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DanaC, that it's a "primal yell" rings true to me.
I've never been even as close to London as Heathrow on a layover. But the idea that this comes out of a disenfranchised class and generation without the eloquence or clarity or whatever it takes to be recognized as "legitimately political" makes a lot of sense to me. In a certain way, that so many figures of traditional power dismiss the riots as apolitical and "just crime" is, itself, a sign that there is a deep, probably fairly widespread common cause -- one which is so endemic that they cannot even pretend to relate. This seems maybe a relevant, if sort of anarcho-philosophical in a dense way, essay about the (previous?) apathy of British students relative to French: Reflexive Impotence In it, he basically argues that there is a bleak future for young people, where they're simultaneously trained to be manic entertainment/stimulus junkies, but also to take on debt and join the rat race. Quote:
I have both a day job and an active entreprenurial pipe dream. But if I were there, or the riots here, I wonder what I would do: it doesn't seem that foreign. Every generation "theatricializes one's lack of prospects": mine did it with body decoration and narcotics. But, we had prospects. |
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@ UG:
So because a relatively small number of people went on a rampage for a few nights we should utterly change the way we as a country function, and have functined for some considerable time? The reality is that we have been slowly creeping towards more American style solutions to social problems and this is the result: social dischord. The recent austerity moves have added to an already mounting tension. This isn't about benefits culture and handouts. At least, I don't think it is. They weren't all unemployed, or from unemployed families. Some of the people arrested have had respectable jobs. One of them was a teaching assistant. But for those that are unemployed, cutting their already low benefits payments and making it harder to claim is not helpful when youth unemployment is riding at 20.3% in some places. At the same time the paths to college and university are getting harder to follow with abolition of the EMA (£30 per week educational maintenance allowance, given to low income kids going to college from school, to assist in paying for travel and books) and the tripling of university fees (used to be capped at c. 3k per year, now most o fthe universities have taken up the opportunity to raise fees and are charging 9k per year). Schools meanwhile have become more segregated than ever along income/class lines, and the movement to an Academy system in many areas has resulted in a massive increase in school exclusions, with difficult to reach pupils far more likely to be excluded than worked with, than used to be the case. Many schools/academies are now specialising, with some offering a more vocational bent and others a more academic, I'll leave it to you to guess which areas have leaned towards academic specialisms and which areas are channeling their youngsters into plumbing and plastering. Society has never felt more economically divided. Kids are growing up in the most consumerist society Britain has ever known, with social worth more tagged than ever to branded goods and having exactly the right stuff. At the same time they're flooded with a mix of messages around entitlement. That has nothing to do with the welfare state being too generous. We had a welfare state when i was a kid, and we had an unequal society and all sorts of trouble. We had second generation entrenched unemployed and a massive underclass, but this sense of lifestyle entitlement is new. |
A couple of things that i find quite interesting about this.
The timing of this is interesting. We've seen over the last couple of years a massive increase in youth involvement in politics. The debate over tuition fees galvanised a large section of the young people of Britain into action. Marches and protests and letter writing campaigns and planned (politely, with permission from the university authorities) campus occupations. There was a huge rally in London, and kids from all accross the Uk flocked to it. Kids were ditching school and getting down to London with their mates, there were young people at the end of their university courses, protesting on behalf of younger friends and relatives, there were teachers and other professionals, many of whom were in their professions because they'd had access to university education through a combination of loans and grants without having to take on massive amounts of debt to do so. There was a real sense of energy around their response, and engagement. There was then a lot of support from young people when it came to protests about public sector pensions. Last year when the main parties were gearing up to the election, the Liberal Democrats heavily courted first time voters, and made tuition fees and student loans one of the central planks of their campaign. They made all sorts of promises, including a cast iron guarantee that if they were in government that they wouldn't allow any increase to tuition fees. Young people joined the LibDems in droves. They were a huge part of their campaign. The twitter generation used social media to increase the footprint of the lib-dem campaign massively. Then the two main parties failed to gain a majority, with many of their votes migrating to the Lib Dems, partly because of this youth response and it was down to the Lib Dems, the third party, to attach themselves in coalition to one of the two parties to form a coalition government. They formed a government with the Conservatives, and one of the first things that coalition did was abandon all the promises the libdems made to the young people. I don't think it's any accident that this is occurring now. I think there is a general sense amongst a lot of young people that the adult world simply isn't interested in them or their views. |
"Control societies are based on debt," and the "debtor-addict" from the above article reminds me of an excellent book by Alain de Botton: Status Anxiety.
it's a great read and a great balm to the nuttiness of a society infatuated with the shiny bling of the material world. We are such suggestible creatures and western civ. has indoctrinated the youth to believe it is their god-given RIGHT to wear 300.00 sneakers. And if you don't wear them - well then, you are nothing but trash. Making people feel like shit about themselves - Capitalism at it's very, very best. :) |
Wait a minute.
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SSSSuuuuunnnndddaaaeeee?????!!!!!!! |
Well with all the folks here who have her phone number and speak to her, I'm surprised no one has tried to call. :eyebrow:
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She's in Aylesbury. Haven't heard any reports of trouble in or near aylesbury.
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unfortunately... that doesnt mean much.... . I've not heard of any reports on mainstream news of trouble in Oxford, High Wycombe or Brighton but I have first hand reports of some trouble in each place... not whole-scale rioting but troubles.. so.... |
Ok, fair enough.
We've had comparatively little in my borough. A few little flareups,nothing the police weren't able to deal with. But Leeds, about a 30 minute drive away, has seen some fairly serious rioting. |
Are you going to try to call her? Sarge? Bunny? Bri?
I don't have her number. |
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Maybe this'll help with the looting.
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Interesting interview from a couple girls:
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I hate cities in general - and perhaps London more than most. I don't understand the rioters at all but then nor I can't understand why people would choose to live in what seems, to me, to be the ultimate shit-hole.
A little nearer to where I live the rioting seems to be taking off too: |
Comedy gold: http://photoshoplooter.tumblr.com/
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It's not the fault of the richer, and if you are not terminally rich then you are unlikely to ever encounter one of them. People are just knuckleheads. Angry knuckleheads. |
Has any body else noticed that ALL this started when Monster and Beest went away for a few weeks ????
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I had a dream last night that I called Dani (and I don't even have her number) at 1am for her birthday. There was more to the dream, but it was weird.
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I blame soccer.
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Ref Sundae - I tried calling her earlier today. Got no answer
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Why an adolescent does something and why those girls just blame the rich may be two completely different reasons. The concept is called epistemology. As an adolescent enters Level 3, abstract reasoning and metacognitive abilities emerge. An adolescent should grow out of this Level and into Level 4 by high school. Should learn how different truths have perspectives. How some beliefs are more valid that others. Unfortunately many adolescents never graduate to that stage of cognitive development until their twenties or older. Rice and Dolgin describe this in their book The Adolescent: Quote:
Their illogical explanation of ‘why’ is based in their interpretations of what they only understand: their emotions. Our understanding means understanding what triggered their emotions. Grasping the hard realities of logic come later during Level 4. Postskeptical rationalism is when some beliefs are finally understood to be more valid than others. The ability to understand perspectives. Some never achieve that cognitive level until at least their twenties. Remain victims of their own emotions. |
I'm back.
I may enter this discussion at some point, but I just wanted to let you know I was okay. Mum & I headed off to Cardiff first thing Tuesday morning, and didn't get back until last night. We were watching the footage on SkyTV while we were away, but I had no internet access. On the coach on the way down we heard that there were rumours of trouble in Grangetown and in Splott (parts of Cardiff), but it must have been contained as we heard nothing more of it. There were definitely a lot of police cars zooming about on Tuesday though, making sure that trouble didn't get a chance to start. Funnily enough, saw a photo in the paper when we were on the way home of a Welsh policeman deployed to London. How could we tell? He had his back to the camera and Heddlu printed on his hi-vis jacket. Heddlu is Welsh for police, although it transaltes more correctly into "keeper of the peace". |
glad to hear you and yours are safe and well..
Wales huh?.. their licence plates should be printed with the motto "I'd like to buy a vowel please" ( love the accent tho.. especially on the *ahem* ladies. ) |
I'm glad to hear from you too, Sundae.
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It's good to know you're ok Sundae. I actually think it was thoughts of you that prompted my dream of calling Dana. lol Weird.
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I dreamed that people kept congratulating me on my Australian accent the night before.
But in the dream I'd actually performed Steve Pemberton's part in the Go Johnny Go Go sketch, which definitely does NOT have an Australian accent. I was being self-deprecating and saying I'd been listening to it for about 10 years, so no surprise I nailed it... And I think that came from twice being identified as an American on the way through London (I was wearing & stars & stripes top though, and carrying a tourist sized bag). I used to be identified as an Aussie when I was a teenager. Something to do with the way I pronounced some words. Dreams tangle things up in funny ways. |
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Politicians are lining up to offer tough talk. Apparently we live in a 'broken' and 'sick' society. Children growing up with no sense of themselves as citizens. No discipline in schools. Being failed by teachers and parents alike. They've grown up with a sense of warped entitlement, borne partly of state handouts etc etc etc.
OR: How bout the fact that this government and indeed the last two governments have consistently downgraded the role of teachers? Their wages have not risen at the same rate as other professions of similar qualification level, so that they are comparatively low paid. They've been the whipping boy of three successive governments when it comes to child crime and lack of social cohesion amongst the youth. But they've been hemmed in at all bloody sides when it comes to actually teaching these kids. In the tabloid press, in political speeches, in the constant refrain to save our broken schools, and start turning kids into citizens again, teachers as a profession are at best disregarded, or at worst villified. How can we expect children in schools to hold their teachers up as social models and respect them as a matter of course, when we as a society have lost respect for their profession. Then I hear from Cameron, that kids 'are growing up not knowing the difference between right and wrong' and the government are going to restore a sense of moral decency in all our towns etc etc. As usual this is placed firmly on the parents and teachers, not instilling these values, and not providing a proper civic example. OR: how bout these kids are growing up seeing their elected officials prosecuted for expense fiddling and outright fraud, the top police officials standing down pending enquiries into fraud and corruption at the highest level, and a financial meltdown caused in large part by the unscrupulous actions of the banking and broking elite. Yes, parents have the ultimate responsibility for their children's upbringing and moral outlook. But to place the blame so firmly on to them and the teachers who are struggling to try and find a way to actually educate these kids beyond the test-passing exercises they're dragged through at every new stage, and ignore the wider picture is disengenuous. Utterly hypocritical to stand up there and point fingers at a section of society that is 'without morals' when your own social group has been shown to be morally bankrupt. |
Dana, someone should give you a column.
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If the parents are not at fault then who is? Seriously.
If my kids misbehave as they do, I don't find excuses for it in the latest political scandal. I look to myself and recognise that I have obviously not got the message across properly so I try something else. Yes it's frustrating, and yes it's hard and it's also largely thankless, but kids don't ask to be born. Parents decide to have them. Society starts at home within the family. Fix those issues and you'll fix the problems of society at large. eta: I don't believe it's a teacher's responsibility to teach kids morals or right from wrong. A teacher's role is to facilitate learning. no more. |
I just have to say that if you can even imagine a world where kids do learn morals and right from wrong at home, so that when they go to school they know how to behave and recognise and appreciate that the teacher is there to help them, a teacher's life would be so much easier, and maybe they (we)'d all stop complaining about what a tough life teachers have.
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My point, Ali, is that the leaders of my country are pointing accusing fingers at various different levels of society for the loss of moral context, when they have themselves, as a group, been found with their fingers in the till and somebody else's fingers in their pockets.
Cameron stands there and bemoans the fact that children no longer respect authority. That children no longer have the basic respect for law and rules that their generation respected, and have no respect for those who uphold the laws. I look at the news coverage of the last few years and I have to ask myself, why on earth would any sensible child growing up in Britain today feel that the politicians who govern them, or the police service that polices them have in any way shown themselves to be worthy of authority and respect? They are pointing fingers every which way but their own. |
Seems like everyone's pointing fingers and no one's really doing anything about it.
We see the same sort of deterioration in family values here as well. It's very sad, but I just try to change things just in my own area. I try and support those in need and give the kids that are struggling a bit of a leg up if I can. It has to start at grass roots. The politicians can't help. Only the individual can make a difference. I just don't believe the government is capable. It's up to communities to work together to help their kids and families in trouble. The problem is just too big to solve all at once. |
Here's a thought:
Riot and disorder have always been a part of the political expression of this country. From the highly organised protest marches that fly out of control, through the street level violence and anger at race motivated police brutality, to the mindless ransacking that springs from a less obviously political place. What we're seeing here has been seen before. The big differences are that the people concerned are primarily very young. And they've been able to organise a response around looting, using social media. Instead of the atmosphere of a riot stretching across the people in the immediate vicinity, and then other places kicking off as news slowly spreads, this time the atmosphere of a riot was able to spread far from the immediate crowd, into a virtual space which these youngsters live in. This is no different really to what happens from time to time in Britain, except that it was accelerated beyond anything we've previouisly experienced. What took a year and a half to play out in the 90s, as town centres and housing estates accross the land began to erupt in riots and disorder, with a new spate occurring every few weeks or months, and again in the mid 00's, with race riots in the northern towns, this time happened across three nights, everywhere, simultaneously. I would not be at all surprised if many of the people involved are not particularly criminal or immoral in their day to day life. And whilst it is ill-articulated, I think somewhere behind their 'it's the rich people's fault' excuse for looting, a genuine political grievance is operating. They may not fully understand it themselves, and it in no way should be taken as a reason not to prosecute criminal behaviour, but it absolutely needs recognising and tackling. This is not simply a moral decline in our youth. We've been singing that particular ditty for generations. Yea, even unto the middle ages. Nor is it the result of a state that helps people to stay out of work. Because, we've also been singing that ditty for generations, and again, yea even unto the middle ages. The debate now is about the 'Welfare State' and then it was about 'The Parish', 'The Poor Law, and 'The Poor Union'. Then as now, the indigent poor were seen as a feckless and irredeemable underclass. Provide them and their families with shoes and linnen for their clothes and why would they choose to work? Allow a subsistence of existence to be supported by the Parish, and vast swathes of feckless layabouts choose that rather than work. It teaches them to be lazy. It teaches them to be immoral. They are different from us. They can't raise their children properly. Their children are immoral. Poor children, whose parents are little more than beasts that walk. |
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Sheep get sheared. |
Good to hear from you Sundae. I think all are present and accounted for now! :)
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The problem: adolescents doing what adolescents do. A normal stage in cognitive development. Or what happens when an adolescent stops growing. Quote:
Long before casting blame, first reasons for that problem must be defined? Does England have so many adolescents with arrested development? Or just a smaller numbers that could so easily create a 'herd mentality'? Or why have so many lost faith in logic? Yes, top management - the parents - are the source of 85% of these problems. If kids are not growing, a parent's job to address it or to seek help. But is that the reason for so much emotion? Casting blame is junk science reasoning if a problem is not first defined. Provided is an example from researchers (the authors of The Adolescent) for how one might answer those questions. Casting blame without first identifying the problem is an example of illogical thought. Shameful is anyone looking for answers in soundbytes. Soundbyte reasoning makes one no different than adolescents who have lost faith in logic while behaving impulsively, intuitively, and indifferently. If parents are a primary reason for this problem, then what is it that parents have not addressed or encouraged? |
To answer you in your own language tw, the parents have not addressed issues with cognitive development, possibly (probably) because they've never reached stage 4 themselves, and so are unable to reason properly to find a better answer than the one that's not working.
For example. I developed parent might look at the circumstances they live in and think to themselves, "Hmmm, this is not the ideal environment to raise my child in. Maybe I should think of a way to improve our lives a little by using the education system (or something like that)", where as a stage 3 might say, "Hmmm, this is not the ideal environment to raise my child in. Who's fault is it?" |
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This is the end of the welfare state, in flames and broken glass. Good riddance, say I. The Sun Never Sets . . . |
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Nothing lasts forever - not even economic systems. the second law of thermodynamics proves it. Good riddance to capitalism! |
I'm still very conflicted about the way I feel about this.
I've said before that I have a right-wing reactionary core beneath my liberal exterior, and shocks like this bring it out. On the other hand I feel extremely concerned at the idea of people involved losing benefits and social housing, because how on earth are they going to survive? I've heard points made to take people out of social housing - let them find housing in the private sector! They have proved they are no longer part of the community! Well, moving people on has never had great success. Look at the sink estates blamed for the "benefit culture" because none of them work and apparently you're seen as a mug by your neighbours if you do. Moving them into the private sector just makes more money for private landlords, devalues other properties in the area and costs local authorities more. Or again - don't turf them out, just stop their benefits. WHAT? How will they pay for the all time record high utility bills? How will they eat? As someone who has had their benefits screwed around with I can tell you it makes you feel desperate and outside of normal society, constantly borrowing and begging and asking for extensions and assistance. And I was living at home with my only dependent a cat! I do see support and help as more important than punitive measures. Let the courts deal with criminal complaints. Where people are found guilty, this is where the charges should be decided and applied. Nothing to do with housing and benefits. I heard a man explaining the issues these youths were facing and yes, it did ring a bell. Children born to girls of 14, 15. Never had a father figure. Children brought up by children who did not have a work ethic, who did not have a sense of family, who had never learned respect for education. The boys get taller than their Mums at 13-14 and from there on have no reason to listen to them, respect them, pay attention to anything they say. Not a cause for rioting, but it works fairly well as an explanation of the mindset of these people and why they step outside what we see as society's basic rules. But then on the other hand I heard a woman from Ghana on the radio. Woooo-eeee she was livid. She was like all the Ghanian and Nigerian women I met in South London. I came from a country with NO free education, NO free healthcare, where you had to FIGHT every day to work! Britiain gives out too much, it lets kids get away with this, there should be more laws, more police, more control! This doesn't happen in Ghana because your mother would slap you silly. You GO to school, you DO your homework or your Grandma will kill you etc etc. I'm not blaming immigrants for the riots at all, but I do wonder if in some cases the children of immigrants are equally disenfranchised by the attitudes of their parents compared to the laissez faire attitudes of their schoolfriends' parents. It might be an additional point to consider, that alongside those with no guidance, there are some that are trying to escape theirs. |
What really pisses me off abot these evictions and benefit penalties, is this: many of the rioters are young, many are still children. So, they're saying that if such children have rioted then their families will be evicted from their social housing. Why? Because they've proved themselves unworthy of that social housing. Since they have acted in such a way, why should tax payers in these communities foot the bill for their housing?
Trouble is, that if there are children in the family (and in most of these cases it appears to be the case) then the local authority has a statutary duty to ensure the safety and security of those children and to assist any struggling families in building that safe and secure family environment. All kicking them out of council houses will do, is force a bunch of families into expensive private accomodation that will make it een harder for them to survive as a family, or simply onto the street or friend's floors. The local authority will then have to deal with that situation as part of its 'corporate parent' responsibility, and the whole exercise will end up costing the counil, and therefore the council tax payers of that area several times more than the cost of allowing them to stay in their council/social rent house. Whilst one part of the council authority is exercising its right to evict, a different part of the same council will be left to try and deal with the family in whatever context that ends up being. It is just a way of looking tough and decisive, that solves absolutely nothing, and exacerbates problems in families that are already probably struggling for internal cohesion against a range of negative pressures. To me this just seems bizarre and retrograde. What makes more sense, as far as i can see, is yes to prosecute those caught in criminal acts. And also to censure the parents who allowed their children to become involved. But censure really is only part of the answer when dealing with families. Those who became involved need educating and working with, to help them become part of a community they apparently feel apart from. I have no problem with short prison sentencnes for the worst offenders, but most of these youngsters could be best dealt with by enforcing some kind of community service, possibly helping in the clean up and repair task in the areas where rioting occurred. This knee-jerk response is ridiculous and actively works against resolving the core problems at play. There are all sorts of reasons why I object to this stuff that are more political in nature. The fact that only one class of the multi-tiered rioting crowd can actually face this kind of penalty for instance, but there are also very real pragmatic concerns with this. Bearing in mind the potential ramifications of eviction and benefit sanctions, it is even more disturbing to consider the speed with which these people are being tried and sentenced. Courts running all night, solicitors pulling 14 hour shifts. speedy decisions are not necessarily the best decisions. And conveyor belt justice may not be robust. |
In the US public housing goes to shit every single time, and we have given up on the idea. After a while it became obvious that putting people there was just about the worst thing you could do for them. We tear 'em down and don't rebuild anything, and people find somewhere to live.
And the neighborhood improves dramatically. |
Ours have always been a mixed bag. There are nice estates, and not so nice estates. Estates in areas where there' s lots of work, and easy access to services and where the atmosphere is not materially different to any private estate, and there are sink estates on the bitter edge of nowhere, with few transport links, fewer jobs and a pervading sense of violence and hopelessness. And inner-city collections of estates that live cheek by jowl with some of the wealthiest communities in the world.
And there are slighgtly downtrodden but scraping by estates where some of the families are in crisis and some of the kids are running amok, but most are just living a 'normal' life, with a job they quite like, and their kids doing well at the local school. What made housing estates worse, in my opinion, was the change to social housing laws under the Thatcher government. Council tenants were given the right to buy their houses from the council, and encouraged to do so with easy to get mortgages, partial equity schemes, and the fact that they were valued at considerably less than a house which had started out private. So lots of people bought their council houses and flats, and then eagle eyed developers started buying them up for a low price (which was still mad profit for the seller). Where the bought properties were flats, they usually ended up as developed executive apartments, walled and fenced with security gates and guards (I lived in one such at the edges of a Salford estate in the early 90s). Where they were houses, many ended up as private sector rentals competing with the council for tenants and often resulting in a transient and troubled populationg moving through the estates. Councils were barred by law from investing the money from the sale of council houses back into the social housing stock. It sat, cordoned off and unable to be spent for years. So, housing stock began to shrink. At the same time, the constant message being put out in government and in the media, was that being a proper adult citizen effectively meant being a home owner. Renting a council house became highly stigmatised and working families who'd once been quite happy to rent a house in an estate, because it was the next best thing to buying in terms of security, were suddenly taking up any assistance scheme they could to get out of social housing and buy a house. When I was a kid, one of the first things you did when you came of age was get your name on the council house waiting list. It was just a part of becoming an adult if you were from a working-class background. And by the far the majority of us were. Now, it comes with a bunch of baggage and most of it has been farmed out to the private sector, or to arms length not for profits. It was a deliberate strategy to reduce social housing in this country and turn us into a nation of home owners. |
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On the other hand, a parent may not be cognitively retarded. It is just an excuse. The question answered only with speculation. Just another formula for failure. A major reason for social breakdown is so many conclusions without first learning facts. As if more laws, more punishment, and more UG will solve all problems. Low incoming housing failed due to bad management. It required complex managers who were provided resources. Management that was provided support from their government supervisors. And who could therefore exercise control of that housing complex. Breakdown started when local management did not even have money to repair and repaint apartments as tenants moved out. Budgeting experts who did not see failure that year. Therefore knew further budget cuts were appropriate. Eventually each complex became overrun by squatters and gangs when complex management could not even replace failed refrigerators. Did not know who was living in each apartment. And did not dare evict squatters. What causes failure of low incoming housing. A bean counter mentality that cost controls so aggressively that an apartment could not even be repainted. So, how do we know parents have arrested cognitive development? Due to the same popular myths and reasoning that also proved Saddam's WMDs? Or do we just ignore the missing facts? Instead, convert assumptions into proof? Then react to those assumptions? Asking a kid why he is rioting can only identify his state of mind and maybe his stage of cognitive development. I still do not see any posts that first identify the problem. |
There are riots everywhere from time to time. All that's required is an excuse. Politics and social circumstances have bollock-all to do with it.
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What i really hate, is the way the government is leaping on this as an opportunity to bring in even more anti-civil liberties legislation and police powers.
The idea that at times of 'civil unrest' the state would have the power and right to close down access to social media is a frightening one. I also don't like the precedent being set here for evicting whole families as a response to the actions of individual members of those families (wtf have the younger or older siblings of a rioter done to deserve eviction as a punishment?). And indeed the precedent of serving eviction notices to those guilty of riot and disorder is itself a dangerous one, even if only aimed at the individuals concerned. There's some talk of extending this to legally enforcable fines levied against homeowners and taken off the equity of their homes. Setting aside the moral questions of whether or not it is just to punish entire families for the actions of individuals, what about the potential for abusing that precedent? The line between legitimate protest and public disorder is often a fine one, and most riots are more founded in legitimate protest than the recent spate (as has been pointed out by many). The weapon this potentially puts into the hands of the state against dissatisfied and angry sectors of the community is a large one. |
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See, the problem with that argument is that it doesn't take account of the many, many times that governments have (and are currently doing again) taken on the mantra of anti-welfare state economists and tried to cut back the system in ways that cut support whilst actually costing more. We've had countless schemes and revamps to the system that have made it less effective at getting help to where help is needed and also more costly to administrate.
What we lose to people playing the benefit system is a drop in the ocean compared to what we lose to the wealthiest tax payers not paying the tax they're supposed to pay. What we recover from the malingerer who's made his back injury stretch three years beyond the actual effects of injury whilst working cash in hand on the side, is as nothing compared to what it cost to root him out. Much of the worst waste in the NHS, to take an example, has been in the administration layer that had to be added to try and knit together the fragmented health services borne of attempts to bring in the private sector. The fucking scams that came in under the guise of the free market were unbelievable. Now, I don't actually have an objection to the free market. I see it as basically quite a positive thing for the most part. There are a few areas of life I feel are better served by socialised solutions and healthcare is one of them. But, whatever your view on healthcare, socialised or privatised, what's abosolutely needed is a sense of cohesion and efficiency, and whether it's profits or targets that drive the process, the direction needs to be towards better care and treatment. What doesn't help that is trying to cobble together an unholy mess of private and public where the lines of division are not very clear and where all the money leaks into either governing the meeting points of the two, or through outright scamming of the system. It wasn't the socialised medicine that cost so much the past twenty years it was the cackhanded attempts to mould it into something it's not. The changes to benefits are another classic example of British politicians attempting to import US solutions to a British setting and just failing miserably, because what's actually needed are British solutions, tailored to a British setting and culture. |
I guess I just don't see how these attempted solutions are "US solutions". If as you say they have been dealing with attempts to revamp the system countless times then the history of dealing with the issues occurred long before our current economic crisis. You socialized system of public support has been around a long time before we began to dabble in it. The attempted solutions are uniquely UK based and as we see the other EU economies unravel it is obvious that the UK is not alone in realizing that the cost of their social systems are breaking the bank and have been doing so for a long time. It is like finding a small bit of rot in a piece of wood, sticking a screwdriver in it and finding your whole house has been eaten by termites.
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I call them 'American' solutions because they are the product of politicians over here looking to America and borrowing ideas.
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Can you give some specific examples? Just trying to understand your point.
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Well, for example, in response to the riots and the 'gang problem' in London and other cities, the government has drafted in an American 'Supercop' to advise them. Seems a reasonable idea in principle, after all, he's had to deal with major gang problems in the US. But the US gang problem is not the same as the UK gang problem. The gangs are not the same, they've taken a different form. And policing here is different. The range of strategies on offer is different. The problems, though similar in some respects are different. But the Conservatives, and even the last Labour government, have such a love affair with American political solutions and philosophies that they just try and transplant it right across, ignoring calls from the police to draw from more culturally similar situations (as in with the gangs in some European cities).
They did the same with the education system. The Labour government brought in a bunch of ideas drawn from American educationalists to solve problems in our schools. Not that there's anything wrong with seeking expertise from American educationalists, or other professionals, just that they seem to be wedded to American solutions above all else, even where it is not appropriate. Most of the attempts to bring in free market mechanics to the NHS, along with ideas like 'welfare to work' programmes and a bunch of other stuff were based on US strategies and programmes running during the 90s, often involving US firms in assisting in both devising and delivering them. Most of the prominent politicians in recent years have voiced their admiration for US economic and political philosophers. The political elite have had a love affair with US thinking and strategy for two generations, and it's the first place they look for ideas. The problem is they don;t seem to hold those ideas to the same level of scrutiny as ideas from other places. They just take it as a good thing because it's what worked in the States. Sometimes they're right, and what they've done is adopt best practice as it appears in the US, but often they've just adopted the knee-jerk responses of the US political system as their own and the solution fails. |
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