BS: Punishment for riots

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:06 PM

Problem is, Bluesman... Lots of despots have spines.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 11:23 AM

Beautiful empty words spoken by Thatcher, carefully crafted by her and no doubt her speechwriter. She spouted a quotation from St Francis on the way in to Downing St in 1979 too. Just words. Actions speak louder unfortunately.

I've never bought this stuff about her being a puppet for Joseph, Ridley et al, who as Ian says were clearly barking. She is (was) an intelligent woman who had a project and knew what she was doing. She was also a small minded provincial ***** (er, imho).

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 09:46 AM

<<<<<<<<<"her claim that there was "no such thing as society"

Well no her actual claim was:

"There is no such thing as society WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITY">>>>>>

She actually said this:

"...But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society.[fo 2] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate...."

Taken from the Transcript here, at The Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 07:34 AM

You should view a party because of it's current policies, not because of what it did 30 odd years ago. Mrs. T. had a spine which is more than you can say than most Labourites.

The way I see it, Britain's economy was failing badly when she took over, we were known as "The sick man of Europe", partly because Labour continued to pump money into a failing mining industry. In my opinion she made a lot of tough decisions that, despite being very unpopular, needed to be made and dragged Britain into the modern age.

Can you imagine what Labour would have done at what was a pivotal point in our country's history, I dread to think.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 07:17 AM

---she personally ordered the sinking of The Belgrano after being told it was retreating away from the battle scene---
.,.,.,.,
Oh, yes, so she did. And what a fuss you lot over there made about it.

So, now, just remind us if you would be so good, what is it that they say about "He who fights and runs away ..."?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 07:12 AM

Responsibility?   When she called me "the enemy within" for having a job down the pit, what perspective should I have put on it?

When she personally ordered the sinking of The Belgrano after being told it was retreating away from the battle scene, what words of her order don't we mention? (Or her face when the BBC reporter asked her about it the next day, and she thought we wouldn't get to know the order came from the top.)

Or how about her overall philosophy that opportunity is another way of saying "Devil take the hindmost."

Oh, hang on. She didn't have any the above philosophy. SHe as a product of others. The Keith Joseph and Nicholas Ridley lunatics of the time, who saw this gullible woman as an ideal front for their social experiment. You don't think the conservatives of the '70s really stomached the idea of being led by a woman do you?   She was a blame hound for if it went wrong and a target for the ire of those disaffected by it. Perhaps Dave "I used to know some poor people" Cameron hasn't worked out yet that you need a bogeyman to blame, not a decent chap, as he undoubtably is.



Oh, hang on.. riots.

No. Prefer Thatcher bashing.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Teribus
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 03:18 AM

"her claim that there was "no such thing as society"

Well no her actual claim was:

"There is no such thing as society WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITY"

Whale of a difference - Most of her detractors always seem to conveniently forget those last two words - but then they tend to always fall into the category of those to whom everything is:

"Isn't IT awful" (truth is 9 times out of 10 it isn't)

"nothing is ever my fault" (truth is 9 times out of 10 it is)

"the government, or somebody else has got to do something about it" (truth is 9 times out of 10 they should take responsibility for their own decisions)

God we'll be hearing about her stealing milk from school children next. In that instance as Minister for Education she had a choice foisted upon her by the incompetence and waste off the previous Labour Government, the children either had schools and books or they had milk - she suffering quite a bizarre brainstorm chose schools and books - what an odd thing for someone involved in education to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 08:53 AM

Check the dates: possibly he'd learned something.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Penny S.
Date: 24 Aug 11 - 09:06 AM

Yeah, right, my sister went to the LSE, and thence to that very square to protest before the embassy about a war. How did he know?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 04:37 PM

"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square."
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 04:32 PM

Godwin's Law, Willie.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Smokey.
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 03:27 PM

I seem to remember one of them had a moustache, but I forget which.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 03:12 PM

You know that law, forget the name of it now, about Internet discussions losing the plot when they get around to mentioning Hitler?

Can we reinvent it, make it about Thatcher and call it Willie's law?

Don't get me wrong. Being an ex miner, my knees aren't what they used to be so I hope her grave has a sprung dance floor. But blaming her just gives her credibility on the eyes of people who agree with the broad thrust of her aims.

And that would never do. Half the feral fuckers being discussed here weren't born when she was stabbed in the back anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 03:06 PM

Thatcher's main contribution to this present topic was that, in her claim that there was "no such thing as society" she played a major part in the destruction of communities like the ones experiencing these present difficulties.
It is enough for me to remember that one of her her last political acts was to remonstrate on behalf of her friend and mentor, mass-murderer Augusto Pinochet and help him escape facing trial for crimes against humanity - nice lady, other than that!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 02:57 PM

She also sold off homes in housing estates to residents for around 40% of their market value. People once again took pride in their areas.

She gripped this country by the neck which was exactly what it needed after years of Labour government crap. I wish to God she was in number 10 today. She would not put up with loafers on benefits or single mothers creaming off the state, no sir.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 02:47 PM

We can remember on her behalf.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Smokey.
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 02:42 PM

I have to admit she had a significant effect on my faith in the democratic process. She was a lesson to us all and deserves to be remembered for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 01:48 PM

Oh dear, mention of Thatcher doesn't half get them all going, doesn't it? ~ even unto this day!

What has always exercised me is the fact that all these great detractors, both now & at the time, continue[d] to call themselves democrats and denounce her for not being so, when she was demonstrably for many years exactly what the δεμως wanted or they just wouldn't have just gone on electing and re-electing her like that, would they? No good saying that she ignored the public will, Al & all the rest of you, when what you mean is that she ignored your will which happened not to be that of the majority. Yet I bet you will still assert your belief in 'democracy'.

Oh, well: what's the use...

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 01:44 PM

There definitely were drugs before Thatcher. I remember that some kids from one of our local Grammar schools got done for smoking purple hearts (I think I've got that right??) in a coffee bar in the city centre.

I was OK, though, because I went to a Secondary Modern!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 01:43 PM

Waste of breath Teribus!

They aren't interested in the facts, or the real reasons for the total lack of discipline and respect so prevalent in our young people today.

They just KNOW that all the ills of this sick nation must be laid at the door of one woman, who started it all happening while she was still at university, and they didn't notice anything that happened between 1959 and 1979.

The mere fact that you and I actually agree about the causes and effects ought to tell them something, but apparently not.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Smokey.
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 12:36 PM

Indeed, she was actually being kind to all those miners and all those poor sods beavering away in dirty factories making stuff we could just as easily import. Besides, if it wasn't for her, the whole of the western hemisphere would now be crushed beneath the Argentinian jackboot. Yet miraculously she never lost an ounce of her sex appeal. Gosh, we were lucky.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 10:31 AM

Before Thatcher??

Oh yes I remember that halcyon time, when everything in the land was all sweetness and light, those days when it was striking hospital porters that decided whether or not you got into hospital to have your operation and it was them who decided whether or not you could have a place in a mortuary or could be buried when you failed in their lottery for that operation. The land of three day weeks and rolling black-outs, wildcat strikes and unelected (at least by the bulk of the population) union bosses dictating to elected Governments. The IMF riding in at the eleventh hour to bail out the UK, and the country going to hell in high gear.

Of course there was drugs, both hard and soft, of course there were gangs and gang warfare before Thatcher. Never actually heard her accused of destroying unskilled and semi-skilled jobs before, but there again all our traditional heavy industries were already well down the slippery slope long before Thatcher came on the scene, she just had the decency to finally put them out of their misery as one might a horse with three broken legs.

In short she saved the bloody country.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 06:26 AM

Things were different then, most of us were just happy to be able to tune into Radio Lux under the bedclothes most nights! Yes there were rough kids and rogues back then and there were some kids who dabbled in drugs but very few and far between not on the scale as it is now the only people that we heard about were rock stars who were so remote from us and 'real' life anyway. But I remembering fearing what my school or parents would say if I did anything wrong. Young people don't seem to have that fear of anything today. I am not saying whether that is a good or a bad thing it is just very different.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 10:06 PM

I was living on planet earth, location England.

You're not facing up to the facts of what damage you colluded in doing to this country if you colluded in Thatcher's reforms by voting for her.

The beggars on the street and the hard drugs came from when we lost a lot of semi skilled and unskilled work - a huge part of our economy. Previously people who were only bothered about buying fitted carpets for the houses they could only just afford to buy or rent, were in economic free fall. Family's just disintegrated in the stress. Yes poverty had happened in the 1930's but not to a chorus of abuse from politicians and media, not with conspicuous consumerism piped into every home by means of the TV - telling you you were a failure and a bum. This is when kids started getting beaten up for not wearing the right trainers.

The hard drugs transformed the mining villages of North Notts where I was working. They had always been tough places, but they became the places where the drug dealers from Sheffield and Leeds came to make deals and do business. The only success story amog the school leavers from one school was the BMW driving drug dealer. (probably another tory!)It was the start of the gang wars.

By the time I was working in Nottingham city, the kids in classes couldn't tell you with any certainty what the name of the vehicle was that took people to hospital - but they all knew what an Uzi was.

Don't tell whart I've seen and witnessed didn't happen or it was my fevered imagination or because I'm a lefty.

A few mods and rockers on purple hearts hardly equates with the hell brew of organised crime and cultural and economic poverty that we have now.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Smokey.
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 07:14 PM

There was significantly less hard drug use in the UK prior to Thatcher's reign. "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" didn't necessarily refer specifically to hard drugs.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 06:11 PM

""Prior to Thatcher there were virtually no hard drugs, beggars on the street, and the culture of gangs, and the feeling that life in England was a chasm of poverty you can fall into and keep falling.""

Which planet were you living on in the sixties mate? Virtually no hard drugs?....Ha bloody ha!   What do you think "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" refers to then?

No gang culture?........1950s Teds v West Indians, 1960s Mods v Rockers closely followed by Hell's Angels v Anyone who "looked at them funny".

And I don't recall Maggie running the country back then.....and neither do you!

So what planet were you on?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999 Sorry again!
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 02:25 PM

"Hence 999 makes a contribution above that hopefully expresses the anger although hopefully not the solution."

You got it, SW. I agree that the law must handle it.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: gnu
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 12:59 PM

I got this by email. Pat Condell's views.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 08:43 AM

What concerns me most was the young children (7-14) who were on the streets when all this was going on.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 03:17 AM

Old Brummy Joke Warning

Mayor of Dudley to hooker: Oi'll say Oi'm impotent, Oi'm the Meer ov Dudley......!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 02:31 AM

I have said many times that a forum such as this is great for getting things off your chest and the word "cathartic" springs to mind.

Yeah, I wanted to hang the little fuckers who trashed my industrial unit a few years ago, hanging was too good for those who broke into the health centre I was on the board for, and as for the diddycoys who nicked my trailer.....

However, in the cold light of day I would want society to exact its revenge by the terms laid down in law. Anything more would of course be a success for whichever flavour of fascism you may ultimately subscribe to.

Hence 999 makes a contribution above that hopefully expresses the anger although hopefully not the solution.

Ian Mather, who in real life avoids confrontation, believe me, seems it is important to try to keep this debate in the real world and has confronted irrational anger by pointing out heartfelt feelings and honest debate don't always sit well together.

The justice dealt out after the riots has been swift and severe. My only question is that just because lots of people had their property trashed at the same time, how does this compare to an average month? Why doesn't our justice system support victims so seemingly effectively the rest of the time?

Perhaps politicians influence the judiciary after all. For God's sake don't tell the ruddy Ministers they have that power. They are much safer when impotent.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 02:02 AM

Hang the little fuckers by their John Browns.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 05:06 AM

And there hangs my point. I slipped in the step brother bit, (wholly true but totally irrelevant) to see if you were thinking rationally or not.

And you are not.

And if you killed anybody with your bare hands, we have prisons to deal with such people.

And your less than objective view is a sad consequence of the issue of drugs. Although I hold no grudge against the people (long dead now) who ran the corner shop near us and supplied my Dad with his Woodbine, they did supply him his fax after all. Even after watching him die of lung cancer, I limit myself to donating to Ash, getting involved in public health initiatives and supporting the move to drive tobacco even further from the respectable mainstream.

What I didn't do was try to make people feel inadequate on a forum such as this. It doesn't become you. I don't know what PC horse shit is, apart from where I confront it. I have a dictionary so I know what "preach" means. It is something I don't do. I do know one thing though, and this relates to the thread we are on...

Punishment is best delivered cold, by objective people who don't have emotions running high, and that is why we have judges, juries and magistrates. Justice is not delivered by those looking for blame for their own situation. (Also why politicians would best serve their electorate by limiting themselves to delivering laws in abstract rather than either interfere or try to take credit for the actions of courts.)

And I am right too.... Whether that makes two of us, well I can bow my head in acknowledgement when someone says a criminal should hang, when the person saying it is speaking from the heart and not the head, but if anybody in sober reflection feels capital punishment is a suitable tool for society, then my opinion of them drops a peg or three.

I am having a very nice day, thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 02:30 AM

As to the cap-pun question, I offer no opinion. But it is surely patent that legalisation/licensing is the obvious solution to the drugs problem. As far as drugs go, we are in a virtually identical situation to the USA re Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s-30s ~~ and everyone know where that led: to huge-scale smuggling, internecine gang-warfare for control of the illegal trade ~~ and among other things to the first, and still very rare, Amendement to the Constitution having to be introduced for the specific purpose of repealing a previous one {I think I have that right}.

Can our legislators really not see that persistence in illegalising what everybody knows that people are going to persist in doing merely perpetuates and exacerbates the resultant problems? Sensible people will admit defeat in such instances, and act to minimise the resultant abuses by taking legal control of the situation ~~ as our Licensing Acts have always done, and Prohibition so manifestly didn't.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 12:20 PM

"don't expect people to be intimidated and change their view for you."

I don't expect you to be intimidated, in fact I don't give a flying fuck what kind of PC-horse-shit you profess to believe just as long as you don't preach it at me. The simple fact is I do have the experience - it's completely different to having 'a step brother who has been in your position' - and I'd willingly kill with my bare hands the fuckers who supplied my kid, if I only knew who they were. Capital punishment would work absolutely perfectly - those pieces of shit could never re-offend.

That's my last word, and I'm right.
Have a nice day.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 12:12 PM

Sorry, that was me.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,P
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 12:11 PM

And just before any starts (again) : Only 8.9 % of those convicted on riot related charges were in employment or studying.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 11:58 AM

Here's the elephant (advisedly) in the room. These are young people wanting attention. If they were happy with their economic conditions, they wouldn't need it. There are those as mentioned above who will use this for personal high jinks but this misses the point. Overall, the purpose of these riots is to bring attention to police harassment, to highlight the unequal status of brown and black people in the UK. Beating them as was advocated above will only make matters worse and soon these activities will be exported to the US. (We've seen this movie before.)

Being punitive, narrow-minded, self-righteous and complaining will not solve the problem. The root of the problem has to do with racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 11:45 AM

Maybe so, but I am a little disturbed to see someone who comes over as rational most of the time advocating something like capital punishment for not having a licence.

I am not insulting you and am quite taken aback by your comment above. Capital punishment is insulting though. Anybody who feels it is the answer to anything has at least one subject where I cannot take them seriously. If that's insulting, I must be an insultist or whatever.

I ma not in a position to have seen my kid's life wrecked by drugs, no. Although I do have a step brother who has been in your position, and I suppose most of us know someone who has had their life wrecked by drugs. It is sadly rather widespread.

I do know what I am talking about though. Sorry but I do. I know that capital punishment is wrong, is barbaric and hasn't worked as either a deterrent or punishment. By nodding sagely and agreeing with you, I wouldn't be doing you any favours either. By talking of licensing (I agree wholeheartedly with that) and then the irrational thought of hanging people who don't have a licence isn't something I could humour you with by agreeing with you.

However "fucking awful" your experiences have been, don't expect people to be intimidated and change their view for you. My view stands. Capital punishment is barbaric and consigned to the history books in the civilised world.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 09:34 AM

You might think differently if your kid's life had been completely and irretrievably wrecked by those evil fuckers Ian. Unless you're in that position, you haven't a clue what the fuck you're talking about so, unless you are in that position, don't insult me by preaching at me about 'awful' - I know exactly what Fucking Awful is.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 08:49 AM

Ah, I can perhaps disagree with both Backwoodsman and Big Al on a couple of technicalities?

Al, riots go back as far as you like. "I'm alright Jack" predates the Th*tcher philosophy too. The timing was there for this to be seen more, but so was the advent of more reporting, more TV coverage of events, more TV channels looking to compete with The Daily Shitscarer. I will be the first to accept that the drugs scene started getting worse in the '80s, and reached pandemic proportions here about ten years after it reached that state in The USA, and about five years before it reached Germany, France etc in the same proportions. We just got to know more about it as time went on. Hence the Catholic priest scandals; always been there, only recently getting front page cover.

I'm not sure giving Th*tcher credit for changing society, good or bad, is something I would be comfortable with. Anyway, if you were to say the Keith Joseph / Nicholas Ridley philosophy, then yes, they, through their puppet exacerbated the situation but I suspect the ability to see how the rest of the world spins helped. We are not the only country with issues, and don't forget, most Scandinavian countries, with similar issues to us kept socialist governments throughout the term of her office.

What was the other thing?... Oh, that's it. Backwoodsman = come on, "they don't deal any more when the stretch they're given is a neck stretch" ???    If you look at the less civilised countries such as China, USA, Singapore and Iran, you find that drug dealers exist, yet capital punishment is on the statute books... (Also, working without a licence being a capital crime? If we were awful enough to bring it back, I would expect it to be reserved for actions you shouldn't do rather than only do with a piece of paper from a regulator.)

People don't break the law because they weigh up the consequences, they break the law because they think they can get away with it, (or, to keep Bridge quiet) because they are desperate enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 08:23 AM

"I know Backwoodsman you disagree with me. I respect your reasons"

I appreciate that Al. But you may be surprised to learn that I don't disagree. 'The War On Drugs', as waged for the past twenty or so years, has failed. Time to re-think, and there's more than one way to skin a cat. It's time to legalise.

I'd go further than legalising drus, Al. I'd legalise them and introduce licencing of the dealers. And then I'd introduce the death-penalty for un-licenced dealing. They don't deal any more when the stretch they're given is a neck-stretch.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 07:44 AM

Sanity appears to be returning in the UK.
Perhaps they've decided that if they're going to hand out draconian sentences to those implcated in the riots, they might just have to start jailing crooked politicians (chance would be a fine thing!!).
From The Times this morning.
Jim Carroll

BACKLASH AS RIOT MOTHER IS SET FREE
Lawyers expect case to spark flood of appeals
David Brown, Richard Ford

Lawyers are predicting a flood of successful appeals against "hysterical" sentencing after a mother jailed for her role in last week's riots had her prison term quashed.
A senior judge ruled that it was "wrong in principle" to jail Ursula Nevin, a mother of two, simply for receiving clothing that had been stolen
by a looter        
Judge Andrew Gilbart, the Recorder of Manchester, said Nevin had been left in a "circle of hell" after being jailed for five months, and ordered her to be released immediately. After growing concern at the sentences faced by more than 1,300 people who have appeared in court as a result of the rioting, it is the first signal that harsh punishments are set to be overturned.
Convicted rioters are being handed prison sentences that are on average 25 per cent longer than normal, an analysis of 1,000 riot-related cases has found. Lawyers and penal reformers said that Nevin's successful appeal is the start of a rebalancing of the justice system, but there are growing signs of disagreement over what constitutes appropriate punishment.
Paul Mendelle, QC, a former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: "I suspect this judgment is the start of many other successful appeals. It is the start of a rowing back from some of the more draconian sentences. I certainly hope so.
"In the magistrates' courts they seem to have got rather too caught up with some of the more extreme views that have been expressed. In the immediate aftermath, and maybe responding to political calls for tough sentences, they have gone over the top."
John Cooper, QC, a criminal barrister, agreed: "This successful appeal is in my view going to be one of many. There has been some hysterical sentences in the magistrates' courts for the last week and over the next period we will see the criminal justice system realigning itself."
Judge Gilbart's decision, however, will fuel fears among politicians that the higher courts will reduce long sentences and substitute jail terms for community punishments when cases are appealed. Patrick Mercer, Conserv¬ative MP for Newark, said: "I hope that the judicial system is going to be consistent on this and that the exemplary nature of some of the sentences is not going to be watered down when the memory of the severity of what happened begins to fade."
Mike O'Brien, QC, a former Labour Solicitor General, called for the Court of Appeal to rule on the extent by which the normal sentence for offenc¬es should be increased because of the seriousness of the disorder.
"The decision of [Judge Gilbart] seems to me to be disproportionate, too lenient, the decision of the district judge on the other hand feels too heavy. Getting the balance right is now something we need some authoritative decision from the Court of Appeal on. These events were unprecedent¬ed... this was a real threat to order in the UK and had to be dealt with severely and the courts have to do that."
Prison governors are closely monitor¬ing the jail system for potential unrest after the total population hit a record high of 86,654 following the courts' decision to remand in custody hundreds charged with rioting and looting.
Governors have been urged to ensure the safety of inmates imprisoned for the first time after three offenders, who were all on remand in connection with last week's violence and looting, were assaulted at Cookham Wood young offenders', institution in Rochester, Kent. Two needed treatment in hospital but the prison service said that the trouble was not "riot related".
The number of inmates has increased by 723 over the past week and officials are making contingency plans to send more people to Isis jail, a new establishment in Woolwich, and to bring forward the opening of a newly refurbished cell block at Lewes prison.
Nevin, 24, was jailed at a magistrates court after admitting keeping a pair of shorts her lodger had stolen during rioting in Manchester.
The mother of two children, aged one and five, had wailed in disbelief when she was sentenced by District Judge Khalid Qureshi at Manchester Magistrates' Court on Friday last week.
Judge Qureshi told Nevin: "You had more than one opportunity to tell these individuals who brought this stuff into your house not to."
However, Judge Gilbart, Manchester's most senior judge, overturned the jail sentence at the city's Crown Court, saying it was "wrong to send her to prison" when she did not go into the streets to take part in looting.
"Ursula Nevin didn't go into the city centre. I regard it as wrong in principle that she was made the subject of a custodial sentence," he told the court.
"You must have found yourself in the course of the last week what seemed like a circle of hell. The way to never get in that situation again is to show the courage to say no. I'm sure the courts will never be troubled with you again. Leave now and go look after your children,"
Judge Gilbart's decision came as David Cameron said rioters and looters given "exemplary sentences" are entitled to a "second chance".
"I'm an optimist. I'm a believer in giving people second chances in life. I don't think anyone is totally lost," he said.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 07:35 AM

Hhhhmmm!

I agree that the rioters shouldn't be allowed to get away with their crimes against their neighbours and fellow citizens - but the sentencing policy seems to be getting more and more dodgy. It would appear that the silly little gits in the North West who tried (and failed) to instigate riots on Facebook are getting the same sort of sentence as rapists. The more I look at these sentences the more it re-inforces my perception that crimes against property are treated more severely than crimes against people (it was, of course, ever thus).

Cameroon says that 'society is sick' (I have news for him - it isn't where I live!) and Millipede says it all comes down to the ever-widening gulf between rich and poor. My money is on the latter - although neither of them will sort it out because they're both 'slaves' of the rich and are only there to help the rich get richer. The days when we elected politicians, and expected them to work for the good of society as a whole, are long gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 05:55 AM

no future in looking back. Even the tories have abandoned the wild excesses of the Thatcher era.

I agree in some ways she was the originator of that sort of toryism where evryone who wasn't on fifty grand a year was a workshy loser who refused to get on their bike and look for work - having skillfully removed all the manufacturing industry , so there was no work for many folk.

However her legacy is everywhere. look at the number of people saying the cuts have nothing to do with the riots - when they aren't living in the strata of society affected by the cuts most directly. Prior to Thatcher there were virtually no hard drugs, beggars on the street, and the culture of gangs, and the feeling that life in England was a chasm of poverty you can fall into and keep falling. Those are the wounds that she and her army of Daily Mail readers inflicted on England. I could see no patriotism in that. no love of country.

We can't undo the past. What we can do is try to protect our children from gang culture. Legalise drugs to cut the ground from under the feet of the gangsters and their culture. Medicalise the addict, rather than have them on the street needing to steal to score.

I can't help thinking we should call to account some of the artists who glorified the gangster drug dealers - as well as Thatcher's crew.

I know Backwoodsman you disagree with me. I respect your reasons.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 05:21 AM

Still waiting to hear in the news confirmation that the police have used rubber bullets and fire hoses on Thatcher who was the ringleader of the riots.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:50 PM

and Eddie Brimson, stand up comedian is another of his kids. greg Brimson who produced the Levellers big album - another offspring of the great man.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Smokey.
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:15 PM

Yeh Brimson is Derek's proper name. Its Derek's kid.

Never knew that - thanks, Al.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 09:31 AM

Greetings from Singapore where the authorities are puzzled by the events in UK and the inmates of this Disneyland with the death sentence wonder if The UK could learn a thing or two.

Perhaps not.

Coming home tomorrow having emptied a few piss pots. Hope there are some buildings left in London. The press here see no difference between the landscape in Tottenham and the landscape in downtown Baghdad.

Of course, the reality will be the UK I left a few weeks ago will be the UK I return to and some new reality TV series will keep the little darlings off the streets for a while.

Punishment? Make them sit in a room whilst M'Unlearned Friend and Jim Carroll debate the impact of the 1954 folk definition.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Penny S.
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 03:57 AM

I know that tax relief on the rich has been around as an issue for a while, but choosing this moment for reminding us seems a bit thick. Funny how you can go to Oxford and still give that impression.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 03:46 AM

Yeh Brimson is Derek's proper name. Its Derek's kid.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:59 AM

Only if you enjoy being robbed.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:26 AM

That's fair enough then.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 10:24 PM

Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford university quotes former Tory MP Jerry Hayes:

"He (Hayes) remembers that when he entered the Commons in 1983 MPs' salaries were inadequate at £14,510 a year. Margaret Thatcher, he recalls, ordered an independent review that recommended rises that would make even Jacqui Smith blush. But that would have enraged voters. So Mrs Thatcher rejected it. MPs were furious. To appease them, they were encouraged to supplement their salaries through the expenses system. Recompense would replace remuneration. "

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Smokey.
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 09:06 PM

That's Dougie Brimson - not Brimstone, but you're dead right about Derek. Greatly undervalued.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:07 PM

Interestingly enough ITV4 have bottled out of showing Green Street tonight - the film Derek Brimstone's lad made about football hooliganism.

Brimstone should have been THE major talent that England produced from the folk revival. If you've spent forty years snuffling about the folkscene pretending that its all got to do with the woes and waverings of the long dead I suppose the london riots will be off your radar. An alien form - not worth understanding.

Somehow I feel sure Derek would have had a joke and a song (probably a traditional one) humanising and explaining what we were seeing. A true folksinger.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:06 PM

"The current annual salary for an MP is £65,738. In addition, MPs receive allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, having somewhere to live in London and in their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency.

Who sets the levels of MPs' pay and expenses?

On 24 May 2011, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was made responsible for determining MPs' pay and setting the level of any increase in their salary. Since the 2010 General Election IPSA has also been responsible for the regulation and payment of expenses to Members of the House of Commons.

Members' expenses for both Houses

Allowances by MP

In June 2009 more than a million documents and receipts were made available to the public online. These related to MPs' claims dating back to 2004/05 and up to 2007/08. These pages have been updated to include information about claims made for costs incurred when staying away from the MPs' main home in 2008/09 and the first quarter of 2009/10.

Expenses by MP

The IPSA website also includes a searchable database of MPs' expenses on their website. Records of expenses date from 2010/11 onwards.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority"

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:00 PM

""Rules created by guess who to provide "bunce" for MPs because even she knew the electorate would not stand for a massive pay increase for MPs. Really Bozo, you surely know that.""

You really need surgery for that chip on your shoulder Richard. You of all people should know that the prime minister of the day doesn't personally decide MPs' wages.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:50 PM

Ah, Penny, Osborne has been on that a while and it looks as if it might rip the coalition up the middle. At least I hope it will. The public schoolboys of course like something ripping them up the middle.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Penny S.
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:44 PM

This is the moment Osborne, he of the Bullingdon Club, has suggested reviewing the top level of tax.

Osborne's plan.


Bullingdon excesses.

Do you suppose being overtly nice to the rich is a direct punishment to us oiks for having a sense of entitlement to emulating our betters?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:34 PM

PS - having recommended a massive salary increase for MPs and stayed with "flexible" expenses rules, she then tried to cover her tracks by warning that some MPs could get caught. Cunning, conniving wossname.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:31 PM

"I rather think that description better suits the ones who are screaming for blood here - don't you think?
Jim Carroll"

What Jim, never heard of 'happy slapping'?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:19 PM

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/maguire/2009/05/13/expenses-row-house-of-cards-has-collapsed-now-for-a-new-deal-115875-21354914/

More.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:16 PM

Bozo - a small start

http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=blame-thatcher-for-this&method=full&objectid=21346871&siteid=93463-name_page.html

Now you do some homework.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:46 PM

Rioting is its own punishment...

Rioting-the unbeatable high
Adrenalin shoots your nerves to the sky
Everyone knows this town is gonna blow
And it's all gonna blow right now:.

Now you can smash all the windows that you want
All you really need are some friends and a rock
Throwing a brick never felt so damn good
Smash more glass
Scream with a laugh
And wallow with the crowds
Watch them kicking peoples' ass

But you get to the place
Where the real slavedrivers live
It's walled off by the riot squad
Aiming guns right at your head
So you turn right around
And play right into their hands
And set your own neighbourhood
Burning to the ground instead

[Chorus]
Riot-the unbeatable high
Riot-shoots your nerves to the sky
Riot-playing into their hands
Tomorrow you're homeless
Tonight it's a blast

Get your kicks in quick
They're callin' the national guard
Now could be your only chance
To torch a police car

Climb the roof, kick the siren in
And jump and yelp for joy
Quickly-dive back in the crowd
Slip away, now don't get caught

Let's loot the spiffy hi-fi store
Grab as much as you can hold
Pray your full arms don't fall off
Here comes the owner with a gun

[Chorus]

The barricades spring up from nowhere
Cops in helmets line the lines
Shotguns prod into your bellies
The trigger fingers want an excuse
Now

The raging mob has lost its nerve
There's more of us but who goes first
No one dares to cross the line
The cops know that they've won

It's all over but not quite
The pigs have just begun to fight
They club your heads, kick your teeth
Police can riot all that they please

[Chorus]

Tomorrow you're homeless
Tonight it's a blast

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:28 PM

"Mmm, I think these folk who went out on the town and had a riotous ball of misrule, would probably be the exact same folk in another once upon a time who thronged the streets to witness a public hanging as 'entertainment'."
I rather think that description better suits the ones who are screaming for blood here - don't you think?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:18 PM

Here's a better version of the above song.

Riot

Yes, I read about the millionaire's daughter. That's funny. Daddy gives her everything she wants but I guess it wasn't enough.

Another was some kind of athlete who had his or her photo taken with the mayor of London and all this stuff but now BUSTED!!!

Well, I guess if you're going to destroy your credibility, you may as well get a free flat screen and droid phone out of the deal.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:15 PM

LOL livelylass, they could also be condemned to attend old people's bingo and reruns of 'Antiques Roadshow'. In fact, we could devise an entire punishment programme for them. What about sequence ballroom dancing, wearing eighties fashions? Listening to Thatcher speeches ("Where there is despair...") 'Singing Together' sessions? Retro Looting lessons?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: michaelr
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:11 PM

Sorry, that sould be "income INequality".

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:11 PM

Tonight it's a blast

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: michaelr
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:09 PM

From an AP article in my local newspaper (a NY Times affiliate), dated August 11:

Britain has one of the highest violent crime rates of 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... There's income equality, extemely 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... 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 austerity measures also will slash housing benefit payments used to subsidize rents for the low-paid, threatening to price tens of thousands of poor families our of their homes...

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.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:08 PM

Mmm, I think these folk who went out on the town and had a riotous ball of misrule, would probably be the exact same folk in another once upon a time who thronged the streets to witness a public hanging as 'entertainment'. Bread & circuses they say.. We all need to get our kicks someplace I guess, though the better educated you are arguably the more 'refined' (or discreet) your kicks become.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:50 PM

"Rules created by guess who to provide "bunce" for MPs because even she knew the electorate would not stand for a massive pay increase for MPs. Really Bozo, you surely know that."

Prove it - in any case labour had 13 years to repeal and they did not!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:40 PM

"Jim, do you automatically assume that I am? "
Sorry Shimrod, I was not having a pop; just underlining what you had to say with what I thought was irony.
I have no sympathy at all for the rioters; I believe them to be part of the rotten world that has been created by our system, just the reverse side of the same coin - looting shops or looting the public purse, one no better than the other.
They do have a certain grim enetertainment value though in the way they have managd to draw middle England out of their cotton-wool wrapping in such numbers in their in their "hang-em-and-flog-em" uniforms.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:20 PM

If you can think of a way in which these feral, rich scum can be adequately punished (in the real world) I hope that you'll let us know.

Stick them in the same cells, but with much longer sentences to serve, proportionate to the damage they caused to us all.

Nothing unreal about that, apart from the fact that the laws are made by their friends.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:16 PM

'I suspect that this all happened just because it was found that social networking media could negate normal police protection.
No need for social and/or political explanations.
They did it because they could.'

Very puzzling though, some of them seem to have come from very nice homes. I mean we all use the internet, but none of us were out pillaging.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:06 PM

Rules created by guess who to provide "bunce" for MPs because even she knew the electorate would not stand for a massive pay increase for MPs. Really Bozo, you surely know that.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:39 PM

I agree that a number of MPs flouted the expenses rules - but the majority claimed in accordance with rules condoned by your beloved labour party in all their 13 years of hideous government.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:38 PM

Haha! Quite so, our poor old looters will be locked into the circle where there's no massive flat screen TV, in fact they won't even be able to watch their neighbors on Jeremy Kyle at all anymore, 'cos there's NO TV, only R4 wittering endlessly on via a natty 'retro' stylee radio, with educational programming, appalling 'dramas' with bad accents and maybe the Archers if their lucky, 24/7. If they've been REALLY bad then it's non-stop Opera on R3, but that's only for really hardened "ironic punishment" cases.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:21 PM

Yes I suspect there is a subsection of hell, furnished by the Innovations catalogue.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:13 PM

""the rioters showed no understanding and compassion for the people adversely affected by their crimes."

Unlike the politicians and bankers who are the soul of compassion."

By condemning the rioters I am certainly not, in any way, supporting politicians and bankers - and why, Jim, do you automatically assume that I am? The latter have certainly set a very bad example and are, almost certainly, largely responsible for creating the 'greed-is-good' zeitgeist. They, too, have got off lightly (but the rich and powerful always do). If you can think of a way in which these feral, rich scum can be adequately punished (in the real world) I hope that you'll let us know.

Nevertheless, in spite of the relative unfairness and disparity, threatening your neighbour's lives and livelihoods with fire and violence cannot be condoned or encouraged under any circumstances.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:59 PM

Oh! And don't get me started on the bliddy RT readers offers supplement! Aaargh...

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:54 PM

Excuse interjection, not allowed to post a GUEST thread in BS, but I noted quite a lot of sneering focus on the type of shops looted in the riots - places like JJB Sports, Footlocker, Mobile Phone stores and so-on, to add a piquancy to this, some commentators pointedly noted that shops like Waterstones remained unmolested.

As something of a counterpoint however, it just made me smile on perusing the Reader's Offers in the Guardian today at just how terrifyingly beige all their tat is. While I do peruse the Guardian online, if (for the sake of argument) I were on a looting spree frankly I wouldn't be seen dead looting the kinds of gear which seemingly represent prime 'objects of desire' for it's general readership..

Who knows, maybe I'm a Chav at heart, but I'd probably rather have a decent pair of trainers than an All-weather Patio Awning.. Eh oh ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:54 PM

The Pure & Simple Criminals first CD "Light Fingered Scum", featuring the smash (and grab) hit single "Shoot, Don't Talk", © 2011 No Law Music (may not be reproduced under penalty of Reginald "Knuckles" Dwight, Pansy "Snarkles" Pinkpantz and Timmie "Torch" Wayheyah)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:49 PM

Is there anyone who is NOT angry about the financial meltdown?

And if there is, when is the white padded van coming to pick them up?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:45 PM

There is the legendary New Addington of course, although many of the council houses are now privately owned - a good deal was had by the tenants, who I believe make their mortgage payments in cash - I wonder why?????

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:30 PM

Funny, the post eater is at it again.

There are plenty of not nice estates around Croydon. I suppose some people just don't ever go there.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:18 PM

Great name for a band

The Pure and Simple Criminals

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:38 AM

Backstreet?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 09:13 AM

You obviously haven't been in the backstreet, Bozo

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:47 AM

"If you're gonna shoot, shoot. Don't talk!"

Same movie.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:36 AM

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig"

The Good The Bad & the Ugly - oh so true!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:31 AM

"Funny it mostly took place in deprived districts then."

I would not call Croydon a deprived district!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:21 AM

There's no border-control keeping the well-off out of poor areas.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:21 AM

And now we are hearing that an already stretched government will have to find over 250 million pounds to pay for policing, building/stock compensation and personal injury claims. I imagine it will come from the overseas aid budget as it is the only thing that isn't currently facing cuts.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:20 AM

PS - I find the Blues extremely boring, and frankly pretty ball-aching.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:19 AM

Funny it mostly took place in deprived districts then.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:05 AM

The distinct impression coming over in the reports is that the festival of rioting and looting we have just been witness to had absolutley nothing to do with race, colour, creed, social conditions, unemployment, despair, poverty or government policy (implemented or not). It was criminal pure and simple.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:48 AM

"light fingered scum"
Pity they're not black or Asian, then you could throw in towel head, nigger or wog and give you a full house.
Keep it coming Bluesman - makes the rioting and looting just that much more understandable.
"the rioters showed no understanding and compassion for the people adversely affected by their crimes."
Unlike the politicians and bankers who are the soul of compassion.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:33 AM

Do the world a favour GUEST Bluesman.

Go and raffle youself.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:18 AM

"If all you barrack room politicians think that you can do better than our elected MPs then put your names forward!!!" - Bonzo3Legs

That I am afraid would be a very long list indeed.

Had you made that statement about thirty or forty years ago it would be pretty short.

Unfortunately today the western world's democracies are "plagued" by "professional" politicians who outside of their own political party have never held a real job in their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:13 AM

Ahhhhh, that all sounds so sweet Don. I can never really understand your U turns here though. One day you are throwing your rattle out of the pram, next day you are blowing smoke up someones ass. Must be one of those post jam tart things.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:12 AM

""Erm......was this premonition informed by the teddy boys, mods and rockers, skinheads, hells angels,""

Yes I was aware of the activities:-

Teds v West Indian immigrants
Mods v Rockers
Skinheads v Anybody Dark skinned (predominantly Asians)
Hells Angels v Anybody who looked at them funny

The point is it's a non sequitur, since (although there was some damage to property, largely accidental) they were all busily engaged in kicking seven barrels of pus out of each other.

In general terms, and of course with some exceptions, outside of the two warring groups in each era the general public was not targetted.

That is the major difference. This week's riots were carried out with the intention to steal with impunity, by terrorising the public and creating havoc.

But the operative word, in spite of all the woolly minded guff about deprivation, was "STEAL"!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:58 AM

""If Don makes a statement about Richard, I'd be inclined to believe it if I were you. Unless you have actual, documented proof of what you claim, I'd be inclined to drop it.""

I'll second that, since that ""opinion"" is nothing of the sort. It is not for me to produce the evidence which would blow you out of the water (GUESTBluesman, or whichever other IDs you hide behind). It is Richard Bridge's prerogative to make that decision, and he is not noted for self aggrandisement, either professionally or musically, competent though he is in both areas.

I suspect you cannot say the same, so why don't you go and play, so the adults can get on with sensible discussion.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:51 AM

"I was also interested to hear of Wandsworth (my home for 20 years) Council's efforts to evict the family of a looter from their home in revenge for the looting at Clapham Junction - echoes much of the middle-class mindlessness to be found in abundance on this thread. "

Maybe you could take then in ? I heard fields can be bought cheap at the moment in out and out Ireland. Any next to your home ? They could share one with the travelling light fingered scum, next to the field full of anti Sinn Fein republicans, think of the fun you would have !

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:31 AM

I've been a wild rover for many a year
But now I'm on mudcat with verbal diarrhoea

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:21 AM

Apologies for inaccuracy.

I have just realised that those figures were in fact 83% adult, 17% under 18.

Not that the difference invalidates anything, but in the interests of truth......

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 05:02 AM

If all you barrack room politicians think that you can do better than our elected MPs then put your names forward!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:57 AM

"Dont you realise that people are getting angry? " ===

No, I don't, Ake. Not in the case of these people who opportunistically took the opportunity to riot, because it's fun, & loot, because they could and the stuff was there, on the coat-tails of a silent demo in protest at what some [tho by no means all] perceived as a heavy-handed police action against a known criminal believed [rightly] to be armed. The eventual violence was, at best and if at all, most tenuously connected to this; or to any 'anger' at their lot on the part of the designer-clothed, BlackBerry-toting mob, whose astounding demographic has been much rehearsed above.

It's comments like yours here, I fear, which make me angry. I mean, look-ee, Ake: JIM SAYS HE AGREES WITH YOU ~~ think on!

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:46 AM

Guardian reporting friction between police chiefs and politicians. I thought Hugh Orde was pissed off in that BBC interview 'tother day! Beeb didn't repeat any of *that* interview later as evidently it didn't suit their brown-nosing agenda with Cameron, but continued to repeat the exact same inaccuracies they'd previously been reporting, which Orde had firmly (and irritatedly) corrected in interview. ie: that Cameron had organised an emergency meeting to sort it all out and had "authorised" stronger tactics like the use of water cannon and rubber bullets. All of which was clearly bullshit spin on the truth of the matter which was that once Cameron eventually got back from his holiday, Orde in fact "briefed" Cameron on strategies that Orde and other chief officers had already begun to implement..

Specifically, I think the police are not merely annoyed at being publicly criticised for "timid" policing by the Tories, but also at political attempts to usurp public glory for subsequent stronger tactics:

"Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, described the role of the politicians as "an irrelevance", pointing out that by Monday the police had decided to mobilise huge numbers of officers in London.
He said he briefed Cameron about the decision after the prime minister returned from holiday on Tuesday morning. Derek Barnett, president of the Police Chief Superintendents' Association, also said the return of the politicians did not make any difference.
"The decisions to deploy police officers in large numbers was made well in advance of politicians becoming involved," he said, adding that the point of politicians returning from holiday was only to give "a sense that there is now someone back in charge of the country and offering political leadership".
Asked about claims by Cameron that policing had been too timid, Godwin said: "I think, after any event like this, people will always make comments who weren't there."
He insisted that the changes in tactics and police numbers were due to commanders, not politicians. "I think the issue around the numbers, the issue around the tactics – they are all police decisions and they are all made by my police commanders and myself."
Political sources described Orde as incandescent with Tory attempts to take credit for toughening the police line, adding that it underlined his fear that government plans for elected commissioners will politicise the police."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/12/police-revolt-cameron-reform-agenda

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:42 AM

"Punishment is too easy a band aid for a wound. Try a little human understanding
and compassion for those who have been left out."

It seems to me that some form of punishment is the ONLY response to such heinous crimes. It would appear that the rioters committed their crimes because they thought that the worse they could expect, if caught, was a 'slap on the wrist'. I saw one (very young) rioter interviewed on TV who said: "What are they going to do to me? Give me an ASBO (Anti-social Behaviour Order)?" If they are not adequately punished then there is an increased likelihood of future riots.

We should also remember that the rioters showed no understanding and compassion for the people adversely affected by their crimes. Even if a person is 'disadvantaged' (arguable in this case) it doesn't exempt them from showing empathy for other members of their community.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:29 AM

I find myself much in agreement with Ake here - not a little surprisingly.
One of the interesting interviews of the week was with a young Salford woman who hadn't taken part in the rioting, but explained quite articulately how, if she found somebody's lost mobile phone she would take the trouble to try to return it, but she didn't see any great problem in helping herself to goods being looted from a large department store - "If they can do it to us, why can't we do it to them?"
I was also interested to hear of Wandsworth (my home for 20 years) Council's efforts to evict the family of a looter from their home in revenge for the looting at Clapham Junction - echoes much of the middle-class mindlessness to be found in abundance on this thread.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:28 AM

Richard, the same thing happened years ago when TV broadcasters were ' encouraged ' not to show footage of football hooliganism.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:28 AM

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/cameron-handled-riots-well-112716293.html

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 04:18 AM

It is being rumoured that pressure is being put on newspapers not to report disturbances that are actually happening. That would strike me as an unhealthy precedent.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:25 AM

"liberal" Fascism of course......so thats all right then!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:18 AM

It is simply a symptom of society in decay!

The real looters were those who contributed to the economic meltdown, and I include most stratas of society in that.

The bankers, the financiers, the successive governments who wanted growth at any cost, and the bottom feeders...the consumers.

As retribution, the middle and lower orders see public services and wages being cut, inflation rising etc,while those at the top of the "democratic" shit heap are unaffected.

Dont you realise that people are getting angry? When they are angry they do desperate, sometimes stupid things.

There is no easy or painless answer to changing a socio/ political system, but change we must, for there is nothing else here but the road to Fascism.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:52 AM

Bluesman, Don(Wysiwyg)T and I have had a number of bitter disagreements in the past, some very bitter indeed as we are diametrically opposed politically, but I've found him to be an honest, deep-thinking man who is prepared to debate robustly, yet remain the friend of those who disagree with him.

In short, he's a speaker of the truth. If 'truth' is subject to opinion or interpretation, then he speaks the truth as he truly believes it. Nothing more can be asked of anyone than that.

If Don makes a statement about Richard, I'd be inclined to believe it if I were you. Unless you have actual, documented proof of what you claim, I'd be inclined to drop it.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:43 AM

"Can you play candyman like Rambling Jack?"

Wish I could.

"Attend to the important things."

I'm trying Al, however me brain says "Yes", but me old fingers say "Fuck off".

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:24 PM

I think we're all of age. 20 years we'll be dead/ Who cares what happens - who knows they may have stumbled upon the right thing to do.

they can give the rioters the Duke of Edinburgh's award for enterprise. Boil them up for glue. I don't care. neither do you.

Get a grip! Can you play candyman like Rambling Jack? Attend to the important things.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:38 PM

I think the idea started with Star Trek. Or it might have been Lord of the Flies.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Frug
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:16 PM

"As far back as 1969 I predicted that we would see feral bands of youths on the streets of the UK.

Behold! The prophecy fulfilled!"

Erm......was this premonition informed by the teddy boys, mods and rockers, skinheads, hells angels,

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:32 PM

Thanks Don, that confirms what I said, not fact, but an opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:21 PM

Even Dr Spock himself, just a few years ago admitted that he got it wrong, the understatement of the last four decades.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:17 PM

""The public debate is now starting to turn to WHY these events happened, not whether the individual events were right or wrong.

Maybe we should think about it.""

I have been trying for the whole of this week to point out that these crimes were not the result of deprivation and poverty.

And today's revelation that 87% of those so far dealt with in court are adults, the majority in work, and only 17% under the age of eighteen does tend to destroy the image of frustrated youngsters rioting because they have no jobs and no future.

What they actually lack is discipline, ambition, conscience, self respect and energy.

With a tiny minority of exceptions, the actions we have seen this week have been an exhibition of greed, criminality and destructive violence.

In spite of the Media attempts to blame it on "Society and Government", every new piece of evidence tends to strengthen the likelihood that we are dealing with feral criminals, the direct result of the freedom from discipline of their grand parents which led to a lack of respect growing worse with each generation.

I really did predict this back in the sixties, which my wife will confirm if asked.

It is a no brainer that if you don't discipline children they will not grow into self disciplined adults, nor will they discipline their offspring or in fact allow anybody else to do so, and Hey Presto, 2011, the year of riots and looting, when those Dr Spock chickens come home to roost.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:54 PM

Bluesman, your comments are tantamount to an accusation of lying which I bitterly resent.

My comments were not opinion but FACT, for which I am under no obligation to supply evidence at your demand.

I think it rather admirable that even in the face of your slanderous debasing of someone of whom you know only what you mistakenly infer from posts on an internet forum, that person chose not to give you the response you deserved.

It was left to me to inform you, which I did.

It is of no import whether you choose to believe or not, as your refusal to believe the truth says more about you than about Richard or myself.

Enjoy your petty, malicious, sniping. It's all apparently that you have since nothing that you post adds anything of worth to a discussion.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:22 PM

What is a fact and what is an opinion differ greatly. Evidence can be a help in any situation. A fact is an irrefutable statement, such as, "check this link to local court services for history of a case he won" or "the link is to a paper of his a university used for law students" or "the website removed the photographs thanks to him as he proved to them beyond doubt the individual owned the copyright". A fact cannot be disputed, as it refers to that which has already been proven. An opinion, on the other hand, is any statement that has been made, based on "feelings", "likes or dislikes", or "one's preferences", so therefore, opinions can vary widely and can be disputed and are not irrefutable. That "he said he was accomplished so I believe him" - is not a fact, but an opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:45 PM

That's why I like both you guys (Don and Richard). Well said, both.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:20 PM

Thank you for your earlier comments Don.

The public debate is now starting to turn to WHY these events happened, not whether the individual events were right or wrong.

Maybe we should think about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:49 PM

""Punishment is too easy a band aid for a wound. Try a little human understanding
and compassion for those who have been left out.""

Have you not seen the cross section of the population being tried for these offences? Ages range from 11 to one man of 47 and all ethnic origins are represented.

A person who is deprived, and in need will steal what he needs, and he deserves your compassion.

If he is stealing plasma TVs and computers, while wearing designer clothes worth about three times my annual clothing expenditure, I would say that your commpassion is both misguided and wasted.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:37 PM

"It's the syme the whole world over. H'its the poor wot gits the blyme.
And the rich 'as all the mon-ey, Now ain't that a blinkin' shyme."

Punishment is too easy a band aid for a wound. Try a little human understanding
and compassion for those who have been left out.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:30 PM

""but I do care that most of the time you are actively on the side of the oppressors (at least in argument here) and every so often you say something that looks as if you have a social conscience.""

I know that can be confusing Richard, which may be because the rest of us are not quite as rabidly adherent to an extremely narrow viewpoint, and do occasionally see the truths, however small, in an opponents comment.

Incidentally folks, it is wrong to assume, or assert, that Richard is either a failed or a comparatively unknown lawyer, much less a clerk.

He is, in spite of our irreconcilable political enmity, a personal friend of mine (and a damn good one), and I can confirm that he is a well known and well respected solicitor, specialising in copyright law.

And if any of you musicians ever have to litigate in that arena, you will be damn lucky if you walk into court with him at your side.

Even barristers don't like to face him and the fact that he is not a barrister is his personal choice.

Just to set the record straight.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: andrew e
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:09 PM

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:52 PM

Excellent punishments being handed out, and many more to come in the Crown Courts, measured in years I'd wager.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:15 PM

I fear you are right, Jim, but they don't want to.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:06 PM

"YES "
Then it's no wonder ethnic and cultural minorities take to the streets when the opportunity arises.
After thirty years of constant contact with Travellers, we never at any time encountered violence or hostility from anybody we met.
We considered ourselves lucky enough to count a number of Travellers among our closest friends.
I suggest you examine your own attitude if you are serious about understaning why Tottenham, Brixton and Notting Hill happened.
Thanks for the example.
Jm Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:05 PM

""I guess Don I did not explain my thoughts very well. In fact i just wrote the original post in haste and anger. I came from an area where boys (Girls were not accepted as yet in the forces.) if lucky finished school. Those that didn't found it very hard to find a job. A good number turned to the forces.""

Believe me Beer, I understand your POV completely.

However, while the army will accept and train any youth who has the necessary physique, and is willing to learn, what they don't want is to be burdened with recalcitrant conscripts and disaffected dropouts.

The situation with regard to those who, as you put it "turn to the army", in other words volunteer, is the same as it ever was, but Political Correctness, and the reaction to a number of NCOs who went too far means that they are hardly permitted to raise their voices to recruits.

So the methods by which they knocked (literally) young tearaways into shape are no longer useable.

As to blaming parents, I agree that parents aren't up to scratch in many cases and just don't care in almost as many more, but the parents really to blame are those of the 1960s who espoused the lunacy of Dr Spock.

It is they who injected the rot and it has festered ever since.

As far back as 1969 I predicted that we would see feral bands of youths on the streets of the UK.

Behold! The prophecy fulfilled!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:07 PM

I don't recall seeing any reports of gypos being involved in the riots.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 02:13 PM

YES

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:48 PM

"
Indeed Jim, very nice people they are too."
Nice bit of cultural stereoyping there Bluesman - do you really believe all Travellers are like that?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:46 PM

Do any of you connosieurs know somewhere I can get Oban whisky - cheaper - best price I've seen online is 34.40.

Bill Howard has made me a banjo and I want to reward him with his favourite tipple. Seen some mad prices for Oban!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:15 PM

No, although when I do express a view, it confuses you.

You are the one who thinks my views must reflect my socio economic class, (not that I've got one to my mind, but there you go.)

You like Rumpole of the Volvo? I prefer M'Unlearned Friend, but my actual friend uses that, and when he returns to The UK he might want to use it. Now, who was it who shouted Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! whenever you joined in a thread? That made me chuckle too.

Presumably, this thread may have reached its end then,

Tatty bye.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 12:18 PM

Interesting, Bluesman, just whose lines from the past you seem to be copying. It tells us what you really are.

Jeri, in the best tradition of nicknaming, "Mither" (which is a Scottish term for whining or moaning) is Mather. Previous attempts at me are feeble, but "Rumpole of the Volvo" is quite good. I hereby adopt it and will get it put on at least one Volvo numberplate. "FFS" ("Fugitive from Sanity") is GFS. Maybe we should have a thread on it like the Mudcat spoof thread titles tradition.

You will hardly ever find a solicitor who will tell you that most litigation turns on the merits of the case. Most will tell you of "the risks of litigation", particularly since the Woolf reforms buggered up any idea of actually trying to apply the rules and get to the bottom of the facts or law.   Some will tell you that their brilliance may enable them to put one over by bending the rules and since the rules are not now properly enforced they may have a point. Another factor is that clients lie to their own lawyers which makes predicting the outcome very hard.   

Mither - your own words again "You seem to think that having a bob or two gives you a certain political view"

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: SINSULL
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 11:47 AM

Just read a story in this AM's news about who the rioters are. Frankly, I was astonished. One woman is a nurse with a 6 month old who left her baby unattended to steal a TV. Another gem - an 11 year old girl who joined her friends in the rampage (pretty, white and middle class) and refused to express any remorse to the judge. Yet another - the daughter of a multi-millionaire. She was arrested with a carload of stolen goods. Another girl, a dancer, was turned in by her mother who saw her picture on TV. There were more than a few criminal types with records an arm long. But the number of adults with good jobs and decent homes astonished me. A college student stole $5 worth of bottled water WTF?????

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:37 AM

Indeed Jim, very nice people they are too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14503686

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:06 AM

"The police, Jim, have a very thin tightrope to walk and being human may sometimes react excessively."
Sorry Richard, should have made it clear.
While I believe (know, from some degree of experience) that some of the police can act aggressively - (take a trip to the Notting Hill Carnival some day), in the main, the zero-tolerance policy coming from the top creates much of the tension.
The stop-and-search incidents I have actually witnessed, particularly in the Brixton area, are prime examples of this.
The people on the receiving end, appear to be, and quite often are, treated as "the enemy".
It came as no surprise to me that the first outbreak of trouble outside of Tottenham, on this occasion was reported to have started following a heavy-handed S&S in Brixton.
We got several first-hand tastes of these S&Ss in East London, when we were working with Travellers, where we were automatically assumed to be guilty of something "by association".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:05 AM

It still amazes me why so many of you continue to answer Bridge here. He never made it in the legal profession so stop feeding his fantasy that he was anything more than a clerk. Anyone else notice how he loves to drop names. I doubt anyone in the profession even knows him. A legend in his own lunchtime. A good rub down with a bar of Lifebouy would answer him better.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:01 AM

Teribus,

I was a firefighter for a good number of years. I've seen firefighters risking their lives to check out burning buildings to ensure no one is trapped or unconscious. Yeah, we wore the gear, but even that doesn't help much when the temperature is over 900/950 degrees F. Hell, we cook food at 350. On occasions when we've found out it was arson, trust me when I say that our concern for that particular fire starter does not have our cups of love overflowing. And when some damned judge gives the guy a few years, we have most of us wondered wtf we're doing the job for. I too share the intent of your remarks about Mr Bowes. For people who have never felt shame, they should in this case. Lots of it.

Keep well.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:47 AM

Funny Bridge, you built up your absurd opinion of me based on my shares in BSkyB as I recall, and literally accused me of having a bob or two. I know nothing of the founders of Guinness Book of Records apart from they seemed to have political opinions that were as far to the right as yours seem to be to the left.

The sequestration case funding? No idea if they were involved. A bit of a bugger of they were but justice is served on the merits of case, or so solicitors keep telling me. The NUM funding of their case came from, if memory serves me correctly, the meeting the NUM chief executive had in a tent with Gaddiffi.

Jeri, I don't know either, but I just keep answering for him when Rumpole of the Volvo shuffles his papers and walks towards the dock.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:34 AM

Richard, who is "Mither"?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:34 AM

McSween's are very nice - had one or two of those. I like the B&S idea, must do that!

Enjoy the Laphroaig (Grumble, mutter, grrmmmpphh.......!!)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:34 AM

To all those wittering on about deprivation, poverty, frustration, Government cuts that haven't even been introduced yet, poverty traps and sink estates.

Have you had a look at a cross-section of over a thousand "looters" have been arrested in London alone and over half of them have already appeared before the courts. This morning on BBC News one of their reporters, reporting from outside the court-house, was asked if there was any discernible "profile" of the "looters" - His reply was quite astonishing - "None whatsoever, those who have appeared so far range in age from 11 to their mid-thirties and appear to come from all walks of life and from the full range of society" - So where are all these poor deprived souls then?? Or should we just face up to facts? What we have witnessed over the past few days has got nothing whatsoever to do with politics, yet to be introduced cuts (as suggested by Ken Livingstone) or social condition, what we witnessed was mass lawlessness, theft and criminal damage on a grand scale.

I do not care a toss how many looters or rioters get battered into a coma and who subsequently die as a result of action taken by the forces of law and order.

To go out with the deliberate intention of causing criminal damage, perpetrate acts of arson, loot and riot was their choice and their choice alone, they deserve everything that is coming their way.

My feelings of outrage are reserved for Mr. Richard Mannington Bowes who was totally let down by every single person in this country - We should all feel shame that this 68 year old man died doing what every single person present should have been doing - Upholding Law & Order, it cost him his life.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:32 AM

Teri, it's what he said (maybe with a bit of the folk process).

I now use his SAS presentation dagger as a paperknife, I've seen him climb out of a wheelchair and end up with his knee on the throat of a bloke of about 6 foot 6 and 17 stone, I've seen his score sheets from when he shot for the Navy at Bisley, and the bit about the charge is true - I saw the paperwork, and the bail condition is true - I was there.

You are I think generally well informed on military matters, but you don't know the facts of this case.   


Mither, your words "brave people who took exception to being treated as pawns by those who were supposed to be representing their interests". I know not and care not much whether you have a "bob or two" (an expression that one of the most loathsome women I ever knew used to use) but I do care that most of the time you are actively on the side of the oppressors (at least in argument here) and every so often you say something that looks as if you have a social conscience.

Oh, and by the way, Thatcher's "clarifications" affected the ability of people to get legal aid not one whit. Other things may have done but not that. My recollection is that NAFF (the aptly acronymed "National Association For Freedom", Ross McWhirter's far right association of abusers of wealth and power) funded many of the legal actions against the trade unions during the Thatcher period and I thought that the one you are so proud of was one, but I may be eliding more than one event from the 70s.   Engaging with society (or at least the parts of it you cannot bring to order) is exactly what you don't do. All you do here is call for repression that will aggravate alienation. Much as I hate to quote Cameron, "Hug a Hoodie" - you won't integrate him into society by punishment.

There was a church near here that used to put up posters, and one said "You'll never knock Christianity in to anyone with a hammer, try a screwdriver and a few good turns".

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:53 AM

I love haggis. The butchers in Crowle are McSween stockists and we have one every now and then. Always a bit too much for two, so I enjoy the following breakfast when I fry the rest up in a pan with a bubble & squeak from the extra veg I cooked.

Tell you what, I won't have a Highland Park for you, (got some in but not my tipple of choice.) I will raise a glass to your haggis tonight with a dram (or three) of Laphroaig. I have developed a taste for smokey peaty drinks lately.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:49 AM

What the government should do..

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:47 AM

The haggis, neeps and tatties went down very nicely last night, Ian. Could have done wi' a dram or two of Highland Park but, alas, alcohol has been completely off the menu for me this past five or six years. Still, the Taylor's Yorkshire Tea was very nice.

518-3, Cook on 210 n.o.
Marvellous!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:41 AM

Yes Al, but as much as the avowed intent of the Th*ther government was to crush any union power base, I can't for the life of me let her get the credit for members holding their union to account. Democracy may not be the ultimate best system for any endeavour, but it is the best we have and so I have always had two bottles of champagne ready, one called Margaret and one called Arthur. I keep two in case I need them on the same day....

Bridge. I don't puzzle you. You are puzzled by the stereotypical makeup of me that you seem to have built up. This Mither bloke may want to enslave the working classes, (whatever they are?) but as I have never seen his posts, I can't comment. Perhaps it was him and not you that sang the parody to Red Flag? There is nothing to be ashamed of in engaging with rather than bleating about society. You seem to think that having a bob or two gives you a certain political view? mmm.. The would be Lord Stansgate for instance? I note Benn didn't give up the family coffers when he gave up the title. There, an example of being loaded up to the nuts financially, and not in it for what you can get out of it.

Your comments over sequestration are selective to say the least. The government clarified existing legal tools, thats all. Without them, the "brave lads" (your words, not mine) would not have been able to get justice due to the way people in the legal world such as solicitors and barristers make it impossible for people without money to have a fair crack at the courts.

To everybody else, its roast duck with orange sauce tonight. I rubbed the duck breasts with a spice and herb mix I made and flash fried them for a short while, then put it in a tray in the bottom of the aga till later tonight. I have french beans, potatoes and cabbage from the garden and will be making an orange sauce with the oranges I bought when I popped out to the shops earlier and the juices from the meat.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:08 AM

The miner's strike had many confusing and paradoxical elements.

There were thug elements on both sides.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:59 AM

An amusing little story Richard but that is all it is - a story.

Unfortunately lots of ex-Navy members on this forum will be able to poke holes in it.

1: Passing-Out Parades are just that no branch of the Royal Navy puts on demonstrations to entertain the crowd

2: "When he cam out of the Glasshouse, the Navy said"??

No such thing as "the Glasshouse" in the Navy - it's DQ's, and given the circumstances as you describe them the charge would have been "Attempted Murder"

3: "he spent the next few years killing the enemies of her maj mostly hand to hand in covert things as part of the SBS"

So straight out of basic training, without a single SQ he is set to work as a Naval Rating (Ordinary Seaman at this stage) killing people as part of the SBS. If there is anybody reading this down in Poole they will be pissing themselves with laughter. For your Walter Mitty to have done any of this he would have had to have gone through the following:

- Basic Commando Training at CTCRM Lympstone (by the sounds of your boys behaviour he would not have lasted one week);

- Served between 2 to 4 years in a Royal Marine Commando Rifle Company with either 40, 42 or 45 Commando Royal Marines, and in that time be recommended for selection for Special Forces. (Your boys penchant for bucking the system would not be the way to get that recommendation);

- The SBS do not carry odds and sods passengers all have to be qualified as Royal Marines Commandos (A Royal Marine Commando can be a member of the SAS, an SAS Trooper on the otherhand cannot transfer and just join the Royal Marines);

- Very rarely are SBS assigned jobs where they "kill people" hand-to-hand or otherwise, they tend to be used to gather information on targets and pass that information back for action by others. If the SBS and the SAS do their jobs properly you as the enemy will never know that they have been there. The first you will know that something is amiss will be the moment you die.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:53 AM

The police, Jim, have a very thin tightrope to walk and being human may sometimes react excessively. IMHO the problem at the early stage (apart from Duggan having been a known villain and gangsta on a smallish local scale - apparently and allegedly out to commit murder with a loaded illegal firearm) was that the IPCC failed to communicate and teh police (wisely IMHO) thought that they could not interfere with the IPCC process by making pre-emptive announcements. I know I don't often sympathise with the police, and I don't wholly trust them, but I think they were in a no-win situation at that point.

Mither, the loaded laws that your "brave lads" used (that included the power to sequestrate union funds) were put in place by Thatcher precisely to do what they did - disempower unions. Any employment law textbook will tell you. Well, almost any of those that examine the reasons for the ebb and flow of workers' rights.   You puzzle me. Most of the time you seem to want to undermine and enslave the working class and unwaged, and every so often you say something that is not so fascistic.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:40 AM

"MP's are proved to be swindling expenses on a grand scale"
A point made last night on a fascinating special edition of Question Time.
The argument put forward was that if your role-models are corrupt and incompetent politicians who, as if by right, helped themselves out of the public purse and considered themselves above the law, which to a degree, they are, why not behave in the same way. Nobody attemptd to defend the looters and arsonists, but comments like these put the present situation in Britan in perspective.
"Jim described him as a "petty criminal"
Based on the little information we have so far, that is what he appears to be - a drug dealer, and until we know any different, that is how we have to consider him. Pre-empting that situation with evocatively misleading language (I am fully aware that it was from the Guardian - that's why I didn't accuse you of making it up) doesn't help us to understand the situaton that gave rise to these events.
To suggest that the police don't over-react is nonsense - yes they most certainly do - I seem to remember a public execution in Stockwell not so long ago!!
The eye-witness report put up by Mayo-Man presents a picture of a peaceful demonstration turning up at a police station in Tottenham, demanding to know why a young black man has been shot, only to be confronted by a group of baton-wielding, riot shielded police - I think they call it "community policing!!".
Can't remember exactly how many major riots were said to have taken place in Britain comparatively recently in last night' programme (9-10, something like that), but I do know that on a number of occasions trouble has flared up exactly because of police insensitivity.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:38 AM

Al, NUM funds were not sequestrated because of Th*tcher, as much as history revisionists will ensure the folklore says she did.

No, I went to the strike meeting at Manton. We voted not to strike. Our delegate went to the delegates meeting later that day and recorded that we voted to strike. Two of our lads took exception to this and took steps to ensure nobody, least of all Scargill was above the law. This took a lot of hard work, courage by individuals who were being threatened and oppressed by their union and its thugs. Please, please don't start giving Th*tcher credit for the accomplishments of brave people who took exception to being treated as pawns by those who were supposed to be representing their interests. I wrote in the local newspaper at the time how I admired their courage and got a letter popped through my letter box by a union committee member who was also a local councillor, saying he knows what time my wife took our baby to the nursery each day.

Not much point in having a union when they make Stalin look like a social democrat.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:29 AM

Someone I know got put in the Navy because he was a bit of a menace on a beer or 12 when he was young. He spent most of basic training on various sorts of charges. At his passing out parade he was put in the unarmed combat demo so the PTIs could have a laugh at his expense. 5 had to haul him off the 6th because he was chewing on that other's jugular. When he cam out of the glasshouse, the Navy said "Oh, so that's what you're good at is it?" and he spent the next few years killing the enemies of her maj mostly hand to hand in covert things as part of the SBS. I had most to do with him recently when he was ordered as a condition of bail to live at my house - the charge was at first attempted murder. If the Army doesn't want them, the Navy might, and they do indeed come out even more dangerous.


What Al says however is sage.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:12 AM

"Put them all in the Army."

Bloody hell, please don't. They'll come out with even bigger chips on their shoulders plus professionally trained to commit violent acts.


Absolutely right, the army won't want them.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:03 AM

Actually Bruce, thers a considerable gulf between whats on the statute books and how the law is actually applied. Ask Arthur Scargill or the Birmingham 6. Theres no actual reserve shown when it comes to the ferocity of law enforcement.

And theres no secret about which side of the political spectrum the law is kicking for.

Thus the Birmingham 6 wait 16 years to be freed for a crime they don't commit. Thatcher can put together overnight a court with all the bells and whistles to sequester union funds.

Criminals in the security service completely subvert the political process - as happened in the SpyCatcher Scandal. No prosecutions. Murdoch getting away with this latest nonsense is akin to saying John Gotti never pulled a trigger. MP's are proved to be swindling expenses on a grand scale - final prosecutions devolve down three Labour MPs and black guy.

The law is very selective in England and very subtly applied. No one with an ounce of sense has any dealings with the lawmakers if they possibly can. If they didn't go after the rioters - its probably because they didn't want to. Only a complete moron would argue that it is applied without bias.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:57 AM

"Put them all in the Army."

Bloody hell, please don't. They'll come out with even bigger chips on their shoulders plus professionally trained to commit violent acts.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:35 AM

"Who cares whether or not prison 'works'?" I suggest that the victims of reoffending do.

Of course, criminals need to be punished, but that is for the satisfaction of society rather than the rehabilitation of offenders. Prison does not decrease reoffending – in fact it may even increase it – unless people are locked up for life (and there are some who should be).

Maybe we need a combination of punishment and rehabilitation, such as a term in prison in a hard, austere (but not brutal or brutalising) regime, followed by an indefinite period of education, PROPER community service and curfews, until the individual has demonstrated that the message has got home.

That way we would, hopefully, cut down the number of victims of reoffending and provide the offender with the knowledge, the desire and the hope to lead a useful and crime-free life.

All we need to do this is the will and the money – so, of course, it won't happen. Nor will effective tackling of the causes of crime.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: andrew e
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:15 AM

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024943/UK-RIOTS-David-Camerons-tough-sentences-Yobs-treated-THEYRE-victims.html

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:04 AM

I agree with some of you, and not with others !!

I don't think that putting them in the Army would be a good idea ; I believe that Scottish regiments have , in the past, taken the worst of " the sweepings of Barlinnie (or wherever) prison" and inducted them into the Black Watch or the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders with predictably disastrous results ; the Army certainly wouldn't want them today !!

          The word that most of you seem to be avoiding here is PUNISHMENT ; who cares whether or not prison "works" ?? It is not supposed to "work" , for God's sake , it is a Punishment for wrong- doing !! Alright, it might, hopefully , act as a deterrent for a few people , but for the majority ,with their "softly softly " treatment , easy access to hard drugs ,mobile 'phones , pornography ,social workers and other assorted "doers-good " and bleeding-heart Liberals , it will never be a proper "deterrent" per se.
                So let's put the capital "P" back into Punishment , lock these bastards up, subject them to rigourous re-education as to their responsibilities as members of a civilised society ,and tell them that if they EVER re-offend, then they can expect a sentence of at least ten years . And charge all the ones responsible for torching shops etc , where people were living in flats above them, with ATTEMPTED MURDER !!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:34 AM

"theleveller, you don't half talk some shite."

Thanks for that erudite, articulate, intelligent and considered comment. It greatly adds to the debate :)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:27 AM

Returning to Duggan, I know nothing of gang culture but I doubt that you claw your way to the top in the gang world by being nice to people.
Jim described him as a "petty criminal."
The Met Police do not call out armed response units to support the arrest of petty criminals.
Only dangerous criminals.
And, they would never choose to make the arrest while the suspect was inside a moving vehicle, on a busy street during the rush hour!

This would only be done as an emergency measure to prevent an even more serious incident.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:24 AM

Ian, your post wasn't there when I wrote. You said what I wanted to but much better than I.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:23 AM

theleveller, you don't half talk some shite.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:22 AM

Indeed he does, Richard. I put it past few governments not to conflate dissent and rioting.

I would expect that martial law will be declared in the next few days. I hope the search for looters doesn't stop when the rioting does.

I am wary of any government that would allow this type of crap to carry on as long as it has. Do elected officials hand in their cajones when they take seats in parliament? Just wondering.

The English used to have real stones. Now, they seem to have marshmallows. WTF happened?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:18 AM

He also makes a legitimate concern about the need for a well trained, well disciplined and well motivated police force.

Regarding the dissent. yes, I was very concerned when Th*tcher called me "the enemy within" in, ironically, 1984. I also have concerns regarding the use of terrorist legislation being a convenient tool for other purposes. Parliament Square being a good example.

However, if a Prime Minister did try to overstep the mark, there would be crowds on the street. I would quite possibly be one of them. We haven't got that now. We have opportunist bored feral fuckers who are well fed, well shod and clothed, educated and in a land where although there are more applicants than jobs of choice, there are still jobs and opportunity.

Perhaps if people stopped analysing and looking for social fault when confronted with criminals suppressing the freedom of decent people at night, we might be able to look at solutions.

The government have at least one solution. They will find them, charge them and process them. CCTV footage will ensure that. Ignore the populist unhelpful shit about rubber bullets and water cannons. Chief Constables don't' need to ring Cameron to use them anyway. We have systems and processes in place. To invent new ones will be no more than a victory for the anarchists who think this is a cry for social change. It isn't, it is a cry for a 40" plasma telly and your scarf / nose on utube.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:52 AM

I think the leveller expresses a legitimate concern about the suppression of dissent.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:45 AM

What worries me now is that we will all be punished for the crimes of the few. Cameron looks set to introduce measures against looters which could also be used against legitimate political protesters. Just another nail in the coffin of the liberty of the law-abiding individual. When you look at the infringements to our liberty that have taken place in the last 20 or so years in the name of our personal protection, especially under New Labour, it really is frightening – with some legislation that has previously only been used as a temporary measure in time of war now becoming a permanent feature. These disturbances could have handed Cameron exactly the justification he needs to curb legitimate dissent.

What we REALLY need is a well-manned, well-trained, well-disciplined and well-motivated police force of people like this:

Not Just a Job

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 02:47 AM

Ditto, meself.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: meself
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:01 AM

Isn't it quite clear what he means? (Take it as either 'respectful' or 'respectable' - what difference does it make?)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: michaelr
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:48 PM

"respective citizens"? Do you mean respectful or respectable?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Beer
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:23 PM

I guess Don I did not explain my thoughts very well. In fact i just wrote the original post in haste and anger. I came from an area where boys (Girls were not accepted as yet in the forces.) if lucky finished school. Those that didn't found it very hard to find a job. A good number turned to the forces. Fellows who were nothing but bullies and assholes would join and came out respective men.( And proud to serve their country.) My two older brothers did their term due to the above facts and became respective citizens when they left the force. No, I think very highly of our military but maybe because from the area where i grew up in , it was a Saviour for many. When I see what is happening, I see youth that need work. The frustration is being taken out in a very wrong way. But maybe, just maybe they have no place to turn but to violence. i know that what i am saying will mean nothing to many who read this and i don't have an answer that would be accepted by all, but many of these kids (children)have nothing to do. Try staying home for one week staring at the walls with nothing to do. I will now take a stand and maybe stand alone. Parents are to blame PERIOD.....

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:38 PM

Yes I use Matalan as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: andrew e
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:30 PM

Russell Brand's comments.

Won't happen of course. It never does.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:30 PM

"Personally, I would be in favour of chaining the blighters together and sending them out under guard, to work twelve hours a day till they had repaired everything they smashed up."

If we're voting on this, I'm in favour.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:00 PM

""Not a thing Don. The title of the thread reads "Punishment for riots"""

Indeed it does,but I believe I am right in saying that it means punishment of the rioters, rather than punishment of one of the world's most technically advanced and professional fighting forces by insisting upon its performing a task it is no longer set up to handle.

You would be setting the army back fifty plus years.

No, the existing laws are quite adequate, if sufficiently vigorously enforced.

Personally, I would be in favour of chaining the blighters together and sending them out under guard, to work twelve hours a day till they had repaired everything they smashed up.

Unfortunately the European Court of Human Rights would probably veto that, which is a pity, since according to their apologists they were only rioting because there were no jobs for them.

A starving man steals food, not TVs and Nike trainers.

Most of those guys were wearing clothes that cost about three times my annual clothing expenditure, just to go looting.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Beer
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:40 PM

Not a thing Don. The title of the thread reads "Punishment for riots"

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:57 PM

""Put them all in the Army.""

What has the army done to upset you Beer?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:59 PM

Jim, if you meant me, I referred to him as an "elder" not a godfather.
That is how he is known.
I got this from The Guardian, not tabloids, and provided a link to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:11 PM

That was the justiciation they put up to excuse the looters' and arsonists' behaviour

Were you on a different thread to the rest of us? I saw no justification, just people trying to explain. There was still damnation from us all.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:08 PM

Odd how letters go missing... statement... let's see if some of the letters stick to the satellite this time.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:51 PM

Beer... "Put them all in the Army."

I understand your stement but, in the end, that may be the ultimate goal of the rich who are running this circus.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:28 PM

"they don't send innocents to prison to then be turned into criminals."
No, they don't - they put petty offenders into prison (in the States, overwhelmingly black) and release them after serving their stretch as fully qualified criminals.
As Richard said, if prison worked, either as a deterrent or as an incentive not to commit crimes, then crime would be on the decrease, instead of..... well, I'm sure you've heard it all before.
I'm afraid I'm very much with Peter Laban on this one - there's very little comfort to be had from either a mob of looters or a lynch mob.
The good news is that that (not even this present government) will bring back the birch, hanging, the thumb-screw, the stocks, the iron maiden.... Those that are caught will be, tried, serve the appropriate sentence and be released.
The bad news is, while the concentration is on "punishment" rather than cause, nobody will bother asking why a peaceful demonstration protesting the the killing of a petty criminal (not a "godfather" as some tabloidese-riddled pratt suggested) turned into nationwide looting and arson sprees, so we will probably never know and the potential for similar events in the future will remain.
Here's to the next time!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Beer
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:28 PM

Put them all in the Army.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:15 PM

I think they should be put into a Love Camp, no boots anywhere...told of their responsibilities and the rights of others, then...shown a great deal of love, possibly for the first time in their lives...

Don't get me wrong, get them working, creating something pretty damned special of which they'll all be proud. Get them out there into the community, doing things for them to benefit everyone, including themselves...

Let them see they can be valued. Tell them they have talents, everyone does, of some sort or another...Give them support...give them boundaries..give the hope...and give them....love.



Or, you could beat seven shades out of them, call them a bunch of fekkin' scum, losers, failures, rat arsed low life and send them back out into society, I suppose...as many seem to want to do around the country at present....

Personally, I'd reserve the latter for the Bankers and those who've really caused this entire situation in the first place..through loving money more than people...

But hell, what do I know?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:03 PM

"the prisons are full and the country can't afford any more"

Neither can we afford to let feral criminal arsonists, looters and murderers go unpunished.

"If sending people to prison worked, the USA would have a low crime rate."

For fuck's sake Richard, for a man who claims to be well-educated you are unbelievably thick - they go to prison because they are criminals, not vice-versa. They are criminals first, they don't send innocents to prison to then be turned into criminals. Leopards don't change their spots. Prisons work by removing arseholes from society. They can't burn, loot and murder while they're locked up. What on earth is so difficult to understand about that? Instead of Greek and Latin, those posh schools ought to give a few classes in common sense.

"Beating a dog does not housetrain it. Have you tried it?"

I didn't mention beating a dog, Richard, you brought that in - maybe that's a clue to your, shall we say "unusual", personality? 'Punish' was the word I used, and there are ways to punish and impress the rules on a dog that don't involve any form of physical assault or brutality. I've lived a great deal of my life with dogs, breeds which some claim are vicious and dangerous - always treated them with love and respect and never had a moment's trouble with any of them. Fair, firm and humane 'Punishment' doesn't indicate a lack of love or respect, rather it's the failure to correct and enforce rules that indicates neglect. As with dogs, so with criminals.

Now, I'm tired of this silly game of verbal sword-fencing and I've got a very nice guitar waiting for me to give it a beating.

Enjoy the rest of your evening.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:41 PM

Sorry, it was "Bluesman". You are too alike.

At risk of sounding like one of the public school buggers who impoverish us - the prisons are full and the country can't afford any more.

If sending people to prison worked, the USA would have a low crime rate.


Beating a dog does not housetrain it. Have you tried it?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:35 PM

100

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:53 PM

"Cavedweller - there are four theoretical bases for imprisonment: prevention, reform, punishment, and Hegelian balance (the balance between right and wrong). Total prevention (ie lock them up for ever so they can't do it again) is wholly unaffordable. It is also morally wrong since the punishment then does not fit the crime, as was the case in the bad old days. The USA has one of the highest prison populations per capita in the first world - and one of the highest crime rates. We do pretty badly on that scale too. Your kneejerk reactions learned presumably from Melanie Phillips are no recipe for a cure."

Richard, By "Cavedweller", I assume you mean me. That is a personal insult and against forum rules. I haven't called you names, please don't call me names - hardly the proper behaviour for someone who professes to be a lawyer.

And yes, I studied law at college, albeit forty-five-or-so years ago, and I'm well aware of those four bases. Read my posts again - I have not suggested locking them up forever - again, I'm well aware of the cost of such an exercise, and that to do so would be disproportionate to their offence(s). What I have suggested is that, in the present circumstances, punishment and deterrence trump Reform and the Hegelian Balance, and that they should have long prison sentences. The precise length of those sentences is not for you or I to decide, but it should be proportionate to the crimes, which are in my view heinous. If your dog shits on your carpet, you punish it. These dogs shat on everyone's carpet, and should be punished - properly and proportionately. That's all.

Regarding prison populations - why are you unable to comprehend a simple fact - the USA has a high prison population precisely because it has a high crime rate. Horse before cart, Richard. Why do Lefties always put the cart first and try to blame prison for criminals' criminality, and why do they have greater concern for the criminal than the victim?

Finally, I have not insulted your professional career. As far as I remember, my only reference to you was as Ian Mather's 'mate'. I don't know you, I don't know if 'Richard Bridge' is your real name and, to be perfectly frank, I don't care a toss about what you do. Lawyer or shithouse-cleaner, it's all the same to me.

I hope that makes my position crystal clear?

Have a nice evening Richard. Be sure thatI will.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:46 PM

I think its got to be the US/Canadian version.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:42 PM

On the other hand the financial crisis has cost the British economy up to £7.4 trillion in lost output, according to the Bank of England...

Now that is damage on a somewhat larger scale. Seventy thousand times as much (assuming that's the American version of a trillion they were talking about - otherwise it would be one million times as much...)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:30 PM

I read somewhere that the English have suffered about 100 million pounds in damages so far. I do not understand why it's been allowed to go so long.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:17 PM

How long before this one is shut down?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:59 PM

I see a lot of these young thugs up in front of magistrates today didn't have legal representation. Does anyone know a "solicitor" who would be understanding to their cultural poverty, deprived backgrounds and lack of social or community understanding who would represent them free of charge ?

It would also be a good chance to tell magistrates and judges the reasons why they did what they did and also put a word in for student protesters due in court after the summer recess.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:26 PM

Water under the bridge, (now that's a thought, see if he can walk on it,) Backwoodsman. I just thought you were reckoning I was being a bit soft on crime. Not me mate..

So, you get to grow your own haggis? Are you rearing clockwise or anticlockwise haggis? I would have thought either will do, but in Lincolnshire, how do you ensure their right / left pair of legs can touch the ground? I thought you needed hills to grow haggis, hence their indigenous state in the in The Highlands. (And McSween stockists.)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:21 PM

Mick, good post - but what do non-USAians mostly see of US politics which is on average far to the right of the rest of the world?

I have nice carrots.

But, Don, when I was young, and when a little further back you were young, there were jobs. UK's youth unemployment is now over 20%, and it's a lot worse in the hotspots. I know two very high achieving young people who went off on a world trip and now are unable to get employed but are precariously self-employed. I know another less young who was European manager of part of a worldwide computer company who let go of the greasy pole to breed and now lives precariously from contract to contract. The world is not what it was. It is conservative governments who have deliberately undermined workers, and removed safety nets, and now it continues. You don't teach a dog by beating it. You teach it with reward and praise. Beat it and sooner or later it will bite you or someone else.


Cavedweller - there are four theoretical bases for imprisonment: prevention, reform, punishment, and Hegelian balance (the balance between right and wrong). Total prevention (ie lock them up for ever so they can't do it again) is wholly unaffordable. It is also morally wrong since the punishment then does not fit the crime, as was the case in the bad old days. The USA has one of the highest prison populations per capita in the first world - and one of the highest crime rates. We do pretty badly on that scale too. Your kneejerk reactions learned presumably from Melanie Phillips are no recipe for a cure.

Oh, and if you want to insult my professional career, at least check for how long you could find me in the Legal 500 first.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:16 PM

This is a splendid opportunity for the government to show they are even handed, by coming down every bit as hard on the feral crooks in the City who looted us all as they do on the people who have followed their lead so disastrously in the last few days.

Put them in the same cells.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:15 PM

Backwoodsman...if we go by your suggested use of vegetables may I suggest parsnips instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:10 PM

Go for it Mick! :-) :-)
This haggis came home with us from the Isle of Eigg (one of The Small Isles south of Skye) been in the freezer a few weeks and we've finally cracked today. Yum!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:04 PM

"haggis, neep, and tatties"

Ummmhhh. Now my mouth IS watering. Finding decent haggis in the States is no mean feat. But Ackroyd's in Birmingham, Michigan, USA makes it fresh and overnight ships it. I think I will order one up!!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:02 PM

Depends where you shove them, pdg! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 12:01 PM

... but we should all have equal opportunity, and that doesn't exist at the moment. By all means lets have sticks - but give people some carrots as well."

Psycopathic street punks are afraid of carrots?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:57 AM

Haggis, neeps and tatties (Lincolnshire-grown, of course) for me and Mrs. Backwoodsperson.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:56 AM

Everybody else; I reckon a Spanish omelette, what do you think?

Yuck. I can eat egg in something like a cake but not as egg and omelette is "as egg" for me. I'd throw up. Shame as we have had our own hens at various times.

Spinach and cheese pie with new potatoes please.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:56 AM

"Also don't recognise the point about my views you made"

Which point, Ian? Been a long day (in more ways than one!).

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:53 AM

Now you're just being cruel Ian.

If my mouth waters any more you may wind up owing me a keyboard.

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:45 AM

Backwoodsman - Just noticed you called Bridge my mate. Steady on a bit. Also don't recognise the point about my views you made Never mind, been a lot of cricket since then.

Leveller. - Plenty of spuds growing south of the Humber. In fact not many miles south of Goole, in my garden. Going to dig a few up now as a matter of fact so I can make a nice meal for my responsible adult.

Bridge. - Predictors of who might end up in prison in the future may well be a good debating point for prison reform, but here we are talking about removing people from society because as the murders to date have graphically show, decent people need protection and no amount of debate over future regimes can comfort them. Incarceration of the buggers will suffice for now.

Everybody else; I reckon a Spanish omelette, what do you think? I am about to get the spuds in, and the perpetual spinach. I have already got out my garlic crop and enough onions for now. We have plenty of eggs cos friends are away and we are feeding their chickens. Medley Farm Shop (Belton) are making their own chorizo so that can go in it. I reckon there are a few mushrooms in the pantry. Yeah, I reckon a Spanish Omelette for my responsible adult. That'll please her.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:32 AM

319-2 at tea. Just coming out again. Gotta go.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:30 AM

I can understand people trying to comprehend why over a 5 day period cities in the UK were subjected to an unpredicted level of lawlessness, violence and murder.

To blame, Murdoch, bankers, government policies, police brutality, people who worked hard to establish themselves in business is sheer stupidity.

If you want to know way they did it, look towards the culture of "why the fuck should I work when I can get state benefits and a home for doing fuck all" yes there is a culture of laziness and opt out of the system and no one can say it does not exist.

Pressure groups get changes made to the law, I spoke with a friend who is a solicitor last night(not a washed up never made it in the real world example) he said governments introduced so many laws over the years to appease such groups that they actually are now unable to deal with situations such as what is currently happening because these laws are now biting them in the ass.

The reality of the situation in our cities is that many cultures are now prepared to defend the areas they call their own. This will lead to tension, divisions and resentment. I am still of the opinion that a monster came of the flames of the past week and we will soon get to the opportunity to meet it.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:29 AM

"That changed in the trendy sixties, as I pointed out in the other thread, with the introduction of Dr Spock's lunatic ideas on education and parenting, which are the root cause of the absence of discipline and respect three generations on."

Yep.
That, and this idea propounded by the Loony-PC-Numbnuts that when a little shit gets caught burning and looting, you pat him on the head and gently explain that it's not his fault, it's the fault of that nasty (insert name of current ruling party) government, or those greedy rich people, then give him a bit of community service - exit little shit from the court, pissing his pants laughing at the stupid old fart of a magistrate/judge who's just effectively let him off and the numb-nuts lawyer who fell for his sob-story and aided and abetted him in getting off, to attend the first session of community service and then say "Bollocks to that" and never turn up again.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:19 AM

==="shops crammed with goods they would never be able to pay for " ===
                                  ,.,.
What 'goods' would these have been, that these youths, in their £100 trainers, tricked out in their         "New Look Black Perforated Hooded Jacket - £30.00" [Google index],   communicating on their smartphones & BlackBerries, would 'never be able to pay for'?

I merely ask.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:13 AM

""Don wyziwig, we get it. You are to be commended. Good man you are for risings from the detritus of your upbringing. Would that "they" were all like you. But, you see, "they" are not all like you. The ingredients that went into the soup that is you, plus a bit of luck, is peculiarly you.""

Self aggrandisement is not the objective here Mick.

The point of the argument is that I was not unique, nor even unusual.

Most of my contemporaries grew up with exactly the same values, and many of them fared much better than I did, only a very few faring worse.

That changed in the trendy sixties, as I pointed out in the other thread, with the introduction of Dr Spock's lunatic ideas on education and parenting, which are the root cause of the absence of discipline and respect three generations on.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:08 AM

"There aren't any jobs. None. Zilch. Niente. Sweet fuck-all."

There are many hundreds, if not thousands, of Polish, Portugese and Lithuanians in South Lincolnshire whose response to that would be their language's equivalent of "What a load of bollocks!".

South Lincs is full of them. They take the jobs that our people won't take. Not "can't find", won't take. Not highly paid jobs, but jobs for all that - jobs that at the very least give a worker a sense of worth and self-respect. I can only guess at the reasons why unemployed, underprivileged British people won't take them.

This is in no way a complaint or criticism of Poles, Portugese or Lithuanians. Good luck to them - they did get on their bikes (metaphorically), they pedalled a very long way and they got the jobs. Because they want to work.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:56 AM

""In fact, he's had a hard re-think and decided to go for a change of career - go to college and study for a different way of life. Let's hope there's a job for him at the end of those three years, with perhaps £12,000 of debt (student loans) to pay off. Now - if someone like him can't make it, what hope is there for someone of a lesser background? He's intelligent enough - and civilised enough - not to want to loot and pillage, but he thinks Cameron and this government just "isn't up to it", and he's not alone.""

Just to take up what I think is a pertinent point, it isn't very productive to lay the blame for a four decades long decline at the door of a government in power for just fifteen MONTHS.

That dealt with, I rather think that your son HAS made it, and done so in a way I can only admire. His position is entirely different than that of the looters, whose motivation (I repeat) was pure greed.

You son has fallen victim to the other side of the coin, by which I mean that there is nothing available locally for a man with his particular skills, compounded by the fact that modern business seems to have applied the concept of obsolescence to human beings.

Of course he shouldn't get on his bike. A sensible man only relocates when he HAS a job in the new location.

So he has decided to improve his skills set to become more attractive to employers, and he is going to have a hard time financially, but he has done the right thing as he would have been worse off in a menial job.

If the looters showed half his industry and commitment, they wouldn't have needed to steal in the first place.

As to the availability of entry level jobs for the unskilled or semi skilled, which you assert do not exist, well they are being done by Eastern European workers for a reason. They turn up on time, they work a fullshift, and they don't take a day off every week.

The jobs are there, but who would YOU employ in those circumstances?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:35 AM

I think I've probably contributed all I can to this thread, so I shall retire gracefully from it - have a positive discussion!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:31 AM

""But if the stuffed shirts who've spent the last few days calling for water cannon, baton rounds, eviction notices, benefits withdrawal, more police, more riot gear, tougher sentences and God alone knows what else, had been born into dysfunctional families on sink estates with no jobs, no hope and no prospects, would they have made better citizens than the kids who've been out rioting? I scarcely think so.""

You obviously haven't been following the conversation very long, but if you had you would know that I was born (with the exception that I had a VERY functional family) in exactly the circumstances you describe, and I believe I can say hand on heart, that I did turn out to be a better citizen. And I did so by willingness to work, which meant I was fully employed from leaving college in 1957 to drawing my Old Age Pension in 2006. Nobody ever GAVE me a job, I went out and FOUND one when necessary.

""And if those stuffed shirts had been brought up faced with celebrity culture, overpaid bankers and company directors, dishonest MPs, and shops crammed with goods they would never be able to pay for, would they have reacted any differently to the way the disaffected youths of London, Manchester etc reacted between Saturday and Tuesday nights?""

It is often amusing Fred to listen to those who know little about a subject tying themselves in knots, amusing but somehow sad.

We had celebrity culture, with Hollywood film stars as the idols. We had Fat Cat businessmen, and they were less controlled than now. We had shops crammed with goods we couldn't afford.

You know what?...We took whatever job was available and stuck at it until something better came along, and in time we bought those goods.

We could have stolen them, but we had too much pride and self respect to sink to that level.

Some of us actually made it to the top by hard work, not corruption, and some of the rich people who are so despised and reviled by many here came from the same background.

Incidentally, I'm not one of those you describe as wanting ""water cannon, baton rounds, eviction notices, benefits withdrawal, more police, more riot gear, tougher sentences and God alone knows what else,"" in fact I've posted against it, but I do want these kids taught that crime doesn't pay, by suffering the realistic punishment so often not delivered by our over soft judiciary.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:30 AM

Don - I'm speaking from personal experience here. Owing to the recession and to bad business practice (greed) on the part of the partners of the firm he worked for over 10 years, my hard-working son was made redundant - along with 170 other (mainly) young people - just before Christmas last year. This is in the "well-off" south-east - Brighton, in fact. He has a mortgage and two young children. He's an intelligent and capable man of 35. Jobs? There aren't any jobs. None. Zilch. Niente. Sweet fuck-all. And he's very experienced in his line of work.

Should he do a Tebbit? (Remember him?) Get on his bike? If so - where to? Where is it easier? If you do know, pass it on.

In fact, he's had a hard re-think and decided to go for a change of career - go to college and study for a different way of life. Let's hope there's a job for him at the end of those three years, with perhaps £12,000 of debt (student loans) to pay off. Now - if someone like him can't make it, what hope is there for someone of a lesser background? He's intelligent enough - and civilised enough - not to want to loot and pillage, but he thinks Cameron and this government just "isn't up to it", and he's not alone.

I'm nearly 67 and never had to struggle to get a job when I was his age. There were jobs - OK, they weren't so plentiful that you could walk into one, but it was never too hard. Those days are dead and gone! Get that into your head. Until a government - any government - gets off its arse and thinks hard about how it spends its money on job creation, education, seeding small employers and similar actions, it won't change. Until large corporations start putting their profits back into their industry, into training and development - rather than handing them all over to shareholders - it won't change. We're probably the only industrialised country in Europe which doesn't put a decent bit of profit back into its own infrastructure.

If you get people involved, working, thinking - with some light at the end of the tunnel, some hope of opportunity and betterment - then you just might get somewhere. We're not all born equal - not by a long way - but we should all have equal opportunity, and that doesn't exist at the moment. By all means lets have sticks - but give people some carrots as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:21 AM

A couple of observations.....

Don wyziwig, we get it. You are to be commended. Good man you are for risings from the detritus of your upbringing. Would that "they" were all like you. But, you see, "they" are not all like you. The ingredients that went into the soup that is you, plus a bit of luck, is peculiarly you. And that is why it serves little purpose in the search for answers, IMO. Your country has a problem. Will Fly, and earlier, Richard Bridge are wisely trying to urge that you all put aside your own peculiar views and look at the broader societal and political causes as you seek to understand and fix. Good sauce, that.

I have only one bone to pick with Richard and others in this and the earlier thread. I have read several comments which referenced "other right wing countries" or "being like America". May I suggest to you that these comments project an arrogance to those of us that are not from your country? It seems to me that national SELF examination is the way forward for my British friends. Your problems are yours and the cause and effect of it is complex. Just as ours are. Comparisons to other countries at times like this only serve to reinforce a negative stereotype of you folks as self righteous and arrogant. And if there is one thing I have learned from years of listening in on your conversations, it is that you are a kind, generous, and hospitable people. I hope the context is not lost on this post, as it meant to be sincere and not perjorative.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:13 AM

You're missing Carry on Cabby.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:10 AM

Don(Wyziwyg)T - Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:54 AM

&

Backwoodsman - Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:38 AM



Are the most sensible things said on this thread so far.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:06 AM

Bloody Hell, Fred McCormick. I've never been called a 'Stuffed-Shirt' before, and if you knew me, you'd understand how inappropriate (yet hilariously funny AFAIC) that is.

I will wear that badge with pride (and a great deal of amusement!).

Now I really am gone, cricket's far more important than this - and the guys I'll be listening to really do know what they're talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:02 AM

Amen. I'm gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:54 AM

""if it's tough enough for decent, hard-working kids to get work or get a decent place to live these days, what hope can be made for those who have absolutely no hope? Without hope there are no aspirations, and without aspirations, people will lie in the shit they were born into.""

Ignoring the predictably nonsensical response above, answer me this Will.

If your final sentence be true, how come we still have ANY decent hardworking kids?

It's about the presence or absence of guts, determination to succeed, and a willingness to work to achieve one's aspirations.

Those you refer to as having no hope represent the absence of those qualities. You can't really believe that there are that many kids too stupid to learn......Can you?

It's a gimme everything free world they live in, and when they are told that free lunches have to be worked for, they simply can't be bothered.

They are on just about every street corner, singing the same refrain...."There's no work available!"

I have repeatedly during my life, which includes a couple of recessions and a "winter of discontent", proved that to be absolute bollocks.

There are always jobs to be had, if you are prepared to do them, and they are jobs for which the decent hardworking are over qualified, but, if you threw away your chances of an education and have (through your own indolence) no skills, then you are perfect for the positions.

There are plenty in this country who started out this way and ended up managing directors, but the downside is that you have to be willing to work hard and learn.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:51 AM

Bloody hell. Will Fly. At last someone has said something sensible. No, there's no excuse for rioting or looting, and I've got a hell of a lot of sympathy for the small traders whose businesses were wrecked and for the people whose communities were wrecked, and for the families of the people who died defending their property.

But if the stuffed shirts who've spent the last few days calling for water cannon, baton rounds, eviction notices, benefits withdrawal, more police, more riot gear, tougher sentences and God alone knows what else, had been born into dysfunctional families on sink estates with no jobs, no hope and no prospects, would they have made better citizens than the kids who've been out rioting? I scarcely think so.

And if those stuffed shirts had been brought up faced with celebrity culture, overpaid bankers and company directors, dishonest MPs, and shops crammed with goods they would never be able to pay for, would they have reacted any differently to the way the disaffected youths of London, Manchester etc reacted between Saturday and Tuesday nights?

If you seriously want to solve the problem of rioting, you first have to solve the problems of inequality and scrapheap alienation.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:49 AM

That was the justification they put up to excuse the looters' and arsonists' behaviour

(sigh)

Repeat after me: attempting to understand why these things happen and hopefully how we can prevent them from happening again is not the same as justifying, condoning or supporting the looters. Doh!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:46 AM

"Backwoodsman, you are such a reactionary that I had assumed you to be from a different more right wing country.   Have you not yet figured out that the best possible predictor of a future prison sentence is having served one already?

Not a reactionary at all, Richard. Just a guy who's worked his balls off and paid his taxes for almost 49 years, and who is sick to the back teeth of the "It's all someone else's fault", "Blame it all on the Guv'mint" bollocks that the bleeding-heart PC-Numbnuts keep drivelling on about.

And of course I've figured out that "the best possible predictor of a future prison sentence is having served one already?" Richard! Haven't you figured out yet that it's very rare indeed for leopards to change their spots?

Got to go - they're playing again.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:38 AM

Well, Will (almost poetry, innit?) - whatever anyone claims is the cause, the only thing that will change things is if people themselves make it change. And to do that, they need to stop blaming everyone else for their problems, stop expecting a free ride, stop behaving like feral criminal arseholes, and get a grip.

Here's a clip from a post I made on 'the other thread' about people who had nothing but who behaved like decent human beings and scratched a life for themselves:-

It is simply not good enough to take the line that, because people are having a hard time, they can be given carte-blanche to burn, loot and riot. My grand-parents and parents had absolutely fuck-all, they lived through the 30's Depression and a World War, lived their entire lives in council houses, no money, no car, no holidays, no electronic gadgetry, just a life of hard fucking work for peanuts-wages. But what they did have was dignity, morals, the work-ethic, respect for other people and other peoples' property, respect for the law, and a firm belief in education, and they made sure that, unlike many of the parents of the criminal animals we've been watching this past few days, they passed their standards on to their children.

There used to be a saying when I was a kid in the 50's - "You don't have to be rich to be clean". And you don't have to be rich to live like a decent human being either.

And that's the long and short of it - standards of decency, respect and civilised behaviour, which my forebears had in shedloads, and which they passed on to their children, are very sadly lacking in much of today's society. Somehow those values have to be re-instilled into people, and I'm not just talking about sink-estate-dwellers, I mean into all classes. There are arseholes at all levels, people who have little or no regard for their fellow man and no intention of giving any consideration to anyone but themselves.

But also they have to be made to understand that violence, arson, looting and murder are absolutely unacceptable no matter what excuse or justification they think they've got - and that means the full weight of the law coming down on the present bunch of criminal scrotes like a ton of bricks.

OK, I accept that birching is unacceptable, that was a rather juvenile suggestion and I regret making it. I withdraw my 'Birch the fuckers' demand, and replace it with 'Jail the fuckers for a long time'. They have to be forced to understand that crime doesn't pay - if we fail in that, our reward will be anarchy.

Someone else further up the thread said they should be sentenced to community service in a refugee camp in East Africa. Now ain't that the truth - they'd find out then what a hard life is really about. Might just change their outlook for the better.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:29 AM

I agree with what Wiil says and am now withrawing from this discussion whilst it's still in a state of relative harmony and before it starts ti get acrimonious.

Watch out for more potato riots south of the Humber!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:18 AM

Or ...


Precisely so Will.


Backwoodsman, you are such a reactionary that I had assumed you to be from a different more right wing country.   Have you not yet figured out that the best possible predictor of a future prison sentence is having served one already?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 09:08 AM

OK, now we've got it all off our chests - now we've birched the fuckers and made 'em each write 400 letters for jobs (to whom, by the way?), and we've stopped all their benefits and prosecuted 'em all and locked 'em all up at our expense - what now?

Let's spend our energies examining cause - not effect - and we might, just might, get somewhere.

I don't believe that the State should namby-pamby any part of society, and I have no sympathies whatsoever for the thuggish behaviour of the looters. But - just a thought - if it's tough enough for decent, hard-working kids to get work or get a decent place to live these days, what hope can be made for those who have absolutely no hope? Without hope there are no aspirations, and without aspirations, people will lie in the shit they were born into.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 08:54 AM

"(this was in Goole - need I say more?)"

Nope! Played there many times.....but always managed to escape with my life!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 08:50 AM

mrsleveller did point out to the producer manager that we live in one of the biggest potato-growing areas of the country and that with just one phone call she could have a lorry-load delivered in half and hour. Actually, there very nearly was a riot (this was in Goole - need I say more?)

I go to our new Morrisons at 9.30 on a Sunday before the tills open and am usually back home, fully ladened, by 10.15. Wine's better, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 08:39 AM

Our Tesco seems to run out of most fresh produce on Saturday afternoons, Leveller. It's so frustrating. If I were a lesser man, or off a sink estate (oh shit, I was off one of those years ago!), I'd start smashing the windows and stealing the electrical goods - that'd serve 'em right! :-) :-)

Morrisons is **OK** but its aisles are too narrow, and always blocked by large baskets full of cheap cans of stuff, and gangs of old people and young mums with hordes of kids, all passing the day gassing. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 08:31 AM

We're no longer welcome at Tesco after mrsleveller staged at sitdown protest in the produce department one Christmas Eve because they had no potatoes. (Honestly!) Fortunately we now have a great local Morrisons.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 08:22 AM

157-0 at lunch. Great!
The scone was very nice - Tesco 'Finest'. Fortunately the looters and arsonists didn't get as far as the backwoods of Lincolnshire, so our Tesco remains intact.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:51 AM

That sounds fascinating Leveller, and I'm carrying on working .8 as they say in the teaching profession, now that I will receive State Pension!!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: DMcG
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:41 AM

"The most signed e-petition on the No 10 website is one calling for convicted rioters to lose benefit payments."

The real problem of this is that it is essentially retrospective. On the assumption that we, if not they, hold the law important, this should not apply to offences already committed. I agree with this quotation from 'A Man for All Seasons':
====
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

====

Yes, if it is Parliament's will, make stopping of benefits for rioters from today onwards one of the possible punishments. But changing punishments after the crime is a very dodgy practice...

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Teribus
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:41 AM

With regard to the highly unlikely prospect of the reluctant job candidate described by Bonzo3Legs.

I just did a cursory check and taking the reluctant job seeker as a married man with two children I was at £24,632 excluding wifie's allowance which would put it up to just under £30k.

Case of some prat in Angelsey who uses his wife as a baby production unit ensures that neither he nor any of his family contributes a penny and rooks the Benefit system for over £42,000 per year - and they even boast about it - "Aargh it's me back you see".

Richard - Bonzo was not saying that Job Seekers allowance paid was £25K+

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:38 AM

Don't bother - the cricket's on TV, and it's far more edifying than this lot, at least it makes sense. I'm off to get a cup of tea and a scone and watch England v. India.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:31 AM

Whatever are you drivelling an about?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:30 AM

No, that is exactly the opposite of the point. Have you never heard of negative attention?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:29 AM

"What do you do?"

Well, for the last 43 years I've earned my living as a professional writer in a range of guises – film & TV, advertising, articles, books and songs – some more profitable than others. At the height of my 'career' I was Executive Creative Director at a large multinational advertising group, after which I ran my own consultancy. Then my biggest client went bust, took down my company, had to sell the big house to help my employees and pay the bank, and I suddenly saw the benefits of downsizing. Now, in between growing my own food, writing two novels and the occasional song, I work as a copywriter for an advertising agency that specialises in the over-50s market – mainly writing mailings and ads for charities (Age UK, RSPB etc.). With an 11-year old daughter still to provide for, even at 62, retirement seems a long way away.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:28 AM

JUSTIFICATION not justiciation!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:27 AM

"Also, I don't think anybody was looting and causing criminal damage because life was unfair".

Well a number of contributors to 'the other' thread thought exactly that, Ian. That was the justiciation they put up to excuse the looters' and arsonists' behaviour.

OK, I'll withdraw my demands for those pieces of excrement to be birched if you and your mate Richard can guarantee that they will be locked up for a long time, because they deserve no less.

It's the failure of society to adequately punish evil-doers that's brought us to a pitch where criminal arseholes have no fear of the consequences of their actions.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:20 AM

"When you look at something as beautiful as a birch tree, you have to be wonder how perverted the human mind is, to turn it into an instrument of torture"

Slightly less perverted than the mind that believes it's acceptable to disregard society's laws and standards, to commit arson and theft, and to run down and kill innocent traders trying to protect their businesses.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:19 AM

I never said it was wrong for you to get it off your chest. If you read my first contribution I said this thread could be cathartic.

Also, I don't think anybody was looting and causing criminal damage because life was unfair, they did it for a laugh, to be outrageous, to get their Andy Warhol 15 mins either on utube or in front of the beak.

Sad, very sad. But all the same, I wouldn't take the opinion of someone who indulged in birching as being serious. It is one thing to hit someone in anger, it is another to deliberately hurt people on behalf of a community in the cold light of day. It says more about him than those deemed to warrant his attentions. His comments seem to justify his actions in his opinion. Nothing else.   Incarceration, loss of liberty, loss of luxuries even, but we are a civilised country that does not condone violence, hence locking up those who hurt other people. What message would we be sending out if we caused hurt (or even death) on others? We would be outcasts in civilised company, and sat on the same bench as Iran, China, Zimbabwe and USA.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:10 AM

Anybody want to list the regimes that still use or those that most recently permitted birching? Go on, make our case!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 07:03 AM

When you look at something as beautiful as a birch tree, you have to be wonder how perverted the human mind is, to turn it into an instrument of torture.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:53 AM

"Backwoodsman has taken the opportunity to get things off his chest, although "birching the fuckers" is not going to do anything but teach them to carry on doing what they do."

I once read something that was written by an officer who actually had experience of birching because he was one of those who carried the punishment out. His most relevant comment was that he hardly ever had to administer a repeat-birching to an evil-doer because they almost never came back.

Can anyone make that claim about so-called 'community-service', or even the all-too-brief prison-sentences that are handed out nowadays?

Ian, if (as has been claimed by many of the PC-Blinkered-Brigade on this forum) those feral, theiving, arsonist fuckers were just 'getting it off their chest' about how unfair life is for them, and that is a perfectly acceptable justification for their vile criminality, why is it wrong for me to 'get it off my chest' by suggesting an eminently suitable form of retribution for their evil acts?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:47 AM

What do you do?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:35 AM

Actually, better get doing some work or I might be looking fao a new job myself :)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:34 AM

Yes, Bozo - been there, done that. Consider yourself fortunate that you are in a position to do that. The vast majority of young (and not so young) people have to look for work in a much harsher environment - not least because of the policies of this crazy government.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:34 AM

I like it - benefits with a cold!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:30 AM

befeits? I think that should be benefits.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:30 AM

They will just have to start writing letters as I did - over 400 after 2 redundancies - and have been self employed since 2002.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:30 AM

".............do your sums before spouting"

I think it's you who needs to do your sums. £25K - minus tax for benefits in kind for a company car - would not exzclude a person with 4 children from claiming child tax credit or, probably, housing befeits. He/she would be considerably better off taking the job.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:25 AM

"The problem is that only the most determined and able and lucky can escape the underclass."!

It's not just the 'underclass, Richard – everyone is finding it tough to get jobs these days. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply living in the past and has no idea of the how the world operates today. Sorry to harp on about personal experience, but I just need to counteract the 'golden age' posited by some posters. My son is currently applying for graduate training programmes before his final year. He's a bright lad and expected get at least a good 2.1. However, he's experiencing an unbelievably cut-throat job market. As an example, he's applied to go on the Aldi graduate training programme and has been told that the acceptance rate is 1 in 12,000. So the idea that people with few or no qualifications are just going to get a job for the asking is, frankly, fatuous.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:24 AM

Denying people benefits, wow that's a great idea ! make them homeless and hungry with no alternative way to eat and live except to do what they've just been convicted of.

And Bonzo £25k plus a car worse than benefits ? get real.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:19 AM

Leveller, family with 4 children - child tax credit/housing benefit/dole for starters.............do your sums before spouting.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:16 AM

It's the little pickings that count. Luckily..

I did say that this is a cathartic thread and some have risen to that challenge. Backwoodsman has taken the opportunity to get things off his chest, although "birching the fuckers" is not going to do anything but teach them to carry on doing what they do. Getting the victims to birch them is the main aspect of Sharia Law that we could never introduce in this country. I do see share your frustration though, all the same. I am heartened however to note leveller's reminder of the dignified appeal of the father of of one of the young people murdered. It is easy to be reactionary from a distance. It would appear that personal experience focuses your mind differently. No father should be put in his position.

We have the Prime Minister talking about authorising things he isn't in a position to authorise, although I sympathise with his plight. You can't be seen to sit there and say there is little a government can do. I only wish they would address what they can do instead of what they can't. I am following today's Parliamentary reaction with interest.


Somewhere in either this or the now closed thread, I recall somebody pointed out the extent is similar to a typical night in a large American city. I'm not sure comparisons help, however exaggerated, but at the same time I don't exactly condone the media seeing this as an exciting opportunity to increase sales through the best driver for sales there is; fear.

In many ways, it is as bad as the phone tapping, as it is on about the same level of morality.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:15 AM

Actually, Bozo's post does serve a useful purpose – the chance to dispel the fantasy of people on benefit living the high life. I experienced the benefit system myself a few years ago when I was made redundant. I was offered no help by the Job Centre with finding work and they weren't even interested in my own efforts ("why bother at your age?"). Mrsleveller was then only working part-time, I had two children still at school and a mortgage and I received the princely benefit sum of £28 a week. My, how we lived it up!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:13 AM

That isn't true and you ought to know it. The problem is that only the most determined and able and lucky can escape the underclass.

Studies in the 60s showed that descent from "middle class affluence" into "working class poverty" was almost entirely limited to the risen working class, so it is not a single-generational problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:06 AM

"The frustration of having no future?"

EVERYBODY has a future. All they have to do is work at it.
The dependency culture discourages all but the most determined, and teaches them to sit around and wait for the government to "Do something"
It's an offshoot of the blame culture, if nothing is my fault, how come they haven't given me a job?
If they do find me a job, do I have to go every day, do I have to arrive on time, cant they just send me my wages every week without my having to go there and do something?
If I don't have enough money to buy a Blackeberry or an IPhone, how come the government doesn't raise my benefits so I can buy one.
I have rights you know.



Responsibilities, WTF are they?

What do you mean it's your money? I get it from the government you know!

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:57 AM

""The most signed e-petition on the No 10 website is one calling for convicted rioters to lose benefit payments.""

That would surely flag up as a "cruel and/or inhuman punishment" and therefore be ruled illegal.

On this subject I find myself having to agree wholeheartedly (a first, I believe) with Leveller's comment.

""We have adequate laws and punishments in place - they just need to be applied. I'm afraid knee-jerk reactions will never provide a proper solution.

I think we should be humbled by the quiet, dignified appeal of the father on one of the three young men who were murdered.""

A saner, and more productive, petition would be one demanding that those laws be implemented in the fullest, most stringent, manner.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:54 AM

If anyone wants the facts about how much Jobseekers Allowance is, they can find them here:

http://www.jobseekers-allowance.com/JSA-amount.html

Bozo's hearsay is even less accurate than usual.



However, and again I am gobsmacked, apart from little pickings that I could make I agree with most of what Mither says above.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:54 AM

Hate to say it, but I called it. This doesn't help matters. I'm as despondent as anyone else, but kicking people out of their homes? No. Just no.

I'm reminded of Curfew (which shouldn't take you long to complete, though you just need to do the Policeman story to see what I'm aiming at)

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:53 AM

Thanks, Al, I love that poem. Not sure about the James Taylor allusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:50 AM

Thread drift

Robert Frost wrote
66. Birches

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right   
Across the line of straighter darker trees,   
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.   
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.   
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them          5
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning   
After a rain. They click upon themselves   
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored   
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.   
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells   10
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—   
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away   
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.   
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,   
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed   15
So low for long, they never right themselves:   
You may see their trunks arching in the woods   
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground   
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair   
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.   20
But I was going to say when Truth broke in   
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm   
(Now am I free to be poetical?)   
I should prefer to have some boy bend them   
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—   25
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,   
Whose only play was what he found himself,   
Summer or winter, and could play alone.   
One by one he subdued his father's trees   
By riding them down over and over again   30
Until he took the stiffness out of them,   
And not one but hung limp, not one was left   
For him to conquer. He learned all there was   
To learn about not launching out too soon   
And so not carrying the tree away   35
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise   
To the top branches, climbing carefully   
With the same pains you use to fill a cup   
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.   
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,   40
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.   
   
So was I once myself a swinger of birches;   
And so I dream of going back to be.   
It's when I'm weary of considerations,   
And life is too much like a pathless wood   45
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs   
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping   
From a twig's having lashed across it open.   
I'd like to get away from earth awhile   
And then come back to it and begin over.   50
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me   
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away   
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:   
I don't know where it's likely to go better.   
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,   55
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk   
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,   
But dipped its top and set me down again.   
That would be good both going and coming back.   
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
James Taylor sang and wrote
The birches looked dreamlike on account of that Frosting

Was James Taylor alluding to Robert Frost - I often wondered from the first time i heard that song.

Has the same thoughts occurred to anybody else?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:50 AM

Bozo, you really do invent a complete load of drivel. £25K on benefits - as if! Your Walter Mitty tendencies are surfacing again.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:48 AM

I don't see any point in squabbling on this matter, basically we all seem to be of one mind as decent human beings.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:46 AM

One of our clients told us that he recently interviewed a young man for a job - basic salary £25k + car. During the interview, the man got up and said that he had to leave as he was not prepared to loose benefits and drop down to that salary, and that he only came to the interview because he was forced to by the Job Centre Plus in order to preserve his job seekers allowance.

He was escorted from the premises and reported to the Job Centre.

That is what we are up against.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:28 AM

Do you really think a lynch mob is anything better than a looting mob?

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:24 AM

We have adequate laws and punishments in place - they just need to be applied. I'm afraid knee-jerk reactions will never provide a proper solution.

I think we should be humbled by the quiet, dignified appeal of the father on one of the three young men who were murdered.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:17 AM

Birch the fuckers.

Better still, let the owners of the burned, looted shops and other premises, the people who lived above the shops and whose homes were destroyed, the innocent owners of cars which were overturned and burned, the workers trapped, terrified in their workplaces, the police who had to face and deal with those violent, feral pieces of shit, let those people birch the fuckers themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: MikeL2
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:16 AM

hi

IMHO I think that the Government should instigation special procedures to deal with riotous behaviour. In doing so they should recognise the seriousness of what is being committed on our streets.

Special courts with special powwers should be instantly installed.

cheers

Mikel2

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:14 AM

The most signed e-petition on the No 10 website is one calling for convicted rioters to lose benefit payments.

"No taxpayer should have to contribute to those who have destroyed property, stolen from their community and shown a disregard for the country that provides for them," the petition argues.

The petition, which had more than 90,000 signatures at 6am, will be referred to the backbench business committee of MPs if it gets 100,000 signatures.

Now this I want to see happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:59 AM

The frustration of having no future?

Not really sure what your point is, Don? I don't think anyone would have expected that every single person involved would be in the same position.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:43 AM

"One good thing! Many are remanded to the Crown Court where sentences might be realistic."#

Well, there's one thing we can agree on.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:15 AM

Among the 500+ charged so far, out of a total of 1300+ arrests nationwide (more than 800 in London) we have

The daughter of a millionaire
A Teacher
A teaching Assistant
A lifeguard
One young man who invested the fare from Winchester (hardly a deprived area) against the likely profit in other peoples' property.

The frustration of having no future?

Well, if their employers find out, that may be a self fulfilling prophecy, except, of course, for the heiress.

Daddy will sort it for that disadvantaged youngster, and he'll probably ground her for two or three days.

One good thing! Many are remanded to the Crown Court where sentences might be realistic.

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:10 AM

Yes, make them homeless and penniless. I think that will create more problems than it "cures".

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:10 AM

I suspect that this all happened just because it was found that social networking media could negate normal police protection.
No need for social and/or political explanations.
They did it because they could.

This is what happened one day in Montreal when the police went on strike.

the 8 a.m. police shift went off to the Paul Sauvé Arena to argue strike tactics instead of reporting to their beats. Suddenly the city was left unguarded. By 11:20 a.m., the first bank robbery had occurred. By noon shops began to close, and banks shut their doors to all except old customers. Early in the evening, a group of taxi drivers added to the confusion. Protesting the fact that they are prohibited from serving Montreal's airport, they led a crowd of several hundred to storm the garage of the Murray Hill Limousine Service Ltd., which has the lucrative franchise. Buses were overturned and set ablaze. From nearby rooftops, snipers' shots rang out. A handful of frightened Quebec provincial police, called in to help maintain order, stood by helplessly. One was shot in the back by a sniper and died.

The crowd, augmented by other opportunists, moved through downtown Montreal, burning and looting. Rioters stormed into the swanky Queen Elizabeth Hotel, then moved on to the nearby Windsor Hotel and nearly wrecked Mayor Jean Drapeau's newly opened restaurant. Expensive shops along St. Catherine's Street were hit by looters. On the city's outskirts, burglars went to work; one was shot dead by a doctor in his suburban home.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840236,00.html#ixzz1UhnjPMZK

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Musket
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:07 AM

I don't know about the deserving and undeserving poor, I thought this thread was about venting your spleen regarding retribution on criminals. Their balance sheet doesn't come into it, just their morality.

A thread such as this may be cathartic for some, especially how frustrating it is for decent people to comprehend the lack of belonging many young people have. Most of those who feel society isn't doing it for them are tucked up in bed though.

By coincidence, and nothing more, it is young people who are relieving their boredom by trying to look outrageous. The retribution shouldn't play to their game and be outrageous though. It must be proportionate, reasoned, defensible in the cold light of day and within the rules society asks of others.

Anything else is throwing turds back at the monkey.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:19 AM

England was quiet again last night.
Three days of turmoil in many cities resulted in just two fatal incidents.
One quiet day in most US cities.

One of those incidents was a triple murder.
It is feared it may lead to racial tension.
Three Muslim Asians were run down and a black man is charged with their murder.
The father of one victim, who was 20, made an emotional but dignified appeal for no reprisals.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:17 AM

There, you see, the concepts of the deserving and the undeserving poor are still with us. This is looking more and more like a timewarp.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:09 AM

Hey, Bozo, maybe you'll be able to get a council flat and move out of your bedsit.

Subject: RE: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Sooz
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:08 AM

I think community service in a refugee camp in East Africa would be a good penalty.

Subject: BS: Punishment for riots
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:33 AM

Where possible, Croydon Council will seek the eviction of council tenants convicted of rioting offences. Good.