News from London

[Seb]

@Prim

I also read that "Britain's youngest grandfather" article last week. It also springs to mind reading all this.

[me_in_japan]

*sigh*

[Admiral-Badruck]

I am not sure what to make of all this. I thought more of the UK but compare it all with the crime and civil unrest in the US and it will not look so bad anymore. Death by cop is on tv every night either on the news or on the tv show(cops)

[Primarch]

I am not sure what to make of all this. I thought more of the UK but compare it all with the crime and civil unrest in the US and it will not look so bad anymore. Death by cop is on tv every night either on the news or on the tv show(cops)

I think it was in 2008 or around that time, that the UK was the most dangerous country in the world in terms of number of crimes per person. However, most of those statistics were based on muggings, petty theft and burglary. The US has a low crime rate per person overall but the number of violent crimes, especially those involving guns, is much higher. In the UK, it's pretty rare for the police to shoot anyone, they generally dont carry guns and neither do most of the criminals.
Parts of the UK are very nice, but more and more the urban areas are being 'terrorised' by unruly and even outright dangerous children. The Justice System refuses to punish kids in any meaningful way. The worst they get is X hours of community service. Very often young offenders are taken on training courses and to paticipate in group activities. However most of them see this as a reward not a punishment.
For example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ramme.html

[Seb]

Very often young offenders are taken on training courses and to paticipate in group activities. However most of them see this as a reward not a punishment.
For example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ramme.html

That is just disgusting.. What a spit in taxpayer's faces.

Because of the riots that went on, there are many articles about politics in the UK in Swedish media right now, many comments I read on these articles say that Cameron is a coward scared of taking conflicts.. Are there any opinions on this among the UK citizens here? What is the general opinion on the British Prime Minister? I don't know much myself about him at all.

[Colonel Voss]

for a little light humor, looks like GW had their stuff returned after the riots http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/soci ... 108124191/

[me_in_japan]

I dont know much about Cameron specifically, as he came to power while I was in Japan. However, in my experience, UK PMs tend to be a bit wishy washy. They're hamstrung by the press - if they do anything too left or right oriented, the press crucify them for it, which leads to them losing the next election. Theyre all aware of this, so they pussyfoot around, not doing very much. The last hard-ass PM we had was Margaret Thatcher, and look what happened there...

[ashmie]

Cameron is definitely more hard line Thatherite than previous Prime Ministers. He has cut funding for everything including the Police and bumped up the tuition fees for education so working class,lower middle class kids can't get degrees.
This was a children revolution really, quite unique, a protest of people with no money for Uni or prospects showing the rich they could do what they wanted. It was also a bit of a full on raid for people to get 'free stuff'. Many of the criminals arrested were middle class oiks, one worked in an Opera House another was an assistant teacher at a Primary school. Not all of them were out of work anarchists.
The general atmosphere in London was dark last weekend when I was visiting for Iron Maiden at the 02. Bruce made a speech about the world going to pot and there being no money but do we care as we are here having a good time. It was right on but to be fair we were a lucky few in that arena with disposable income.
They played the number of the beast towards the end of the set and later that night the riots were in full swing. London was aflame. It was surreal and uncanny to say the least.

On our way there before the riots kicked off on the Saturday night my cousin and I saw an Apache helicopter flying above the Thames patrolling the area. We thought it was unusual at the time, so they were expecting something to kick off it seems. As I boarded my plane for Japan and my marriage I left the airport TVs watching images of Tottenham literally on fire. Mainly high street shops were smashed but sadly peoples houses caught fire near to those places. Busses and cars went up in flames also. One young boy was mugged while he was bleeding on the street.
The Sony Centre was burnt to the ground too I've later seen in the Japanese press.

Can't really make head nor tale of it. Originally the vibe was it was revenge for a black youth getting shot by police on the Thursday, kind of a L.A. Riots in the 90's thing. The government and media were very quick to remove the incidents from having any kind of political statement or connection for obvious crowd control reasons. The one good thing is it has woken up the rich and the politicians to the fact that there is something we need to look at very seriously in UK society. The old divides will have to be noted and the gulf between rich and poor will have to be addressed. On the bleak side it means more CCTV and monitoring and distrust of the general public.

I was relived to be getting out of London when I did but sad to be leaving it when it was such a state. Especially as I'm a Primary teacher here in Japan. I wondered if my skills might be more needed at home. Whichever I hope the teachers back home can do there bit and add a bit more discipline and moral fibre to these kids lives.
Recently many art and youth projects have been cut by Cameron as there just isn't the money for fun stuff in the Tory budget. It's a shame as these kids benefit from these things, they just need a focus on something creative to get rid of that hopeless feeling of having less paths to follow.
Many people on TV were quick to label the kids as feral rats which can never be fair. A society who alienates and labels it's children as subhuman can never survive for long. Lets hope we can all learn and rebuild from these terrible events.

[Spevna]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAC0YSm ... r_embedded

[me_in_japan]

I had never heard of that Pat Condell chappy. A man with an opinion, and no mistake. An opinion, which, in this case, i agree with 100%. He puts it a bit more strongly than I would (especially the latter half of the clip) but that doesnt in any way invalidate what he's saying.

Word.