It is almost beyond belief that there is so much violence and criminality happening at this moment. The riots are spreading and are now also in Birmingham and no doubt will spread further.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14450248 for BBC coverage

I never imagined people would lower themselves to the level of rioting. It never serves a purpose, nothing is solved and the issue at hand is just forgotten. Innocent people suffer, livelihoods are destroyed.

I don't understand one bit!

I have just received an email from my son who lives in London...


Annoying rioting thugs.

Hi Mum.

Don't worry... The riots are inconvenient but I'm not too close to them.

Unlike recently in Greece these scum have absolutely no reason to riot, they are the same people who usually stick to their own territory, shoot each other and mug innocent passers by, but for some reason since Tottenham two nights ago they all seem to think they can break into shops, houses and cars and steal what's in them, then set them on fire, and no one will stop them. The fact hundreds are now walking home carrying TV sets and other electrical items, and others driving back with vehicles packed with looted goods and have not heard of a single arrest despite them all being in the open, caught red handed and half of them filmed on the local CCTV systems they aren't being stopped.

Normally these rubbish keep relatively quiet and local, but now we can see them all as if it's time for them to come out and be seen. On the upside it's the perfect opportunity to round them up and lock them away till their thirties or forties (none I saw tonight were over about 20 and looked like they'd kill you if you challenged them) and clean London up in a few days. Like it would ever happen here. Most will get community service and be allowed to carry on and keep it up. That's why they're doing it now, as the police don't even investigate many crimes like car theft and vandalism as they don't have the staff or time to bother. That's what happens when the enforcement system fails.

This is from the BBC News website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14450248

This doesn't tally with your comment about no arrests, however I would imagine that arson and other damage to premises come way out in front of looting so the police perhaps decided to concentrate on the most important things.

What started all these riots in the first place? I don't think I've seen anything about that.

An alleged drug dealer was shot on Thursday by police, there is an investigation but it is alleged that he was armed. There was a demonstration in that area the following day which then got violent. This is nothing to do with the rest of the criminality which has followed.

I am listening to the news as I type and a couple of teenage girls, drinking looted wine, said that they are teaching the police and 'rich people' that they can do what they want. They hope, they said, that the violence continues.

The police have started publishing photos of some of the offenders.

Here is the story about the trigger...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14459516 BBC News.

I note that the word inciting teenagers to join in has been largely spread by Twitter etc, Blackberry and other Social Networks. Wonderful. It seems they are not yet closed down. I wonder why not.

Back to the arrest figures, and these are only for London, 310 overnight, 525 so far in the past few days.

And special camps to hold them in a la "V for Vendetta"?

Regrettably no.

A lot of the coverage here is of the tone of criticizing police for not being able to control it.. I feel more like it should be criticizing the youth for having no respect for where they live! I could almost sort of MAYBE see lashing out with vandalism when frustrated about something (not that, from I've read and heard on this, this is the case, definitely not now 3-4 nights later) but it got absolutely out of hand with people hurt, and killed even, and spreading around the country, seems to me like it's spreading and continuing by kids who don't want to miss "the fun". How can you do that to the place where you live? I certainly wouldn't want to wake up one day and realized that my idiot friends and I had burned our whole town to the ground.

Something that was a drug related issue escalated to this? Sounds like what is happening near the Mexican border, but to a lesser scale I am sure. Plus there is no rioting near the border, although there have been casualties due to the violence there.

I saw an interesting comment somewhere that went along the lines of the rioters that are destroying their own communities have lost all pride in themselves and in their community. I have found it rather frustrating that whenever somebody gives possible reasons as to why such pride has been lost, they are branded as an "apologist".

A youth worker was on a news channel earlier talking about how 75% of roughly 60,000 places on summer courses from last year have been cut, leaving approximately 15,000 such places available for youths to apply for across all boroughs of London. And that is just one example, she said that many other youth programs had suffered severe cuts as well.

Is it a coincidence that this has happened in the summer? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But surely keeping the urban poor youth active in their communities, doing something purposeful such as those courses, over the summer is essential. Boredom, even though being dismissed rather quickly by some in the media (Kay Burley), surely has its part to play in this. I also think it is far too easy to call these rioters "mindless". Of course some of them are but there must also be a great deal of frustration and disenfranchisement amongst some of the politically aware inner-city youths.

All that said, this has got way out of hand and I have the greatest of sympathies for the people who run small businesses. These people are very often not the "rich" people that the rioters are supposedly angry with. The most saddening image was that of the person bleeding and in obvious pain being mugged by a gang of yobs and yobettes.

There is also, as usual, the bandwagoners, the anarchists and other such entities taking advantage of the situation and I imagine that very few people who are rioting are doing this in support of the protest march in Tottenham where all this started.

I simply fear that the media are oversimplifying the issues here as they confidently state that there is nothing behind this other than "brazen criminality". But maybe I am wrong and that is all there is to it - unsettling times.

Well I never had any nice little 'summer courses' provided for me and my friends, but I don't recall popping down the city centre to torch MacDonald's and smash my way into sports shops to steal whatever I could lay my hands on.

Not everybody is the same Carti - people's family situations are all different, people's levels of education are different, people's financial situations are different. Extremely affluent areas of London are in some instances just a short stroll away or a quick tube journey from some of the poorest areas in the country. Some communities, or sub-sections of communities, have strained relationships with the police and feel as though they are being profiled and unfairly treated. Stating that because you didn't have something and as a result didn't behave in a certain way must mean that everybody who doesn't have that "thing" must therefore behave in the same manner ignores so many variables.

Of course everyone's situation is different, Jonno, but there's no excuse at all for behaviour of this sort.

I'm not suggesting that there is gg, I'm simply suggesting that there must be reasons for the behaviour. Ignoring these reasons and rather neatly calling it greed doesn't solve problems. There has to be something wrong or missing in someone's life that they have to stoop as low as people have of late. What is happening is a disgrace but I just can't believe that there is no reason behind this.

To turn the question around, why would you not loot? In answering that question we start to realise how these variables affect our actions. There was a psychologist (specialising in the psychology of riots/mobs) on a news station who expressed the point I am trying to in a much more eloquent manner.

On the lighter side:
I warned you about the consequences of getting dusted with that volcanic ash from Iceland! Now maybe they'll clean it up. Hose it all down with pink-water cannons. Remember that northern headed cloud of ash that went over Poland? Know where that ended up? Greece! Way I figure it is that all the homeless who got caught out in that weather slowly became over irritated by the silicon powder. The government knew this was coming and are covering up the vital ash/anger studies done in the 1850s. Wikispeaks says that all of industry was alerted and shipped their factory rejects to the stores all in a ruse to collect the insurance bucks. The World ID Centre has identified several mercenary rioters from file footage. It is speculated that they were intended to lead the riots in a different direction but some guy named Dinsdale Python kept shouting conflicting directions. Then somebody forgot to stop at a gas station to ask for directions and everybody got lost. Al Gore plans to head over to lecture on the contributions the fires will have on global warming, if someone will pick up his honorarium/fees. Rumors are starting that it was a rival drug lord who actually did the first shooting from a hidden grassy knoll. At least that's what's been overheard by my sources on someone's mobile phone.

To me the looting is a secondary thing. I could see how bored (or dumb) kids could get caught up into joining in on looting. But setting fire to a huge part of the city? Hurting people? Someone was shot. Compared to that, to me, looting is not the worst thing, though it's certianly hurting businesses and the community.

I think the fires and looting go hand in hand and it is going to cause long-term pain for a lot of people. Saddening images of a family business that has been run from the same building for over 150 years completely destroyed.

"Stating that because you didn't have something and as a result didn't behave in a certain way must mean that everybody who doesn't have that "thing" must therefore behave in the same manner ignores so many variables."


Oh dear. Not when it goes as far as mass looting, arson and other criminal damage by schoolchildren. I suspect that that kind of thinking is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It seems that there's something deeply wrong with British society and to suggest that the cutting of a few thousand summer courses in the last year or so is the cause of this mayhem is not even in the 'sticking plaster' category.

I have to say, though, that I've taught in Ireland, Israel, Germany, Belgium and France at one time or another, and in my experience general levels of expectation, commitment to learning and attainment in the UK are shockingly, spectacularly below what is the norm in any of those countries - which have otherwise similar social and economic problems. Not knowing the UK well enough, I have no idea why this should be.

What on Earth is wrong with the home life of these schoolchildren that they are able to be on the streets overnight to partake in these riots? This is precisely what I originally posted. Oh dear indeed.



I didn't say that, I gave just one reason and there are doubtless many more. By saying as you have that there is "something deeply wrong with British society", it suggests that there are reasons behind these riots and that is simply what I was asking. This is what has frustrated me over the last couple of days - nobody is allowed to ask "what is wrong" because the only thing that won't be frowned upon is to say this a disgrace, this is mindless this or that, this is purely down to greed and so on.



Agreed.