I have to agree - acting like it is a fundamental human right to be granted access to cutting-edge consumer items. Whereas the pseudosocialists SecondJudith and PrettyVacant would have us believe the riots are the noble rallying of the disenfranchised youth against the oppressive state apparatus.
The difference that social networking presumably makes in this is that whoever burnt out the car at the end of my road (in Bristol) last night probably felt like part of the mob burning down buildings in the London area.
I am sure its easier to get it in Eton. But then its Apples and ornages, Eton is a public school and Brixton is state.
Yet I do know this, when I did the Bar a few years ago, of the 400 people total more then half were from state schools and the Bar Course is very very very difficult to get into, every stereotypical thing you can think about with regards to class it has and yet the guy who got the top marks was black, from Brixton, from a family dependent on benefits (his mother had five kids from four partners) and he went to a local school and later the London Metropolitan Uni. And yet he was good enough through sheer hard work to be a Scholar at Lincoln’ Inn (meaning financial aid), he is now considered one of the brightest prospects in the young Bar.
Point is that hard work can get you out of it and take you places. You have to work hard to succeed and that true everywhere. You need top grades to get into the best Universities and for that you need to work hard. Its not rocket science.
Nice, but I was thinking more about intercepting calls for riots and looting and showing up before the rioters, or using siezed phones to send out fake messages and send potential looters right to the arms of the police. You know, basic electronic warfare.
And probably sold him the idea that getting an education is a good thing to do. You can get A-levels at the school I work at - but a lot of the kids I see aren’t interested in achieving even the minimum they can.
In other news, wealth includes the means to give your offspring a better start. And there I was thinking it just meant more toys.
That’s simply not true and they know it. You can claim that all you want, but they just have to look around and see all the people who worked hard and died poorer than they started.
Even if it’s not the only option open to them, if that’s what they PERCEIVE the situation to be yes, you are very likely to get riots.
Urban riots such as this often take place in an environment with real, serious issues. Some typical ones:
discrimination (racial, class, religious - doesn’t matter, and can be a mix)
poverty (lack of money)
high unemployment (lack of jobs)
lack of good educational opportunities
lack of adequate healthcare access
lack of adequate housing
police brutality (real and/or perceived)
You don’t have to hit all those points to get a riot, but the more you have the more likely one is. Also note how often the word “lack” appears in that list.
Is anyone here going to deny that race and class discrimination exists in Britain? Is anyone going to deny a high rate of unemployment in London’s poor? Do these young people have the means to get a better education? How crowded is their housing, and how likely the prospect of obtaining better housing? Is there actual or perceived police bias or brutality?
It doesn’t excuse any of it, of course, there is no valid excuse here for violence, looting, and arson. But it does make a start on explaining why it happened. While some might look at the situation and say, well, London’s poor live better than a lot of people elsewhere, they have food, clothing, shelter, cell phones, and a bit of money, that ignores the fact that these people feel they have been excluded, discarded, and warehoused in a manner that what they have right now is the best they will ever have. They have nothing to do all day, and see no way to make things better. They have no purpose. They’re in a cage and it’s not even gilded.
Now, you can just go back to ignoring all that background and dismiss this as the work of random thugs, but if you do you’re leaving fertile ground for another riot down the line. If you don’t change the conditions that cause such hair-trigger tension you’re only treating the symptoms, not the root causes.
I went to one of the Clarendon schools (not Eton) and I was just about the only one there with the intention of getting an education. Okay, I exaggerate, but probably no more than 50 of the 150-odd kids in my year were interested in anything other than drinking, shagging and the new Wu-Tang record, and at least 25 of the 50 were only interested in sports.
That’s not news. What is news is the underlying assumption you seem to be making, which is that the offspring of those with no wealth will be mollified by that concept.
ETA: None of this should be taken to suggest that I condone the riots. I don’t, and they need to calm the fuck down. But suggesting that they’re all just a bunch of head cases is missing the point.
I don’t see why they couldn’t be disaffected youth. Sure, there are probably some criminals taking advantage but the idiots mugging for the CCTV and posting videos of themselves on YouTube are not career criminals. Career criminals know better.
Of course those who commit such crimes should be punished.
However, if Britain ignores the context in which these riots are occurring they will simply have more of them in the future.
I’m old enough to remember when, in the US, it was legal and considered perfectly acceptable to pay a black man less money than a white man for the exact same job. There was no legal redress for that injustice. It used to also be the case that it was legal and acceptable to pay a woman less than a man for the same work. There was institutionalized, legal, exclusion of minorities from geographical areas (redlining). Through vast areas of the US blacks were systematically segregated and given inferior facilities, education, and treatment - and that was the law.
How was voting going to change that?
Answer: it wasn’t. Nothing changed until the uprisings of the 1960’s and a bunch of the majority in the US became convinced that legal discrimination was wrong and detrimental to the country.
Yeah, but it kind of sucks if you’re NOT one of the best and brightest, doesn’t it? And let’s face it - only 10% of the kids in a neighborhood can be the top 10%.
So what’s left for the rest of them?
Used to be, if you didn’t have the smarts or the money to get a higher education there was still work for you to do - you could get a job in a factory or digging ditches or something, and thus have a purpose to getting up in the morning. If you were willing to work your body harder you had a chance to make a bit extra.
Now? If you aren’t in the “best and brightest” and don’t go to university what do you have? The menial jobs are gone outsourced or automated away. These people have no purpose in their lives. What do they have to look forward to, 70 years on the dole, in the same flat, and nothing meaningful to do?
No. They are menial jobs out there (http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk if you want to see yourself) but do you know what? None of these useless ingrates will do them because they think they are beneath them. Every rioter of working age, which I expect is the minority, could get a job as a cleaner, or bar staff or labourer.
The practical answer is that if those on the bottom simply steal shit and burn stuff down, they will most likely be the ones to suffer for it both individually and collectively - regardless of the rights and wrongs of the matter. If society ceases to have general law and order, what you get is the “haves” barracading themselves in with private security, and the “have nots” left to rot. It inevitably exacerbates the divide in society.
Aye, loads of people do, but that is a shite existence, undercut all the time by new recruits. Hey, capitalism. I guess all big cities have these problems though. Not being awfully confrontational, just a bit sad, to be honest.