Tottenham Riots

[Pastel_Princess]

I think he was being a little unfair on the Police. He criticised them for treating it like a Public Order incident, but that is exactly how it started. What? Were they expected to foresee a peaceful demonstration morphing into the biggest wave of looting the country had ever seen?

 

[brandyman_uk]

All this talk of police budgets actually misses the point.

Let's take the statement from the Manchester Police dude about the Police being the "bulwark against anarchy."

This is obviously not the case. The Police can only enforce order given the consent of most of the population. Societal consent to the rule of law has always been assumed or it could never happen. If everyone is an anarchist, how many police officers do we need?

Mitch

 

[MathySivananthan]

Actually the police can only enforce order so long as the sanctions taken against people are actually perceived to be a credible threat. If you don't care or having nothing to lose then you can do what you want.

 

[iheartyouuu]

Nope, don't believe that.

I choose not to steal. I choose not to firebomb. I choose not to loot or assault police officers.

I choose to avoid all those things, not because I am afraid of being punished but because I just think they're the wrong thing to do.

There are, similarly, things within the law that I choose not to do because I don't agree with them and things outside the law that I do regularly regardless of fear of punishment because I don't believe they are wrong.

Order in society is not maintained by force, it's by consent.

Mitch

 

[Phoenix/Deity]

So what do you do when people do not consent?

The problem is that these worthless pieces of filth do NOT consent to abide by the law...so what do you do? If their own moral code is insufficient to get them to behave like humans then what is left?

 

[DRYankee30]

It sucks from all sides... unemployment high in some areas... those who are employed by the gov. are busy claiming for all sorts of fraudulent crap... institutionalized racism in the police force has long been the reputation of the MET coppers. And you flat out have a massive subsection of the population that just decides to bone out and go ape shizzle when the police start backing off. In many ways it's not far off the LA riots.

 

[msblondie94]

I don't think that knee-jerk reactions are ever very helpful, but I realise that the politicians have to be seen to be doing something, so... they come out with knee-jerk reactions.

Today we get sound-bite statements from the likes of Eric Pickles about looking into the possibility of extending the existing powers of local authorities to evict tenants convicted of offenses during the riots. Which makes for great headlines, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any quick changes, because it's a hell of a complicated issue.

 

[EclipseMar13]

Biggest issue i have with this is that we have been mind-screwed by the media and politicians so much that no-one trusts the politicians and have the belief that it matters not whom is in power as they will exploit and scam anyway and anyhow.

As for the Police, I think they should run riot down Downing street. Who's Cameron going to call then? Boris? And the Police being financially liable, Well that's just so stupid it makes me want to ... Oh i don't know.....Riot?

 

[CuteLittleCherry]

I don't think that Cameron has picked the best time to be seen to be critisising the police, but there are serious questions which will need to be addressed at some point. We keep hearing accounts from shopkeepers of how their shops were ransacked while the police just stood and watched. Police tactics need to be looked at.

 

[girl_0wnz]

From what I gather, the police stood and watched in two situations:
1) When they're told to hold the line as it were. If you happen to be the wrong side of that line its not great for you I admit.
2) When the number of rioters is so against them that they have serious worries that their formation would be broken up and each officer isolated if they attempted to advance

 

[SavannaX]

In many cases the Police needed to hold their line. If they'd broken to go beat some kids looting an off-license, then they would have opened an access route to another area of the town centre and increased the area they had to manage. In the first couple of nights there wasn't enough Police to both seal off the major shopping streets and take the fight to the looters.

In Birmingham on..Monday(?) night, the Police focused their attention on preventing looters access to the two biggest indoor shopping centres, which was the correct thing to do as the potential for massive damage was greatest in those two areas, especially as one of those centres has direct access to New St. Station.

 

[Alarafan2]

IMHO there is only one cause of the rioting and looting in this case.
Scum people with no morals.
That's it. That's all it is.
They saw they could get away with things in the anonymity of the crowd and lacked the moral fibre or desire to control themselves.

I heard two girls blaming the "government". They didn't even know what parties were in power. They were just scum without even the self awareness to know they were doing wrong.

 

[cumfortably420numb]

I get that but the problem doesn't magically fix itself and needs some sort of commitment from the public and not just in the couple months before an election where they decide who to vote for based off a couple of tv shows. it requires people to actually follow politics most of the time even if its jsut watching question time or something once a week. Its great complaining about how evil politicans are but since that power comes from the public its not going to change until we do. Very few things piss me off more than listening to someone complain about some part of politics or the state of the country, asking if they voted and they either say no or they just voted for a party because they always do. I get annoyed by stupid things like that.

The mind-screw part is right of course but the ability for the media/politicians to do that stems from the fact that no one cares enough about the system to think for themselves. The media doesn't collectively follow one party so if you're opinions on everything are decided by what one party or media outlet says then no wonder everything's supposedly gone to rat poop. I'd also add that watching QT you see at least one person every show who has a complaint against a party/person/policy and refuses to process any answer given that doesn't match up with their ideas. I seem to have gone from saying we need less apathy to saying we need to rewire the human brain to stop confirmation bias working...


The army? Hmm army v police in some massive battle royale. I like it.

 

[dontnotice]

Everybody saw how 100% of UK Bankers and politicos got away with stealing everyone else blind!

How many indictments?
None, zero, zip, nada ---- NOT ONE!!!

Those kids are just following in the footsteps of our leaders!
Corruption starts at the top!


Osu!

 

[LauraR]

Here's a petition you might want to sign, depending on where you stand on the issue:

http://www.petitiononline.co.uk/petition/open-letter-to-david-cameron-riots-jobs-and-education/3382

 

[rockypuma]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025356/Croydon-riots-Model-Shonola-Smith-22-jailed-6-months-looting-Argos.html

...then on the flip side

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025187/England-riot-sentences-Police-furious-David-Cameron-vows-looters-pay.html

 

[Savy]

Might not be popular for saying this, but UK Bankers didn't steal anything in the run up to the credit crunch or the time afterwards. They lost a lot of money, but they acted legally and within their remits (for the most part), and in a lot of cases were effectively pushed to carry on by the politicians at the time.

In fact, the bankers lost out on quite a bit of money that they were contractually entitled to because of the one off tax on banker pay, so it could be argued that we actually robbed them rather than the other way around.

Don't get me wrong, they were acting very recklessly towards the end of it, but they certainly weren't doing it out of malicious desire to separate someone from their property, they did it because they got their risk calculations wrong.

 

[SchnauzerLove]

What are you smoking Aegis?
We are talking about bankers!!! The guys that killed the world with derivatives!


Osu!

 

[fearnee]

Well, they hardly invented those. Derivatives have been around since before money was invented.

 

[HuwW]

This won't make me popular here, but:
On the one hand, you can kind of see why this is happening.
People, if they are lucky (yes, lucky.) enough to have a job take home about 9,000 a year. Houses cost a million each. You'll pay 2 hundred thousand for a broom cupboard in the middle of a post-industrial wasteland in London. That is the real mathematics of civil unrest. And we have a conservative government who couldn't care less and is busily sending the message, via cuts, that 'oh no, we couldn't care less about you, we'd rather give our money to the bankers'.
On the other, the only shop to escape looting was waterstones. And somebody, unaccountably, stole a load of imodium from boots. What does that tell you. Idiots? They couldn't even spell 'moron'. Most of this is opportunistic criminality, and the sooner we clean the streets of these cretins the better.