The UK Riots...

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  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,269
    You hit the nail on the head there, @BAIN123. A couple of parents once told me, when I informed them about their boy spreading racism in the classroom, that "we don't have any time to worry about that! It's your responsibility to make sure he behaves!" I shall never forget these words (though spoken in Dutch of course. ;;) ) You see the thing is, a kid from a Christian Turkish tradition had been absent for about a week and most people, including myself, didn't know what the excuse was. (It later turned out to be the flu, plain and simple). Another boy, of Arab descent, suddenly commented on the absence saying that the kid had to be ill since all of 'them' sleep in their own p and s over 'there'...

    You have NO idea how angry I was. The Arab kid was ALWAYS the first to cry 'RACIST!' at anyone of us, contemptible Christians, when we reprimanded him one way or another. I referred to such previous incidents when I talked to the father. He made it abundantly clear, his eyes sending out signals of loathing, that he wouldn't have that conversation right there and then. Kiddo needs manners? We, teachers, teach them. Not they, parents. They have more important things on their minds than upbringing...

    (Epilogue: both kids left school early. The Turkish boy's scores weren't good enough. He took off to become an electrician, which is not a bad thing by the way. Great job, pays well these days! The Arab kid left because his older sister went to another school (also because of poor test scores) and the parents wanted all their kids in the same school. In a way, that's a shame, for despite his arrogance, he wasn't so bad in terms of math and sciences. Last I heard was that he was studying accountancy on the lowest level. He could have been an engineer, we're all sure of that. Bad call by the parents, especially since both schools are in the same city, located not even 5 km apart.)
  • LudsLuds MIA
    edited August 2011 Posts: 1,986
    Wow Dimi, looks like a lot of these parents really need teaching about how to do some decent parenting. Can you sign them up in your class?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,269
    I wish I could. Some lovely mothers among them. ;;)


    Errr... Back to the riots! :)
  • PrinceKamalKhanPrinceKamalKhan Monsoon Palace, Udaipur
    Posts: 3,262
    Interview with London Store Owner about the riots showing why journalists get held in about as much esteem as used car salesmen and plaintiff's attorneys these days:

  • j7wildj7wild Suspended
    Posts: 823
    Racism! Racism!

    that's what the black people here all use as an excuse!

  • Posts: 4,622
    3 excellent editorials on the subject:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/less-political-rebellion-more-mollycoddled-mob/story-e6frg6zo-1226111939883
    Excellent commentaries PKK, especially the last two by Melanie Phillips in the Mail and Brendan O"Neil in the Australian.
    The "Australian" article was even written by a self identified liberal. There is hope, when liberals as well as conservatives are waking up to the dangers of the welfare state and the culture of entitlement and dependancy it promotes.

    From "liberal" Brendan O'Neil's excellent piece in the Australian:
    "What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people's existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain "mentally fit", has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention."

    ==The left hates to broach the topic of family breakdown. (There is no subject more politically incorrect and distasteful to the left than the notion that family breakdown might have anything to do with anything. Can't touch that one with a ten foot pole as it's "insulting" to single mothers, not to mention "judgemental." Can't have that!"
    Kudos though to Melanie Phillips in the Mail article linked above. She's not afraid to offer up some straight talk on the matter.

    ".....and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family.
    For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit."

    ".........When Labour came to power in 1997, it set about systematically destroying not just the traditional family but the very idea that married parents were better for children than any other arrangement.
    Instead, it introduced the sexual free-for-all of ‘lifestyle choice’; claimed that the idea of the male breadwinner was a sexist anachronism; and told girls that they could, and should, go it alone as mothers.
    This was the outcome of the shattering defeat of Tony Blair, in the two years or so after he came to power, at the hands of the ultra-feminists and apostles of non-judgmentalism in his Cabinet and party who were determined, above all, to destroy the traditional nuclear family.
    Blair stood virtually alone against them, and lost."

    ==I'm not a big fan of Tony Blair but he at least he fought the good fight within his own party.


  • edited August 2011 Posts: 2,782


    Racism is alive well in the uk

    He had a point but made in it in the wrong way innit?






    This man, this noble man made more sense to me than any overpaid, over hyped politician overrated speaker. rip his son.
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    edited August 2011 Posts: 14,003
    I must admit that until now, I have been somewhat oblivious to the full extent of the riots. Due to the destruction of the Sony distribution centre, Shamless will most likely have to postpone their release of Don't Torture A Duckling, due to the copies being held in the centre. That may not sound like much, but for a small company like Shameless that specialises in a niche market, this is going to be costly. :-(

    It turns out Arrow have also been affected. They put out this statement on the 9th:

    After five months we brought The Beyond replacement programme to a close, happy in the knowledge that all stock had long been corrected and customers could now surely purchase new copies without the need for a replacement, thus rendering any future replacement service redundant. When we discovered recently that customers newly purchasing copies of The Beyond were finding old discs we became alarmed and investigated the stock being held at our distribution centre, Sony DADC, Enfield with a view to discovering what had happened with the replacement of discs.

    As most of you will be aware, the rioting in London spread to Enfield last night and the distribution centre was looted and set on fire. Thankfully no staff were harmed in this atrocious attack, but it does mean all Arrow stock, and the stock of many other distributors, is now no more. We are working with Sony DADC and our partners to find a solution for getting stock back in stores very soon. Stock that is currently with retailers is all that will be available for the moment and new releases such as Midnight and the forthcoming ArrowDrome titles will surely be affected.

    In light of recent discs of The Beyond being sold uncorrected following our brief and incomplete investigation we have decided that as soon as our distribution centre is up and running again a supply of replacement discs will be made and of course new stock replenishment will be manufactured with the corrected disc. We thank you for your understanding through this difficult time and will update with news of the availability of Arrow stock as it is available.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    edited August 2011 Posts: 24,269
    I wonder, since the news died fairly quickly after one calm night, how things are going in London (and the other ravished cities). What do the streets look like? How are the nights? How's the police doing? Any word on trials, sentences...?
  • Posts: 5,634
    Any kids under 15 who get caught up in the mayhem get a slap on the wrist and told 'Don't do that again' etc etc

    Police and law courts in the United Kingdom are generally regarded as a soft touch now.

    Life doesn't mean life anymore, out in 15-20 years in most circumstances

    I understand things have improved since the worst of the trouble except for some minor sporadic nonsense, which can sometimes be attributed to just general last night behavior in any given time or place

    always going to be some idiot rebellions in any part of the world I'm afraid



  • St_GeorgeSt_George Shuttling Drax's lovelies to the space doughnut - happy 40th, MR!
    edited August 2011 Posts: 1,699
    I wonder, since the news died fairly quickly after one calm night, how things are going in London (and the other ravished cities). What do the streets look like? How are the nights? How's the police doing? Any word on trials, sentences...?
    There's been a predictable reactionary response from the powers that be - and little interest in getting stuck into sorting out the cause: the widening gap in society etc.

    A major symbol of how uninterested the UK government is in treating the symptoms rather than the cause is that, thanks to the rioting and unquestioned line that we must send every looter possible to prison to 'punish' them, we've achieved record numbers of prisoners and are fast running out of prison places for them all. And yet statistics prove that too often when someone's sent to prison in the UK they learn there how to become a more effective criminal (thief, burglar etc) and when released they're more likely to re-offend. Don't get me wrong, any rioter or looter of the type we saw last week deserves punishment, but this can't be the answer on its own. And given the justice system clearly doesn't work (i.e. punishment alone is useless unless there's rehabilitation and there simply isn't enough of the latter), it's hardly much of an answer at all. Why are we sending youths like this to prison when it's likely to make things worse in the long-term - just to make us feel better? I mean, seriously - it plain doesn't work. And will probably just lead to more riots.

    Aside from that, earlier this week, while he visited parts of damaged and looted London, Prince Charles also took the effort to visit the area of Hackney, London, where a fair number of the London looters no doubt reside, and where there is a serious problem with youth unemployment, gangs and youth services have been cut, are facing difficulties in reaching the youth of the area and are clearly crying out for help. Of course, Charlie can't do anything, but at least he expressed empathy for the youth workers' problems and the wider problems of the area. Have any of the politicians in the government visited that area and/ or made those sort of noises? Of course not. Their only response so far has been reactionary. Clearly Cameron has time on his hands - he could have visited Hackney and the youth project there that Charlie did today; instead he chose to watch the cricket. Draw your own conclusions from that, peeps. ;)

    Like I said, to improve society - which I think it's pretty obvious (and has been acknowledged by others in this thread not just me) is of great importance - we all need to chip in as citizens of that society; politicians can't just do it all. Indeed, they arguably should take a lead from us - we elect them supposedly to lead the nation in the direction we want. But, for me, on this score the politicians at the top are making none of the right noises and none of the right moves. Frankly, they seem not to care. But really why should we be surprised - their attitude to the economy seems to be merely obsessively to cut the deficit, not come up with a genuine plan for growth that would benefit the majority of the nation and not just their friends in The City and their donors... :p

  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,339
    That was very good of Prince Charles, to go and visit such areas. Indeed, politicians these days seem only interested in their own future, not the country's. Long term thinking and responsibility are words that slowly dissapear. In a couple of years nobody will even understad their meaning anymore.
    Oh well, life isn't all that bad just before our empires also collapse, just like in Roman times ;-)
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,348
    I remember these riots of two years ago - did they really gain anything, I wonder?
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    Dragonpol wrote:
    I remember these riots of two years ago - did they really gain anything, I wonder?

    A couple of 40 inch plasmas at the very least.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,348
    Dragonpol wrote:
    I remember these riots of two years ago - did they really gain anything, I wonder?

    A couple of 40 inch plasmas at the very least.

    Yes, I'd forgotten about that, Ice - the riots seemed to be more about looting and vandalism more than about any financial or social grievance. How predictable of such people.
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Dragonpol wrote:
    I remember these riots of two years ago - did they really gain anything, I wonder?

    A couple of 40 inch plasmas at the very least.

    Yes, I'd forgotten about that, Ice - the riots seemed to be more about looting and vandalism more than about any financial or social grievance. How predictable of such people.

    What do you expect from the feral chav underclass? That they want to instigate some sort of social change a la Tsarist Russia in 1917?

    Thank Christ they are too stupid to only aspire to a new telly and the tat Mike Ashley sells rather than any actual power. Now if they got themselves a Lenin or a Hitler it would be something to worry about.
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,339
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Dragonpol wrote:
    I remember these riots of two years ago - did they really gain anything, I wonder?

    A couple of 40 inch plasmas at the very least.

    Yes, I'd forgotten about that, Ice - the riots seemed to be more about looting and vandalism more than about any financial or social grievance. How predictable of such people.

    What do you expect from the feral chav underclass? That they want to instigate some sort of social change a la Tsarist Russia in 1917?

    Thank Christ they are too stupid to only aspire to a new telly and the tat Mike Ashley sells rather than any actual power. Now if they got themselves a Lenin or a Hitler it would be something to worry about.

    The plus-side to bad education ;-)
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,348
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Dragonpol wrote:
    I remember these riots of two years ago - did they really gain anything, I wonder?

    A couple of 40 inch plasmas at the very least.

    Yes, I'd forgotten about that, Ice - the riots seemed to be more about looting and vandalism more than about any financial or social grievance. How predictable of such people.

    What do you expect from the feral chav underclass? That they want to instigate some sort of social change a la Tsarist Russia in 1917?

    Thank Christ they are too stupid to only aspire to a new telly and the tat Mike Ashley sells rather than any actual power. Now if they got themselves a Lenin or a Hitler it would be something to worry about.

    Yes, I imagine we need not worry. Two years on and all that...mere blundering.
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