Tottenham Riots

I've been trying to avoid this thread as I have slightly strong feelings on the subject which aren't exactly conducive to clear thought. However, I find myself reading through it and responding again, despite my earlier decision not to do so.

ajfsound, you appear to have very definite opinions on the matter and believe that the root cause is the be all and end all of the situation. I therefore present you with this question - being of a somewhat disadvantaged socioeconomic background and still earning less than the national average wage, even for unskilled labour despite being in a technical role, in this country why on Earth was I not out there with them?

The simple answer is "because it wasn't right".

The more complicated one is that, despite the fact that I am definitely not a nice person (frequently arrogant, impatient and above all look after number one first, family second and the rest of the world is mostly irrelevant) and have no Christian values to speak of (pagan, polytheistic agnostic is probably closest) I did not see it as a morally correct thing to do. I'm also a former substance abuser ("addict" would be the more common term) and performed some rather reprehensible acts in the past to feed my habit - stole, cheated, lied, the usual score - I never once gave in to violence. My speech is very rarely passive and my nature is certainly anything but yet I still see this as being 100% wrong.

Justify it how you prefer but the worst day of my life for me was the one where my parents found out. "Mortified" is a term that has fallen out of use but sums up the feeling rather adequately. I knew that what I was doing was wrong but it was a case of plausible deniability as long as they didn't know. I literally had no choice but to do something about it at that point. I still have a hell of a lot of work to do to make up for that.

Aim as many fingers at the government as you wish, assign blame to the "powers that be" if you prefer but it is still the parents that have the most effect. If a child is fed on a constant diet of "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!" or "The state owes me a living! I've never had a job but they owe me!" then that's all they'll ever believe. I'm most definitely not perfect but I had my first job at age 12 ( a paper round) and switched that for another when I was 13 that paid more (working every weekend at a poultry farm) as I was taught that it was only worth something if I'd earned it from my own sweat. Admittedly I went badly wrong along the way and I'll always remember my mistakes but I choose to learn from them, not perpetuate them.

@eddie543: I've spent a grand total of 7 months of my life out of work. This would be because I was physically disqualified from the jobs available, not because I was unwilling to do them. We're actually showing a decrease in unemployment figures in Lincolnshire month on month as opposed to an increase, despite the fact that we do have an increasing immigrant community. Partly because the work ethics of the immigrants (and that, as far as the yellow bellies are concerned, includes anyone not born here) pretty much matches that of the locals - work hard = get paid. Simple as. No, it's not perfect (designating certain pubs as "English only" led to "No English" in others and a certain amount of friction) but in general it works, immigration aside.

"Work ethic" appears to be the key term here. I don't mean to troll or flame but it does strike me that you "city folk" do expect a lot more from the state and employers than us yokels. If I wanted to cut down my costs on food I'd grow more of my own veg and hunt a few rabbits or pigeons (I can pot plenty of the flying rats by camping the vegetable patch - vermin but good eating) for the table. Air rifle pellets are cheaper than the butcher (yes, we still have those) or supermarket meat counter. OK, so you don't necessarily have the same options that I do but it still seems to me to be a glaring difference in attitude - don't just bitch about it, do something. Something that is both within your means and within the law.

 

I don't care why they might do it personally, as I have no stake in the outcome but that's just me. However, either way money is being saved, whether it's more so for the consumer who can spend that extra saved money elsewhere, or it's the producer who can save and invest on other things - so either way it's not taking away jobs but spawning other ones in replacement.

 

Like pretty much in whole Europe. And you would be surprised how many people really don't want a job. Or should i say - many of them probably have a job, just not a official one. But few extra GBP from the state doesn't hurt, right ?

 

Lincolnshire, wooo! Represent.

Lincolnshire has very few graduates and no academic culture to speak of, I think that's got a lot to do with how willing people are to do crap jobs - graduates have bigger senses of entitlement than non-graduates. I bet in places like Essex the crap jobs never get filled by clean-handed locals.

/sweeping generalizations

Anyway, earlier I said education wasn't to blame, but I'm going back on that. I've got a feeling education contributes a lot to the complacency and sense of entitlement in my generation - it's people telling you what to do, paying your way, and feeding you a constant stream of praise and rewards throughout your formative years. I know it's definitely done a lot of damage to my motivation and willingness to work for a living, for one.

 

No, they just don't want "crappy" jobs. The point remains that if immigrants (like myself) can find a job, why can't the locals? And I did not come from some developing economy where UK minimum wage is considered a fortune; I came from the Netherlands.

Hardly so. I'm illustrating how incredibly harsh life was in those day. You make a good point to add that punishment for transgressions were incredibly harsh also --excessively so. But this was also a time of much smaller police forces.

In any case, it seems to suggest that it is not hardship, but consequence that determines whether people behave themselves.

Exactly my point. This does not mean that we should go back to more barbaric times, but that we should consider that these riots essentially happened because of a perceived lack of authority --from parents and from society.

YMMV as always. Different papers give different breakdowns.

"I bet..." is still as much an assumption as you say I am making.

So if you want a job, this tells you that your options are...?

 

As part of the criminal proceedures, during the court actions taken against the looters found, they should ask (seriously) why did you riot/loot?
Study the responces and then formulate a solution

 

There is a perception in this country that academic achievement is the pinnacle of a young persons success. We highlight those who did not do well at school but became successful through hard work (i.e. Richard Branson) because they are now rich and fit nicely into a consumer culture where what you own and what you can afford is more important than who you are. Those who choose to do a trade are looked down upon as only stupid people who were to dumb to go to university would chose to learn a trade. When did this happen? Skilled tradesmen and women used to be highly respected members of the community.

We label young people failures because they did not hit an arbitrary score in an exam. To me its a contributing factor to what has been happening.

 

Funny story:

My university programming lecturer was an Indian fellow (With an awesome name - Premkumar Elangovan), who ran a company in India, which he paid the salaries for out of his paycheck from the university - He paid them roughly £150 each, per month, for two or three days work a week. That, apparently, was a well paid job for them.

I don't know any Brit that would work for that kind of money per month (Although, I did at one stage, because it was better than a slap in the face with a wet fish), for anything longer than a month.

I don't know where I read it, but there were some snippets of people saying "I can afford it, but if I can get it for free, why shouldn't I?"

Sums up British attitudes IMO. Lazy, feckless, want everything for free.

To paraphrase Marcus Brigstocke

"This sums up the British attitude;

"Right," said Fred, "Both of us together
One on each end and steady as we go."
Tried to shift it, couldn't even lift it
We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea and

You should hear the Polish version of that song;

Tried to shift it, couldn't even shift it,
We were getting nowhere!
So we call our cousin, she brings over five other guys, we lift it eventually,
we work for nine extra hours, but it's okay, we don't charge"

I can't check it at work, but I think this is the video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqMG7ljJQos

 

RESPECT. That is the problem, no-one seems to have it anymore. How many people, if they found a babys shoe in the street would put it on a wall, a fence, a post, so anyone came looking for it they could find it again or would they just throw it over someones wall? If you saw a set of keys left in a door, would you knock and let them know, post them through the letter box or nick off with them to use at another time? People just don't seem to care about their communities anymore

 

The shift came when decisions were made to move from production based economies towards consumption based economies.

This appears to be the case, I should say.


For the record: I belong to the category of skilled tradesmen myself.

If you do not respect yourself you're not capable of respecting others. These are people with NO self-respect.

 

The cost of living in India and elsewhere in the world is lower than the UK though, why do you think people come to the UK to earn a good living and be able to earn enough to send money back home>? its all relative
You have to admire any persons who up sticks and move Globally to improve the quality of life for them and their families
Hard work deserves respect. It has mine.

 

Ah yes the typical view that a soon as people join dole ques that thay all become lazy listless people who feel they re too good to work or become benifit fraudsters.

because this is a stagnant economy and jobs at the bottom level wouldn't be contested no way near as much if we had followed, what were other EU countries wishes, and temporarily blocked free movement from the A8 contires. Also it would help if there were much more control on outside of EU migrants. I have no problems with immigration if it is here when there is no great amount of cyclical unemployment.

Lack of Consequence and hardship are both reasons behind these riots. Most riots in history involve people who face hardship, future hardship or percieved hadrdship.

As it said before we are all guilty of logical fallacies and in reality we are more debating on beliefs.
my options would be more than migrants yes however:
Secondly my options are competing for jobs that 4 years ago someone of my age would have been able to get; instead the current climate of competing with ex managers, accountants and administrators with up to 20 years of experience in say office fields.

Or my options are jobs in food production facillities or recycling facillities, for exmple. Where by I must compete with migrants. Also i would like to note that a fair few now have management that is migrant ( i know because I have walked the streets of traffordpark 4 times in three weeks) and I assume that they would not be bothered about any of the barriers that a migrant may or may not face.

 

That is not a "typical view", but unfortunately a reality. Maybe less in UK, but more to the east you go, more typical it is.

 

The historian Professor David Starkey has raised a furore over his comments that "The whites have become black". The comments made on Friday nights news night can be viewed here. The pertinent part of the discussion has is quoted below.

 

Indeed it is, it'd be foolish to argue that point, but the point of that story was more that someone is willing to run a company, and when it transpired that it wasn't earning enough to pay for itself, get a job in a foreign country (Teaching mostly disinterested assholes how to write C#) just to keep two guys in work - it's a motivation that people in the UK don't seem to get.

 

That is interesting.

So your practically saying that if you have become unemployed and claim job seekers you are immediately a lazy listless git or a benifit fraud.

Or that if you leave college or uni and have no jobyou are now a lazy listless git or a benifit fraud.

So basically the extra 600,000 Job seekers created by the recession from both of the above reasons are now automatically lazy listless gits or benit frauds.

I do understand that there are 400,000+ people who do not want to work or would rather work illicitly that are constantly on the dole or on the dole in and out of prison but not the whole of the 1,520,000 claimants on JSA at the moment or not even the whole of the ~900,000 claimants pre recession.

Even in the sections of society that are lazy or listless there is a need for help for them. Too long have dole culture individuals and fammilies been swept under the carpet and igored. It will be difficult and no one person or political party has all the answers but there is definate need of something being done about these people, is not there? Or should we just leave them to fester and grow and create more crime? Should we just leave them and play the cat and mouse game of arrest sentemce release, arrest another sentence release.

 

You are putting words in my mouth i never said. The fact is that usually more than few percent of the unemployed ones are not really unemployed. They help out there for a small payment, then there, then there. Maybe that doesn't count as fraud in your eyes, but it is a untaxed amount - and if you get 300GBP as unemployment benefits and you get 100-200GBP as a side income from such small untaxed jobs, then the fact is that you are breaking the law.

Then there are of course the ones who never want to work, and again, number of these is not single digit among the unemployed. Even if you would have work for everyone, you would end up with a single digit percentage of people who would simply reject work.

And then there is the biggest group, who are people who really want to work and just can't find a job - but they still usually have higher demands than the employers are willing to accept, so they are without job. Existence of this group doesn't make the previous two non-existent.

And the last part of your post... Well, i lived in country which had "100% employment" - forget it, it doesn't work. Creating state funded jobs just for the sake of giving jobs to people is a failed idea - if you don't believe then look at unemployment rate of former communist countries durring the communism. 0%.

And finally - you say you would go work in a Tesco for the minimal salary ? Because that is the salary you get at Tesco or for similar job in nearly every country (the minimal salary for that countr).

 

I never said myslef to create state jobs for the unemployed and chronically unemployed. I meant help.

I mean like the help I'd want like a training scheme, like the one I was on but one that actually worked and got me something more than 12 weeks of voluntary work, so I could then show an employer an NVQ or NVQs in relevent feilds.
3-6 hours a week of supervised job searching online might help to make sure the long term (6mnt+) unemployed look for work . during which time you can use a phone to telephone employers at the gov'ts expense rather than that of mine which I can't afford.

(also might make sure that occasions when me and my mate were looking for work for 8 hours of 2 days throughout 3 shopping centres, that my mate didn't get his money stopped 2weeks because they said they didn't beilieve he had looked for work in the past two weeks)

It would be great if Future jobs fund was still with us whereby I could get a 6 month tempory job to gain experience. these jobs only being available to People on JSA.

It's not necesarily about getting 100% employment but it is about making people, especially young people feel like they have a fighting chance. A hell of a lot of people from my highschool year are unemployed, some are in uni (to work at thier leisure tolearn the things they don't need) , some are only just about to finish college, two or three have jobs with the armed forces and very few have jobs. Those that do have jobs usually have known someone to get them.

 

I could see that being on the dole for a long period of time would have the potential of creating apathy and inactivity. But that's not the same thing as not wanting to work, it is the symptom of being on the dole for a long period of time. Nothing suggests the situation would be irreversible, let alone the mindset of the unemployed.

We're always told by media that natives of said western European country don't want to work. Well, I'm sure media could sell the public their own guillotine and then have the public use it on themselves, if they had to.

 

Let me ask you something - what kind of school did you and your friends finish ? Why do i have the feeling that you didn't finish a "technical" school, but a "humanist" one ?

For example here in Slovakia many people go to humanist schools (generic middle schools - gymnasiums, law or teacher high schools,...) and then they are surprised they can't find a work. Of course they can't find a job when they want to be a lawyer, but the awerage salary is too low for their liking.

And the opposite side of the spectrum are the technical schools, which create engineers or at least people who finished the secondary schools in fields of electronics, computers or other practical skills. And what a surprise - there is higher demand for these people than the number of people who actually finish these shools.

It is cool that you can speak perfect latin, or that you can remember the whole history of Europe - but there is no need for thousands of students finishing these schools every year. There is no need for thousands of financial experts who knows everything about securities, deposits, shares, merges and splits, forward trades and options - you will need accountants instead for example.

I do understand that finding a job as young is hard - i got my job as nearly 21 year old after half year of unemployment (searching for job every 2nd day on the internet) in a country with 19,7% unemployment rate at that time ! But unfortunately many have unrealistic requirements (i want my job to be in 5km range and no further), demands (i want to have the national average salary as a Tesco worker in warehouse). I moved 150km from a small 12k city to a huge 500k city just to get a job. I got a salary which was below the usual salary paid for such work - but i needed the job and i knew that if i will prove myself, my salary will go up.

So if you are "young", be prepared to move few hundreds of kilometers - and then you will find your job. But if your criteria is "i want to live next to mom", then yeah, it is your fault that you don't have a job.

Look at all those "work immigrants" from Europe - they moved hundreds if not thousands of kilometers to get a job. Look at USA, the often just pack the family and let's go from east to west coast because he got a job in San Francisco instead of Chicago.