Anarchy In The UK: Rioting In London

[Lace Neil Singer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499

The riots even spread to Maidstone and Chavham, sorry, I mean Chatham. But the police stamped them out in record time. These idiots are supposedly protesting about the death of a gangster, shot by police for having a gun in his possession... but looks to me like they're just taking advantage of the situation to go mad looting shops, setting things on fire and hurting innocent people.

This brave woman told the rioters off.

[Greenday]

This is just opportunism at its worst. Some scumbag got shot and people want to use it as an excuse to riot, tear shit up, and steal. Nothing but the scum of society showing their true colors.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Maybe this is an incredibly ignorant or misinformed statement, but I thought cops over there didn't carry firearms? I heard that some asshole got shot by cops...which is a daily occurance in the US...and now everyone's rioting.

From a Yank standpoint, it's hard to understand. Can anyone walk me through it? Seriously, I'm not the only one over here.

[telecom_goddess]

From a Yank standpoint, it's hard to understand. Can anyone walk me through it? Seriously, I'm not the only one over here.

agreed....I'm not fully understanding what caused these people to go off in the first damn place.

[Andara Bledin]

The "cause" was the wrong thing at the wrong time and set off something that had been already primed.

This is what happens when the disparity between the highest and lowest within a culture is perceived as being too wide. This was an event with enough organization behind it for people to be driven to specific locations, and the focus of the attacks was on the theft of luxury merchandise, while many of the participants were minors, likely swept up in the sense of trying to "take what they deserved."

From an article at Champion Post:

As Nina Power wrote in The Guardian yesterday: ''Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights … would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10 per cent are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.''

There's another thread asking if civil unrest is imminent in the US and the answer is that if we keep going down the road we're going, where the rich get richer and everybody who isn't rich loses more an more ground, then yes, we'll be seeing events like this on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Regular street police in the UK don't carry firearms, but they do have police on Firearms Duty, which I suspect is who they use when they're going after criminals who are known for having their own weapons.

In this case, they were following Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old gang-member. There were claims that he had fired at the police, which is why they shot him, however, the only shot that hit an officer was fired from another officer's weapon, and Duggan's gun, which he was carrying and which was loaded, had not been fired during the incident.

Article at the Guardian

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

It's not that unknown over here for someone involved in illegally held weaponry to end up shot, but it's very rare in comparison to the US.

As to the reaction, from what I understand there was a genuine protest against this that was hijacked by people who just turned violent. Quite unusually, this resulted in rioting and looting by people who wanted to riot and loot, including someone who took time ensuring she had stolen the correct size of trainer from a sports shop.

Why and how this spread to other cities in the UK is beyond me. I think other disaffected youths just took advantage of the chance to gain expensive stuff for free. That's just supposition.

Rapscallion

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Okay. Thanks for clarifying.

I would say this sort of thing spreads because the lowest common denominator sees it going on via the media and uses it as an excuse.

It has happened over here. The LA riots spread to other cities, some as far away as the opposite coast. . That was a mess fueled entirely by the media. I suspect you all have the same thing going on.

[Rapscallion]

From an article at Champion Post:

The link cites the Guardian, a newspaper that richly deserves it's title of being left-leaning. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's certainly a factor from what I can see. I can also suggest that the effective marketing of consumer goods - the main thrust of the rioting being to nick this sort of thing.

There's another thread asking if civil unrest is imminent in the US and the answer is that if we keep going down the road we're going, where the rich get richer and everybody who isn't rich loses more an more ground, then yes, we'll be seeing events like this on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Again, I'd say it's not the only factor. Many youths seem to think they're owed something. I suspect that's a perspective thing, since I'm now in my forties.

In this case, they were following Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old gang-member. There were claims that he had fired at the police, which is why they shot him, however, the only shot that hit an officer was fired from another officer's weapon, and Duggan's gun, which he was carrying and which was loaded, had not been fired during the incident.

Without looking at the article, I know it was part of Operation Trident - targeting black-on-black gang violence, one of the few areas where criminals are armed fairly often.

Rapscallion

[Andara Bledin]

The link cites the Guardian, a newspaper that richly deserves it's title of being left-leaning. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's certainly a factor from what I can see.

There was a study done in refugee camps trying to look at the effects of overcrowding and violence. The results of their studies found that crowding had little effect, but in situations where there was a perceived (not necessarily real) class difference between individuals within a camp, violence would be more prevalent. More notably, where there was rigid stratification with little opportunity for improvement, there was more violence, not always perpetrated by those at the bottom, but also by those who shared strong ties (usually racial) with those who were at the bottom undertaken on their behalf.

The fact that the UK is judged to have the worst ability for a person to improve their situation among all developed nations is a very strong indicator that violence is likely and only requires some form of spark, which the protest against the killing of a member of the bottom rung being a convenient springboard.

Many youths seem to think they're owed something. I suspect that's a perspective thing, since I'm now in my forties.

Actually, this is just an aspect of the whole. The fact that most people in the UK are going to end up doing no better than their parents and not necessarily because they didn't try is very disheartening and since they have nothing to lose (they're never going to do any better, after all) there is nothing to stop them from lashing out.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

There's no justification at all for what these yobs are doing; personally, my sympathies lie with the innocent people who got hurt, mugged and whose businesses and homes were burned down.

http://gbcghana.com/index.php?id=1.358617.1.510609

Like this guy for example, who's son was killed by looters. I think the old woman who challenged the looters said it best; namely, that the rioters are no longer fighting for a cause, just ruining people's livelihoods.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Lace, I totally agree. Usually, when it happens here, the "disenfranchised" looters and rioters attack their own neighborhoods.

I could see it if they went after what they perceive as "The Man", (not excuse them or sympathize, mind, but at least see it) but they don't. They turn their violence on themselves and destroy their own communities, and the people who suffer are mostly people just like themselves.

[Andara Bledin]

I didn't offer justification. Mostly because, as stated, there is none.

I was merely stating the cause, and until changes are made to improve the chances for people in the UK to not be trapped in the petrification of the social rankings, it will continue to happen.

^-.-^

[jackfaire]

Doogie Howser did a really good episode on the LA Riots that showed the affect it had on the people involved

[Greenday]

I didn't offer justification. Mostly because, as stated, there is none.

I was merely stating the cause, and until changes are made to improve the chances for people in the UK to not be trapped in the petrification of the social rankings, it will continue to happen.

^-.-^

The cause is that there are people who are bad. If they know they can get away with something, they will do it. Unless we go to pure communism, there will always be someone who has something you want. And some people don't give a shit about being decent and will take it the very second they get a chance. I'd be willing to bet plenty of rioters aren't poor. Probably plenty of middle class people who just said, "Haha, I can tear shit up and the popo can't do shit about it!"

[Lace Neil Singer]

Um, the rioters certainly are not poor. A lot of them spread the word using Blackberries, iPhones and Facebook, so they're obviously not on the breadline. Neither am I, to be honest, but I certainly can't afford a Blackberry or an iPhone.