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or any week, there is always unrest in London...but it is allowed...for the moment. Tolerance at this stage is in limited supply from what I read.
I look from afar at all those huddled masses from Africa and the Middle East who beg to be admitted to the western world, and often that means London. Most of them come to stay with their families and a desire to join in the free market.
These latest riots seem to be perpetrated by this very group, probably the children of former refugees. What has it been, one generation, two? Have they all forgotten that they came to a place where free speech means the police don't shoot you for cursing the Prime Minister. (Hell, doesn't that happen in Parliment all the time?)
Yes, the riots are a party atmosphere and filled with young people and that "lets rip off the rich folk attitude." But would they do that if their parents or their family were facing deportation or the firing squad? Lest they forget, this is not Egypt or Yemen or Syria. They would all be dead if it were.
The media is calling this "copycat" rioting,. New groups of youths not involved in the original shooting incident that are now looting stores for new shoes and clothing. "Foreign elements" "black kids" they say, how difficult it must be to not lash out and call them racist names for all this destruction. But then I don't read the English tabloids so I don't know what those looneys are saying.
Yes, employment among the young people is a problem. Jobs are non-existant in much of the Middle East and Africa, do they want to go home, I think not. I am one who approves of work for welfare programs if they are sensible. One American state takes every fifth mother and allows them to watch the children of the other four so that they can find jobs, creative welfare programs do exist.
But we are overwhelmed by garbage in our lives, by polluted rivers and streams, by trash that needs to be sorted and recycled. That sounds like jobs to me. And at least these youth would be better off somewhere doing something useful for their newly chosen country and they can take pride in the contribution. Otherwise it is jail for robbery, arson and assault.
No matter the source of the problem, creative government is needed. I am all for reviving the Depression Era work farms and the conservation corps here in America. As the stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down there will be thousands of soldiers shipped back into our rotten economy and that will make them mad. We didn't plan the wars well but we must plan our way out of them and now. Where are the jobs for these people?
Comments encouraged, ideas welcomed by one and all. At least here, we know the politicians never listen to creativity, but we can voice the ideas aloud. :-/
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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I have not posted on this before, because I am still digesting it, and it's very close to my heart. I live in Tottenham, where the rioting started, and have done since the before the Broadwater Farm riots 26 years ago (though I'm moving out in the next couple of months). I walk the length of the High Street a couple of times most weeks - as I did on Friday of last week before the rioting, and again yesterday (as far as possible: much of it is still closed). My young companion was an acquaintance of the guy who was shot dead by the police - the death that sparked the initial riots. The lad and his best friend (a 27-year-old black guy whose family came over from Monserrat when he was 3) watched the film of the looting with me on Sunday afternoon, and identified at least half a dozen of the rioters as people they knew. These in some sense are MY people - part of my daily interactions, tangents to my life.
There are no jobs. It isn't a question of enabling people to do jobs: there simply are not enough to be done (there are about six unemployed for every every available job nationally in the UK: the proportion is much worse in the deprived areas where the rioting has occurred). The local council has responded to budget cuts - among the most savage in the UK, imposed by our current central government - partly by closing all youth clubs and centres: that alone was likely to cause increased violence, and it was certainly predicted (for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/29/young-people-gangs-youth-clubs-close ).
The gap between rich and poor is increasing. There's a fair bit of evidence that when the gap exceeds a certain percentage, the health effects on the poorest are significant: it doesn't only matter what one's absolute income is: relative income counts as well. That's understandable - man is a social animal, and health is mental as well as physical. Many of the poorest have health problems making them unsuited to continuous employment.
Institutions which used to be worthy of respect have been shown to have their fair share (if not more) of faudsters and criminals. Newspapers - the phone hacking scandal. Parliament: the MPs expenses scandal, amongst others. The police: the anger over the deaths of innocent people (Ian Tomlinson, etc) and the feelings of cover-up. The Bankers: the massive bonusses awarded to those who have plunged our financial system into chaos, and made life so much more difficult for the worst-off in our society. It all doesn't exactly encourage the disadvantaged and excluded to feel that people are really expected to abide by the law, or to play fair.
Our society has become very credit-dependent. Those who have to rely on Pay-as-you-go phones, prepay meters for gas and electricity, don't have access to buy things cheaply on the net because they don't have credit / debit cards, etc are not only at a real disadvantage, but also FEEL excluded and rejected.
These youths don't feel part of our society. They don't feel they have any prospects, nor any future other than a life on the dole. They have consumer images chucked at them through advertising, urging them to aspire to things that will forever be out of their reach through legitimate means. No-one represents them: politicians are only interested in self-styled, self-appointed, self-important "community leaders" - hell, my MP doesn't even bother replying to most letters!
Nothing excuses the violence and thuggery. But if we are to prevent it, we must try hard to understand the conditions that have given rise to it, and work to alleviate them. That is NOT a short-term fix - it will take a decade to undo the damage of the past few years, and we may already be facing a whole generation "lost" to mainstream society. But we have no alternative but to try, and we have no alternative but to find the money for it ... the costs of not doing so are demonstrably already too high.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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saxifraga_umbros wrote:
> Nothing excuses the violence and thuggery. But if we are to prevent it, we must try hard to understand the conditions that have given rise to it, and work to alleviate them. That is NOT a short-term fix - it will take a decade to undo the damage of the past few years, and we may already be facing a whole generation "lost" to mainstream society. But we have no alternative but to try, and we have no alternative but to find the money for it ... the costs of not doing so are demonstrably already too high.<
Well said, your whole post was well said.
I think that fix you mention begins at home. Families in a poor economy should not become so large. Most life forms in nature downsize in response to external pressures as part of their survival instinct, man does not. Too many mouths to feed is often the result of reckless behavior or religious fervor. These things need to change.
Many who are out of work are there as a result of wrongful education choices. I would love to take a poll and see how many Liberal Arts majors are employed by McDonalds. The rush to join the IT revolution spawned a generation of computer science majors for whom there is no work. The very nature of IT is to downsize itself and allow the machines to take over. Silly humans.
The Haves and Have-nots are here to stay, at least until the next revolution, and I don't mean to say that mindless rioting is a revolution. Anarchy serves no social purpose, mindless violence is only a form of egotistical greed and is too self serving to bring about change.
Governments will not tax to save the poor from themselves. But neither will destroying shops and other establishments that serve the community. What is seen in London and in other English cities this week is the very thing that other countries like France and Germany fear from their large foreign populations.
There is no good answer to the problem. I certainly don't have one. ??
[Updated on: Tue, 09 August 2011 16:01]
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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The unrest in London this week... 
