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see the riot coverage last night? never seen anything like it, whole rows of houses/shops alight
liverpool , bristol, leeds, wolverhampton, walsall too... heard today trouble in nottingham and manchester as well

anyone caught up in it? luckily I don't live near any danger areas

wonder if it will kick off again tonight  :bluesad: :question:

I've been hearing about this for a while and I hope our members over there are alright.

An interesting comic from a British cartoonist just popped up today expressing his thoughts on the situation:

(http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/221/8/0/someone_shoot_them__please__by_jollyjack-d45yyz7.jpg)

His words that went along with the strip:

Those girls in that video are just f**king idiots, this whole situation is just idiotic in so many ways. Just a bunch of a***oles trying to be hardcore. Hopefully they can be put in their place.

We have idiots in this country.

LOTS AND LOTS of idiots...


 :bluesad:

I live in Camden and it kicked off there a bit last night. Watched it from my bedroom. Scary stuff.

nasty. would hate to be caught up in it. my brother's in notting hill, I texted him around 10pm and he said it was ok, some restaurant got looted though

I'm near Preston, Lancs. People here haven't even discovered the wheel yet, so I think all should stay calm.

lol  :smile: I am in deepest darkest somerset, should be OK here for similar reasons

Take care and be safe you guys.

I'm supposed to be in the safest borough in all of London. And there are 32 of them!
But even I'm affected.

police really need to get on top of it, they looked useless on tv last night. people aren't afraid to riot... other countries would've got water cannons out straight away. I think the police are just too afraid of offending anyone(?)

No problems so far here in Scotland thankfully..

Nutty stuff.   Good luck my friends.
-Ed

I briefly saw a headline about these riots but didn't read the article.
What's the deal anyway?  Why are these riots happening?

It's like the World went nuts for a few days.  Everybody should calm down.  The riots are pointless mayhem.  30 servicemen including 22 SEALS died in a helicopter crash Saturday, presumably caused by an insurgent rocket.  Of course everybody knows about the markets.  The news is rotten and we're being crushed by it.  The English are a great people and everything will be okay again. 

Stay safe friends.

take are guys and stay safe!

I wonder how  many of the rioters are actually English . . . .

A bunch of kids got mad that a drug dealer with a concelled weapon was killed in a confrontation with police. People started rioted, and then a bunch of dumbass kids started stealing stuff and burning buildings down.

Or at least thats what i've gotten out of it.
All you British members stay safe.

Stay safe there!

Something had to be simmering in the collective pot of these people before the shooting of the gang member....seems like that incident just pushed the "GO" button.

yeah, but for it to go crazy in 6 or 7+ cities on the same night, something was obviously pre-planned and the police must know that

last night London was quiet apparently, but loads of other places weren't. Manchester got ransacked, 3 people protecting their street were killed in Birmingham. Bristol was bad as well... these are cities spanning the entire length of the country, all going mad!

It's not normal 'protesting' either. it's shop looting, shops and houses being set on fire, mugging, general lawless stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsS8kTQkjfE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plCTTjze-SA

OK, I'm going to wax political here for a minute . . .

I think this behavior is the inevitable end result of socialism.  You teach the poor, the ignorant, and the elderly for nearly 100 years now that what other people earn is actually theirs.  The government takes from those who earn and gives to those who do not, for generation after generation.  What it amounts to is punishing those who succeed economically in order to reward those who do not.  The responsibilities that belonged to the adult world - caring for children, providing for your family, earning a decent living, caring for the elderly, obtaining health care - all these duties are taken over by the state, until you have a generation that believes that the world owes them a living, and a retirement, with free health care and free child care along the way.  And eventually, other people's money runs out, the government cannot keep its promises, and the discontented masses, who have never learned to provide for themselves, rise up in fury at anyone who has anything they do not.

In England and much of Europe, this is compounded by the fact that multiculturalists have encouraged mass emigration from countries whose values and ideas are completely alien to the 2500 years of Western Civilization.  Not just alien, but adamantly opposed!  And instead of assimilating, these people multiply and create enclaves of their, for lack of a better word, barbaric values in all the great cities.  Their youth are taught to hate the West and all it stands for, and to do all in their power to undermine and destroy its culture. 

Meanwhile, the native population having totally abdicated the responsibilities of adulthood to the state, quit even bothering to reproduce.  They play away their 20's, marry in their 30's, have one designer baby about the time they turn 40, and wonder why there are no children in the school the same ethnicity and cultural background as their child.

While I am a fundamentally optimistic person, in these events I see the beginning of the end of 2500 years of proud civilization.  The West had a good run.  I just grieve that I was born in a time when I will very likely see its demise.

Really?

You?

Surely not...


 :wink:

I am going to respectfully disagree with that analysis. I don't think it has anything to do with the introduction of socialism, especially as England is not a socialist state. This argument strikes me as introducing political arguments into a problem that is much simpler.

The people rioting are a***oles. Most of them are probably poor, some of them might have money. The common thread is they are dicks who don't think of anything beyond themselves and their self-righteous and unearned anger. They would exist in any economic system, capitalism included.

I do very strongly disagree with the idea that every non-Western culture that emigrates create "enclaves of barbaric ideals" in Western societies, and that this is what is at fault. That's xenophobia, and you can quickly dispel that notion by going and talking to families of non-Western cultures.

Every culture has extremists, but extremism is not the culture. More to the point, every culture has a***oles. It's the a***oles who are the problem.

Wow.
So....in other words-your saying that places of great Western Civilization like...of...the United States shouldn't let forgeiners in?
What's the whole point of "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free..." ?

I wonder what the American Indians thought of assimilating the Great Western Civilization into their culture.
Or the African slaves of being assimilated into the Great Western Civilization?
Was the rise of Nazi Germany a result of letting the Jews assimilate into Germany?

Mofo  is right...being an a***ole has no cultural boundries.

how many different ways are there to look at this..how long is a piece of string ...

IMO, no legitimate cause can be represented by a riot of arson, looting, and violence. the psychology behind the reasons for this riot could be as deep as the ocean, bottom line is people don't have a right to riot, (unless perhaps they're under a regime of extreme hardcore repression, which relatively speaking couldn't be further from the truth in England right now), and there's no justification for it.

Again I'm also going to respectfully disagree.  If anything early commentary seemed to give the impression that it was the capitalist system that has failed: less funding in the under-priveledged areas, lower education because of this and the capitalist consumer driven market making people want want want so much, which is why people mainly were looting and stealing playstations etc.  If anything that suggests a more socialist system would have helped by providing more help to the underdeveloped schools and helping the disadvantaged from feeling so disconnected with their society. 

In any case, boiling it down to socialist vs capitalist is wrong anyway: as Mofo said much better than I: a-holes are the main reason, and later news reports tell us that it's not just the underprivileged doing this anyway:

http://www.theage.com.au/world/wellheeled-join-downtrodden-in-looting-spree-20110811-1insa.html (http://www.theage.com.au/world/wellheeled-join-downtrodden-in-looting-spree-20110811-1insa.html)


Basically it seems to me to be just selfish, cruel human beings who are 'all about me' who also smelt an opportunity and were let to run riot.  Add to that the fact the British police aren't deploying more serious means to stop the protestors [ie rubber bullets and water cannons] and things got out of control quick. 

I favour this approach, personally.
(http://www.horrorphile.net/images/soylent-green-riot-control1.jpg)

I'm going to disagree about socialism causing this.  It appears there are a lot of factors, but what I've largely heard of the reasons is that the people looting want to:

A.  Have fun
B.  Profit
C.  Exhibit power against authority

I place the blame for the rioters and looters on the parents who (failed to) raise them.  An important part of parenting is teaching them to respect others.  Another important aspect is right and wrong, and the strength to choose the right path when everyone else is obviously in the wrong.  Groups of people make the wrong choices all the time.  It frustrates me to hear the people involved in events like this, when asked why they did it, respond with "Well, everyone else was doing it."  Children say things like that.

A movie actually came to my mind when I listened to the first reports on the riots, and that film was "A Clockwork Orange."  Alex was not deprived in any way, nor was he the result of a welfare system.  He simply had no respect for other people, as the world only existed for his benefit.  

Good point!!!

No, that's bollocks. It's not a good point at all. I hate to say this, but some of our North American friends here need their check there facts before you start posting all this political racial bile. Now I don't agree with the constant influx of migrant workers in the country but the fact is nearly all the rioters ARE English. You will find that it is the immigrants that are taking to the streets to protect local communities and the businesses that they have worked hard to build up.

The problem is a social one, that goes back almost 30 years. Ever since Thatcher, then New Labour and all the PC "human rights" bulls**t came in, this country has been going backwards. Cuts to the police force and changes in the education system have helped a yob culture flourish without any discipline and any basic level of morality. Parents these days do not care what their kids get up to, families are lumped together on council estates and have got it into their heads that is desirable to be on benefit. These people think they can get something for nothing and they usually do. These rioters are uneducated and they have no respect for anyone. It was unfortunate that the protest in Tottenham turned violent, but there is no reasoning behind the riots throughout the rest of the country. That is squarely down to greed and lack of values. The kids in Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham etc have nothing better to do with their lives and they think it is "cool" to damage property and to damage lives because they think there is not enough police to deal with them (which there isn't) so this is the best opportunity to commit theft.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I work (for the government) with these kinds of people day in day out and I have to live amongst them. I am disillusioned with society, with the procedures at work that fail and there needs to be big changes because things will only get worse in the future, no matter if clam is restored. It will only be a case of "how long for?"

I totaly agree with this totally.
I live in a part of London thats mostly immigrants from the Indian sub continent and other than a very, few, small incidents (which were caused by white people with a English accents) it was quiet here.

The people that immigrate here are the ones that want to invest into the communtiy and put the most into it.
And those that care about their community aren't goint to destroy it.

(http://i51.tinypic.com/34y8do5.png)

RC  and others - if what I said was out of line, I apologize.  Frankly, Doggett and Circus have much better first hand info than I do, although, to be perfectly honest, I do think that some of Circus' comments back up my contention that socialism has, at the very least, not ameliorated the conditions that led to this lawlessness.

On the immigration issue - please don't misunderstand me.  Immigrants, like many of those from India and the Far East, who want to come to the West IN ORDER TO assimilate and make something of themselves, should always be welcomed with open arms.  They make a country stronger.  But those who come here, especially (and yes, I am riding this hobby horse again) Muslims from the Middle East, who want to set up enclaves of Sharia Law (which is fundamentally opposed to every single freedom Western Civilization cherishes) should be politely told to assimilate or go home.  How many terrorist plots have been hatched in fundamentalists mosques located in Europe and America's greatest cities?  These people have a stated goal of ending our way of life, and their presence should be, at the very least, closely monitored.  They arrested another one outside Fort Hood here in Texas this week - AN AMERICAN SOLDIER radicalized by a jihadist imam - with enough explosives and ammo to kill a couple hundred people.  His avowed goal was to avenge Major Hassan, the Fort Hood sniper from a couple years back.  Radical Islam is the enemy of freedom and the enemy of civilization, and I will not back down from that assertion.  It does not include all Muslims - many of them are peace loving and delightful people.  But there is a dangerous cancer within Islam that threatens, not just decent Muslims, but ALL non-Muslims.  It's time to quit ignoring the threat.

Anyway, sorry if I hijacked the thread.  I'll shut up now.

course you didn't hijack the thread (pun intended? lol)

the main thing about these riots though , is that they're not racially motivated as far as I can tell. they're more anti- police/government than anti- race/religion , although there may well be some of that in the mix too as far as the London riots were concerned...it's hard to say anything for definite imo

it's an inscription on a statue, written by another government!

We needed immigrants desperately at that time, now we need them perhaps less desperately. I'm not an immigration opponent per say, but mixed with a massive welfare state it can be bad for a country.

If you have a hypothetical country in good shape and you were indiscriminately (wrong word maybe, but you know what I mean)  people in who signed onto welfare, how would that benefit you? You have to preserve yourself first, you can't always be the good guy.


I don't think most immigrants are of this type and I am pretty much a typical open borders type libertarian but I acknowledge it's a complex issue.



I would also sort of agree with Indiana about the nature of the riots as being people who feel entitled being cut off. At the same time, I can sympathize with people who are having austerity forced on them because of bankers. Say you're a poor person who needs a little help from the government now and then or your neighbors do. Now, because Alan Greenspan, Phil Graham, The banks, all these people blew up the housing market, had great celebrations for themselves at the UN and Davos, now that that's over poor people are going to have to endure this austerity.

People are like I didn't invade Afghanistan, I didn't cause the housing crisis, why am I part of  "we" now that it's time to make sacrifises?  I wasn't on the gravy train with these characters. Let AIG and Goldman Sachs and Donald Rumsfed make sacrifises.

DCA - I do think you have the right of it there - but that quote:
"We just want to show the rich we can do what we want."
To me, that shrieks of Marxist-fueled class hatred.

I'm depressed about the whole world situation, though.  Western civilization keeps crumbling away, and none of the forces threatening to replace it are worthwhile.

We are heading into a new Dark Age if nothing changes - " - made longer, and perhaps more barbaric, by the lights of perverted science. . ." as Churchill once said.

Lester, you are much less wrong than usual in your response! :teddyr:

Rioting solves nothing but just causes chaos and destruction. But organized peaceful protesting can make a real difference especially in mass.

But you din't...  :bluesad:  We are definitely missing a few emoticons.  

http://media.theage.com.au/news/world-news/grieving-birmingham-fathers-moving-call-for-calm-2550929.html (http://media.theage.com.au/news/world-news/grieving-birmingham-fathers-moving-call-for-calm-2550929.html)

First article, a father's call for all races and religions to come to peace after his son and two others were killed in the riots trying to protect others.


http://www.theage.com.au/world/three-dead-as-rampages-sweep-across-england-20110810-1imt5.html (http://www.theage.com.au/world/three-dead-as-rampages-sweep-across-england-20110810-1imt5.html)

An article about the same incident. 

http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-illwill-arrest-over-brazen-riot-robbery-20110812-1ipix.html
 (http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-illwill-arrest-over-brazen-riot-robbery-20110812-1ipix.html)

Finally a pretty sad video about a boy who got bashed in the riots, and while he was sitting on the ground bleeding, a couple of people went up to help him and while helping him they also stole things out of his bag.  Its a pretty shocking video actually, about how brazen it is...


I heard on the news two interesting 'sides' to the story.  The first being the man above who put aside his own grief to call for peace from everyone, and implored people of all religions to band together and try to mend bridges.  The other being a white English lad from the "English Defence League" who spouted the most hateful bile about immigrants I have heard in a while. 

Based on the two reactions, I know which of the two I'd rather stand beside and support.

my take on the looting is that the rioters started it, so that they can get the loot and sell it on eBay or Amazon or etc.... BTW, was this, at first, a verbal throw down?

http://mises.org/daily/5549/Fiat-Money-and-the-British-Riots


the monetary explanation




...

Isn't it kind of shameful that in some countries known for their freedoms there's so much unnecessary violence and rioting while in others with many less freedoms peaceful protesters seeking freedom and democracy actually do stay peaceful even in the face of armed retaliation...food for thought there.