Riots in Tottenham, London! (NO RACIST COMMENTS)

[Von Smallhausen]

Bill Bratton didn't join the LAPD until 2002, so no.

 

[Tefal]

Lets hope that any obstacles in hiring Bill Bratton can be overcome as anyone who can lead two major police departments and slash crime in both should be considered.

shoot Teresa may in the head, problem solved?

I hate how politicians will try and block the best man for the job to point score.

 

[Von Smallhausen]

I have an idea it would be that she doesn't wish to be outshone by someone who has 40 years policing experience and knows what he's talking about.

When it comes to frontline policing and how it is at the front line, Bill Bratton wipes the floor with her.

 

[Tefal]

When it comes to frontline policing and how it is at the front line, Bill Bratton wipes the floor with her.

I think the average street drunk does too von

 

[badcompany]

Why get so worked up about a border? It's not like it means anything. What would this country be without immigration? An overgrown forest completely devoid of human life. You can't justify xenophobia because you can't define what you're deluding yourself into trying to defend. If you want to stop immigration how far back do you go? One generation? Three? Two hundred? What arbitrary number works best for you? Hell, what generation are you?

And what could you possibly disagree with in the human rights act? I'd like to see if you had the same opinion if the tables were turned.

Your liberal views are irresponsible the country is over crowded and society has lost it's sense of community partly due the fact its been fractured with w e afterwave if immigrants who refuse to intergrate and even bother to learn the language.

 

[regulus]

Why get so worked up about a border? It's not like it means anything. What would this country be without immigration? An overgrown forest completely devoid of human life. You can't justify xenophobia because you can't define what you're deluding yourself into trying to defend. If you want to stop immigration how far back do you go? One generation? Three? Two hundred? What arbitrary number works best for you? Hell, what generation are you?

And what could you possibly disagree with in the human rights act? I'd like to see if you had the same opinion if the tables were turned.

It seems if most xenophobes get their wish, we'd all be bald pot-bellied bulldog tattooed chavs with flabby biceps and football shirts punching it out in grimy little backstreet pubs every night.

Thank God for immigration. Without that I wouldn't be dating a stunning Swede but a dog of a Brit. I wouldn't have interesting friends from various nationalities but stuck with people with nothing interesting or new to share as they all grew up pretty much like me.

Long live the EU.

 

[Cosimo]

The Telegraph has run the same story.

Well then they’re scrapping the bottom of the barrel as well.

 

[Mr Gimp]

People arguing that we don't and haven't had a fundamental problem with immigration really gets on my nerves, as It's quite obvious that we have. Maybe not now as severely as in the past, and I'm not saying that immigration is solely to blame for the problems we've had either as that would be very narrow minded and blinkered viewpoint, but there is a problem. It's not THE problem, but a contributing factor amongst many. As for arguing for immigration by pulling out the old 'We're all immigrants' line, I'd say it's pretty obvious that we're not referring to European migration and the make up of the traditional white English population from the Germanic tribes and indeed the rest of Europe for that matter, so why that's even pulled up is beyond me.
Immigration on a scale we are having now thanks to the common availability of commercial transport to pretty much anywhere on the globe is bound to lead to pockets of ethnic identies which aren't integrated into society. Again, it's not immigration that's the sole problem as I'm sure there is more that could be done to help integration, but it is a major contributing factor.

 

[spudbynight]

Because it causes income inequality and society suffers as a consequence. Leaving things to the free market is a recipe for disaster because markets do not always behave rationally - as recent history has neatly demonstrated.

Well have a look at how well communism has fared.

 

[Cosimo]

Some of the scum may be impoverished but it appears their parents don’t care. What kind of a state are we in when a 14 year old appears in court and the solicitor says they are too busy to attend. Some of these parents deserve a whipping as well.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Punishments should be proportionate to the crime, but what you dont understand is that your opinion about what is proportionate is your opinion, it is not fact.

While I appreciate you informing me of what I do and do not understand I have to tell you that you are wrong in your assertion. I'm perfectly aware that what is proportionate is a matter of opinion, I do however think it somewhat unlikely that amongst most rational people that petty theft or property damage and death are equivalent on the scale.

You cannot prove most of these things because you would never be able to get the information, and the only real way of getting proper statistics would be a time machine and keep going back and changing laws.

You're sort of right, we can't do an exact comparison. However we can look to other similar nations who have introduced harsher/more lenient punishments at similar times and see whether crime rates have increased/declined or remain relatively unchanged. As an argument saying that we can't have an exact comparison without a time machine is true but ultimately pointless, we've got to live within the bounds of reality and since time machines don't exist it's a facile argument to expect a reliance on them for comparison purposes.

However i believe it can be explained with simple maths.. I.e. more prison time = less time in public, less time in public = less crimes committed.

and reducing recidivism does not give you any ground to win statistically wise, if people are spending more time in prison they will on average commit less crimes. So while you just a pretty happy with Recidivism as a word limited in definition unable to fully encompass the actual important statistics. I'd rather expand the question to how many crimes are being committed in total and is that number being reduced.

Edit, what i mean by recidivism is that is someone after being released commits one crime, that's the same as one hundred. So really, why should you care about rehabilitation to reduce recidivism??

Although you've possibly tried to explain what you consider recidivism to be here I don't believe we're thinking of the same thing, recidivism is the rate of repeating undesirable behaviour, in this case criminal behaviour.

How is one crime the same as one hundred? It's not the same in either quantative or qualitative terms. It may also be worth noting that people can commit crimes in prison, true they're normally not going to be against the general public but it's not correct to say they can no longer commit crime.

I am of the mind that people cannot be forced into rehabilitation, so i really think it should not be attempted at all.. Let them go to prison for 15 years, and when they get caught again up it to 30 years, they should be pretty old when they get out, and im not too worried about OAP's running around in riots.

Rehabilitation works best when people are interested in making a change to their behaviour themselves so you cannot force them into it, however that's no reason not to have the option available. Some people need guidance to change their behaviour, they've identified that they don't like aspects of their behaviour and seek to change it but don't know how to - these people are the ones who are likely to benefit most from rehabilitation and you'd deny them that because people can't be forced into it? That's almost a complete abdication of logic.

 

[MagusUK]

Some of the scum may be impoverished but it appears their parents don’t care. What kind of a state are we in when a 14 year old appears in court and the solicitor says they are too busy to attend. Some of these parents deserve a whipping as well.

That is just a legal loop-hole the parents are exploiting. The courts can not fine a minor without the presence of a parent or guardian, so basically the kid goes to court & the judge can't pass down the sentence & has to adjourn the case for a later date, wasting more of the tax payers money. They will most probably continue to do this over & over.

 

[Lindo]

Your liberal views are irresponsible the country is over crowded and society has lost it's sense of community partly due the fact its been fractured with w e afterwave if immigrants who refuse to intergrate and even bother to learn the language.

No offence, but if you can't use punctuation properly or be bothered to spell 'whatever' then you can't comment on language. The English language is one of the most difficult languages to learn and I personally think immigrants do a great job. A majority can speak pretty good English, maybe still have foreign accents but that creates no different difficulty than talking to a Scot, a Welshman, hell even brummies I can't understand sometimes.

It'd suck if we all spoke, acted, look and thought the same wouldn't it. Lighten up and see that immigration is what made this island what it is. It's why we have the things we have. I think British people have a problem with immigrants through history having being invaded so many times. You go to mainland Europe, they're used to people passing through. Immigration is what creates culture, British culture is pretty much made of bits of the every other culture out there. You can thank the Asians for your spices, the Europeans for education and Americas for tobacco.

 

[spudbynight]

I found this an interesting read.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100100831/drop-the-brooms-you-capitalist-scum/

I’ve always been a connoisseur of Left-wingers’ hissy fits — so much funnier than their actual “humour” — and this week they’ve really been spoiling me. On Tuesday night, I wrote a blog post suggesting that the looting was terrible PR for UK Uncut, for two reasons.
First, anti-cuts activists were stupidly sending out mixed messages (and worse) about the looters. “Bankers have looted our financial system for years!” trilled Sunny Hundal, who edits the self-important Liberal Conspiracy blog. Second, the public had lost all patience with street protests and was likely to blame UK Uncut for putting ideas into the rioters’ heads.
Well! Liberals on Twitter went absolutely bananas. To give you a flavour of their responses, imagine Dave Spart with the delicate sensibilities of a Victorian spinster. How dare I suggest that UK Uncut’s fellow travellers were attempting to politicise the riots? “Name names!” they demanded.
OK, here’s a name for you: Mr Donnacha DeLong, the new president of the National Union of Journalists. On Tuesday he described the “broom army” of middle-class volunteers who cleaned up Clapham Junction as “scum”.
Yes, you read that right: scum. DeLong said so in a Facebook comment; I rang DeLong to check that it was authentic. “Yes, but I was referring to a particular exclusivist crowd,” he explained. Here’s the relevant Facebook exchange, between DeLong and an anarchist ally calling himself Al Mikey:
Al Mikey: “[What about] the reactionary part of these clean-ups like in Clapham Junction that have overtly classist twists to them. What’s your take on them?”
Donnacha DeLong: “They’re scum, it’s just important to realise that they’re not all reactionary scum. A lot of anarchists have been trying to get this [clean-up] going as well.”
What a mess. Ideologically, I mean. On the far Left, we had anti-cuts activists exploiting the chaos. Cambridge graduate Jacob Bard-Rosenberg told anti-cuts activists heading to the riots: “Mask up. Properly, not just a hood.” Jody McIntyre, a wheelchair-bound student activist and blogger for the Independent who clashed with police during the anti-cuts protests, tweeted: “Be inspired by the scenes in Tottenham and rise up in your own neighbourhood.”
A slightly more nuanced message was sent out by Anticutsspace, a pressure group which runs a student centre in central London. Its blog said: “We offer unapologetic solidarity and support to those involved in the UK uprisings. This sentiment extends to both the rioters and to those communities affected by them.” To be fair, however, most anti-cuts activists don’t feel much solidarity with the rioters. They feel betrayed by young people who, instead of fighting for higher benefits, more diversity outreach officers, carbon-neutral skateboard parks etc, simply make a beeline for the nearest pair of fancy trainers.
There have been attempts to rationalise this as a sneaky tactic of capitalism, which has turned legitimate disaffection into “commodity fetishisation”. But most members of the public are livid at seeing commodities “fetishised” by being nicked. As The Daily Telegraph’s US politics blogger Tim Stanley points out, in America there’s nothing like a black-led riot to destroy popular support for (mostly white) political protests against cuts in government spending.
I suspect that’s the direction in which British public opinion is heading. Thanks to this week’s riots and looting, UK Uncut has suddenly become just so 2010.

Jody McIntyre - remember him? Loathsome toad.

 

[mrk]

An 18yr old teen has been arrested and is due to appear in court in September for sending out a BBM broadcast trying to start a copycat action on the rioting this week.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/13/uk-teen-arrested-for-illegal-bbm-social-media-crackdown-gains-s/

Engadget says it's a murky path for free speech but I feel they're wrong and all those up in arms about law enforcement watching BBM and other similar services for criminal acts such as this can get stuffed. As long as the law is only looking for key words that could indicate a person is attempting to or taking part in a criminal act like the rioting which caused countless damage and some loss of life then I'm all for it.

 

[MagusUK]

Lighten up and see that immigration is what made this island what it is. It's why we have the things we have. I think British people have a problem with immigrants through history having being invaded so many times. You go to mainland Europe, they're used to people passing through. Immigration is what creates culture, British culture is pretty much made of bits of the every other culture out there. You can thank the Asians for your spices, the Europeans for education and Americas for tobacco.

+1

Everyone is quick to blame the immigrants yet they ignore the capital, intellect & manpower they have invested & contributed into the UK to make this country the force that it is.

 

[Lindo]

Jody McIntyre - remember him? Loathsome toad.

It's quite funny, no...hilarious, when the police struggle to contain riots in the streets to protect family homes and businesses but if there's any lippy kids in wheelchairs who have CP, they've got it covered!

 

[badcompany]

Long live the EU.

Your bigoted stereotypes aside thank god the eu is on the rocks and we shall finally break free from its beaucratic liberalism soon.

 

[Orcish-Horde]

The looters prayer

Our father, who art in prison,
even my mum knows not his name,
thy rioting done,
you'll read it in the sun,
in Birmingham much as it is in London,
give us this day our welfare & forgive us for being truely dependant,
as we forgive those who got ASBOS against us,
lead us not to an employment situation,
but deliver free housing,
for thine is the petrol bomb,
the plunder & its glories ,
forever and ever...

I'm scum.

I little more family friendly.

 

[Lindo]

Your bigoted stereotypes aside thank god the eu is on the rocks and we shall finally break free from its beaucratic liberalism soon.

Becoming an almost 'super-state' is hardly liberal. Although, I support the idea of the EU. Anything that makes Britain more like the rest of Europe is a good idea by me.