RIOT!

[Van Dammer]

May have missed this argument today but how many people disagree with Cameron when he says we dont have to spend more money on the Police and we can just remove paperwork and back office work to ensure we actually get Police Officers on the street?

 

I kinda agree in principle, Police shouldnt be doing mundane work or following up pointless paperwork and even pointless enquiries like if somebodies Garden Gnome was stolen or whatever BUT its whether they can actually ensure we have a Police Force on the street. Its something thats easy to say but difficult to put into practice.

[Loki]

They only got him on that one offense, though his crimes were Stradi-various.

 

You're stringing this out now.

[WU LYF 4 LYF]

Question Time was pretty good, I thought John Prescott and the Archbishop of Canterbury came across especially well, and were very fair in their balancing of firm authoritative action against the perpetrators and proper rehabilitation of them, combined with action taken to combat social inequalities and moral ills that lead to such events.

 

May have missed this argument today but how many people disagree with Cameron when he says we dont have to spend more money on the Police and we can just remove paperwork and back office work to ensure we actually get Police Officers on the street?

 

I touched on this earlier in the thread. It's more that the police need to rethink the distribution of resources rather than needing more resources per-se. Special Support Officers were meant to provide a cost effective method of getting a more visible law enforcement presence on the street, but this has proved wholly unsuccessful. They are seemingly under-trained, with few powers and high levels of incompetence that have led them to become laughing stocks. Since their only powers seem to include on the spot fines for parking discrepancies or cycling on the pavement, they are also often hated as well as ridiculed.

 

In the light of this, I would rather abandon the entire force of specials and replace them with even a quarter of their number in real officers with real training and real powers.

 

I also think police need to be allowed to show more common sense. I'm unsure whether they're hamstrung by their orders or if the actual constables themselves have little room for maneuver; either way, I think they need to be given/to show a greater level of interpretation powers, so they do not simply enforce legislation rigidly and without any thought for personal circumstance. They need to be able to react to a certain situation and to act in a flexible manner. This would give them the opportunity to connect more with real people and to enforce law according to the values of society not simply due to the book of legislature.

[Kiffy]

A different focus as well, seriously there's better things to be doing with their time than nicking people for using mobiles in their car.

It's all bollocks though I reckons, for all their noise I've not heard any cops saying their paperworks gone done or is even likely to go down. The paperworks there for a reason, to back up laws and proper procedures and targetting and all that and the government won't scrap all that. Methinks it's a smoke screen while they cut the budget and reduce the numbers, personally.

[patiirc]

Only caught the fag end of qt,l because been quizzing, but the comments on P155 ere just the general reactionary FB/Tweet bollocks and Frazer Nelson came accross as a bit of a nob.

 

Shall watch it properly tomoz

[Psygnosis]

The old gent in Ealing fighting off rioters has died say Sky News.

Edited August 11, 2011 by Psygnosis

[Smeg_&_The_Heads]

The old gent in Ealing fighting off rioters has died say Sky News.

 

If they find the ones he was fighting off would that be a manslaughter charge they would be facing?

[Mr.Showtime]

Could be.

[Pinc]

If they find the ones he was fighting off would that be a manslaughter charge they would be facing?

Radio City News here in Liverpool said the Police are treating it as murder.

 

Also;

 

A fire on the ninth floor of a tower block in Southfields, southwest London, has forced the evacuation of more than 150 people

 

Let's hope it wasn't arson.

 

Edit: The anchor on Sky News just acknowledged this story. A man in his 40's is in intensive care but the fire is not thought to have been linked to rioting.

Edited August 12, 2011 by Pinc

[Ross]

That would have been a better idea. If these people feel alienated from society then perhaps rebuilding the damage they helped cause would instill some community spirit in them. I wonder how they'd feel if they spent a month, say, tending to a garden only to have some gobshite come along the night before their last day and completely destroy it.

 

Agree with this - community/restorative justice is definitely the way forward. If possible, have the perpetrators meet the victims to hear first-hand the damage they have caused.

[d-d-d-dAz]

Sky News currently showing an interview with four teenagers, involved with the looting, who say they looted because whilst they did want the 'stuff', they also needed the stuff to sell for income because they have no jobs and believe that the state institutions are skewed to help the have's and not the have-not's. They may be anomalous, they may not, but Sky subsequently interviewed Eric Pickles who was happy to say 'no, they're lying.'

 

Whilst nothing can justify attacks, and whilst undoubtedly (like the teacher and the grammar school student) there were those who weren't disaffected, if the government narrative is going to be one that actively ignores the opinions of those involved, and their communities, then we're doomed to repeat this all over again.

 

Scarier still? ...Pickles is the bloody communities minister.

[Kiffy]

Sky News currently showing an interview with four teenagers, involved with the looting, who say they looted because whilst they did want the 'stuff', they also needed the stuff to sell for income because they have no jobs and believe that the state institutions are skewed to help the have's and not the have-not's. They may be anomalous, they may not, but Sky subsequently interviewed Eric Pickles who was happy to say 'no, they're lying.'

 

Whilst nothing can justify attacks, and whilst undoubtedly (like the teacher and the grammar school student) there were those who weren't disaffected, if the government narrative is going to be one that actively ignores the opinions of those involved, and their communities, then we're doomed to repeat this all over again.

 

Scarier still? ...Pickles is the bloody communities minister.

 

To look at the causes would involve being prepared to address them, addressing them goes against the current government policies, going against government policies is not something the government are prepared to do. Therefore there are no underlying causes, other than pure criminality (which is actually a description, not a cause, but why sweat the small stuff) everyone who did it will be locked up and we'll await the next time it goes and feign surprise once again.

I fucking hate the tories.

And the system is undoubtedly skewed to help the haves more than the have nots, or opportunistic looters and opportunistic expense fiddlers would be facing the same consequences (theft being theft) which they are quite clearly not.

[Van Dammer]

If they find the ones he was fighting off would that be a manslaughter charge they would be facing?

 

its being treated as murder and im sure I heard that he didnt actually confront them, he just went to put out a fire in a bin they had started and was then attacked.

[d-d-d-dAz]

The thing is even when governments do, and I mean of all parties, try and tackle underlying social problems (particularly as concerns money) they focus on reducing poverty. They do this in many ways, some effective and some not, but so endemic is our belief in the 'reduction of poverty' that we forget that reducing poverty only raises incomes, reducing inequality raises spirits. And, if we want young men and women, constantly bombarded with advertisements and implicit references to things they don't have, and have no hope of having, to feel like valued members of society then we have to look at tackling inequality as well as just poverty.

 

Clearly, this doesn't mean a reductionist Marxist view of income inequality but rather a holistic view of inequality that looks at access to resources, and tools, that wealthier individuals take for granted. This means looking at things like the 'internship' culture in the careers market, whereby people are expected to work for free to bolster their CV (unattainable for people from low income families); the decentralisation of the economy (high speed rail is actually a part of this) as well as looking at the benefits of a graduate tax or other solutions.

 

Aside from equality, as a society we need to look at the responsiveness, and representativeness, of the state institutions. The first aspect of this was looking at changing the archaic first-past-the-post voting system (and, no, before some smart arse jumps in i'm not linking this directly to the riots) but that failed because we allowed the conservative media to control the narrative, but other tools are available to us; the ability to recall MP's, community policing arrangements whereby chief constables hold community conferences monthly to address certain issues, the devolution/decentralisation of economic powers to cities so public services can be tailored to the needs of the individual communities and perhaps even the installation of directly elected Mayors in all cities so that local people have a political focal point, aside from an MP, who is not caught between the cross hairs of localism and central government.

Edited August 12, 2011 by d-d-d-dAz

[tiger_rick]

I've noticed all week that the government have refused to put forward any other POV than this being greed and criminality. Kiffy makes a good post as to why.

 

It does worry me that they won't look to change what is obviously wrong at the bottom of the tree. I believe that most of the looting was down to greed or people who were criminals anyway and that everyone, regardless of their circumstance should face heavy punishment. You can't ignore the problem though. I said days ago that it scares me that we have people in society who don't care about the consequences enough to partake in this type of behavior. To me, that says that we need to ensure that the police and the courts earn the respect of the scum and that the people at the bottom of the ladder get further chances to climb up it.

 

There was a guy on the radio the other day who worked with young people. He was trying to help a 19 year old lad get a job last year. This kid couldn't get a job at Subway because he didn't have any experience. Shit like that needs to change.