London Riots continue

[sniddy_v1legacy]

People are angry. The general feeling is that the government simply does not care about the working class and the middle class. That does not excuse the burning of shops, but it does explain why so many people are willing to get involved in the riots. It's exactly the same as back in the Eighties: The Tories enacted damaging policies that hurt the lower classes, so they took to the streets and rioted in response. This is a cry for attention, and for many they feel like it's the only way to get any sort of attention from the government. People feel ignored when their community services and projects are getting shit down, they feel ignored when their protests achieve bugger-all.

If you treat people like shit, you can't be surprised when they start lashing out. If we had made real investment in communities over the last decade to give people something to do, if we'd made real investment in job creation, rather than cutting half a million public sector jobs that many families relied on, we'd be seeing far fewer disenfranchised kids and adults taking to the streets and causing violence.

Here here, some of the ambiguity around the shooting won't help but seriously back anything in a corner and it will lash out...man is no exception...We have people working for less then $9 an hour, and petrol costs more then $2 and you're taxed to start with at at least 20% generally will never afford own home little help if you wnat to help yourself....and no one is listing....

Unless that changes this wont

With the way things are this could get worse, or easily flare up again.

 

[EeveeElectro]

It's twats like them that give young people the bad reputation they have!
It makes me sick! Japan was hit with a fucking Tsunami and Earthquake and there was no looting. A man gets shot, for shooting first (which is what you're supposed to do) and everyone goes ape shit and riots. Some people probably don't even know what the fuck they're rioting about, they just want to join in.

 

[Spaghetti]

Ah well. Boris Johnson will be back from his holiday and he'll go and beat up the 'oiks'.

Yes! Boris shall sound the vuvuzela of war, bringing an end to the madness!

Spoiler

OT: Much of the rioting seems opportunistic, yobs attacking and looting shops that have stuff they like (JJB Sports Clothing stores for example). I'd secretly love to say this is a response to Tory cuts or possible Police brutality (which may have been the case at the beginning in Tottenham), but the pictures being shown suggest much of the rioting today was simple looting and "yobbery" with no political message behind it. But there must be some underlying failure in society to allow this thing to happen.

 

[SnipErlite]

Christ it must be scary.
Just bury your good stuff and get a shotgun.
Teach the fuckers some manners.

Heh yeah was a bit worrying, although despite it happening all around my area it never actually came here....well, a co-op got two windows smashed in the high street nearby but that's all.

 

[hazabaza1]

By the way, any update on the riots? Heard from some places that it's over, but I'm not sure.

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

I don't understand where all this rioting has suddenly come from. What is wrong with these people? I can't think of any reasons that would justify this crap - most of them are probably just along for the ride to be honest. Idiots.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

From what I can gather from our questionable American news sources, the riots were sparked by the shooting of a drug dealer.

Can someone elaborate on this? As it stands now, it really doesn't paint any aspect of the riots in a good light.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The riots are ridiculous - they started because a police officer was doing his job. The guy shot at them, so they shot back! So they bloody well should!

And even if the cop was in the wrong, is that any reason for damaging the homes, property, and lives of hundreds of people who weren't even fucking involved???

I think they need to get out some sort of knock out gas and blanket the whole fucking area with it. So a few innocent bystanders are caught in there too? All it'll do is put 'em to sleep.

 

[Wintermoot]

that says some things about the UK police.
also is it that hard to chuck some teargas grenades into a crowd?
also I,m siding with the police here the officer was doing his job and accidents do happen.

 

[orangeban]

I'm just going to post my support for the police.

That is my career of choice and I (possibly naively) have (almost) absolute faith in them to do their abilities with professional standards and to the best of their ability.

Good luck to all the officers out there trying to keep the peace!

]

As someone whos been in,witnessed and lived through quite a few riots ,the English police force are woefully crap at controlling them and even then that was a pretty mild riot by Northern Irelands standards.

There using tiny circular shields and only charge in groups of 3 not to mention they looked generally pretty damn terrified of the situation as evident in the fact they couldnt stop wide spread arson and looting. Im pretty sure they had to blow the dust of their riot equipment in some instances(you cant really count the student protests as proper riots when your cracking the heads in of a few students throwing bottles etc. and not bricks)

Though I do like to see a good riot lets those in power know that they cant just do whatever and not have some form of reprocussions.

Their has been some talk of foul play happening in the shooting of the armed persom though no one can say for sure at this stage such as did the police exacerbate said incident etc.

Can you blame them for looking terrified? I mean, there British cops, they prepare for knife crime and vandalism, not widespread riots.

 

[JonnyC]

i don't condone the violence, but it seems from a lot of reports that the man may or may not have been armed as they did find a weapon nearby. However, there is no evidence to it having been fired. The bullet that hit a police officer was a police issue H&K round that could be attributed to ricochet. Also; eyewitnesses claim that it was police who opened fire first, some even claim he was pinned to the ground at the time.
obviously i don't know what happened exactly, and the report is not out yet, but according to the sources, his death was effectively an execution. Again, if evidence presents itself to the contradictory, i will change my opinion but it seems that his death was not merited.

One more thing, from preliminary reports, it seems that the original demonstrators were not the ones who started the riots, but opportunists who set fire to police cars that were there for public safety during the protests. I have to put some blame on the media for reporting non-factual evidence either to generate ratings or to downplay the racial and socioeconomic tensions in Britain right now.
Sorry for the long post, i had a lot to say.

 

[Duskwaith]

I'm just going to post my support for the police.

That is my career of choice and I (possibly naively) have (almost) absolute faith in them to do their abilities with professional standards and to the best of their ability.

Good luck to all the officers out there trying to keep the peace!

]

As someone whos been in,witnessed and lived through quite a few riots ,the English police force are woefully crap at controlling them and even then that was a pretty mild riot by Northern Irelands standards.

There using tiny circular shields and only charge in groups of 3 not to mention they looked generally pretty damn terrified of the situation as evident in the fact they couldnt stop wide spread arson and looting. Im pretty sure they had to blow the dust of their riot equipment in some instances(you cant really count the student protests as proper riots when your cracking the heads in of a few students throwing bottles etc. and not bricks)

Though I do like to see a good riot lets those in power know that they cant just do whatever and not have some form of reprocussions.

Their has been some talk of foul play happening in the shooting of the armed persom though no one can say for sure at this stage such as did the police exacerbate said incident etc.

Can you blame them for looking terrified? I mean, there British cops, they prepare for knife crime and vandalism, not widespread riots.

There also trained for counter-terrorism so unless they have decided the middle ground was that umimportant that they feel it necessary to not properly train for their jobs then thats a pretty big problem when your job is to "protect the community".

They even had(squeaky clean) riot vechiles, those that werent lent by the PSNI/RUC, they also had rubber bullets aswell. Its just a mix of laziness and generally retardedness