Mobs in UK

[zakhal]

Petition on Government website calling for looters to be evicted from council houses

'Manchester residents have already shown that they are prepared to stand up for the city they're proud of and they won't let the thugs win.
'Now, the city council, along with our housing association partners, is sending a message to the looters.

'If you are a tenant of any of our properties, and you or your children are found to be involved in the looting, we will use whatever powers are available to us to make sure you are thrown out.

'Most people who live in our properties respect their neighbours ad play by the rules.

'Those who do not, and who are found to be involved in this sickening criminal activity, could find their tenancies at risk.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...evicted-say-83k-e-petition.html#ixzz1UjvohPrT

 

[hishadow]

Atleast it's a good solution for letting the general public vent some anger. Other than that its for the courts to administer justice.

Maybe its interesting in its own right concerning mob mentality?

 

[ChienAboyeur]

You missed my point. In order to change your opportunities, you have to change how both you and other people perceive you. Of course you still need to get the qualifications to get the job, but even if you have the qualifications, if you dress like a hoodlum, you aren't getting the job.

I dont think I missed anything. Changing how other people's perception? On this case?

A hoodlum dressed as a non hoodlum remains a hoodlum. A white person no matter how dressed, remains a white person. Same for a black person. There is no failure in perception.

If one wants to perceive a white person dressed as a hoodlum as a non hoodlum, one can.
If one wants to perceive a black person dressed as a non hoodlum as a hoodlum, one can.

Perception is determined by will. Wanting to change other people's perception is madness.

So no, I dont think I missed a point there. On the contrary. People should understand that a kind of speech is getting old and that is the issue at present times.
The annoyance with these people is that they have ceased to believe in those kind of stories, that changing their dress will change their skin colour. This story no longer works. Apparently, they have enough of it. And that is the worrisome part.

If it was a simple matter of dressing code, this story would have been solved decades ago. For the US, this story tells also about people telling it because looking at pics from the 1950s, somehow, that story of dressing code loses even more strength as the most meaningful differences in dressing is probably money.


People take drugs. Drugs are useless to cure their disease. The speech "take your pills, you will grow better" finds no reality to root. Drugs takers split in several groups, among which people who keep taking their pills and people who
stops taking their pill and take their own medecine.

Treatment in the current political framework: drug makers have nothing to change, if people do not get better, that is because they do not take their pills. People who take their pills, if they do not get better, that is because of people who no longer take their pills.

And this speech, just like the mayor, does not address people who do not take their pills, who have seen through, who have grown tired of the drivel.

The dressing code story is just a resounding shout that the root causes wont be dealt with.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

In the newspaper of today, there is an article of a German who lives in London since 1998. He has witnessed some of the mobs.

This read was interesting.

If I could, I'd quote the whole text, because there's just too much information in it.
I'll try it with a kind of listing.

Please keep in mind that the author is working as a lawyer thre. This could mean that his point of view distorts his look on the topc a bit.

- He says that London inhabitants closed the doors and watched Face Book and Twitter - "ironically the same mediums which the Chaots used to arrange their meetings"
- the streets have been empty
- football/soccer matches were cancelled (the author writes that his favourite group, the Tottenham Hotspurs cancelled their start as well)
- riots started a few hundred metres away from the ticket bureau of the stadium
- the ticket bureau was destroyed

- "The tries of understanding also failed. The plunderers might have been relatively poor. But they didn't arrive bare foot. Their goal was not to own sneakers. Or a cellular phone. Or a TV. AThey already had all that.

- Their goal was rather to have another pair of sneakers. and the newest smart phone. And the flattest screen. Social romantic rather isn't going to rise with that. [?] I have never seen a single political banner.

- Very likely this wasn't any anticapitalistic uprising [?]. The participating ones rather indulged an distinct form of worshipping false gods of market economy from Nike sneakers to Apple IPads. The fact that public housing was done in the midst of properous areas - what is right in principle - apparingly led to the rioteers' longing [for goods] have become especially great. They are sitting in tiny cars next to Ashton-Martin cars at the taffic lights - daily.

- The riots are not a problem of immigrants. For that, too many of them are white. In one shop of JD sports, a sports chain, the intruders had been queuing up disciplined [?] to take off the security tags from their loot. How very British.

- Does this look like an uprising of a worker's class ? It looks rathr like a non-worker's class. Some of them come from families who live from social wellfare in second of thirs generation. They have internalized a kind of perception of entitlement : "Something for nothing".

- The moral ideas of respect of ownership and of physical integrity [?] went lost. They perceive the state [the government ?] rather as in an obligation to deliver [something] [the German word "Bringschuld" is used here] or even as a foe, which is manifesting itself in the probing questions of social workers, teachers who go on the nerves, and "disrespectful" policepersons.


- [...]

- Since the reforms of the Thatcher era UK has evolved into a service society. The winners are the good quialified ones, bad or not at all qualified ones don't have much of a chance.

- Meanwhile good working and hard-working immigrants from East Europe occupy many jobs. As a Londoner of he prefers british or polish tinners.

- [...]"

That's what he wrote. I shortened it a bit.

 

[hishadow]

- football/soccer matches were cancelled (the author writes that his favourite group, the Tottenham Hotspurs cancelled their start as well)
- riots started a few hundred metres away from the ticket bureau of the stadium
- the ticket bureau was destroyed

I did mention that ticket prices were too high, didn't I?

 

[Ubereil]

Interesting video on the matter.

Übereil

 

[kalniel]

Brit here.

Still WAY too early to determine if there is a root cause - each town's riot was different and for different reasons - as did the participants within a riot. So causes vary the full spectrum from protest violence at authority, protest violence at social situations, protest violence at capitalism, opportunist violence, opportunist looting, fun, and something to do.

The single biggest cause I'd attribute is simply lack of education/intelligence - the short term actions will have caused the perpetrators to be worse off in the long term, but that's a behaviour most of the human race suffers from to some extent. It's no different from someone deciding to pirate a video game. The genre is just different.

Personally, I'm pretty proud of the majority of the UK's behaviour here - the actions were rightly looked upon with utter disgust by the majority, even the majority of people in the age group of the looters, as shown by the huge number of volunteers in the clean ups. I'm proud of the fact that the police put human lives ahead of material damage, and while there are lots of accusations that they could have done more, I'm glad that the serious incidents of harm to people were so few in number that each one has received full attention - more people die on roads each day.

Many of us are frankly more annoyed that the person who created a certain e-petition couldn't even spell the word 'lose'

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I too often mix up "lose" and "loose" as well - especially since we have "lose" here in German language as well …

 

[kalniel]

I too often mix up "lose" and "loose" as well - especially since we have "lose" here in German language as well …

Yes but it's not your native language!

(OK, I still get them wrong as well, but if I was creating a petition with the aim of getting over 100,000 signatures I'd check carefully )

PS regarding an early post in this thread, 'ned' and 'chav' aren't acronyms for anything - someone might have coined an acronym to fit them since, but they don't stand for anything. I've not heard 'ned' for ages, but 'chav' is still around (and there are many regional versions of the same thing - it was 'chad' where I was growing up, which is related to a particular local suburb of ill-repute).

 

[zakhal]

PS regarding an early post in this thread, 'ned' and 'chav' aren't acronyms for anything - someone might have coined an acronym to fit them since, but they don't stand for anything. I've not heard 'ned' for ages, but 'chav' is still around (and there are many regional versions of the same thing - it was 'chad' where I was growing up, which is related to a particular local suburb of ill-repute).

Before this week I had never heard of those terms. The book that descripted them was written in 1995 so I guess its possible they might not be used anymore.

Even if the occasian was not positive all this made me more interested of the british culture. Been reading some books and watching movies. Currently watching "This is England".

As a positive thing casualties were few in this riot. In comparison in the LA riots 53 people died and thousands were wounded.

 

[kalniel]

Even if the occasian was not positive all this made me more interested of the british culture. Been reading some books and watching movies. Currently watching "This is England".

Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a small Island' is apparently a nice if outdated taster for outsiders.

 

[zakhal]

Historian blames the black subculture which has become popular among the whites too

Historian David Starkey has told BBC's Newsnight ''the whites have become black'' in a discussion on the England riots with author and broadcaster Dreda Say Mitchell and the author of Chavs, Owen Jones.

He also hit out at what he called the ''destructive, nihilistic gangster culture'' which he said ''has become the fashion.''

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14513517

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Interesting idea. Makes sense.
I'm not sure whether he's right or wrong, though (how could I ?).

 

[JDR13]

Still WAY too early to determine if there is a root cause - each town's riot was different and for different reasons - as did the participants within a riot.

Wasn't the root cause that guy getting shot by the police?

As far as reasons go, there were two kinds of participants. Those who were doing it to protest the shooting, and those who simply wanted to wreak havoc and/or get free stuff.

 

[woges]

I'm not really sure on the riot matter but I will say the eviction of families from their abodes on the account of an adult family member being involved in said riot is a disgrace.

David Starkey is rather ridiculous you'd think there hadn't been a working or social underclass since the arrival of black people in the UK. It all seems a case of fingers wagging, mouths shouting and brains inactive from all sides. I guess the Whites have been becoming Black since 1517 when Londoners went after foreigners. No just no.

 

[Corwin]

When you have laws which preclude proper parenting and the teaching of discipline; when you propogate other laws which do away with the 'old' morality and morality structures, why do you then complain about the lack of these things when things turn sour??!! UK leader go look in a mirror and you'll see the root cause of your troubles!!

 

[Ubereil]

Wasn't the root cause that guy getting shot by the police?

I don't know, was the shot in Sarajevo was the root cause of World War I?

Übereil

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Interesting idea. Makes sense.
I'm not sure whether he's right or wrong, though (how could I ?).

Interesting? How?

This guy is another brilliant example of the intellectual worthlessness that prevails at least on the media.

White people can not become black people. And vice versa.

Yet this guy attachs to these qualifiers to a culture. Claiming that there is a white culture and a black culture.

It is non sense. Worshipping and idolizing criminals has been a feature of the US culture since at least the mid nineteenth century. It was done by white people and black people are newcomers in that game. From what I learned from the few african cultures I investigated (which are held by black people then), no sign of worshipping criminals. So why make this a black thing?

Instead of admitting the very simple fact that there is a culture that can be adopted independently of the skin colour, this guy builds up a shallow fallacy that whites are adopting black culture, which is not even black in the way it was developped by white people way before black US people start to adopt it (in this sense, they have grown betterly assimilated since they adopted more of the cultural characteristics)

So I really wonder how this idea is interesting.

The trouble, because the current situation can be seen as troublesome, is that the common speech held by people like this historian has worn out. Larger chunks of people, no matter their race, no longer believe in it and have dissociated from it.
The fact that some white people do now fall into the category is bothersome for anyone coming up with a racial explanation. So the pisaller is to claim the existence of white and black culture and redress the situation as such.

Worthiness but apparently in demand.

 

[Jhari]

It is non sense. Worshipping and idolizing criminals has been a feature of the US culture since at least the mid nineteenth century. It was done by white people and black people are newcomers in that game. From what I learned from the few african cultures I investigated (which are held by black people then), no sign of worshipping criminals. So why make this a black thing?

Of course it's not a Black thing. It's a POOR thing. I think well off people tend to shift blame from economics to culture to explain poverty.

Continuing his excellent post:

Instead of admitting the very simple fact that there is a culture that can be adopted independently of the skin colour, this guy builds up a shallow fallacy that whites are adopting black culture, which is not even black in the way it was developped by white people way before black US people start to adopt it (in this sense, they have grown betterly assimilated since they adopted more of the cultural characteristics)

So I really wonder how this idea is interesting.

The trouble, because the current situation can be seen as troublesome, is that the common speech held by people like this historian has worn out. Larger chunks of people, no matter their race, no longer believe in it and have dissociated from it.
The fact that some white people do now fall into the category is bothersome for anyone coming up with a racial explanation. So the pisaller is to claim the existence of white and black culture and redress the situation as such.

Worthiness but apparently in demand.

I believe this to be correct. People who have become so disenfranchised don't do themselves any favors by giving up on the dream of financial success. They see too many who went to school and still didn't get a job, and those who had jobs but lost them in plant closings, and those who seemed to be doing well just lose it all. Poverty grinds one down, and people do give up…start feeling that they have nothing to lose.

 

[kalniel]

Wasn't the root cause that guy getting shot by the police?

As far as reasons go, there were two kinds of participants. Those who were doing it to protest the shooting, and those who simply wanted to wreak havoc and/or get free stuff.

People are shot around the world by police without riots ensuring every time. Indeed, there has been the (rare) few cases of police shootings in the UK over the last few years, however the vast majority of them haven't caused riots. Likewise, we've had several riots in the world and the UK that didn't have any temporal connection to a police shooting, so no, I'd say the root cause wasn't a guy getting shot by police.