing that they only wanted white men on the team (they settled out of court for everything she asked for). I used to think that white racism in the UK was greatly exaggerated, because it's usually hidden. I was wrong, and so are you. The English are usually too polite to shout racial abuse on the street, although it happens (it's happened to my wife), or to push excreta through letterboxes, although it happens (it's happened to my wife's friends. No, the English tend just to politely but firmly exclude them, and then act surprised when people complain about being excluded. There are elements of that, but there's also a big element of white supremacists trying to turn it into that (some of those identified as sending tweets inciting the riots have been identified as being connected with the BNP, a white racist political party), and actually many of the rioters seem to be spoiled middle-class kids, many of them employed. Many of these people "locked into poverty" were communicating using blackberries, which I can't afford. Even if they stole them, somebody must have been paying for a data package that I can't afford. It pretty clearly didn't, as I see it (and I used to live in the next district along from Tottenham, so I know it pretty well). There seem to be almost as many motives as there are participants, although the most common one seems to be that they feel it would be daft to pass up on free stuff. And that motivation isn't limited to the poor.
We are definitely not the most PC country in the world, you should see New Zealand...... The point is that the riots weren't racial at all. They kicked off in Tottenham because a bloke happened to be shot from that part of London. If it had happened somewhere else in London, the same thing would have happened. Look at the riots around the place, if you saw the footage that we see you'd know it wasn't a racial thing. It started as a protest, things got flared, and then scum from the suburbs just started looting and burning things. The economy has alot to do with it, but it's mainly the youth (the 'scum' youth) of England rioting and taking what they can while they know that it's affecting everyone. If they rob somewhere as a one off, they're likely to be stopped. While the country is currently gripped with London, elsewhere people saw an oppurtunity and took it. Nothing racial in this at all, no-one has suggested this in Britain. Please do not make assumptions just because it started in a mainly black area. (Aside from the BNP, if they were dropped into a pit of fire I wouldn't care less).
It's not my assertion; I don't know squat about riot control. It's what the police experts have been saying on TV. Having a rolling banner on a TV news channel listing the shopping centres that don't have a police presence or announcing that police are being removed from one area to another is not "publicising where the next trouble-spots are predicted", it's creating the next trouble spots. Why do you assume the riots in England were instigated on the grounds of police racism? That's not what I see here, and I've been pretty close to some of the riots. A lot of people who are not involved seem very keen to invoke race, though. Is it so unthinkable that riots might not be racially motivated, but might be more like the student protests or the anti-globalisation protests? All of the people I've heard interviewed have said that it was about "the rich" or "the government", none have said it was about race. Anyway, I hear it's raining in the north, so things should quieten down there.
The use of Watercannons is indeed pointless, this is not an insertion but a fact. They're good when facing large masses of people who're in one place (For example if a big protest got out of line and a large chunk of people were marching together) but against the rioters that we've got now they're useless. The ones we have currently are basically using guerilla warfare, they're throwing stuff and moving, and only in small packs. They are not massing, they're looting/burning, then throwing rocks, then running off. Rubber bullets aren't going to help much unless they start peppering police alot more, or start using guns themselves. I've heard that a shot was fired in Birmingham last night but little has been made of it by the media so presumably it wasn't true. Plus they're going to kill people with those, best not to stir up even more resistance when we inevitably kill some 14 year old looter while firing into a crowd. Once again, these are not racial riots, they're general riots that happened to start in a mainly black area. Nothing more, nothing less.
Your ignorance is stunning. So Salford, Manchester etc are likely the Afro-Caribbean community in particular. ? Check yer facts son & then come back & have an informed discussion.
Have you seen the picture of him holding up his gang signs, wearing bling and emulating the trash culture we've made here in America? No, I can't tell exactly who he is just by looking at him, but sometimes you must infer things by what your gut is telling you, and because the information from the media can be mere lies. This time, my gut tells me that the media downplays or ignores the criminality of this man in order to protect us of from the simple fact that a community would have to horribly disillusioned and angry in order to actually be rioting on his behalf. Though I know the saying "correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation", lets be real here. There is a link between this communities majority ethnicity and its ignition as the starter for these riots. It may not be a race riot in the sense of "We're blacks lets Riot against white", but they clearly feel alienated: from color, from culture, and from the economy of England as a whole to be willing to start this violence. I meant that as title as hyperbole a bit. Scandinavia doesn't have as much of a political correction enforcement establishment as us as they don't really need one: their still majority pasty white Scandinavians, just beginning to feel the social pressures of immigration. America and the U.K. on the other hand have a quite large and elaborate one, due to the many different beliefs and minorities we must appease or never offend. That's exactly what political correctness is used for, besides advancing the tenants of its religious doctrine. As for Britain's past time of moaning about problems, know that Thomas Pynchon wrote that: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about giving answers" Never claimed I did. All I did was search for information on Tottenham and the start of the rioting. Tottenham has deep economic and criminal problems. Its where a large non-white population lives. I'm not surprised at all that the riots started there. What the riots have become however....... I'm not exactly sure I can say.
And Ealing? (Or rather, as it now seems to be officially called, Leafy Ealing?) And all the other places that got hit but not hard enough to make the news, such as Orpington, where I am?
Yes I have, and none of those things are capital offences here. Yes, it can be. But nothing in the UK is a capital offence, the police have admitted that they mishandled the situation, and their early claims that he shot first have been shown to be false. They actually organised a peaceful protest on his behalf. And I could point you to predominantly white areas with just the same degree of alienation, where if a white person had been shot by police there would have been just the same reaction. You seem to be determined to make everything the fault of black people, which shows your ignorance of the situation in the UK, your ignorance of the development of the riots, and I am struggling to interpret as anything but racism. Again, you don't seem to know much about the situation in Europe. Scandinavia has a persistent problem with neo-nazis, and I'd certainly consider that a politically incorrect position. Objecting to overt expressions of prejudice, whether over race, gender, sexuality, disability or whatever, is not glossing over problems. It's addressing the problems in a way that doesn't automatically marginalise the oppressed. So what do you think that we should be moaning about, that we're not? Nor am I. But I wouldn't have been surprised if it had started in a predominantly white area with deep economic and criminal problems, either. I don't see race and immigration as the root of all evil. Do you?
Not affected personally, per se, but simply disappointed with my own country and despise the Tories for what they've done to my country. My fiance doesn't want to live in England - and I keep telling him I'd really like to come back and even raise our kids here. Then I come home, and the first thing I hear is the News of the World scandal, and now the riots. I actually want to come back, and it's like it's giving me absolutely no reason to. I try to defend England, convince my fiance that the UK isn't so bad. And I come home to this mess. Problem is, the English just don't seem to get how good they've got it compared to other countries. That doesn't excuse the terrible employment market and the millions who're out of jobs, others whose medication is being taken away due to cuts and all those students who can't get to uni, I know. But sometimes I feel like the English should just be more grateful for what they have. And they need a reality check - our reputation is so terrible abroad. At least that's the case as far as I know in France, Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic. Our government need to start listening and actually start acting for the good of the nation, and our people need to learn the art of contentment somewhat. It's not that all the fault lies with one or the other - it's both. I don't think either side is doing as they should. But it's not just England. I feel like it's happening all over the world. I feel like we live in an extremely unstable age and I feel like it's all just a lead up - a drum roll - to what's to come.
How is what is happening about the Tories ? Do you really believe that the mess only stretches back to when they were elected in 2010 ?
Why do you keep talking about the death penalty? I'm saying I'm making a personal judgement call, based on limited information, on who this man is and what kind of community would rush to his defense. You can't function in society without making judgements like these, its impossible to have all the info and be completely objective. You're confusing self-defense and the death penalty. I have no clue whether the police lawfully killed that man. It many ways it doesn't matter to me: its that a community would believe mass rioting and thieving is a proper response to that. Hardly matters that it started peacefully when it has ended so horribly. Is there? Is there larger all white areas with the exact same poverty level of that of Tottenham? Is there all white areas with the equal crime rate of Tottenham? I don't know this information, but the statement that: "If a white guy was shot by police in a white area, whites would be rioting" I find fairly weak. Its relativity where relativity doesn't count. Uh-oh, the big R word. The one word the PC police put on its greatest offenders. I do have ignorance of the situation in the U.K., but perhaps my lack of knowledge is healthier than a steady stream of false knowledge? I never blamed "black people". That would be a false and fairly flat statement. I said that the beginning rioters were majority non-white. (I have no clue as the riots spread to different areas if that's true or not now). What does that mean? I don't think being black makes you inherently want to riot, but it does mean you may have a higher chance of being part of a certain segment of English society: a section that is likely under-employed, under-educated, on welfare, and surrounded by crime and whose social fabric is torn by a society too weak to defend its own values. True, I couldn't say if say, Scandinavia's neo-nazi problems are worse than say, America's or Germany. However, Neo-nazis are a highly over-represented group in all western cultures for the amount of power and numbers they actually possess. I'm talking about the fundamental splits in societies due to mass immigration of people whose culture is fundamentally different from the country their immigrating to. It is a question of integration and of minority alienation. Well, its hard to find any large and well regarded source actually making overt expressions of prejudice: the PC establishment has done a very good job eliminating them or making sure there doing their best to spread the PC religion as well. I'm not really sure what you mean by "marginalizing the oppressed". Are they inherently oppressed? Aren't the oppressed already marginalized? Well, I read an article by Max Hastings that blames liberal dogma on these riots for creating this violence. I think you should be asking yourself as a society if getting rid of old values to conform to multiculturalism is right. I think you should be asking yourselves what kind of society you've created if the young feel so entitled and and yet disillusioned that they'd see it morally acceptable to riot and steal and burn. You call them "youths", you call them "hoodlums" and then when its all over they'll still be on welfare, they'll still be in broken families, and they'll won't truly consider themselves English. Just like in America you've told them that no code of values is as good a code as any.
We currently live in the Czech Republic actually The Bard of Wigan - you're right, of course, that it stretches much further back than that. But I certainly don't thank the tories for the millions of mistakes they're making since being elected. I suppose though, if you were to place blame on someone, the real source would go so far back you'll never get there, so, the present government is the best scapegoat. They're not doing a great job, either way.
Because he was killed by the police and the police's first action seemed to be to try to cover it up. Even if he were a criminal, that behaviour was -- shall we say "problematic". Whatever sort of person he was, this is not a country were the police can kill people and decline to explain themselves withour protest. Where are you getting your information? I've already told you that the response of the community was not "mass rioting and thieving", it was a peaceful protest. It matters that you keep saying that it was the response of the community to the death, when it wasn't. Exact? Probably not; some of them (I'm thinking of Dagenham and some parts of Sheffield that I know) are comparable. There are no all white areas any more than there are any all black areas. Tottenham is not an all black area. I don't understand what you mean by relativity there, unless you mean that different rules apply to black and white people. Do you not think that racism is an issue? Do you consider it acceptable? You do seem to be getting your own stream of misinformation from somewhere. A higher chance, yes, but there are very many white people in just that situation. In fact, because black people are a minority in the UK, if you look at the situation from the opposite side, if you pick a random person in the UK who is unemployed, under-educated, on welfare, and surrounded by crime and whose social fabric is torn by a society too weak to defend its own values then the odds are probably that they will be white, not black. The breakdown we are seeing is not because of immigrants with cultures that are fundamentally different to the local culture, it's that the local culture itself is fragmenting. Remember that most (not all) of the rioters are young, of all races and cultures, and are being condemned by the older generaltion (and plenty of their own generation) of all races and cultures. And do you see it as a bad thing that overt expressions of prejudice have been reduced? I mean that if you try to deal with an issue and use demeaning terms for one of the parties or make demeaning assumptions then you show to that party that you are sided against them, so they're likely to resent rather than accept any solutions you offer. For example, in response to some previous riots on a London estate, the police officially commented "The majority of the residents are decent, law abiding citizens, but these actions were done by young people". Now, what do you think that this did to relations between the police and the decent, law-abiding young people on that estate? Er, well, yes, he would. But the question is what created this violence, and all you've discovered is Max Hastings politics. It isn't and we don't. What has that got to do with multiculturalism? You seem to have a grudge against multiculturalism and assume it's the cause of all trouble. Still you are assuming that the rioters are not of English origin. I'm acquainted with a few people who are are the sort of people to have been involved in the riots, and they're as British (and white) as you will find anywhee. If I'm right and they were involved in the riots then they will have gone home and truly considered themselves English (and proud of it). We've told them no such thing, but they don't care about what we've told them.
Neither is America, but that doesn't stop police from doing the same thing. Exactly, the death was an excuse. This is basically a community with such feelings of alienation and anger that they see themselves as entitled to do this damage and thieving. Though I sound like some old conservative flookey it really is a simple fact of a large percentage of your country's population being completely devoid of the morals and values that make something hard to define but hugely important called "the english character". Its the same here in the United States, with almost the exact same consequences. I'm merely skeptical. I'm not trying to turn this into these into some kind of watts riots for the U.K., I'll I know is that often riots of this magnitude are not done by the law-abiding majority. . just that saying an all white area would riot if a white guy was shot is missing the point. Yes, often different rules apply to blacks and whites in a western society, many different rules. What's considered socially acceptable, what your history is, what your place in society is. Not to mention things like racial quotas to achieve "diversity" in government, schools, and business institutions. This things are all endemic to America as well. I've noticed when I get into social arguments like this with people is that they always really, really want me to be a racist. I'm not sure if its to achieve some sense of moral superiority, or so they can go to fellow-liberal friends and say that defeated an ardent racist in debate. No, I consider racism horribly unacceptable, but the kind of racism I find most damaging and endemic today is the one you hardly hear of and is actively pursued by all our politicians this day. Its a kind of "pity racism". I have no idea how much the U.K. has this problem compared to the U.S., but it born from white guilt, and does nothing but tear apart our minority communities. These kinds of things are minimum wage, affirmative action, welfare, black history month, etc etc. Its the kinds of things that lower and destroy a community more than any jim-crow kind of law could ever do. It attacks the family and an individuals self-worth. I get the same feeling from these riots, and the small interviews of rioters themselves, that they have this similar sense of aimlessness, alienation, and a loss of self-respect. How do you think they developed this mentality? From white racism or police brutality? Quite the opposite, its from well-meaning, liberal minded whites attempting to help and foster the "minority" communities. True, I guess my statement was bland and circular. All I'm saying is take something like the BBC news with a grain of salt, as such large organizations are rife with an agenda their quite adept at voicing without seeming subjective. Well that's true just because whites are the majority. However, If I were to take a random 10000 white and a 10000 black U.K. citizens, I'm guessing their be a much higher chance that those 10000 black citizens would have a higher percentage of criminal offenses, government assistance usage, and feelings of indifference or respect to English society as a whole. I think you're getting somewhere, how is the local culture itself fragmenting? What causes it? Whose responsible? Why do these rioters not represent English society as a whole? I you want me to say hail hitler to make you feel good, I will! No, I'm glad are newspapers and media don't spout overt racist things about eugenics or homophobia, but that's hardly a worthy point. Those things are literally non-existent except for the occasional blog by some wack-job. What is existent, however, is having to live in the fear of being called a racist or bigot when you wish to point out a simple fact such as higher black incarceration rates. (A U.S. phenomenon at least). Social problems here are almost taboo, and is one of the reasons with have such difficulty dealing with them. Well, read the article and tell me what you think. His theory as to what created the violence seems more valid than any other given so far. Just google "Max Hasting liberal dogma 2011" and you should find it. I'm glad you think giving up the values of your country is a generally bad thing. However, I think you should look closely at whether you truly think those running your country have the same idea of what England should be as you do. I absolutely do have a grudge: its one of the greatest diseases in America, and I feel its likely the same in Britain too. It seems fairly harmless on the outside, but a country that cannot uphold even its own values, let alone say the military or economy, has no reason to exist. Multiculturalism is when you give up your culture in order to appease the demands of another, for the mere sake of conciliation. I feel like that weirdly proves my point. Their must be some reason they don't care for what you've told them, that their so amoral they take any show of respect as a show of weakness. Good luck on that island of yours! We've just had "flash-mob" riots here in the United States that have been over-shadowed by your own. I think all the western world needs a bit of soul-searching.
Bit disrespectful, don't you think. I'm beginning to really hate both the far right and far left in the UK. The far right is blaming immigrants, the far left is blaming social inequality.
Since the government promised to be tough on this behaviour and provide the police with what they need to bring the situation under control, things have settled down. At the bottom of this, people or children that go around in gangs are basically cowards.
