Spectre; calls for water canons or rubber bullets are pointless - in the vast majority of cases the problem has been that the looters cause havoc before the police can get there and are gone by the time they arrive. It's a minority of cases where the police actually end up face-to-face with the looters.
Mostly because of really crappy deployment times and a inability of the UK police to be proactive about problems.
What's needed is a better network of police on as many street corners as possible ready to respond rapidly for discouragement purposes until this particular zeitgeist has blown over. You can't subdue that zeitgeist with force, that would only re-enforce it in their small minds.
Considering that interviewed UK rioters say they're doing this because they won't have any significant consequences, I think you're wrong. They need to be 'informed' that this crap really isn't going to be tolerated - in the swiftest and most effective methods available.
The UK isn't Texas or LA and the mindset of the criminals isn't the same either. When I was in the states I noticed very clearly that there wasn't really any US equivalent of inner-city urban hoodies or chavs. They're a uniquely British cultural phenomenon.
The hell we don't. They don't wear hoodies (mostly because it's too damn hot), but we've got inner city 'unemployed thuggish youths' by the truckload. Same general character type.
One of the 'uniforms' for that type here is the white T-shirt or athletic team jersey over black or dark knee-length shorts, usually baggy. Believe me, we have them.
I'm not suggesting you're entirely wrong, I just keep seeing post after post from you and I can't imagine you're as in tune with the UK cultural problems as you would be with your own domestic cultural problems.
The immediate solution for widespread rioting that's gotten out of control where the innocent are getting killed is swift and harsh repression of the rioters and looters. It's always been the case, and it doesn't matter where the rioting is. Other approaches have been tried over the centuries and mostly none of them work.
A long-term solution is something else entirely, and I've not said much about that, but before you can apply any long-term solutions you have to get the bastards to stop burning, looting and pillaging.
UK has six water cannons in Northern Ireland.
Bring the troops out on the streets is not necessarily a good thing. The British Army have created too many marytrs on the streets around the world.
They have a lot more than that. They're called 'fire engines'.
Failing to see how this is worse than what they have right now. It's not going to be Bloody Sunday again - and trust me, I'm sensitive to that as I'm a quarter Irish - but the world needs to land on these assholes yesterday.
I would also commend the history of famous widespread riots lasting several days - I believe you will find that most of them were only stopped when military force was applied. The Nika riots in Constantinople only stopped because Justinian sent in the military and killed 30,000 people. (After which, he didn't have any riots for a while. I wonder why.) The New York Draft Riots of 1863 only ended when the military started
shelling the city with artillery. The LA Riots of 1992 ended when the military showed up with machine guns and started shooting people that were running checkpoints. I can go on.
One of the main reasons they are doing this.... they know for a fact they can get away with it. Majority will not be caught, its strength in numbers and they know the police are stretched. But the ones that do get caught... will of been caught before for various similar crimes and know full well that they'll get a slap on the wrist and will be back in the dole queue to get their hand outs. They have reached a state of impunity.
There's actually
a piece on that in the Telegraph today.
Now, just what will these consequences be you may ask? Well, for those over eighteen whatever custodial sentences they do receive, if any, they will no doubt serve just a fraction of their sentences as is common for most criminals in the UK. However, in what will clearly be a perversion of justice, those rioters under eighteen will be treated as if they too are the victims of the very crimes they have commited, as this is the ethos at the heart of the youth justice system. I know this from having worked alongside and in the Youth Offending Service. Within a few weeks many of these rioters that you are now watching loot, burn and terrorise on a twenty four news channel will be on an Intensive Surveillance and Supervision Programme, where they will spend the majority of their ?sentence? being escorted to gyms, adventure centres, DJ courses and having their lunches bought and paid for and they will even be given the bus fares to attend their ?punishment?. There will be a minimum of community work as part of their ISSP and in some parts of the country the Youth Offending Service will fail to implement this part of the ISSP. I know this will occur because I have seen it first hand. Another part of their ISSP will involve them sitting in on classroom based sessions where staff will ask them what feelings they were experiencing prior to setting their community alight and how best they could channel those feelings in the future. We may even get them to do some ?poster work?, as I have heard it referred to, where they will draw and colour in examples of criminal behaviour just in case they were not aware that torching local businesses and throwing masonry at the police, fire brigade and passers by were indeed criminal acts. When this is the system charged with preventing youth crime is at any wonder we have such high rates of recidivism amongst the more serious of young criminals? Many of the rioters you see on the streets will have been through this sytem. They know there are no real consequences for their actions and thus they behave in the manner we are now viewing.
That's seriously, seriously broken right there.
Michael Arch of Sky News points out (same link above) that even on his own network you can see how thoroughly the politically correct idiocy has infested all of Britain (and thereby made people deny reality because such things
can't possibly be true according to the PC worldview.)
Funniest interview ever on Sky. Female Sky reporter interviewing a white guy who has had his shops burned. He said to her , the arsonists/looters were all black. She said to him , you can?t say that , there must have been white guys there as well. He thought about and then said , ok they were not all black , i was the only white guy there. Is that ok to say ?
This guy states this with a totally dead pan face without a hint of the pc faux pas.
She again corrects him and states nervously you just cant say they were all black , he responds , but they were i was there.
Unbelievable. The interview describes the state of our society in a nut shell.
Finally, no more softly-softly.
Nice adapted 10th gen F350s there. Even Europeans have to admit their utility.
Yeah. I also wish they hadn't kettled a couple of thousands non-violent protesters several times at different places. Because if they hadn't, they might NOT have had to play politics this way.
They were playing these same stupid games before they started kettling people. They're probably going to continue doing so even after the riots are over. Saw the same thing in Los Angeles and I'm seeing the same issues starting to appear there as did before the 1992 riots... LA has riots about every 20 years or so because of similar idiocy.
Keep in mind, I used to be quite leftist and liberal. It was the 92 riots that made me change my mind.
If these riots have taught us anything, then how important it is that the government has not only the theoretical, but de facto monopoly on violence and the means to uphold it.
The UK government DOES have a de facto monopoly on legal violence. How's that working out for their citizens here? I'm sure the dead would have something to say about that - oh, wait, they can't, because they're
dead.
A government that has a monopoly on legal violence and then fails to use it in defense of its citizens needs to have it taken away.
I have just pointed out what is and what is not legal - Citizens arrest and detention is, beating the crap out of someone, no matter how much they provoke you, is not.
Keep resisting the citizens' arrest, well, you keep getting beat is how that works.
"STOP RESISTING" <whump whump> "STOP RESISTING" <whump whump>
Nope. You got it totally, completely, utterly wrong. The reason why jobs are hard to get without a degree, and, at the same time, the reason why it is vitally important for the economic prospects of all of Europe that more people get university degrees is that in a globalized economy, unskilled labour is being outsourced to where it's cheaper.
Except there are whole loads of
skilled labor positions in industry that aren't going to get roboticized any time soon, that you don't have to go and get a college degree to be competent or marketable in, and that you can actually go to a vocational school and get your certifications in a relatively short amount of time. One thing that some people in the US have been saying for a long time that many are starting to realize the validity of - college isn't for everyone, nor should it be, and there are plenty of vocational schools for out there begging for students to fill positions in industry even now.
A skilled welder or tool and die man, for example, can make in excess of $250,000 per year. That's more than many doctors make; it's more than many lawyers. No college necessary, and there are distinct shortages of personnel in those fields.
Of course, Western Europe has long denigrated vocational training and the like or at least such is my understanding; there's apparently some sort of social stigma over there (which I just don't understand) for people like welders and fabricators.
You can also work your way up the ladder as well. Mom worked her way up from the bottom in the financial industry and made it to Senior VP of division of a major national bank
without a college degree. She did eventually go back and finish her degree out, but that was just for her own edification. She didn't need one in her job.