One death so far; PM calls special session of Parliament. Why are they doing this? What do the rioters want? Are they just frustrated at being poor? Did the riots on the Continent give them ideas? Are they trying to accomplish something? Or is it all just an excuse to loot?
They began as a march in reaction to the shooting of a man by the police. The march turned to rioting.
Now they seem to just be rioting for riots sake.
Large population of young men without job prospects = this. Through out history it’s the same story. Not sure why anyone’s surprised.
An end to the nasty habit the police have developed of gunning down innocent men in the street, in the back seats of taxis, in their beds in the house next door to the one they were meant to raid, and so on, might be a good start.
Innocent? Didn’t this guy pull a gun and actually fire on the police first? :dubious:
The police retrieved that bullet, which was embedded in a police radio. Turned out to be police issue. The evidence that he opened fire at any point is so far just some arse-covering coppers making dubious statements. The only guns or bullets we have evidence for at the scene are police weapons. As for him, well, he isn’t in a position to comment.
At most, it appears the dead chap might have had a gun about his person, the tales the police told about him leaning out of a taxi blazing away like the sociopath in a gangster movie is bullshit.
Ah. Interesting update. Thanks.
ETA: Still no reason to riot, loot, burn and pillage though.
I’m wondering whether that may happen in the near future in the U.S. We also have a huge jobless population.
You’ve got one in nine young black males in prison already - wtf does it take to rise up. The degree of passivity and acceptance in the USA is quite staggering from a European pov. IMO.
A this relates to kids looting T-mobile how?
Every suggested explanation I’ve heard, from all quarters, has basically been the same explanation one hears for any world event: “It’s happening for reasons that comport with my political views.”
They are rioting because the police is not taking the required forceful steps to put the riot down and because on account of too restrictive gun laws, and self defence laws, people are unable to protect themselves. Making rioting fun and profitable without much chance of anything too bad happening. Shoot a few rioters would put a stop to it presently. If not do it again.
I honestly can’t tell if Rune’s post is a satirical response to Tom Tildrum’s post or if he’s serious.
I am sure he is serious. Not only do you have an almost toally disarmed population, but you also have a largely unarmed police force. When the police cannot effectively project force, you have the apparently ludicrous scenes we have on TV now, where half a dozen police officers are just watching a dozen “kids” loot a store.
Not that I am saying that the policy is right or wrong. It just looks really, really bad in cases like this. Now this has reduced the total level of gun violence in the society compared with the US (almost ten times more cops killed by guns in the US since 2000 than have been killed in the UK since 1900). But non-gun violence is a different matter.
See, I don’t think it has much to do with politics. It started out as a protest of a police shooting, and then hoodlums and criminals realized it was perfect cover to start mayhem. Now folks are stealing and burning shit because they think they can get away with it.
As to the guns issue, the trade-off between non-gun violence and gun violence is one Britain was willing to make. I don’t see why this would change anything - it’s not like Police with guns stopped riots in LA or NOLA, right? Riots are stopped with overwhelming manpower, not by shooting rioters.
Perhaps “why” is the wrong question. Maybe better to look at “how”.
Rioting always requires a committed core of agitators and a crowd willing to go along with it; once rioting starts, it builds on itself, as those interested go for it and those who are fearful of it stay home, and the authorities are overwhelmed and helpless - they cannot defend everywhere (“s/he who defends everywhere defends nowhere”). The issue is not why, but how: how to get that core and crowd together, without the authorities stopping it?
In the past, this was hard - because the spread of information was slow.
Today, with ubiquitous social media, it is easy. Messages pass faster than the authorities can track. “Spontaneous” crowds are easily formed, forearmed with the knowledge that they can attack and likely get away with it.
This explains the modern “success” of rioting, and the reasons why are really secondary: there could be any number of reasons. After all, no-one claims the similar scenes of rioting in Vancouver after the Stanley Cup game had any deeper political meaning.
I’m reminded of that one discussion in Starship Troopers about the belief that “violence doesn’t solve anything”. Some people need to learn there’s a difference between being politically correct and being correct.
The rioters are ruining innocent bystanders’ lives because they are both willing and able to do so. Being cowards, the threat that their victims might actually fight back makes them less willing, and the capacity to at least hold them off until the police arrive makes them less able.
I think it is a combination of most of those explanations.
I saw a great write-up from someone living in London and this was the view he espoused (sadly I cannot find the link so I’ll summarize as best I remember).
Certainly there is an aspect of disaffected youth. The economy sucks, they have poor future prospects and they are bored and angry and feel powerless.
As with many social upheavals they can start from seemingly insignificant events. WWI started over one assassination. The unrest in Egypt started with one guy setting himself on fire. Here it is some guy getting shot.
It was the writer’s opinion that the youth probably do not really care overly much about they guy who was shot. He doubted if most of them could even tell you his name. But it was the spark that lit this tinderbox.
After that they used it as a cover to loot and rob and be general hoodlums. There is no real political goal for them. They see a chance to rob and pillage and are pretending it is about the economy.
It IS about the economy at its root but at the end of the day these folk are just plain acting badly and do not deserve the righteousness that something like the Arab Spring engenders.
Yes. I lived through the LA riots, watching it around my workplaces and neighborhood, and I can say that the motivations for something like rioting defy simple, pat explanations. Some people were pissed off at police, some were pissed off at the general local economics, and some people (not only hoodlums) were just taking advantage of the decision of the police to stand back to get something for free. It’s a breakdown of the social contract.