General discussion for (Tottenham) riots

FTBFun

Generali wrote: »

What has shocked me in Northern hell-hole towns is the level of violence in and around pubs. You just don't get that in London or if you do it has passed me by.

Tottenham is a dump. There is a rather nice football ground there though.

Indeed there is. Speaking selfishly, it might help the clubs case for public funds for regeneration, this sort of thing. Or not perhaps, if the local chavs are just going to smash the place up again.

I'm a bit conflicted on this whole event - part of me believes it's a symptom of social deprivation and that dealing with it involves that, and part of me wishes The Comedian from Watchmen was a real life person....

EDIT: re violence outside pubs - the worst I've seen was outside a club in Edinburgh, literally two guys were kicking the !!!! out of some poor fella for a bit then they legged it. Can't say I've seen that much at all in London, if ever.

FTBFun

drc wrote: »

London is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character. Even affluent, leafy, genteel, middle-class areas become something out of a horror film at night with groups of rowdy chavs and all sorts of goings-on at night. I'm sure it wasn't like this in the 80s or even 90s. What's happened to London .

I think it might be a little confusing, as unlike a lot of other places London tends to go nice bit-shithole-nice bit-shithole.

Except Tottenham which is shithole-hellhole-shithole.

lostinrates

Generali wrote: »

What has shocked me in Northern hell-hole towns is the level of violence in and around pubs. You just don't get that in London or if you do it has passed me by.

Tottenham is a dump. There is a rather nice football ground there though.

Having moved from very posh village to considerably less posh one, but still ''nice'' I was somewhat surprised to read that we must fight to keep the local policeman because the number of ASBOs has gone down since he arrived. I'm surprised that any asbos in a small village community are ''accpetable''.

I've never spent time in a northern hell hole city, but seen some ''gang'' type stuff between small rural towns. its just bizarre. Compared to the rest of the world we have so much, even the least lucky of us are lucky than the average people in many places.

I have no doubt social deprivation is part of it, but I also believe this is not just a financial issue, but deprivation of ambition, culture, education...I think that its highly probabl;e supporting SOME people too comfortably out of work is compounding the issue.

Generali

FTBFun wrote: »

EDIT: re violence outside pubs - the worst I've seen was outside a club in Edinburgh, literally two guys were kicking the !!!! out of some poor fella for a bit then they legged it. Can't say I've seen that much at all in London, if ever.

Dundee was shocking. My mate lived above a night club and people used to lob bricks and bottles through the windows of his flat if they saw people in there!

Leeds was dreadful as well. Every other bloke seemed to be trying to get into a fight. What's wrong with trying to get laid like a normal person?

You get the very occasional fight in the West End. Not much apart from that though IME.

ruggedtoast

To be fair to the police I suppose even if they do arrest someone for disorderly behaviour nothing will happen to them anyway. I know a policeman and he said he felt like giving up when a repeat offender walked into their police station and asked how he could "go back".

"Go back where, what do you mean?" They asked.

He explained that he wanted to go back to prison as he had all his meals, recreation, tv and Xbox provided and was frustrated that they kept letting him out before he wanted to go.

On a tangent slightly but I would like to see a real push against alcohol related disorder here.

Mrs_Bones

ruggedtoast wrote: »

To be fair to the police I suppose even if they do arrest someone for disorderly behaviour nothing will happen to them anyway. I know a policeman and he said he felt like giving up when a repeat offender walked into their police station and asked how he could "go back".

"Go back where, what do you mean?" They asked.

He explained that he wanted to go back to prison as he had all his meals, recreation, tv and Xbox provided and was frustrated that they kept letting him out before he wanted to go.

On a tangent slightly but I would like to see a real push against alcohol related disorder here.

A point I've been making in the discussion forum. The people who are doing the looting are not making a stand for anything they are doing it because they can and even the ones who get caught and charged (which won't be many) will only get either fines, community service or at most a few months in prison. They know this, there is no deterrent.

Their is a section of society that is completely disaffected, authority means nothing. The cuts won't help but neither can they put down as the sole cause. All governments of all colours have created this mess in the past few decades.

adouglasmhor

Generali wrote: »

Dundee was shocking. My mate lived above a night club and people used to lob bricks and bottles through the windows of his flat if they saw people in there!

Leeds was dreadful as well. Every other bloke seemed to be trying to get into a fight. What's wrong with trying to get laid like a normal person?

You get the very occasional fight in the West End. Not much apart from that though IME.

I have to say me and my mate got jumped in Woolwich by skinheads but it was 30 years ago and they were certainly looking for a fight.

StevieJ

I wonder if Loughton Monkey is manning the baricades, they seem to be moving closer :eek: like Shaun of the Dead.

FTBFun

A pretty pathetic attempt to say the Met are blaming Twitter by the Beeb here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14439970

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that there were too few officers in Tottenham on Saturday night, but blamed Twitter for fuelling looting and violence, saying: "Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality."

Not once has the use of the word "blame" been used there. Think they might be hearing from Twitter's lawyers fairly soon. You might as well blame the mobile phone companies for chavs texting each other!

ruggedtoast

I've had to stop reading the comments on the Guardian as they are just making me angry. Apparently everything is the fault of society and nothing is the fault of the looters who are entitled to steal because they feel angry and hopeless.

How about channelling some of that energy into getting a few NVQs and moving somewhere with better prospects?