I’d be too busy laughing to do anything, I suspect.
And the winner of the most randomly hilarious post of 2011 is already here! It’s only August, but the bar is set so high now. 
At least the Tories are honest about being wankers.
The round up begins …
As a liberal type, I approve of this message.
Pile conspiracy charges on top of everything else and make sentences run consecutively and without hope of remission or parole. Laugh off 25 years you vermin.
In this situation - no. I’m a liberal type with liberal friends but we know this is nothing more than a dangerous, verminous under-class with no redeeming features flexing new-found muscles and empowered by an encrypted communication system that gives them a dangerous mobility.
No sympathy at all. Declare martial law and a curfew and gun down any face-masked fucker who sticks his head out the door. The world will be a better place without these savages.
Well, Hitler aside, fire is famously non-discrimatory. Arsonists may set out just to destroy property, but the fire doesn’t care what or who it burns.
That said, what about the rule of law? Is it more or less important than human life?
Well, that depends on which law. We seem to have decided as a society that breaking the speed limit is more important than human life.
You don’t see many liberals running on this platform.
Be prepared to lose that bet…
Change 'Harlem to London and Langston Hughes expressed it far better than I could.
As someone who is familiar with London and has friends in low places, I can assure everyone that the riots have NO origins in any political thinking, **Pretty Vacants ** bizarre idea of a socially conscience, disaffected youth, acting out their frustration at their broken dreams caused by an uncaring repressive regime, and so on and on and on… would be quite comical if it weren’t so far of the mark.
The original rioters were London gangbangers and their social group, who make their livings from crime, sometimes petty crime, sometimes serious crime, and who hate the police 24/7 whether or not they have actually ever had any dealings with the police.
They have probably never ever seriously sought work, or for that matter want honest work, so they are not exactly heartbroken because they’re not working.
Their adult futures could easily have been predicted years earlier (and probably were) from their complete lack of participation in the learning process at school, and their disruptive (and even at school age) criminal actions.
They are in short sociopaths, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever be anything else.
The people involved in the latter riots, have a hard core who have set them up as a cover for looting, and a large number of thrill seekers who aren’t above a bit of looting themselves.
Interestingly, I knew some of the instigators of the London riots, back, I believe in, 83 or 84, who were equally forthcoming, in that they deliberately set the riots up for economic gain, relying on the "sheep "to join in and keep the police occupied , while they went about their “business”.
As the saying goes, the more times change the more they stay the same.
Of course today its so much easier to organise because theres a ready, willing and able flock of sheep on the social networking sites to hand.
…snipped for brevity
I think this is a very good summary.
This is scum having fun. This is nothing to do with current economic realities, though some commentators who are particularly anti-tory seem to think that this has somehow been created and ignited in the last 15 months. That the last 13 years of cosmetic spending and reduction of social mobility magically never happened.
The seeds of the unrest were sown long before May 2010. Of course now, with unpopular cuts looming, it is trivially easy to suggest that as a legitimate trigger.
I say balls, this goes deeper and those willing to point fingers at a 15 month-old government are cowards and hypocrites unless they are wiling to critically assess the failure of every government since the 1950’s to address the underlying issues.
That’s it? Thats all you see? Why NOW why not before and throughout all time?
I was in LA during the LA riots and the sense of lawlessness was palpable. people were on their roofs with rifles and shotguns.
When a segment of society realizes that society has nothing to offer them but a lifetime of poverty and struggle, the benefits of law and order become less apparent to them.
When the distribution of societal wealth becomes lopsided enough, the sanctity of property rights becomes less sacred to those without property.
Mobs are inherently unruly and unpredictable.
So Israel has never had an underclass that resorted to violence?
No but it is a predictable and forseeable reaction.
Apparently it is a lot closer to it than you care to admit.
dissent doesn’t have to be crushed, its simply has to be trivialized and ignored.
I tend to think that the side that kills thousands of people when it doesn’t have to are the savages. And “kill on sight” is hardly a “liberal” attitude. And you are deluding yourself if you think you can massacre thousands of people without killing a great many innocent bystanders.
Democracy doesn’t always work. Tyranny of the majority disenfranchises minorities. Tyranny of the minority disengranchises the poor.
If the poor and disaffected youth had historically been voting Tory and can show they disatisfaction at the poll by switching their vote next time aroudn, I could see your point but I don’t see what they can do differently.