There is something depressingly familiar about what is happening in the UK (or, more correctly, England) right now. I remember similar disturbances back in the 1980s.
Same areas - London (Tottenham, Brixton, east London generally, Ealing). Liverpool (Toxteth). Parts of Nottingham and Birmingham. Bristol. All so called "deprived areas".
Same Government - Conservative, although this time aided and abbetted by the Liberal Democrats.
Same strident calls from the Daily Mail, and others, to "bring in the Army, give the Police water cannon and rubber bullets".
Same results - senseless violence. Looting sprees. Cars and buildings torched. Police bombarded with bricks, petrol bombs and any old missile that rioters can get their grubby little mitts on. Hospitals overworked treating policeman and rioter side by side.
And the ordinary law abiding citizen left to count the cost in damaged property, looted business premises and destroyed lives.
As Michael Palin said, 40 years ago, in Monty Python: "I keep getting this feeling of deja vu...."
* * *
There are things I just don't understand.
Now I'm sure there are questions to be asked about the shooting by police that started all this last week, and I'm equally sure that in due course they will be asked and answered. But why and how has an apparently peaceful demonstration against that action in one area of north London exploded into a nationwide outbreak of looting and destruction? Why does burning down a discount warehouse in Liverpool equate to a protest against a police incident in Tottenham?
Apologists are stating that the rioters are from deprived areas and are protesting against police brutality and Government policies. They are stating there are "racist issues".
Bullshit.
The areas where this is going on are no more deprived than areas in cities like Cardiff and Swansea, Glasgow and Edinburgh, Derry and Belfast. But, so far at least, the disturbances are limited to English cities. Now why is that, I wonder?
Police brutality? You can't make that claim until it's been proven that the initial incident involved "police brutality" and so far that has not happened. The police may well have used batons against the rioters and cracked a few heads - well, good for them! Faced with a mob of numpties lobbing home-made molotovs and bricks in my direction, I'd be sorely tempted to use a damned sight more than a plastic shield and baton to protect myself. That is not "police brutality", it's self defence.
Government policy? Which one? That which provides everybody with a free education? Health care? Unemployment benefit? Or the ones that are attempting to provide better housing rather than rat infested tower blocks? Encouraging re-training to get more people back to work?
Racist? Hmmmm.......On the news reports I've seen so far, there seems to be an equal split between white and non-white rioters. There is also a mix of white and non-white police facing them. Doesn't look too racist to me. Tottenham, like most of the other areas affected, has a high percentage of non-whites living there (I won't call them immigrants, because they're mostly second and third generation - so as English as me). By and large, most of the time, the white and non-white populations seem to get along just fine, mixing more or less happily in the schools and pubs and clubs and football grounds: Britain is increasingly a multi cultural society where racism is on the wane everywhere. It's only when something like this happens that people seem to scream "racism!"
* * *
So for me, none of these excuses stand up.
It is lawlessnes, pure and simple. Opportunism of the worst kind, by a minority of young and malevolent toe-rags who should know better - and would if parents had not ignored their responsibilities and left it to schools to discipline their kids.
Schools that, actually, can't do that because successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, have introduced legislation after legislation, limiting the punishments available to teachers to such an extent that their hands are completely tied when it comes to discipline.
When I was a kid, 12 years old, back in the 1960s, I had a little argument with a kid in the year below me - it was not much more than name calling, but I ended up giving him a little slap. He went to the headmaster. I was branded a bully (without being able to fully explain what had happened) and received four strokes of the cane across my arse. This was the standard punishment for bullying in most schools and accepted by most parents. I had detentions from time to time, for misdemeanours (like most school kids), and the detentions happened on the same day as you were in trouble. It invariably meant I missed my bus home and had a wait of over an hour for the next one. I lived nearly 20 miles from school. Usually, I was further punished by my parents when I got home. And that is precisely the point - my parents did not object to the school punishing me and typically punished me further for stepping out of line. This is called discipline, a concept that seems to be unknown to most of today's youth. I would never have dreamed of answering either of my parents back, nor a teacher or other adult, and especially not a copper. The idea of firebombing a pizza parlour, setting fire to a police car or chucking petrol bombs around, just for fun, was (and still is) completely alien to me.
Fast forward less than 10 years. I played football with a guy who was a teacher at the local comprehensive school. On playground duty one morning, he moved to break up a little argument that was developing between a couple of 14 year olds. One of them drew a knife and brandished it at him, swearing aggresively. My mate reacted instinctively, slapped the brat around the ear, confiscated the knife and gave the kid a half-hour detention for that night......the maximum he could do without school governor's approval. He intended to speak to the headmaster at lunch time to take the matter further - knives being no laughing matter. Within a couple of hours, the headmaster called my mate to his office. The brat was there, with his (unemployed) parents - after my mate had left him in the playground, he'd gone straight home and complained. My mate was ordered to apologise for hitting the kid and told to return the confiscated (the brat called it "stolen") knife. He refused point blank and resigned on the spot, never went back to the school.
Fast forward another 10 years or so, to when my own kids were at school. Caning had already been ruled illegal, courtesy of various civil liberties and child cruelty groups and lily livered politicians. Detentions were still used, but the school had to give advanced notice, in writing, and were only enforced if the parent agreed to it, in writing. Where is the discipline in that? The result of course is that kids (who by nature will always try and get away with as much as possible) began to have pretty much a free rein to do as they pleased with little fear of official sanction. When caught, it was no more than a ticking off, from a police and justice system increasingly unwilling - because of a weak justice system and overcrowded prisons and detention centres - to do anything more.
I'm convinced that in those 40 odd years, since my caning, there has just been such a breakdown in child discipline that kids nowadays believe they are above the law and can do whatever the hell they want. If that involves the odd riot and a bit of looting and mugging, then fine.
* * *
But this whole "deprived area" stuff really really annoys me. Now I'm not suggesting places like Toxteth and Brixton or St.Pauls in Bristol are a bundle of laughs, but in comparison to some places they're quite wonderful.
Mogadishu anyone? Kabul or Helmand Province? Whole swathes of land across India and China - two of the biggest and fastest growing economies in the world - where people live in the most abject poverty (that's if they're not sold into modern day slavery in childhood)? Vast tracts of Africa where people and especially children are starving to death while the western "civilized" world stands by wringing its hands but doing comparatively little to help?
In my travels, I have seen some grim areas that make these riot torn street look like affluent neighbourhoods. Parts of Beirut still resemble bomb sites after the conflicts with Israel and Syria within the last 15 years or so. So do parts of Belgrade and Novy Sad in Serbia, where NATO was bombing as recently as the 1990s (and are now busily turning Benghazi and Tripoli in Libya into similar ruins - but that's all in a good cause, apparently). My now home town of Warsaw has areas on the east bank of the Wisla, the Praga area and its neighbourhoods, that are only now becoming anything other than a mafia controlled no go area. Even sunny Port of Spain, in tropical Trinidad, has its daily shooting and areas you just don't go through after dark (especially if you're the wrong skin tone)
So the idea of "deprived areas" being at the root of the current problems doesn't stand up, I'm afraid - else there would be riots in those places every night of every week, and there aren't - people get on with their lives in relative safety if not comfort, knowing full well that things could be a hell of a lot worse.
* * *
In saying all this, I have no idea what the answer is. English (as opposed to British) society seems so fucked up nowadays it's impossible to know where to start.
Political parties calling each other names and demanding this and that law change is not the answer, but no more than a starting point - and it will only become that with recognition that they are equally to blame, since the situation has spiralled down into this parlous state on both their watches over the past 40 years or so.
The police certainly need more powers - and more particularly increased numbers - to patrol the streets and fight the crime that is clearly rife. But that means more government money being spent and probably more taxes. People don't like paying taxes.
There clearly needs to be some investment in these and other areas, aimed at providing better education, better housing and more job opportunities - again more investment and more taxes.
Somehow discipline needs to find its way back into the home and the school room. Repealing some of the legislation preventing decent punishment in schools might be a start, but it's not only schools. PARENTS must start showing more responsibility for their kid's values and behaviour, not leave it up to others....because really, there are no others. If some of them would today stand up and be counted, stop their littel angels from donning their hoodies and going out to join in the fun, it would be huge step in the right direction......
I have five kids. I've had fun and games with the older ones in the past, but they're adults now and live their own lives. I believe they have a decent set of values and I know are as disgusted as I am about what is going on now. None of them have their own families yet, but I hope when they do they make sure they teach them right and wrong, and the true value of property and life itself, and don't let them run unchecked, as so many parents nowadays seem to have done with their kids. For my younger ones, five and three, I genuinely fear for their future - they have, inevitably, glimpsed the shocking scenes on news programs - it's big news here in Poland, just as it is London - but thankfully are too young to grasp what is happening. With climate change fears and the global economy shot to hell, I wonder what kind of a world they will grow up in.......
Same areas - London (Tottenham, Brixton, east London generally, Ealing). Liverpool (Toxteth). Parts of Nottingham and Birmingham. Bristol. All so called "deprived areas".
Same Government - Conservative, although this time aided and abbetted by the Liberal Democrats.
Same strident calls from the Daily Mail, and others, to "bring in the Army, give the Police water cannon and rubber bullets".
Same results - senseless violence. Looting sprees. Cars and buildings torched. Police bombarded with bricks, petrol bombs and any old missile that rioters can get their grubby little mitts on. Hospitals overworked treating policeman and rioter side by side.
And the ordinary law abiding citizen left to count the cost in damaged property, looted business premises and destroyed lives.
As Michael Palin said, 40 years ago, in Monty Python: "I keep getting this feeling of deja vu...."
* * *
There are things I just don't understand.
Now I'm sure there are questions to be asked about the shooting by police that started all this last week, and I'm equally sure that in due course they will be asked and answered. But why and how has an apparently peaceful demonstration against that action in one area of north London exploded into a nationwide outbreak of looting and destruction? Why does burning down a discount warehouse in Liverpool equate to a protest against a police incident in Tottenham?
Apologists are stating that the rioters are from deprived areas and are protesting against police brutality and Government policies. They are stating there are "racist issues".
Bullshit.
The areas where this is going on are no more deprived than areas in cities like Cardiff and Swansea, Glasgow and Edinburgh, Derry and Belfast. But, so far at least, the disturbances are limited to English cities. Now why is that, I wonder?
Police brutality? You can't make that claim until it's been proven that the initial incident involved "police brutality" and so far that has not happened. The police may well have used batons against the rioters and cracked a few heads - well, good for them! Faced with a mob of numpties lobbing home-made molotovs and bricks in my direction, I'd be sorely tempted to use a damned sight more than a plastic shield and baton to protect myself. That is not "police brutality", it's self defence.
Government policy? Which one? That which provides everybody with a free education? Health care? Unemployment benefit? Or the ones that are attempting to provide better housing rather than rat infested tower blocks? Encouraging re-training to get more people back to work?
Racist? Hmmmm.......On the news reports I've seen so far, there seems to be an equal split between white and non-white rioters. There is also a mix of white and non-white police facing them. Doesn't look too racist to me. Tottenham, like most of the other areas affected, has a high percentage of non-whites living there (I won't call them immigrants, because they're mostly second and third generation - so as English as me). By and large, most of the time, the white and non-white populations seem to get along just fine, mixing more or less happily in the schools and pubs and clubs and football grounds: Britain is increasingly a multi cultural society where racism is on the wane everywhere. It's only when something like this happens that people seem to scream "racism!"
* * *
So for me, none of these excuses stand up.
It is lawlessnes, pure and simple. Opportunism of the worst kind, by a minority of young and malevolent toe-rags who should know better - and would if parents had not ignored their responsibilities and left it to schools to discipline their kids.
Schools that, actually, can't do that because successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, have introduced legislation after legislation, limiting the punishments available to teachers to such an extent that their hands are completely tied when it comes to discipline.
When I was a kid, 12 years old, back in the 1960s, I had a little argument with a kid in the year below me - it was not much more than name calling, but I ended up giving him a little slap. He went to the headmaster. I was branded a bully (without being able to fully explain what had happened) and received four strokes of the cane across my arse. This was the standard punishment for bullying in most schools and accepted by most parents. I had detentions from time to time, for misdemeanours (like most school kids), and the detentions happened on the same day as you were in trouble. It invariably meant I missed my bus home and had a wait of over an hour for the next one. I lived nearly 20 miles from school. Usually, I was further punished by my parents when I got home. And that is precisely the point - my parents did not object to the school punishing me and typically punished me further for stepping out of line. This is called discipline, a concept that seems to be unknown to most of today's youth. I would never have dreamed of answering either of my parents back, nor a teacher or other adult, and especially not a copper. The idea of firebombing a pizza parlour, setting fire to a police car or chucking petrol bombs around, just for fun, was (and still is) completely alien to me.
Fast forward less than 10 years. I played football with a guy who was a teacher at the local comprehensive school. On playground duty one morning, he moved to break up a little argument that was developing between a couple of 14 year olds. One of them drew a knife and brandished it at him, swearing aggresively. My mate reacted instinctively, slapped the brat around the ear, confiscated the knife and gave the kid a half-hour detention for that night......the maximum he could do without school governor's approval. He intended to speak to the headmaster at lunch time to take the matter further - knives being no laughing matter. Within a couple of hours, the headmaster called my mate to his office. The brat was there, with his (unemployed) parents - after my mate had left him in the playground, he'd gone straight home and complained. My mate was ordered to apologise for hitting the kid and told to return the confiscated (the brat called it "stolen") knife. He refused point blank and resigned on the spot, never went back to the school.
Fast forward another 10 years or so, to when my own kids were at school. Caning had already been ruled illegal, courtesy of various civil liberties and child cruelty groups and lily livered politicians. Detentions were still used, but the school had to give advanced notice, in writing, and were only enforced if the parent agreed to it, in writing. Where is the discipline in that? The result of course is that kids (who by nature will always try and get away with as much as possible) began to have pretty much a free rein to do as they pleased with little fear of official sanction. When caught, it was no more than a ticking off, from a police and justice system increasingly unwilling - because of a weak justice system and overcrowded prisons and detention centres - to do anything more.
I'm convinced that in those 40 odd years, since my caning, there has just been such a breakdown in child discipline that kids nowadays believe they are above the law and can do whatever the hell they want. If that involves the odd riot and a bit of looting and mugging, then fine.
* * *
But this whole "deprived area" stuff really really annoys me. Now I'm not suggesting places like Toxteth and Brixton or St.Pauls in Bristol are a bundle of laughs, but in comparison to some places they're quite wonderful.
Mogadishu anyone? Kabul or Helmand Province? Whole swathes of land across India and China - two of the biggest and fastest growing economies in the world - where people live in the most abject poverty (that's if they're not sold into modern day slavery in childhood)? Vast tracts of Africa where people and especially children are starving to death while the western "civilized" world stands by wringing its hands but doing comparatively little to help?
In my travels, I have seen some grim areas that make these riot torn street look like affluent neighbourhoods. Parts of Beirut still resemble bomb sites after the conflicts with Israel and Syria within the last 15 years or so. So do parts of Belgrade and Novy Sad in Serbia, where NATO was bombing as recently as the 1990s (and are now busily turning Benghazi and Tripoli in Libya into similar ruins - but that's all in a good cause, apparently). My now home town of Warsaw has areas on the east bank of the Wisla, the Praga area and its neighbourhoods, that are only now becoming anything other than a mafia controlled no go area. Even sunny Port of Spain, in tropical Trinidad, has its daily shooting and areas you just don't go through after dark (especially if you're the wrong skin tone)
So the idea of "deprived areas" being at the root of the current problems doesn't stand up, I'm afraid - else there would be riots in those places every night of every week, and there aren't - people get on with their lives in relative safety if not comfort, knowing full well that things could be a hell of a lot worse.
* * *
In saying all this, I have no idea what the answer is. English (as opposed to British) society seems so fucked up nowadays it's impossible to know where to start.
Political parties calling each other names and demanding this and that law change is not the answer, but no more than a starting point - and it will only become that with recognition that they are equally to blame, since the situation has spiralled down into this parlous state on both their watches over the past 40 years or so.
The police certainly need more powers - and more particularly increased numbers - to patrol the streets and fight the crime that is clearly rife. But that means more government money being spent and probably more taxes. People don't like paying taxes.
There clearly needs to be some investment in these and other areas, aimed at providing better education, better housing and more job opportunities - again more investment and more taxes.
Somehow discipline needs to find its way back into the home and the school room. Repealing some of the legislation preventing decent punishment in schools might be a start, but it's not only schools. PARENTS must start showing more responsibility for their kid's values and behaviour, not leave it up to others....because really, there are no others. If some of them would today stand up and be counted, stop their littel angels from donning their hoodies and going out to join in the fun, it would be huge step in the right direction......
I have five kids. I've had fun and games with the older ones in the past, but they're adults now and live their own lives. I believe they have a decent set of values and I know are as disgusted as I am about what is going on now. None of them have their own families yet, but I hope when they do they make sure they teach them right and wrong, and the true value of property and life itself, and don't let them run unchecked, as so many parents nowadays seem to have done with their kids. For my younger ones, five and three, I genuinely fear for their future - they have, inevitably, glimpsed the shocking scenes on news programs - it's big news here in Poland, just as it is London - but thankfully are too young to grasp what is happening. With climate change fears and the global economy shot to hell, I wonder what kind of a world they will grow up in.......
No comments:
Post a Comment