That’s the nature of social media - people doing stuff with no idea why they’re doing it. Copy this cat to your status to show that you’re against animal cruelty, etc. No shortage of impressionable morons in the world, apparently.
Saying “it’s worse in another part of the world that you’ve never been to, so buck up” isn’t going to make any impact on a person who has grown up in relative poverty to people around them and has little prospect for the future. Income disparity, which is pretty big in the UK, is a big predictor of crime. Funny that it’s showing its ugly head now.
Okay - this IS racist. THEY are, as far as we can tell, all working poor Londoners and their teenage children. Even if a large number of them appear to be from ethnic minorities, they’re not more from the west indies than I am.
I’d like to note that there are other ways of dealing with riots - tear gas, fire hoses, rubber bullets, etc. Note that I’m not saying that they *should *use those kind of measures, just that they can.
Talk about funny, I remember back when the poverty-stricken masses didn’t organise riots via mobile phones and the internets…
Hard to do that when they hadn’t been invented yet.
Quite - and then there’s the fact that mobile phones are extremely cheap all things considered. I said relative poverty, not absolute grinding can’t-afford-food-and-shelter poverty. Fact is that wealth disparity in this country is stark and growing wider, as we’re in a time of severe economic hardship the reality of this is going to be felt harder by people. I’m not saying that this is a riot against class inequality or anything like that, because it’s clearly nothing like as organised or ideological, but the fact that people seem more interested in looting than actually attacking state power or anything says a lot, and they’re doing it in their own communities rather than necessarily targeting richer ones (although that’s starting to shift a bit as attacks are starting to happen more widely).
Yes, it’s pretty clear that those carrying out these attacks are urban poor who are largely in ethnic minorities - but again being in an ethnic minority in London tends to correlate quite highly with poverty, so you can draw your own conclusions from that.
People are getting fed up, pissed off and tired of the misery that living in this country is right now, and I’m not at all surprised we’re watching these events unfold. The only thing that is surprising is that it’s taking so long for the police and government authorities to intervene decisively considering what is at stake (this is going to reflect exceptionally badly on London’s image given it’s hosting the olympics next year, and it’ll be massively disruptive to the local London economy which is a huge chunk of the country’s output).
Well, quite, I guess.
Although the current government is trying as hard as it can to stop doing so.
Last night the fire hoses were clearly needed elsewhere, but I am generally in favour of them as crowd deterrents. Cold wet people go home, and their phones stop working.
Sorry, Malacandra, I’m being a bit thick this morning - could you explain your point more clearly?
I suspect it was an attempt to claim that poor people don’t have phones, which is incorrect of course.
One of the most depressing things I’ve seen in a long time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gex_ya4-Oo
Group of guys help an injured young guy up, then proceed to rob him.
I read it (Malacandra’s comment) as a comment on relative standards of poverty. The vast majority of the people rioting have somewhere to live, TVs, mobile phones, are well fed, and a fairly high percentage will have internet access.
Precisely. These people get benefits and handouts that make them far wealthier than the working classes of a few generations ago. Look at the video footage - these are teenagers with expensive branded clothes, mobile phones and jewellery. They have no idea what true hardship is, but they think the world owes them everything.
Don’t try to bring a political dimension into this. It’s greed, pure and simple. The kids rioting were not protesting against the inequities of British society; they just know that they can smash, burn and steal property with no comeback whatsoever and want to profit from it. Hence it is spreading across the country. People are realising they can do what they want and face no consequences, and they think: “That looks like a laugh, I’ll have some of that.”
It makes you realise just how thin and fragile the veneer of civilisation in this country is.
A wise comment was just posted on another discussion site I frequent:
Exactly. This is only “poverty” by a very strange definition of the word.
In slightly less depressing news:
Crowdsourcing London’s clean-up
Riot clean up in Clapham Junction
Riot shield tea-tray
And in surreal news:
Iran urges UK to restrain police
like
Dude, not cool - there are plenty of groups other than “West Indies” involved, and if you were paying attention you’d know it has more to do with relative poverty and class issues than ethnicity.
In other words, don’t be a racist jerk. It makes you look bad.
[QUOTE=Hallucinex;14118390.
And in surreal news:
[Iran urges UK to restrain police]
(http://www.presstv.ir/detail/193030.html)
[/QUOTE]
Harldy surreal. As the UK never misses a chance to lecture Iran on police brutality after a riot; I am sure a the Iranians wish to return the favour.
Well, sure - but [del]Curtis LeMay[/del] Qin Shi was spouting stupid advice and I felt compelled to point out the stupid.
While I’m glad the London police didn’t go nuts with a violent response, fact is they’ll have to ratchet up the force to get this situation under control. It could look quite brutal before it’s all over, but they can’t let the city burn and the bystanders get injured or killed.
Given the seriousness of reality quoting a “space nazi” is crass at best - but typical of Curtis. He’s young, so I’ll forgive him his all too apparent ignorance of what an urban riot is all about, but really, he needs to get a better grip on history and the real world.
Only because mobile phones and social media hadn’t been invented yet in the 1965 Watts neighborhood of LA.
While some of this MIGHT involve “flash mobs”, at this point I seriously doubt anyone is organizing anything, it’s mostly just a free-for-all.