England starting to imitate America?

[ballvalve]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/08...night-rioting/

Demise of government [over] entitlement programs cause people of color to burn down their neighborhoods.

England has so spoiled its youth, and their only skill being drinking and texting, It seems you may expect the country to look like one big Compton riot, as after the imbecile Rodney King was properly beaten by the police.

Any cut fingers from breaking store windows will be treated by the Brits for free at a cost of millions.

The Chinese are bent over laughing at how stupid we all are to divest ourselves of jobs for our youth and give it to them to build shiny toy machinery and debri to fill our dollar stores.

[Terry]

Cookie sent me this story too.
I do recall during the Viet Nam war, also seeing daily coverage from England over their religious war. The Catholics and the Protestants were in heated battle.

Maybe that's why Ian moved here. We do seem to get along better with all of our differences.

[Tom Sawyer]

I was wondering who would be the first to start poking Ian with this one

[Ian Gills]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14449675

This is dreadful and unacceptable: an unimaginable example of the violence that can be triggered, and spread, when police shoot a person of minority descent in England.

In America, people simply would not care. Police shoot people dead all the time here.

Americans have become that numb.

But for how much longer?

Your disadvantaged population is larger and more disillussioned than any anywhere. And to make matters worse, America's poor have guns.

So take it as a lesson. Raise taxes on the rich. And provide the poor with the essential services they are entitled to. Ban guns. And focus on jobs.

Or else.

England is bit like America though:

0105: BBC staff member reports hundreds of youths ransacking a Panasonic store in West Ealing - no sign of police.

[Tom Sawyer]

Pay the ransom. That's really what welfare and hand out programs are. A ransom that we pay to keep a select few from tearing our cities apart. When the welfare state begins to break down, those that depend on government money to live are the first effected. Since there are no jobs or other legal ways for these people to get the money they need to live, they will begin to riot, rob, mug, pillage and destroy whatever gets in their way. The wave of rioting will grow and begin to suck in more and more people. It will cost the government billions to stop it. More police, more jails etc. It is actually cheaper to pay the ransom than deal with the problem. The thing is that eventually, if enough welfare folks are on the dole, there are not enough working people to pay the bill. Is this what is happening in England now? or is this whole thing an isolated abboration caused by social unrest?

[ballvalve]

Most of the youth of our rich nations are becoming android abberations because of electronic devices glued to their ears 90% of the day.

And the lack, especially in the 'other' races of not having a father, or a father that cannot change a tire. Or spends most time in jail.

Every generation said the youth are turning to garbage, but now we have a new experiment with the innundation in media.

I say every kid that steps out of high school gets two years of community service in camps without phones and tv's. And lots of theose sadistic unemployed fathers as bunkhouse watchmen with shot filled rubber hoses.

Uniforms in ALL schools, hard work, machine training, trail building makes men instead of bored vandals. The BEST workers I ever had were vets. They learned discipline, and that makes life so much easier.

What we do about all those sluts in g-strings at age 15 is another question. [Sure wish they had them when I was 15.]

I say legalize prostitution for those over 18, and our daughters won't be found nearly as often buried in the forest. Rember when you walked home from school when you were 12 years old? Where did that world go and why?

And Ian, our cops shoot a lot of people, not quite enough, but because they DO have guns and 99.9% of the time that bullet was their best and well deserved medicine.

[Tom Sawyer]

There's currently three of them at large somewhere on the east coast that are in serious need of termination.

[ballvalve]

Lets get Bronson back....

[Ian Gills]

Your tolerance of guns is why those three kids are wreaking the same havoc as all the teens in England.

Ban guns.

Because most of you are too stoopid to know how to shoot.

[master plumber mark]

I have been watching the violence in England, and it amazes me
what a bunch of wimp pussies the police are....

They are literally watching all these teenagers run up and
down the streets setting buildings ablaze
and basically standing there wondering how to control them..
are they totally imputent??.

I KNOW that you are not gonna like this IAAN but the answer is pretty simple...

spray them down with a couple dozen volleys of rubber bullets....
I know that they dont want to kill anyone involved, but I dont think that
their is any law in England against giving the crowd a
whole bunch of red hot welts on their back sides to impress upon them the idea
that crime and arson is gonna sting like hell...... ...

Lots of Tear gas would also be a nice touch... dont you think>>

or is that too uncivilized for merry old England??



also, you are totally full of crap when it comes to banning the guns,
by the very example of what a messit is over there right now.....

If the shop owners in England were ARMED,
I am pretty sure that most of the damage
would have been adverted.....or the level of RISK to
the common theives would make them think twice before
looting and setting ablaze homes....

I guarantee that if someone tried to burn
down my home and business ...my 12 guage shotgun
and my smith and wesson 9mm will
come out and I would lay down what is called in America
"supressive fire".....

talley ho....Ian...

[Tom Sawyer]

I made a resolution to buy another gun every time Ian says we need to get rid of them. Just picked up a Ruger Vaquero in .45 Got 500 rounds to go with it.

[ballvalve]

Your tolerance of guns is why those three kids are wreaking the same havoc as all the teens in England.

Ban guns.

Because most of you are too stoopid to know how to shoot.

By the by, I think the plumber meant impotent, no matter how impudent they are.

But about shooting, we who shoot do not do it as a whim. We are raised with guns, and know the rules, and we know what and when to shoot. My 5 year old has already a very surprising and healthy respect and proper fear of guns.

But he and his German Shepherd are able to shoot together and understand the dangers, and the dog does not flinch at a shot from a pistol or shotgun. And the dog would die protecting him from lion, bear or pit bull - better than any gun.

Last week, from my balcony which looks out over a million acres of wild lands, we had to shoot a rabid feral cat, which had been circled by his protector, Maciek, the German Shepherd. My kid loves cats, but even at his tender age, he said this animal is not well and must be eliminated.

The Grizzly bears that once ate salmon in my stream are dead for over 100 years, the salmon blocked by a hundred dams. The coyotes are trapped out and the fox is in a decline. My salamanders that once mated in huge balls of hundreds in my stream are dead from detergents from morons upstream that dump their wash water on the ground.

And the human equivalent of rabid feral cats are taking over England and the large cities of America. We are in a steep declne and can only hope for a bizarre flu to lighten up the earth.

Rubber bullets will not suffice to change our demise.

[Cookie]

Ian, when the govn provides for everything, and kids do not have to be responsible for the futures they want and learn to provide for it without the aid of the govn this is what you got going and why. Self respect is learned by doing not getting it given to you.


Britain's rioters: young, poor and disillusioned
By MEERA SELVA - Associated Press,PAISLEY DODDS - Associated Press | AP – 1 hr 52 mins ago..



LONDON (AP) — Each of the young rioters who clogged Britain's courthouses painted a bleak picture of a lost generation: a 15-year-old Ukrainian whose mother died, a 17-year-old who followed his cousin into the mayhem, an 11-year-old arrested for stealing a garbage can.

Britain is bitterly divided on the reasons behind the riots. Some blame the unrest on opportunistic criminality, while others say conflicting economic policies and punishing government spending cuts have deepened inequalities in the country's most deprived areas.

Many of the youths themselves struggle to find any plausible answer, but a widespread sense of alienation emerges from their tales.

"Nobody is doing nothing for us — not the politicians, not the cops, no one," a 19-year-old who lives near Tottenham, the blighted London neighborhood where the riots started. He only gave his nickname, "Freddy," because he took part in the looting and was scared of facing prosecution; he was not among the youths in court.

Britain has one of the highest violent crime rates in the EU. Roughly 18 percent of youths between 16 and 24 are jobless and nearly half of all black youths are out of work.

As the government battles colossal government debt with harsh welfare cuts that promise to make the futures of these youths even bleaker, some experts say it's narrow-minded to believe the riots have only been a random outburst of violence unrelated to the current economic crisis.

"There's a fundamental disconnect with a particular section of young Britain and sections of the political establishment," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at University of Nottingham.

"The argument that this doesn't have anything to do with expenditure cuts or economics doesn't stand up to the evidence. If that's true, then what we have here are hundreds of young, crazed kids simply acting irrationally. I don't think that's the case."

Nearly 1,200 people have been arrested since the riots erupted Saturday, mostly poor youths from a broad section of Britain's many races and ethnicities.

Courts have been running nearly 24 hours a day to hear all the cases since the rioting began. Most cases are heard in a blink of an eye and only give a snapshot of some of the youngsters' lives. Many of the defendants haven't had a chance to talk at length with their attorneys, and most can't be named because they are minors.

An 11-year-old boy from Romford, Essex, was among one of the youngest to appear in court on Wednesday. Wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit, the youngster spoke only to confirm his name, age and date of birth.

The boy pleaded guilty to burglary, after stealing a waste bin worth 50 pounds. A charge of violent disorder was dropped.

Attorneys for some of the defendants said their clients were good kids who have caring families but got caught up in the violence.

Daniel Cavaglieri, one of the lawyers for a 17-year-old who appeared at Highbury Magistrates Court, said the youth was studying mechanics and trying to finish school. He was accused of following his older cousin to loot a clothing shop, and charged with intent to steal.

"His mother is furious he was out and about at that time. She genuinely thought he was at a friend's house," Cavaglieri told the court. "He's going to be grounded."

Another defendant, a 15-year-old immigrant from Ukraine, pleaded not guilty to using or threatening unlawful violence. He already has a criminal record for theft, and police said he threw stones and other missiles in the thick of Tuesday's rioting in London's Hackney area.

Prosecutors said the boy is an only child who lives with his widowed father. He came to Britain from Germany three years ago after leaving Ukraine when his mother died.

It's unclear what role racial tensions have played in the riots, if any.

In Tottenham, most residents are white but blacks from Africa or the Caribbean account for around a quarter of the ethnic mix. It's also home to Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Asian immigrants. The rage has appeared to cut across ethnic lines, with poverty as the main common denominator.

But there's a history of racial tension in many of these neighborhoods, and the riots themselves were triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black man in Tottenham.

In 1985, the neighborhood was home to the Broadwater Farm riot, an event seared in the memories of many of the rioters' parents. Back then, violence exploded area when a black woman died from a stroke during a police search. The area remains a hotbed of ethnic tension: In the past year, police have logged some 100 racist or religion based hate crimes.

Other social problems afflict the places where rioting erupted: high teen pregnancy rates, gun crime and drug trafficking.

Under the Labour-led government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, authorities tried to penalize badly behaved youth with Anti-Social Behavior Orders, or ASBOs. The orders have since become badges of honor for many of Britain's youth.

In 2008, there were more than 1 million reported cases of violent crimes in England and Wales alone. By comparison, there were 331,778 reported incidents in France and some 210,885 incidents in Germany. Violent crime carried out by children and teenagers is also among the highest in Europe.

"There's income inequality, extremely high levels of unemployment between 16 and 24-year-olds and huge parts of this population not in education or training," Goodwin said. "There's a general malaise amongst a particular generation."

Britain's Conservative-led government is implementing painful austerity measures in an attempt to get the country's finances in order. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged 80 billion pounds ($129 billion) of spending cuts and 30 billion pounds in extra taxes to trim Britain's huge deficit, swollen after the government spent billions bailing out foundering banks.

The plans to cut services from welfare to education sparked violent protests last year, as students took to the streets to demonstrate against the tripling of university fees. The government is also cutting civil service jobs and benefits, raising the state pension age from 65 to 66, hiking the amount public sector employees contribute to pensions and reducing their retirement payouts.

The austerity measures will also slash housing benefit payments used to subsidize rents for the low-paid, threatening to price tens of thousands of poor families out of their homes and force them toward the fringes of the country's capital.

Economists at the Centre for Economic Policy Research say such cuts promise more unrest. Most of Britain's deepest cuts haven't even come yet.

"There's usually something that sparks these things off," said Hans-Joachim Voth, a research fellow at the center. "The question is why is it that in 90 percent of these cases that nothing happens? Why is it that some places just end up like a tinder box?"

[Ian Gills]

Cookie is not allowed in Ian's corner.

Canadians are the only ones that can be trusted with owning guns (and making angle stops).

It's a credit to our police force (and plumbers) that the English rarely have to use them.

I really hope this sort of lawlessness does not come to America.

We need to raise the benefits for the poor here before it does.

Kids learn responsibility through opportunity.

That means going to a good school regardless of income. And healthcare for all to boot.

Your poor are more in number and more disillusioned that ours. The biggest difference is that their criminality is mostly amongst themselves. I don't know may people in America brave enough to walk through a poor neighborhood. Same can't be said of England. Our poor are better integrated into society than in the US - which is really saying something.

You'd best hope it stays that way.

You're sitting ducks compared to the English. We had groups of people out willing to protect one another. I doubt communities in America would do the same. People get beat up on the metro here and others just go about their business.

Disgusting!

Ban guns. Learn to use fists instead. It's that simple.

[Tom Sawyer]

You gravely under estimate us