London's burning

[Stay Golden]

Relatives of mine in the UK have been telling our family that this was going to happen 2 years ago. That it has been brewing with several organized groups over economic disparity, lack of jobs, the tension over immigration laws and wanting to cause general mayhem. Many citizens over there truly fear that eventually the opportunists are going to swarm and over take some of the banks by force using huge numbers.

[Jordan!]

Immigrate to overcrowded city

complain about lack of jobs

[d_phaneuf]

http://twitter.com/#!/gmpolice

[Puppet Guy]

Originally Posted by Stay Golden

Relatives of mine in the UK have been telling our family that this was going to happen 2 years ago. That it has been brewing with several organized groups over economic disparity, lack of jobs, the tension over immigration laws and wanting to cause general mayhem. Many citizens over there truly fear that eventually the opportunists are going to swarm and over take some of the banks by force using huge numbers.

my father-in-law retired back to the UK in the late '90s, and came back to Canada in '01 for this very reason. He saw it coming then, which makes one wonder wwhy no one in government saw it building.

[stampsx2]

From BBC,

More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling for anyone convicted of taking part in the riots to lose any benefits they receive - becoming the first to be considered for a Commons debate


I don't live in London but where can I sign this? The money will be needed to cover the costs of rebuilding the city.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Stay Golden

Relatives of mine in the UK have been telling our family that this was going to happen 2 years ago. That it has been brewing with several organized groups over economic disparity, lack of jobs, the tension over immigration laws and wanting to cause general mayhem. Many citizens over there truly fear that eventually the opportunists are going to swarm and over take some of the banks by force using huge numbers.

This sounds a little more organized than just some street gangs on a rampage that the PM tried to paint it as.

[HPLovecraft]

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

This is a strange event...there has been legitimate protests occuring in England in the past year or two.

Maybe this event will be used by their government to install a more intense police presence moving forward, and limit future protest of any kind. Hopefully not......

It seems this is just out of control looting, maybe just as a result of economic frustration and mob mentality. I think this is far beyond the shooting incident that supposedly sparked this, and obviously there are racial undertones among the economically distressed as well....

Unfortunately, I think this is what happens when you have a nanny/welfare state in control for so long, as others have said. What a broken society.....I just talked to a couple who came here from England 3 months ago and they filled my ear about the banks, taxation, immigration etc.......I didn't think it was that bad.

It's too bad England shop/home owners don't have a 2nd amendment to protect themselves with. Some of these thugs should be eating lead to curb the looting.......meanwhile the police are just standing by, totally overwhelmed and doing nothing to help the people.

Mikey on to something?!


In wake of riots, British PM proposes social media ban

British PM David Cameron says "free flow of information" can be "used for ill"

In other news, Mubarak throws his hands up in relief, and screams "finally, they get what I've been saying all along!"

Cameron said that government officials are working with authorities "to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

[ . . . ]

"Free speech is central to our democracy, but so is public safety and security," said Ivan Lewis, the shadow secretary of culture in the House of Commons, according to London's Guardian newspaper. "We support the government's decision to undertake a review of whether measures are necessary to prevent the abuse of social media by those who organize and participate in criminal activities."

Weren't we just praising social media a few months ago? Oh, how the tables have turned.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social....html?hpt=hp_c2

[d_phaneuf]

David Cameron and Boris Johnson are probly the worst 1-2 punch in the world right now

wouldn't listen to anything either of those clowns say

[icarus]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

From BBC,

More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling for anyone convicted of taking part in the riots to lose any benefits they receive - becoming the first to be considered for a Commons debate

I don't live in London but where can I sign this? The money will be needed to cover the costs of rebuilding the city.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/7337

The petition actually calls for those convicted to "loose" their benefits.

It will be up for Commons debate now that it has reached 100,000 online signatures, but having watched BBC Parliament's replay last night of yesterday's emergency Commons session (how nerdy) it was already being talked about and its contents being raised. I'm not sure it will pass as there were suggestions it is already a remedy available in the justice system.

While I pay for these people's benefits through my taxes even though my visa prohibits me from ever qualifying for them, I am not sure whether it would ameliorate any root causes and instead just exacerbate the problems.

[Stay Golden]

"The thing that's so distinctive about the London riots … and different from past riots that behavioral scientists have written about, is that the convergence of rioters now is of heterogeneous actors, with different motives: some acting on political motives, others to loot, still others to engage in wild and crazy behavior," Goode wrote in an email. "So it's difficult to theorize about similar behavior … that is caused by very different impulses."
Simon Moore, a researcher with the Violence & Society Research Group at Cardiff University in Wales, thinks there's one factor that may be uniting all the rioters: The perception that they have low status. In research he conducted last year with colleagues at the University of Warwick, Moore found that low economic rank — being poorer than others in the same geographic region — rather than actual poverty, which is defined as not being able to afford things you need, elicits misery.
Along with misery, a fair amount of research has found that low status also leads to feelings of animosity, Moore said. "[Yet] another area of work suggests low status elicits stress, and this is implicated in aggression," he wrote in an email.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/science-lon...220203802.html

[Cecil Terwilliger]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,1348827.story

Just in case anyone needs to put this in perspective.

London riots started about a week ago. Police have already arrested 1700 people.

Vancouver riot happened 2 months ago. Zero arrests.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Bouw N Arrow

Immigrate to overcrowded city

complain about lack of jobs

That's the thing that gets me. As the child of immigrant parents born in Canada just a few months after they got here, I sort of know some of the hardships of being a family in a new country. You definitely start off on the bottom rung.

I hate that so many immigrants right away move to the large cities where the competition for jobs is more fierce and then complain that they can't find decent work or they are not being handed opportunities. When my parents came here, they moved to a small town up north and worked in mining. There are jobs in Canada, it's that new immigrants seem to think that they are entitled to all the ammenities that big cities have even if it is not economically viable for them. Let them do what my family had to do to get established in a new country.

Granted, I don't know the situation in England. Maybe there really are no jobs or opportunities for immigrants.

[Boblobla]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,1348827.story

Just in case anyone needs to put this in perspective.

London riots started about a week ago. Police have already arrested 1700 people.

Vancouver riot happened 2 months ago. Zero arrests.

There were arrests in Vancouver, noone has been charged with anything yet though.

There have already been convictions in England.

[icarus]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Granted, I don't know the situation in England. Maybe there really are no jobs or opportunities for immigrants.

I would from my observations say very few of the rioters are immigrants. Most were born here in the UK and many of those have parents who were also born in the UK or immigrated here decades ago.

[4X4]

I heard a clip on the morning news of a rioter claiming that his looting was his way of getting even with a few shops that didn't hire him.

[mikey_the_redneck]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Wow, the first Mikey post I don't totally disagree with. My only issue with your post is the impact the "nanny state" has had in creating the riots. I feel as if it is more just mob mentality/fun looting than it really is people upset about the social systems, etc in the UK.

This article articulates what I was trying to get at.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...ial-value.html

It's about moral decay...

"What has been fuelling all this is not poverty, as has so predictably been claimed, but moral collapse. What we have been experiencing is a complete breakdown of civilised behaviour among children and young people straight out of William Golding’s seminal novel about childhood savagery, Lord Of The Flies."

The article gets into the breakdown of the family, feminism, education, multi-culturalism, welfare/entitlement culture etc.

[d_phaneuf]

Originally Posted by Boblobla

There were arrests in Vancouver, noone has been charged with anything yet though.

There have already been convictions in England.

ya, just goes to show how much of a joke our legal system here is

Vancouver one happened in the day so it was much easier to ID people, happened in a much more contained area so it should have been easier to arrest people etc.

[Flamenspiel]

There are other issues vis a vis VA vs London. I believe London has the highest number of surveillance cameras per square mile of any major city. Much easier to convict if you have them on film.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Flamenspiel

There are other issues vis a vis VA vs London. I believe London has the highest number of surveillance cameras per square mile of any major city. Much easier to convict if you have them on film.

Agreed, there was a definite lack of video evidence in Vancouver.

[d_phaneuf]

gmpolice GM Police
Just locked up another man for stolen goods after he bragged on Facebook he couldn't be caught. Wrong.


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