I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love. Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving! We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
Location: US/Canada
Registered: September 2009
Messages: 733
I'm not sure that Nick Weeks, who resides in one of the worst hit council areas in London, is going to appreciate this particular spin on the recent rioting and the principal reasons for the outbreak:
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
I don't like the man in the video, but I sympathise with his initial proposition. However the culture of hindsight gurus is something I disapprove of. The man is a twat. After sympathising, briefly, I stopped. He is a twat.
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1560
Actually, I think that giving ANY kind of publicity to this kind of ill-informed rant is probably a really bad idea.
I'm not gonna go through it line by line, but some of the things that really made my hackles rise included:
"they know damn well if caught they won't be properly punished" - see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London-riots-Lidl-water-thief-jailed-for-six-months.html : "A college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months on Thursday for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water during a night of rioting." the normal kind of sentence here in Tottenham for nicking a crate of drink is about an eight-week tag, plus some community service.
"criticised by people who are not in their situation and couldn't cope if they were" I've faced my fair share of public disorder at gigs, at big events, and at weddings - including being woken at 1 am and called into work because as Service Manager I had to go and deal with a drunk wielding a Samurai Sword at a wedding, who had already injured three people; I've had guns pulled on me; and planned and organised security for events in conjunction with the police up to and including a royal visit.
"the whole thing happened because the police shot dead a man who was pointing a gun straight at them" There is ABSOLUTELY no evidence for this (nor is there any evidence that the gun was a replica, or was wrapped in a sock - both of which are commonly-held beliefs among Mark Duggan's friends).
"if they had to look for employment, they might have to learn to read and write" Actually, most have reasonable basic literacy - at least as good as is common amongst the Poles and Brazilians who tend to be in at least casual employment. Those that don't often have organic reasons such as dyslexia, or cognitive/developmental problems (often as a result in inadequate nutrition in infancy and/or diseases of poverty - or massively interrupted schooling for reasons including sickle cell disease).
The riots in London have been used as a massive opportunity by the neo-Nazis to inflict their racist views on the rest of us (please sign here http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/page/s/we-need-to-stop-a-riot ...) - this is NOT a race issue, it is an issue of poverty. That's certainly true in the community I've lived in for the past quarter century, and the riots elsewhere have nearly all occurred on the borderline between affluent areas and very deprived ones. The major ones are the same areas that rioted in the 1908's - Tottenham, Brixton, Hanworth in Birmigham, Toxteth in Liverpool ... things are as bad now as they were then, for the poorest of the poor, and those that society treats as (and often refers to) as "dolescum".
"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
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
I didn't watch it sufficiently to be able to comment on your analysis. But I watched it enough to recognise that my initial gut reaction was wrong, that my sympathy with his initial proposition was ill founded, and that he is and will always be a twat .
I think that concurs with your analysis in sufficient broad terms for me to agree with the overall point you make, though being unable to comment on the minutiae