the UK is burning!

Dont know how much coverage this is getting internationally, but it isnt good over here!

Last night serious riots in London, Bristol. Birmingham, Liverpool.

Tonight its on the verge of kicking off everywhere (big police presence in almost every major town and city in the country and gangs of youths gathering).

The flats (apartments) I live in got smashed up by a gang of kids (bricks through car windscreens, broken windows, fire alarms off)... just shows how contagious anarchy is... I like just outside Birmingham, and its apparently starting up in the centre right now. But even here the same spirit of carelessness and desire to break things up is bubbling under.

_

This started off after police killed a man in Tottenham and ignored protests outside the police station... after 3 days of increasing violence it has now just become an orgy of violence, theft and vandalism by the disenfranchised and criminal elements all over the country.

Lots of reactionary talk amongst ordinary people of sending in the troops, lots of racist talk blaming certain ethnic groups... and lots of ordinary people and businesses without homes or premises... 100's maybe 1000's of shops looted and fired, cars fired, fighting on the streets between gangs of youths and police. Few people actually seem to be asking why these things are happening.

Its a pretty ugly view of Britain that we are offering the world right now.

 

i've followed alot of it. it's a predictable and undeniably inevitable result of the powers that be running roughshod over the rights of the people, then being treated like laws don't apply to them. It's bound to happen over here in the US again sometime soon.

 

i've been tied up with relatives the past few days so have only been aware that something bad has been happening, but i didn't know what it was about.

this is helping me get a sense of it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/09/london-riots-day-four-live-blog

still trying to figure things out.

be safe, sf.

 

It has been in my (very) local newspaper for the past few days. Not on the front page, that's really only local news, but it has been on the single page of world news each day.

How many people do they estimate are involved in the rioting now?

 

Great analysis. IMO this is precisely what is happening.

Strange Famous ... Hi I live West of London, and going off to ASDA, [BritWalmart] I noticed high police presence in my town centre, and got thrown out of ASDA due to it getting 'closed early due to unforseen circumstances'. I chatted with the police, and they confirmed they were worried that there may be trouble tonight.

Unlike the the riots which sprang up in the latter part of the 20th century [1980s?], these are highly organizeable and mobile on account of mobile phone technology.

 

Manchester and Birmingham/West Brom/Wolverhampton are in trouble tonight, London pretty quiet...

 

But he did have a gun apparently.

Then again, can you trust the police to police the police?

 

^^^^
I read that bit from the Penny Red blog, as quoted by Cyn.

One component is the 'squeeze, and another is the unfairness of distribution of pressure.

One examples of the squeeze is education grant-cuts. I'm not referring to university level, where the mandatory grants have been replaced by 'loans'. Personally, I do not like what has happened there. I am referring to withdrawal of support for people going for education above GCSE or O level. This imposes an, IMO, unacceptably low ceiling on peoples' realistic aspirations, and a solid foundation for their displeasure, as they attempt, as expected, to enter the workforce, but with inadequate entrance requirements. Education is increasingly available only to those who can already afford it.

Other examples include cuts in health care, cuts in pensions, and raising of the pensionable age in some professional areas. [could someone who'se good with facts provide specifications, if needed]

Some of my friends who are not English do not see the 'problem': 'If you can afford education [etc], good. If not, then that's a shame. Better luck next incarnation', their argument being that subsidised education is paid for by parts of their tax which could be described as 'imposed charity contributions'.

Please note: In this post, I am not writing the previous two lines with intent to discuss the 'rights and wrongs' of that attitude, but with intent to make, what I could describe, in sensationalist terms 'England's Fury', more understandable: Since about 1945, whether the Government in power has been left-wing, right wing or ...er ... middle wing, the concept of the 'Welfare State' has been solid, and based, to some extent, on the notion that people have been and could again be expected .. legally expected to 'give their all for their country. Think of it as 'Deservingment' ... the corollary (?) for grunts and commoners, of the 'Entitlement' which seems to be the ... er .. entitlement of the ruling classes. A national equivalent of UFC's commitment to support, through charity drives, the healthcare of US troops "They fought for Us. We fight for Them". England has had more than half a century of very high taxes, and very high import duties to FUND all this. My parents paid through the nose 'to be English', as I have been doing. Paying in Advance, the idea being that when Others 'need it', they can have it, and that at those times when 'I/we' need it, we can have it. That's part of why people a Mad As Hell ... forced to lose most of your earnings, with the promise that as yuo are supporting others on their rainy days, you will be supported on yours. Then they crew you.

I've written this from the point of view of a middle aged person, naive at political arguifying, with intent to apply one perspective ... one facet to this ugly jewel of explanation for this mayhem.

Equally naively, and, additionally, underinformed: I have heard of the American concept of 'civil disobedience', where some forms of lawbreaking are acts of practical jurisprudence ... highlighting the UNlawfulness of laws which have been made. I mention this because whilst the idea these rioters are running around conflagrating, and stirrers and, er, street-entrepeneurs are taking advantage, gets me to agree that 'people need to get peaceful', I steer clear of and vilify expressions of 'self-righteous condemnation'. As a psychotherapist I see this mayhem and the outrage as a social equivalent as the totally understandable response of identified 'problem children' of a family, the heads of which have been depriving and mistreating them, whilst spending all night at in the bar, drinking. Or .... all being out of the country on their First-Class-Travel Summer Vacations.

 

it's interesting to watch the us press coverage waking up to the possibility that what's happening in the uk might have multiple motivations some of which are linked to the kind of austerity measures prompted by some benighted monetarist-based notion of "fiscal responsibility" that the us is about to impose on itself for no real reason...

 

Nobody remembers Weimar Germany...

 

i hear bad things happened in beer halls there. and fascism merged with bourgeois "common sense" not only afterward.