If they were looting food I may have had understanding if not sympathy. The fact they in the main the looting was for product most people save for from their hard earned income kills off understanding and sympathy with me.
To see the picture of the girl with an arm full of shoes and a big smile on her face, the ***** who stole from the injured lad whilst pretending to help, sorry if these people think there can be any justification for what they did they are very deluded. Send them to live somewhere where they meaning of poverty is about not having food and shelter, rather than not having a HD ready LCD TV and iphone.
If they can put that much effort into destruction they can also put that much effort into working, So I suggest they get of their lasy work shy backsides and go do something constructive.
Hi All, we are quick to judge those involved in the recent riots in the UK.
A friend of mine found himself caught up in them & found himself looting an Argus store.
So if anyone wants a catalogue…?
I would like to know how many of these dissafected rioters actually had jobs. The first one on the BBC news was a 31 year old teaching assistant mentoring young people. The general thought, put forward by left leaning people is that it is all the Tories fault for not giving these poor, underprivileged more money and lovely government jobs. Being one of the under-privileged working class, just a few years ago, being brought up on a slightly rough council estate near the east end of London and not having the opportunity to attend university, we were always rioting and stealing the latest Dansette record player from Fergussons electrical shop at St. Andrews Corner in Becontree, going on demos in London protesting about the Vietnam war, fighting running battles with the Met and smashing the windows of the nearest Wimpy Bar.
Fortunately, I am lucky enough to have worked in a career I have loved, in the creative industry for the last 40 years. Tracy is right, if the safety net means you don’t have to work, why bother? Trouble is, as now, when the economy hits turbulance and you have to cut back and really can’t afford to pay the idle, something has to give.
Having read a report that a third of children leaving primary school can’t read or write, unless there is a fundamental change in the way the education system is run the attitude of a substantial number of young people will continue with the results we see this week. I was amazed that the teachers and teaching unions haven’t all instantly come back from their 6 week summer holiday immediately and called an energency conference to sort out this mess! You can’t stop young children from learning, the need to learn is in- built so how is it that when they get to school the people working there are able to stop them? Having said this, the vast majority of young people study hard and work hard and should be given society’s full support as they will support us in the future.
Tracy, you have a point about people not being prepared to do any job just to get work. I recall a TV programme about immigration in Peterborough, my home town. Local youths complained they were being done out of jobs by immigrants from eastern Europe prepared to work for low wages. The immigrants had come over for the fruit picking season and to work in the local canning factories, something my brother and I both did to help pay our way through university. But when the same youths were asked why they hadn’t applied for this work the reply was unanimous: “Well, I ain’t doing that, am I.” It was beneath them, apparently. It makes me furious. My father walked from Anglesey to London to find work during the depression. We didn’t have hot running water until I was 13 or an indoor toilet. My parents couldn’t afford to buy me a bicycle to ride to my grammar school on the other side of town (I’d walked up till then) so I got a paper round so I could buy my own bike on the never-never (7/6 a week, I seem to recall, all I earned!). I worked every holiday to help pay for my education; I delivered meat by bicycle, worked as a builder’s labourer, a plumber’s mate, an electrician’s mate, a painter, a wages clerk, a postman. I worked nights as a baker to help pay the bills in my final year at university and studied during the day. OK, casual work may not be so easy to find these days, I wouldn’t know. But as a result of all that my first salary was more than my father had ever earned in his life and I have had a fabulous (and well-paid!) life. I was also able to help my parents when they got older and needed care, pay them back some of the sacrifices they made so I could have a better life then they had.
How many of those kids out looting and setting fire to buildings and their parents would be prepared to do as much?
" I and presumably you,too, as many other Brits in France, are fortunate enough to be able to quit those circumstances. There must be many people in UK who, like me, found the stress of paying a mortgage intolerable, who absolutely refuse any kind of government handout, either in UK or anywhere else,
but unlike you or I, are not able to quit"
Jeanette, these people have my sympathy, however, I bet they weren’t out rioting over the last few days!
If you are able bodied, there is always some work available. It may not be work you want to do, it may only pay the minimum wage and it maybe a dreadful job but - there is always something. I have lived and worked in many countries, always working whether I can speak the language or not. I was formerly a professional type but have turned my hand to washing up, cleaning toilets, making beds, whatever was necessary to earn a living. The only job I ever walked out of was a quality control job inspecting rubber components - I lasted one day! It was in the UK and that meant I was not entitled to benefits (the unemployment office had told me not to take the job as they knew I wouldn’t like it), so I found a job in a pub the next day.
The major difficulty these days is that many people receive more money on benefits than they do in a job - that situation must be reversed. It must always pay better to have a job, that way people have an incentive to find a work. It is an insult to all hard working people that it is possible to have more money for not working. If you have never had a job then you should not be entitled to any benefits at all; Just like France.
I am not fortunate that I managed to leave the UK - I made the decision to do something with my life. I live as an immigrant in France, I have a job and I am in the process of setting up my own business so I can work more flexible hours.
My children were born here and I bend over backwards to ensure they they are truly French and British, having the best of both cultures. You can do anything if you really want to but you have to make sacrifices to get there, nothing in life is handed to you on a plate and it shouldn’t be either - that is where things are going wrong - everyone wants something for nothing! I am sure there are some people who have family ties, who simply can not change things but the majority of single, young people, the world could be their oyster if only they got off their backsides.
Peaceful protests yes, bettering yourself to change your world, yes but riots and looting, NO, it wont solve anything!
By the way Jeanette, I had a look at your stove and the video you made, absolutely fantastic stuff! Well done.
PS I don’t have designer clothes, flat screen TV’s, Wii etc and I still manage to have a satisfying life. My major concern at the moment is how much I can afford to spend on a second hand laptop to assist in my business set up. Anyone got one for sale?
@ Tracy - I’m totally with you. The comparisons people are making to poverty of our poorer ancestors really gets my goat. If these people were truly poor it would have been potatoes, veg, fruit & coal/wood they were stealing as the basic essentials needed to live, not flat screen TV’s, Nintendo Wii’s or other electronic goodies on which to watch/play their premium sky tv sports & film package at circa £50 a month paid for no doubt by the state’s generous benefits packages.
I listened to some of the muppets in Manchester today (as a former Mancunian I feel justified to call them muppets - is that too much of an insult C?) and couldn’t believe the sheer audacity of some of them or their parents. ‘What have they got?’ said one mother justifying her son looting a store - judging by their latest sportswear/trainers and other luxury branded clothing & accessories I would say far more than they deserve!
If you are bored then get a job like the rest of us & don’t moan about the Polish (another muppet tried blaming the riots on the Polish today) Sort your life out, take responsibility for yourselves & get out of bed at a decent hour, take a job at the bottom of the ladder & work your way up like the rest of us & our decent families before us. No that’s too difficult, far easier to laze around whilst the rest of the country doles out your beer/drug money from the free bank (the state in case you’re not into Muppet lingo).
I know there were some professionals (if you can call them that!) who were also caught looting but they do seem to be the minority of the minority - thank goodness.
If you have time to listen right now, BBc is broadcasting Prime Minister’s questions live , all about the riots.
Hi Jeanette,
I don’t think it could be solved by smacking bums - as I said, it doesn’t work for my daughter(although the threat works great on my son:-) However so many young people today have not been disciplined in any way, neither at home or at school, exactly as Terry said. A civilised society needs discipline of some kind, just read Lord of the Flies!
The point I was making it that it is never justified to loot shops, set buildings on fire and make innocent people fear for their safety.
We should all be free to demonstrate, to put our point across and I believe this is still the basic right of everyone in the UK, it is not necessary to behave like a yob. To compare the rights every person enjoys today to the 18th century is not really a just comparison, in those days, poverty really did exist and the working classes were totally disenfranchised.
It is due to these revolutions in the past that the young people involved in this trouble today have the right to revolt. Unfortunately they do not have a great deal to revolt about except boredom as they sit around getting handouts from the state - with a few exceptions of those gainfully employed.
Great quote from Robespierre though, will have to look it up as I am currently reading about the Russian Revolution for a change.
It is all very sad. Like Stephen Fry said “Does anyone ever riot in winter?” Interesting thought. I prefer to focus on the response. The million or so people who have signed up on twitter and facebook to the clean up operation are sending a much more profound response to the rioters and looters than any eloquent government offical could ever come close to. Heartwarming stuff.
OK I havent read all responses but I guess we are still on the same sort of ‘what’s happening in the uk’ theme, sorry if its gone away from that. But I work for a couple of garages in my local town and its a sleepy sort of place low crime, nice kids, low unemployment etc etc. Last night one of the garages had about 20 cars destroyed, all the windscreens and windows broken. The boss of the garage said its getting like England here! So I put him right!
A young man on the same Newsnight programme as Harriet Harman commented that it would be no bad thing if mothers went to where the looting was happening, grabbed their children and gave them a clip around the ear. Unfortunately, he added, if the mothers did that they’d be arrested for assault. So no smacked bottoms 
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks!
(Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story, 1957)
I can honestly say I have never, smashed anything in rage or frustration as an adult, I have a firey temper but would never resort to violence of any kind. If I did it as a child then I had my bottom smacked and quite rightly so (although I know smacking doesn’t work for everyone, including my own daughter).
However, if these young people had been disciplined in some way in the past then they would not be behaving the way they are now.
It is total irrelevant that they feel they have been mistreated, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for criminal behaviour. If they want to change their future there are better and more legal ways of going about it. Every able bodied and able minded person has a choice, not everyone has the best start in life but we all have an equal chance of a future. You just have to WORK at it and therein lies the problem.
Harsh maybe but life is not fair, it never has been and it never will be but it doesn’t stop you from getting on with life if you want to.
One of the first people prosecuted for looting over the weekend was a primary school worker - now what does that say about society today? How exactly did we all let him down? He was stealing from Richer Sounds in Croydon. He was 31!
The facts of this problem will never be explained away in a few paragraphs so I won’t try. However to say all the people are young yobs, is far too simplistic, they have already arrested and charged professional people , caught up in the looting!
Lets not forget the riots in Paris only a little while ago, before we all label everyone in the UK in some distinct group.
There was a trigger that sparked the original issue, and a lot of pent up tension is being released. We won’t get to the real bottom of this , until a real review is done in the cold light of day further down the pipe. Lets be honest here, when has a major economic downturn never ended up with cars on fire? They all have in my lifetime.
I currently have people in work advocating shooting the rioters with plastic bullets, and I have to say this is the sort of knee jerk, wrong heading thinking that inflames the problems, not makes them better. I will wait for a well thought out public enquiry before I rush to judgement on who is to blame.
Looters should be arrested and charged according to their crimes, which is happening extremely quickly, and the Police in co-operation with the public, must do their best to maintain law and order. A lot easier said than done, when you are massively out numbered.
I support the Police at this difficult time, as I’m sure that if any wrong was committed during the initial shooting, the guys on the ground fighting the mob now, had nothing to do with that.
Just my 2 euro cents
University fees must be irrelevant in this case. The yobs aren’t the slightest bit interested in going into further education.
Harriet Harman suggested the same thing on TV last night and was so easily ripped to shreds by Michael Gove she had to backtrack quickly to save any credibility at all.
I spent the whole of Monday night worrying about my husband travelling from Gatwick via Croydon into inner London where I saw streets blazing with no fire crews/police in sight. Yesterday I watched online as ‘youths’ threatened to continue their rioting into the area where he works & where our apartment is rented. One of the offices was closed ‘no-one in or out’ due to a gang of 60 balaclava’d youths near the area.
I am glad I am in my quiet village in the South of France and not right in the centre of it (where the local Tesco’s had an attempted arson attack, a house was set on fire and many cars too).
This is not the blame of the banks or the government or the police, this is the doing of a bunch of young hooligans who have been brought up with no discipline, have no respect for themselves or others and have no ambition in life.
If (as I am) you are sitting quietly in a cosy seat safe from harm, think about how you would feel if a large gang of masked youths marched past your door smashing your windows and wanting to rob the pc you are using…it’s not the pc that would bother you, it’s your own safety & that of your family. If you can then empathise with these youths then you are a better person than me.
Senseless violence, indiscriminate damage to property but most importantly to the peace of mind of all those innocent people who are indoors worrying about whether their home/work place will be next.
I don’t want to go back to London but I don’t want my husband there either…my stomach is in knots (which is not great at 5m pregnant) but I have to have faith that the police will be there to protect him. I will not be sitting here attacking the police who are there trying to do their job as I need them to do their job as I’m sure many of you who have family in a similar predicament will be too.
Quoting Martin Luther King who was talking about a section of society who were really down-trodden and prevented from taking part because of their colour, is to degrade the comment. These people can have a stake in our society if they bother to reach out and work for it. I saw a comment by a teacher in an inner city primary school replying to the criticism of teaching standards. She said that the childrens’ parents looked upon the school as a safe dumping place for their kids, who had to go, but refused to learn.
These is rural poverty, but you don’t see country children out in the village streets behaving like this. We have created a section of a generation (or two) of parents who see nothing wrong in living off benefits, failing to discipline their children or give them any support to try and better themselves financially and educationally.
Well said James.
The BBC interviewed a young lad looting in Manchester last night and the reason that he gave was that he could not afford to buy the electrical goodies and he said that there weren’t enough police to catch him as they were moving around. Also it was his first offence (so not a gang member) and he would only get a caution!