Riots in Tottenham, London! (NO RACIST COMMENTS)

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This piece from The Telegraph blogs sums up my views perfectly :

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/k...ainers-is-ok-everyone-makes-excuses-for-them/

Katharine Birbalsingh
Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine's doing now. Katharine's personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.


No wonder these kids think stealing trainers is OK. Everyone makes excuses for them
By Katharine Birbalsingh Politics

The reason your house is not regularly robbed is not because you lock your doors. It is because most people don’t steal. Sure, locking is a deterrent used to deter those on the fringes of society, but the main reason you are not attacked on the street, shops are not constantly looted and burnt down, and we all don’t take things that don’t belong to us is because someone, when we were little, taught us the difference between right and wrong.
Put a child in front of an insect and he will take great delight in making it suffer until his mother or father tells him that causing pain is wrong. Children need to be brought up properly with parents who care enough about them to say no, with a school system that cares enough to admit when behaviour is out of control, with a community that recognises that we are ALL responsible for our children.
Many of these mindless thugs involved in the riots don’t think more than 10 minutes into the future. They think that stealing trainers is ‘fun’, not even considering that it might be wrong. Many of them are, quite literally, unable to read and write: 17 percent of 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate. If you de-educate an entire generation, if you constantly make excuses for their behaviour, if you never teach them the difference between right and wrong, then chaos is what you reap. These young people are just implementing what they’ve learnt at school!
Teachers can only keep the peace in the classroom because they have established authority. Where there is order in classrooms, children show respect because they have been taught to respect teachers. ONE teacher can therefore command the respect of hundreds of children. It is the same with the police and order in society. The police cannot hope to outnumber the rioters. As a civilised society, we rely on a sense of morality in our people to keep the order. How did the Japanese survive their recent nuclear disaster? They queued quietly for food and help, and waited. They didn’t say ‘ME ME ME’! Do young people wear hoodies in Japan? Do Japanese children question their teacher’s authority? Do Japanese adults defend the appalling behaviour of their youth? NO.
We are an international disgrace. What would happen if the teacher left her classroom and said that she was ‘keeping a close eye on things from her holiday home’? Theresa May, Home Secretary, was the only one of our leaders, whether Conservative or Labour, who returned from holiday immediately when Tottenham exploded. Where were all of our leaders? If even our politicians refuse to take responsibility for their ‘classrooms’, then how can we expect the children to remain in their chairs?
Ken Livingstone blames everything from Thatcher to the Conservatives to lack of youth clubs. Darcus Howe is comparing our riots to Syria’s! I look on in horror at our BBC reporters, as well as ordinary people being interviewed on TV, as they all chant the usual mantra without even thinking: cuts, cuts, cuts. A man whose shop had been looted met Nick Clegg on the street, clearly distressed, and rather than blame the looters, he attacked the Deputy Prime Minister over the cuts. What is wrong with everyone? Have we been brainwashed by aliens?
Even the sensible people (and there have been a few) refuse to denounce ALL of the violence. Brixton, Croydon, Birmingham are bad, but Tottenham somehow was ‘understandable’. Come again? You mean sometimes looting and violence are acceptable? Apparently, the Tottenham riots are understandable because the police shot Mark Duggan (father of four, according to the Guardian). Do we really think that the police went out and killed a random innocent man? Or rather, as the local residents say, was he not a ‘major player’ in the Tottenham criminal underworld? They say he ‘lived by the gun’, and caused ‘grief’ to local people. Some say he was a crack cocaine dealer. His fiancée says he was determined not to go back to jail (so he has been in jail) and he has a child with her and another woman. She also has another 2 children from another man. Yet what do Mark Duggan’s parents say? That he was a good father and a respected member of the local community. How can someone with that reputation be considered a respected member of the local community?
Was Mark Duggan a good father? Who knows! Certainly, Jens Breivik, father of the Norway bomber, was absent during his son’s childhood. He refused to see his 16-year-old son because he ‘wasn’t ready’ (whatever that means). Jens Breivik, rather than feeling remorse for having failed as a father, was only interested in his own reputation when the appalling Norway killings took place. But when I criticised him, I was shot down by ordinary readers of this blog. How dare I criticise parents when I am not a parent myself! White readers say that they are unable to speak about black absent fathers because they’re white. Fine. But is Jens Breivik black? Yet no one was willing to be critical of his questionable parenting. Parents teach their children the difference between right and wrong. If they are absent, then the child grows up without a moral compass.
These criminals are responsible for their behaviour but so are their parents who sit at home, knowing their children are out there, looking forward to the goodies their children will bring home. I am so angry, so ashamed, so utterly dismayed. The vast majority of these criminals are black. No one will say it. I hang my head in shame, both as a black person and as a teacher. I naively thought if I could tell people what was happening in our schools that we would change things. I wrote a book, thinking that this would stop the liberals from the excuse-making. But instead, I was told I had made it all up. Our great capital city is on fire and even this isn’t enough to convince people that the excuse-making must stop!
What does the Socialist Workers Party say? “These riots are a bitter reaction to racist policing and a Tory Government destroying people’s lives.” It beggars belief. Our reaction to these riots is the greatest worry. What will defeat us is not the rioters. Scary as they are, they are a minority of yobs. What will defeat us is the power of bad ideas. Given our refusal to change, the worst is yet to come.
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hurfdurf said:
This is the working class revolting against the police, who are the immediate strong arm of the State that recently and increasingly wishes to contain youth and the poor with prisons and austerity. Looting is an act of breaking the windows that hold people from the commodities they desire. This isn't to say that looting is a positive act of transcendence of the present order, because it conforms to dangerous consumerism. But the looter deserves a luxury good just as much as the buyer.

The working class is nasty. What do you expect after decades of neoliberalism?

I can't help but comment on the sheer joy the rioters express. How good must it feel to fight back against the police who bother you daily and terrorize your community regularly? They laugh, swigging liquor with their friends as they take the **** they've always wanted but could never afford.
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Fail.
 
buchtis said:
This mess and other minor incidents before have made me realise how pathetic the British Police actually are. remind me a bit of these rent-a-cops who have a uniform but are powerless to do anything.

Pathetic.
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It's not their fault though, using force and they'll end up out of a job themselves.
 
Ahleckz said:
I agree with you and sld. However, this lack of representation isn't what is causing or fuelling these riots. This is simple thuggery and herd mentality at work. To think otherwise is wrong. Yes, there are problems with poverty, disfranchisement and minority groups. These need to be discussed in a proper, mature fashion. However that doesn't seem possible because of the threat of being branded a racist.

I'm not wanting to get into a discussion about what we should do to prevent this in the future, at the minute. I want us to try and stop this and bring people to justice. That's why I've been arguing so ferociously about not bringing in 'weaponry' because I don't think it will help.
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No you're right long term solutions right now aren't as important as sorting out the immediate I agree entirely.

If people want to call people racist for pointing out facts then let them be, however there is a way of stating facts that make it factual rather than personal... i..e x% of people at the riots are black/white/other... or black people are causing the riots... one is more factually correct, and one is also less antagonistic.

Kenai said:
It is very telling and what I find more telling is so many people's absolute refusal to accept that race might actually have something to do with things. I think people find the notion so at odds with what they've had shoved in their faces for the last decade or two they can't bring themselves to accept that maybe race can be an issue, maybe race is an issue now and maybe even the 'minorities' themselves are the ones who see it as the issue more than anyone else.

They get confused and afraid of facing the issue head on and we end up in the situation where you get branded a racist for even pointing out basic facts.

It's time for people to stop, think and face up to things, not just hide behind accusations and pretend everything is alright really.
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Unfortunatley I think you're right :(
 
Stupidity of some people, check out the catch a looter website to see people posting on their FB/Twitter bits they've stolen, sums up the type of people doing this!
 
It's nothing to do with the death of some scum bag who got shot by the police now, it's just a cover to go out and break the law and profit from stealing, whilst also causing damage to property and businesses.
 
Kent police have been trialling UAVs for months. Can we not borrow them to get us a better idea as to how and where the rioters are moving? I have to say, if Celameron's really decided to use neither the army nor water cannon tonight, I can't help, but think him utterly spineless. Thatcher would have been nuking them by now.
 
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mrk said:
It may have attributed to this but it certainly isn’t the cause. Take away Multi-culturalism and you would still have stuff like this happening with the neds and chavs. Do you really think the regularly drunk Adidas bottom and hoody wearing white youth would do anything decent otherwise?

Please.

These kids have seen an opportnity to loot shops and do it with their mates. Nothing more than that. There is no reasonable motive but only a blatant disregard for property and other people's quality of life for these youths. they don't give a damn about their living environments.
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Is it, what about the black on black stabbings in London you hear about every week? I think its more than an opportunity, its all they know, crime/violence/no respect at least when the riots stop they will be back to stabbing each other :D
 
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ubersonic said:
No their scum class, were not talking about people who cannot get a job were taking about dregs who dont want a job they just want to spong off society knowing they will get homes, flat screen tv's, games consoles, etc.

Like Mr Caine said "Some men just want to watch the world burn"
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That's a terrible short sighted and closed view of things.

Just because they some are "scum" doesn't mean others don't have serious underlying issues in their lives, people should take pity on them, our greatest weapon here is to fix it, not exasperate it.

I know some would love them to be killed and thrown into the sea, but that solves nothing.

Hell even the scum should be helped, the sign of an enlightened society is its approach to things and so far we have done EVERYTHING WRONG.

Drugs, terrorism, the way government is handled by us and how they work, policing and media problems, the list goes on.
 
sldsmkd said:
And i'm coming round to your view (it's a regular love in!). I still think stuff like Teargas has it's utility in dispersing crowds, but yes this isn't the Middle East. Lets see how 16000 Police can control the situation.

And as i've said, we need to get the situation under control - once that's done there needs to be a SERIOUS conversation about what and why.
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:D

I've never advocating a 'softly softly' approach. Nor do I particularly care about the human rights of the rioters. I haven't said we shouldn't use water cannon et al because of the dangers towards the rioters (though I have ruled out using fire appliances for the safety & legal reasons). I think we should be very careful that we don't make the problem worse through the actions of law enforcement. By using water cannon et al I think that will happen and that is wrong.
The situation may change and may warrant such things. If it ends up being an assault on the police and an organised attack against major targets (Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Police Stations, Scotland Yard, etc etc) then perhaps then it'll be apt to bring in these things to protect key assets.

Once it has all calmed down, then yes that is the time for discussion. I hope that it is frank and not marred and downplayed because of threats of being branded a racist.
 
Ahleckz said:
What, the guys at the top who have authorised the use of armoured vehicles? The bringing in of mutual aid, the cancelling of all leave, the tripling of police on the streets in 12 hours, the organising and implementation of a COBRA authorised POA, the utilisation of other police forces stations...

Sounds to me like they've been working bloody hard.
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All of which should have been done in the first 2 hours of the initial riot ( except convening Cobra), that response time is terrible!

Armoured vehicals that were NOT on the ground from the beginning?

Pint being now?...these guys arnt even close to be scared of the Police now..they are laughing.
 
any news on slough or reading? really dont want any scumbag rioters there.

also, anyone got the link to that riot map that was floating around the pages in the 180's
 
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