@england people

[Mr. DS]

Stay safe friends.

[bob]

take are guys and stay safe!

[indianasmith]

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

[Criswell]

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

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.

[Trevor]

Stay safe there!

[RCMerchant]

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.

[zombie no.one]

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

[indianasmith]

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.

[Doggett]

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

Really?

You?

Surely not...

[Mofo Rising]

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.

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.

[RCMerchant]

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.

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.

[zombie no.one]

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.

[dean]

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.

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


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. 

[AndyC]

British police aren't deploying more serious means to stop the protestors [ie rubber bullets and water cannons]. 

I favour this approach, personally.

[Andrew]

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.