Question: Are we witnessing or on the brink of 'revolution'

gtvlusso

Or is the rioting simply a bunch of morons on the rampage?

Just a though that spilled out of SimonAH's thread;

Has this rioting become an uprising against the serious cutbacks in spending, general economic situation and a feeling of hopelessness?

Is this becoming about the ever expanding gap between rich and poor?

Or am I talking c0ck?

nicklouse

gtvlusso wrote:

Or is the rioting simply a bunch of morons on the rampage?

Just a though that spilled out of SimonAH's thread;

Has this rioting become an uprising against the serious cutbacks in spending, general economic situation and a feeling of hopelessness?

Is this becoming about the ever expanding gap between rich and poor?

Or am I talking c0ck?

nothing to do with cut backs. we were told this last year

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/1 ... ent-unrest

Opps.

bails87

As someone much more eloquent than me wrote:

We should be tearing down the current system; the world is a deeply unfair place in which a rich minority rule billions of people’s lives. But the system will not be destroyed with random looting or violence – which plays perfectly into the hands of those in power, who can simply enforce more powers to control ‘us’, and can say once more that we cannot be trusted with any freedom or input into how they run the world.

What the world needs are millions of activists who do the one thing the system fears the most: think. This requires us to reject the endless stream of drivel we sit through on TV, the mindless websites we visit for inane stories about celebrities or the endless pursuit of more consumerist shit that we are led to believe is the answer to all of our problems.

We need to get mad as hell, but not like this.

There are people who are p#ssed off, there are d1cks just out to steal stuff in the chaos. I don't know how many of each there are, or how many people are both.

rjsterry

Schoolkids and teenagers, who've worked out that if they all go out on the rob on the same night, then the police will struggle to cope., and a few more hardened criminal elements taking advantage of the situation. A slightly blunter police response, would send most them running.

We're all screwed to a greater or lesser extent by the current economic situation, but most of us just work a bit harder.

bails87

nicklouse
And then you hear police officers talking to the media saying "we can't do anything, there just aren't enough police available".

Koncordski

Are you serious?

It's kids with no ambition or moral code stealing iPad's from Curry's becuase they've worked out that if you turn up in a gang of 20 and leg it before the cops show up you can get away with it.

Or as sky news would have you believe, "I'm so angry over public sector pensions, that's why i have set fire to this furniture store in Croydon."

:roll: :roll: :roll:

nicklouse

bails87 wrote:

nicklouse
And then you hear police officers talking to the media saying "we can't do anything, there just aren't enough police available".

did you follow the link?

bails87

nicklouse wrote:

bails87 wrote:

nicklouse
And then you hear police officers talking to the media saying "we can't do anything, there just aren't enough police available".

did you follow the link?

Yep, read it on Monday when it first started doing the rounds. I mean, it's not just a prophetic (budget conscious?) vision from chief constables, we've now got officers on the streets saying the same thing.

asprilla

bails87 wrote:

nicklouse
And then you hear police officers talking to the media saying "we can't do anything, there just aren't enough police available".

I'm inclined to believe the police are playing a bit of 'i told you so' with their deployments. 32,000 Met police plus reserves available from Surrey, Susses, Essex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and anywhere else you like and we can still only manage to put 6,000 police on the streets last night?

Urgent response, I think not.

Gussio

Revolution? No. Rampant, opportunistic stealing? Yes.

kieranb

is it to do with mass youth unemployment? Nothing to lose and no future, no connection to wider society. If so things in the future will probably get worse before they get better thanks to the advance of automation (robotics, smart systems), see

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/20555/

http://jakeg.co.uk/essays/basicincome

MichaelW

Personally I blame the downgrading of USA government bonds to AA+. That's my excuse.

asprilla

kieranb wrote:

is it to do with mass youth unemployment? Nothing to lose and no future, no connection to wider society. If so things in the future will probably get worse before they get better thanks to the advance of automation (robotics, smart systems), see

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/20555/

http://jakeg.co.uk/essays/basicincome

Nope, it's definitely kids steeling stuff because they've realise no-one will stop them.

Sewinman

I think some kids have grievances, but that has been the case for pretty much ever. From what I could see last night it was basically just about stealing as much stuff as possible....because they could. I think they also looked pretty cocky about it and that they were now running the streets.

As I said on the other thread, if they were angry with the police they could have attacked the Lavender Hill police station and torched it.

I don't think its revolutionary though....that would require a bigger cause or political movement for it to have legs.

bails87

Asprilla wrote:

bails87 wrote:

nicklouse
And then you hear police officers talking to the media saying "we can't do anything, there just aren't enough police available".

I'm inclined to believe the police are playing a bit of 'i told you so' with their deployments. 32,000 Met police plus reserves available from Surrey, Susses, Essex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and anywhere else you like and we can still only manage to put 6,000 police on the streets last night?

Urgent response, I think not.

How many sets of riot gear are there? how many officers need to be kept 'fresh' for the next day and probably the next night.

I think the police tend to work 3 shifts per day, so 32,000 officers, assuming all of them are fit to work would give you just over 10,500 officers to cover a single shift on any day. Take out officers who aren't public order trained (any? I don;t know) Take out officers who don;t have a set of riot gear, take out officers who were injured the night before. Take out officers working on other cases. There are still rapes, murders, burglaries going on. And someone has got to be doing the investigation of the rioting......

asprilla

bails87 wrote:

Asprilla wrote:

bails87 wrote:

nicklouse
And then you hear police officers talking to the media saying "we can't do anything, there just aren't enough police available".

I'm inclined to believe the police are playing a bit of 'i told you so' with their deployments. 32,000 Met police plus reserves available from Surrey, Susses, Essex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and anywhere else you like and we can still only manage to put 6,000 police on the streets last night?

Urgent response, I think not.

How many sets of riot gear are there? how many officers need to be kept 'fresh' for the next day and probably the next night.

I think the police tend to work 3 shifts per day, so 32,000 officers, assuming all of them are fit to work would give you just over 10,500 officers to cover a single shift on any day. Take out officers who aren't public order trained (any? I don;t know) Take out officers who don;t have a set of riot gear, take out officers who were injured the night before. Take out officers working on other cases. There are still rapes, murders, burglaries going on. And someone has got to be doing the investigation of the rioting......

I quite aware that they can't all work and that there are other things to do, but afaik it was 6,000 offices deployed last night, not 6,000 riot officers. We are talking about a presence on the street, which in many areas was completely absent last night.

clarkey cat

if it was a revolution they'd need an agenda - they don't have an agenda. They're just a feral (and disenfranchised) underclass causing havoc for amusement because they can: would they be doing it though if they had any prospects other than becoming feral adults? Possibly not. Who knows.

pangolin

Yes but put one or two officers somewhere and you are inviting trouble as rioters decide to try their luck and attack them. There needs to be a large amount of them in each place to put a stop to a riot there. There clearly aren't enough to put a large amount at each riot.

mudcow007

the riots in Liverpool last night seemed to have targeted a police station (smashed windows on ground floor) an then set fire to cars by pour petrol onto them from coke bottles then they attacked Tesco

if they don't have any kind of agenda they are just trying to cause trouble

i wonder how long it is until the movie V is being banned because it instigated all of the riots

daviesee

It can't be a revolution.
A revolution has an agenda.
Stealing trainers is not an agenda.

mudcow007

Question....

how far would you go to protect your house/ car from rioters?

if you were woken up in the morning to the sound of rioters in your street, coming closer an closer to your house, you try the police but they cant respond as they are too busy, what would you do?

walkingbootweather

I'm only surprised that nobody has yet blamed Wiggle.

bails87

mudcow007 wrote:

would you do punk?

This is a 75p magnum, the most powerful ice cream in the world.

What could you do? Probably very little.

jonny_trousers

rjsterry wrote:

Schoolkids and teenagers, who've worked out that if they all go out on the rob on the same night, then the police will struggle to cope.

It's this, but we do now have to question what kind of a society we have created that makes so many young people believe blatant theft and vandalism is perfectly acceptable? Social injustice, hopelessness and a fear of their future? Hmm, maybe. Or could it be the selfish, want-everything-for-nothing culture we now live in where youngsters feel they deserve fame and fortune simply because "It's what I've always dreamt of" rather than instilling a philosophy that much is possible with hard work and dedication?

gtvlusso

mudcow007 wrote:

Question....

how far would you go to protect your house/ car from rioters?

if you were woken up in the morning to the sound of rioters in your street, coming closer an closer to your house, you try the police but they cant respond as they are too busy, what would you do?

My house and 'stuff' I would not protect, only my family, protect with extreme prejudice.

kieranb

Asprilla wrote:

kieranb wrote:

is it to do with mass youth unemployment? Nothing to lose and no future, no connection to wider society. If so things in the future will probably get worse before they get better thanks to the advance of automation (robotics, smart systems), see

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/20555/

http://jakeg.co.uk/essays/basicincome

Nope, it's definitely kids steeling stuff because they've realise no-one will stop them.

Yes, but why are they thinking/behaving like that? I could steal from my workplace without getting caught but I don't, there are plenty of other situations where people could commit crimes knowing they wouldn't get caught but they don't.

AidanR

I was out cleaning up this morning in Croydon, and I have to agree it's people taking advantage of mobs to steal, smash and burn. Sod unemployment - most of them are or should be still in school. You could actually tell there were people out on the streets that had been involved - they were the ones grinning proudly amidst a sea of dismayed faces. They don't give a sh*t about anything but themselves, and they will do it again if they can.

AidanR

Kieran, I understand that there are underlying social (and, importantly, parental) causes. But none of that matters in the short term - they simply need to be stopped. Only when order has returned can the underlying problems be addressed.

clarkey cat

Kieran, I understand that there are underlying social (and, importantly, parental) causes. But none of that matters in the short term - they simply need to be stopped. Only when order has returned can the underlying problems be addressed.

I agree - I'm a massive lefty tree-hugger but right now we need some cracked heads.

notsoblue

This isn't a revolution, but the violent consequence of the disenfranchisement of a generation. I think this point from Kenan Malik says it quite well:

[url=http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/five-quick-points-about-the-riots/]Kenan Malik[/url] wrote:

The polarisation between the claim that ‘the riots are a response to unemployment and wasted lives’ and the insistence ‘the violence constitutes mere criminality’ makes little sense. There is clearly more to the riots than simple random hooliganism. But that does not mean that the riots, as many have claimed, are protests against disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives. In fact, it’s precisely because of disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives that these are not ‘protests’ in any meaningful sense, but a mixture of incoherent rage, gang thuggery and teenage mayhem. Disengaged not just from the political process (largely because politicians, especially those on the left, have disengaged from them), there is a generation (in fact more than a generation) with no focus for their anger and resentment, no sense that they can change society and no reason to feel responsible for the consequences of their actions. That is very different from suggesting that the riots were caused by, a response to, or a protest against, unemployment, austerity and the cuts.

davmaggs

mudcow007 wrote:

Question....

how far would you go to protect your house/ car from rioters?

if you were woken up in the morning to the sound of rioters in your street, coming closer an closer to your house, you try the police but they cant respond as they are too busy, what would you do?

You can combine the British love of tea with home defence and have lots of boiling water to hand. Not many people would like to receive that on their heads. If you are a softy then go fair trade on them.

Cars can't be defended and probably not worth being out in the open for.