Rioting spreading through London & to other English cities.

@Arella Mae,

Obviously I can't speak for Bill, but this is not something that can just be dismissed as criminality. There are a lot of other factors involved.

People keep asking why we're still bashing the bankers. It's because none of them have been held accountable for the massive fraud perpetrated on the global economy. Let's see a few City financiers hauled up in front of the beak.

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UK riots: Cameron looks for lessons from LA to tackle homegrown gangs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-gang-crackdown?INTCMP=SRCH

That article mentions the riots in Los Angeles that I talked about in the British II thread some days ago - and about Los Angeles' changes after the last one. Bill Bratton seems to be set to be a consultant to Cameron. Bratton is former commissioner of police in New York City and Los Angeles. Hmmm, re Cameron, but it might be a good thing, at least in part.

Bill Bratton's changes in Los Angeles, both toughness and conciliatory initiatives (described in the text) worked quite well, at least in contrast to doing nothing, but have flagged now due to lack of money, officers, and so on.

Also mentioned is the Strathclyde initiative in Glasgow, which I think I've read about at some point, that was based on a US system in Boston and Cincinnati.

(for those who missed that post of mine, in the '92 riots in Los Angeles, we were busy at work when we heard what was going on, on the radio, and decided to leave work early. Not long afterward, the building next to us was burned, in the same kind of rampaging that has been going on in Britain. So I just missed some really scary stuff.)

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@ossobuco,

I remember the riots in Los Angeles and how frightening it was to watch it on TV, never mind being right there.

-------

I only can imagine how terrible people feel in England and how disappointed they must be to watch all this take place in their country where people are usually reserved, polite and anything but rioters.

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@ossobuco,

Cameron is looking for a cheap fix, and you're probably right, it will fizzle out due to lack of money

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@Arella Mae,

Bill failed to add, Arella, that the small percent do not just live "very, very high indeed" but they insist on strutting it too and rubbing it everybody's noses. And, if there is any truth in the Global Warming theory, they are looting the whole sodding earth and bragging about it. In your face whited sepulchres. It is us who are to be "greened".

And if there is no truth in the GW theory they look ridiculous doing it. The reason they are in a trance is because they have so many choices what to do with the passing hours that they are constantly wondering whether what they are doing is the best choice. That's why there are taxis rushing around London all day. They soon get bored.

I gather Mr Madoff's suits have been cut up and made into top-of-the-range i-pad covers.

Try to imagine yourself sitting down to read a good book, Tom Jones or Ulysses, or What Katie Did Next, with $200 million in the bank. I'm not sure I could manage that.

They can't even go in a Fish and Chip shop back room and order double steak pudding, double chips, mushy peas, gravy, double bread and butter and a pint of well stewed tea with milk and four sugars. What would Nigella think if she found out about that. What a lapse of aesthetic taste is using HP Sauce and Heinz Tomato Ketchup. That's despite those two products having been refined by the mass palette of generations on the "better mousetrap" principle which is the ideology they are supposed go into the trenches to defend.

Quote:

When commenting in 2006 on his former pupil's ideas about a "Bill of Rights" to replace the Human Rights Act, however, Professor Bogdanor, himself a Liberal Democrat, said, "I think he is very confused. I've read his speech and it's filled with contradictions. There are one or two good things in it but one glimpses them, as it were, through a mist of misunderstanding".

The former pupil is David Cameron. And if Professor Bogdanor went on the record that evolution should be taught to schoolkids my friends on the relevant threads would be jumping up and down with glee.

Who got looted to provide the Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Johnson family money?

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@izzythepush,

Well, Bratton's LA effort hasn't fizzled out, precisely, and I don't think it was cheap, but it is less well financially supported today.. last I read.

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

People keep asking why we're still bashing the bankers. It's because none of them have been held accountable for the massive fraud perpetrated on the global economy. Let's see a few City financiers hauled up in front of the beak.

Excellent idea. I see a lad got sentenced to six months in prison today for stealing a bottle of water during the looting of a LIDL supermarket.

On that scale, what should Fred Goodwin get?

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@McTag,

Drawn and quartered.

Cycloptichorn

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

It you wish peace and a stable society the only way to do so is having the vast bulk of the population to be stake holders in that society.

Strange that there is a group of people on this website who think that a small ruling class can seize all or at least most of the wealth of a society and not have the society come apart as a result.

sharing in the rewards is part of what makes a colllective work, but we also need sharing in the decision making and sharing in the work.....all aspects of the shared experince have broken down.

One thing that liberals need to understand is that welfare with dignity as was practiced in Briton is not just compensation for unneeded labor, you can't write a check and make everything OK here. What is required is a job or some other means of contribution. The check writing is only a stopgap measure to be used until the problem can be solved. This anger we see from the throwaway class in the UK did not just develop when the conservatives took over and massively cut back on the check writing, the liberals writing checks to keep the problem quiet rather than dealing with the problem helped it along as well. Try giving $20 for the movies to a college grad who can't find a job and then report back if they think you have made the problem all better.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

What would be helpful, would be if you shut your ignorant mouth.

My "ignorant mouth" is based on the fact that Britain, having had two world wars in the 20th century, and my male relatives had to assist in Britain not being on the losing side in both wars, I believe America has earned a sort of vested interest in your society. Be that so, I choose to think that the disenfranchised in the British class system should just stop whining, and act like proper British. Be a good Brit, or mate, just like the Germans learned to be "good Germans."

If you do not care for me voicing my opinion, different from yours tho it may be, sorry, that is the beauty of the internet.

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@Foofie,

For someone so hypersensitive to any perceived racict stereotyping, when it cocerns you, you're unaware of the irony and hypocrisy that your own racist stereotyping of us causes.

Your country entered the war because of Pearl Harbour, but your knowledge of History is obviously as limited as your knowledge of Geography.

We can do without your smug schadenfreude, you're starting to sound just like the Ayatollah, you racist ****.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

I see a lad got sentenced to six months in prison today for stealing a bottle of water during the looting of a LIDL supermarket.

It was a case actually, and he had the nerve to say he was "thirsty". And even if it had been only 1 bottle, I reckon the fact that it was looting and not regular shoplifting accounts for the severity. Rightly IMHO.

I remember a photo taken after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Prominently visible is a sign saying "LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT". Also I now see that some soldiers sent to help actually took part in looting.

"Soldiers looting shoes during 1906 San Francisco fire, after the earthquake."

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sites/default/files/images/758px-Soldiers_looting_1906_fire.img_assist_custom-600x475.jpg

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@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

My "ignorant mouth" is based on the fact that Britain, having had two world wars in the 20th century, and my male relatives had to assist in Britain not being on the losing side in both wars, I believe America has earned a sort of vested interest in your society.

Bollocks. You complete tosser.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

For someone so hypersensitive to any perceived racict stereotyping, when it cocerns you, you're unaware of the irony and hypocrisy that your own racist stereotyping of us causes.

Your country entered the war because of Pearl Harbour, but your knowledge of History is obviously as limited as your knowledge of Geography.

We can do without your smug schadenfreude, you're starting to sound just like the Ayatollah, you racist ****.

Many in the U.S.A. believe that FDR did want us to get into the war on the side of Britain, so we can expand our role, which was already lendlease. Do not believe that those Americans of British ancestry were not concerned about Britain.

I have no schadenfreude. I sort of like Britain. It is continental Europe, that in my opinion "yawned" when they heard of the Holocaust, for which I have little commiseration.

Are you promulgating the myth that anyone that does not commiserate with the have nots in society are racist? What is that based on? Catholic theology? I tend to take a more Protestant view of society, in that one should be productive, and reap the rewards of one productivity.

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@Foofie,

No, I call you racist based on your previous anti British posts. The way you refer to the Palestinians as 'just arabs,' and your blanket categorisation of the working class as 'trash.'

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

No, I call you racist based on ...[..].....blanket categorisation of the working class as 'trash.'

So Foofie is no Robespierre and no Danton - but how does that make him a "racist", exactly?

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@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

I remember the riots in Los Angeles and how frightening it was to watch it on TV, never mind being right there.

After the L.A. riots, there were pundits that pointed out that life in L.A. reflects a sort of cloistered group of haves, versus the uncloistered group of have nots. Meaning, I thought, that the haves in L.A. travel to their jobs in the seclusion of their cars, never having to rub elbows with the underclass, as New Yorkers do every day on the subway. So, please do not follow any herd thinking, and believe a riot, is a riot, is a riot (a rose, is a rose, is a rose). The U.S.A. has worked hard, since the '60's riots to lessen the alienation of minorities.

Britain will learn from this event, like the U.S. learned from those '60's riots. L.A. was different than many urban centers, as I mentioned, since the haves were able to maintain a cloistered life, shielded from the underclass.

Perhaps, there will never be riots in German cities, which might just reflect the ability to do preventive social engineering?

When the Brits had a civil society, they did tend to look down their noses at others, I believe. So, I am trying very hard not to have schadenfreude, since they did shed real tears on 9/11. But, many can be annoying in their pompous culture, when times are good there, I believe.

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@contrex,

You're a classicist, right? If so, do you recall another - very distinguished - British classicist, Enoch Powell, quoting "the Roman", as he put it, about "...the Tiber flowing with rivers of blood.." As you must read more of the UK press than I do I wonder if any allusions were made to that speech. Thanks.

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@High Seas,

Quote:

Would it stop the rioting if there were free showings of Pygmalion? Henry Higgins teaching elocution (The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.) might be helpful?

I have already stated why F is racist. The above posting is racist, as all my fellow Brits who have commented on this thread seem to agree. Interesting that you only dedcided to comment on this thread now. Did someone pm you?

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@izzythepush,

I just landed in NY, where I live, back from Berlin, where I was on business, and I've no idea what you're talking about ref conspiracy PMs or anything else relating to this forum generally and this thread particularly. Have been too busy the last several days to look up A2K at all. What's the matter with you?!

1 Reply

Rioting spreading through London & to other English cities.

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