Rioting in the UK over a Police Shooting?

[TheBilgeRat]

So, doesn't there have to be a pretty serious reason for the bobbies to be allowed to get guns out?

Link to article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14450248

[gunni]

the guy had allegedly shot at police officers but there is a lot of controversy about it.
it may have been the shooting that set off the rioting but I think it says a lot about the state of the UK just now, government cuts have hit a lot of people hard and clearly people have had enough and thats probably why it's spread throughout England as far as Manchester and Liverpool last night.
The main concern of the BBC and some politicians last night seemed to be the "bad impression" that it was giving of London with the upcoming Olympics next year. The only thing in my opinion that the Olympics has to do with it is that if the government hadn't overcommitted themselves financially with the Olympic bid perhaps there wouldn't be riots and they could have spent money on public services instead of the widespread cuts (including the police force who have been seriously stretched by this with some officers having only had an hour or two to sleep in the past 48 hours).
London's former mayor Ken Livingstone said in a report that he believed this was happening because the government was "out of touch", it was refreshing to hear a politician talk some sense for a change instead of the normal spin.
Its a bit strange for me to watch this happen I must say having only recently moved abroad from the UK especially when I'm seeing twitter/facebook updates from friends who live in these areas. Thankfully none of them have been involved but some are close enough to hear the sirens and smell the smoke!
Hopefully the British government will pull their heads out of their backsides and start addressing some of the underlying issues before things get any worse.

Edit: I just got this link to a Londoner's blog from a friend, makes an interesting read
http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html

[nicholas]

This country needs a good dose of Islam.

[LordSpunky]

I will return later tonight with my view - an essay on my countries rioting.

[LordSpunky]

Firstly I need to make clear that these are my personal ramblings, they may not be the views of any company, party, committee, association, group, family member or anything else I maybe part of, linked to, work for or own / am a part owner.
I, like most of you, are sickened by the recent riots. I am also unsure to the cause and why they still continue.
This is not about some dude getting gunned down by a cop. This is about a lack of respect, a lack of respect for everyone and everything.
I’m not sure what they are trying to achieve. If you read some peoples columns it is linked to mass unequal class divides, bad treatment to ethnic backgrounds, to Coalition government cuts, to police harassment. Well, if it is some or all of these, they are too late.
My point is this, to rise up against the police or against central government, or even massive billion pound making corporations, I could possibility understand, as long as it was a peaceful protest, but this lot have their targets all wrong. The sickening thing is these mindless idiots are turning on their own people, on local communities, independent business and families. For the average worker to be beaten and robbed on their way home, for a family to have to flee their burning house, for anyone to be fearful of their own life in their place of work or their own home is a disgrace.
For any relative or friend of the late Mark Duggan must be horrified to have 3 days of riots carried out in ‘his honour’. What a terrible destruction of someone’s memory.
These yobs are out to cause total mayhem, to burn, steal, beat and slash anything and anyone in anyway they see fit. They have no regard for the law, of any consequences, and sadly they have no respect for themselves or their neighbour. It isn’t funny, it isn’t big, or clever. I’ve never truly understood this gang, knife yob behaviour in the sense that: if you want a fight, I will fight you. Man to man, fist to fist. That is how it should be, no stabbing, no kicking someone in the head when they are down, none of this cowardly four blokes on one. It is wrong it is weak. I call a spade a spade, and a fight is a fight. I’m not saying I would win a fight, but if a fight has to happen then it has to be fair. If you want to fight, get in a ring, control your anger and get behind your country. Or fight with words, write that letter, get that petition signed. Get your members to mark that ballot paper. There are ways there are means. Anyway I digress.
The mindless ****s also fail to realise if any part of the riot is linked to cuts, unemployment and the like, that causing over £100m of damage is going to have to be paid for, from our own bloody pockets!
Yes we have some big social problems, yes unemployment is high, wages are low, and cost of living is up. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. These are issues for everyone in this country and anyone else affected by the worldwide recession.
I would like to see they water cannons, but truthfully I would like to see the Army rolling in. I want these hooded robbing bastards to be gathered up, (and lets not discriminate, whatever the race, colour, age, gender, height, you did the crime you WILL do the time,) dragged along the street chained up together. Expose them, let us all see their faces, I want to see the fear in their eyes while police and squaddies are loading these bastards up. I want to see real punishment for this, not some holiday prison cell; I don’t want to pay to keep these pricks in comfort, playing the PlayStation that I bought but have never played! They need to be sent away to do some real hard time, to dig the roads with tea spoons and toffee hammers! – Back to the real world these yobs will be punished, they can’t get away with this.
In times like these we need to support each other, to look after our community, be supportive of our police force, our Prime Minister and Deputy, to all our Ministers. We need to rid our streets of the vermin and learn and act upon the huge lessons we are all learning from this.
Remember this isn’t a protest, these are damn right feral and disgusting acts and it makes me so damn cross!

[Matt_H]

Utterly stupefying. From the pictures I've seen, it looks like selfish teenagers breaking and stealing stuff for teh lulz - internet juvenile delinquency, but on a massive scale.

Courage to the people of the UK...

[gertsy]

Utterly stupefying. From the pictures I've seen, it looks like selfish teenagers breaking and stealing stuff for teh lulz - internet juvenile delinquency, but on a massive scale.

Courage to the people of the UK...

And they then return to their warm homes far from the scene and hop on their computers and xboxes and message how cool it was.  As long as their xBox or PC isn't stolen or broken it's alright.  I think one of your pollies got it right;  "Feral Rats"
Hold them in prison for 30 days for terrorism then push them through the courts a slow as need be.  
IMO people who blame the government/authorities for their own situation are cop outs.  It 'aint gonna be sat in your lap. Get off you slack pimply behinds and work two or three jobs.  Work hard, make some money, be someone, and change the world.  A throw back to the dark ages in action and intellect.  If your not aiming to leave the world a better place, please leave it now.

[CritAnime]

Utterly stupefying. From the pictures I've seen, it looks like selfish teenagers breaking and stealing stuff for teh lulz - internet juvenile delinquency, but on a massive scale.

Courage to the people of the UK...

There was a really interesting couple of snippets from teens that the BBC had interviewed.

One was a young girl, about 16-18 holding a can of beer, basically ranting how the police and others didn't respect them. And that all the civil unrest was down to a simple lack of respect towards the younger generations.

Then another snippet was a radio interview with two young girls from one of the worst hit areas. These two girls again sounding between 16-18. They bragged about breaking into an off-license to steal some wine and other alcohol, which they then bragged they were drinking at 9am(because they were so hardcore).

When the BBC journalist then asked why they were doing it, especially in their own communities they admitted it was for the fun mainly for the laugh. Then when pressed about why they targeted stores they said it was because the owners were more wealthy than they were. They then went onto claim that it showed people who actually holds the power.

Now these stores were mainly family run businesses. Local stores, off-licenses, takeaways, news agents and the such. Hardly any of them were chain stores. All were places that people had to work hard for in order to make them a success.

This is what annoys me about this entire situation. The fact that it was all essentially mindless violence and criminality. There was no motive behind this. No political agenda. No point to any of it other than sheer thuggery.

The original message of the initial protest was lost when the thugs and anarchists joined in.

[odin]

What puzzles me is that something as simple as a vehicle mounted water cannon is apparently seen as a drastic measure for containing riots in the UK?

[X-ray]

They should have spanked these yutes on night one, instead of letting it get out of hand and involve multiple cities, going on for 4-5 nights.
 
From what I hear, the police shooting was not according to procedure and the guy didn't open fire on police at all. So the relatives will probably sue.
 
That's not an excuse for all and sundry (who probably don't even know the deceased or give a rat's arse about him) to go on the rampage. According to one report, a shoppping mall was looted by a crowd of 300 arse-fezzes. Very disturbing to see how young some of these kids are.
Somewhere along the line they should have had some firm parental guidance.
This is just opportunistic (albeit organised) criminal activity. If a few of these morons had been given a few stout cracks with a baton in the beginning, we might not be in this situation.

[DavidF215]

The Prime Minister said it right: A sick society. When violence becomes fun and laughable, then the kids have lost touch of reality. Respect is earned; it is not a right or an entitlement. Now with all the money spent for repairs, there won't be any jobs for them--great plan.

[TheDaddy]

While I agree with you regarding the youth being dicks and just taking advantage of a serious issue I also think that the problem goes well deeper.

This is just the culmination of years during which politicians have been ignoring the people who put them there and just thinking about their own good, taking care of their friends.

At the moment there is a dodgy government guided but a half baked coalition, these two parties don't like each other very much but they carry on as the greed and desire of being in government is too strong to let go, see the deputy prime minister (a liberal democrat) who is basically Cameron's (a tory) poodle.

It's miserable to watch as you can read it on the Lib Dems faces that never in a million years they could be a majority government so they thought "let's take advantage of this opportunity to be in the history books, screw our beliefs and ideals". Pathetic really.

It's the result of the Prime Minister silly idea of "Big Society" which basically means "I haven't got a clue so you sort yourselves out".

The government and some important branches of the society are corrupt to the bone (politicians claiming benefits, easy to bribe police, people who have forgotten to do the honourable thing and resign, nobody resigns anymore  etc...), a typical hypocritical attitude.  

When a government loses the trust of his own people then it fails.

When a government is not the reflection of his own people then it fails (most politicians come from a well off and privileged background, see the prime minister for example).

When a young person thinks it's right to go and destroy shops then it's a signal, it's clear that they don't feel part of the society, they have nothing to lose, nothing to live and work for. This is where the society and the government have failed them.

From Penny's blog:

"Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.

Noone expected this. The so-called leaders (Prime Minister Cameron) who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong."

Hard and too fast cuts in public services have been a mistake, for example, they want to cut 16,000 police men and women, the number of police on the streets in the last days to keep things under control was exactly 16,000!

See the USA, what a complete joke. The government needed to find money to avoid defaulting so tried to raise taxes (basically asking the rich people to help out) but it failed as the rich said" I don't wanna pay more taxes, ask the poor" so the poor get hit hard.

It's laughable really when you think about it, the whole economic decline was caused by those rich banks and corporations who now don't want to be held responsible.

It's no use trying to feel scandalised, you need to face the problem at the root. Why don't they feel horrified by a society deeply divided into classes? With the rich and posh class owning and ruling the country?

Water cannons and spanking won't solve the problem in the long term.

[gunni]

couldn't agree more TheDaddy!

[Hattig]

It's just sad, but they're just following the example set by society - what the politicians did when they made fraudulent expenses claims (and isn't it sick to see those politicians moralising on Newsnight and the like?), or what the bankers did when they reward themselves massive bonuses for destroying economies and doing a crap job. Not that many of the kids themselves would be aware of these things, just an overwhelming sense of injustice and unfairness in their lives that caused them to lash out.

No excuse for the violence though, and of course in many areas it's gone beyond just pillaging for the "fun" of it. The police should have cracked down on the first night, which was a massive failure on their behalf.

Hopefully it has opened some eyes as to the problems of deprivation, lack of opportunity, and inequality in society.

[Tripitaka]

...and to think, people ask me why I live in the middle of nowhere. It's because I saw this coming years ago.

I must admit that I'm a bit stunned by our politicians claiming that "respect is earned" and condemning theft. That's part of the problem, how can we respect them when they steal off the people in expenses scams that should put them in prison, then evade justice and give themselves a pay rise through the backdoor. Hypocrites, pure and simple. When that's the example set by the leaders of our country what should the youth do? Follow suit?
And I would urge you not to believe the media in the UK too readily either, they are notoriously dodgy bastards controlled by politicians and bankers.
BTW gertsy, did you know that upwards social mobility in England was faster in medieval times than it is now?
Anyway, at least one good thing comes out of all this. We're not likely to get a second term of Tories.