In fairness, at the time the change was made it was just England that was affected the Welsh and Scots weren't involved. There's now mention of some bother in Cardiff though...
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Riots in the UK
- Thread starter iStudentUK
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This is a fantastic article. It outlines that while frustrating and inexcusable, the root of the problem is rather more complex than a lot of people wish to think.
While I slightly object to the UK title (as there is nothing in Northern Ireland or Scotland), Britain might be a more relevant title, England & a slight scuffle in Wales a bit too long. So leave it as UK.
16 year old in Glasgow arrested for breach of the peace after starting a Facebook campaign. It only took the police a few hours to arrest him so it looks like they are monitoring t'internets.
But we're not being complacent, it will only take the Neds (English: 'Chavs') a couple of bottles of Buckfast before they have a brilliant idea.
16 year old in Glasgow arrested for breach of the peace after starting a Facebook campaign. It only took the police a few hours to arrest him so it looks like they are monitoring t'internets.
But we're not being complacent, it will only take the Neds (English: 'Chavs') a couple of bottles of Buckfast before they have a brilliant idea.
Great article; nuanced and actually intelligent. Thanks for posting it. I've just read it and forwarded it to my brother.
While not sinking to the abysmal standard of most articles I've seen Ms Williams is still looking at from a middle class liberal perspective as if a study of some newly discovered tribe in New Guinea.Everbody who lives in a working class area knows that this generation has been cut off from everything available as a benefit from society.They have no chance of "making it" they never have, at least their parents and grandparents generation knew if they keep their nose clean and worked their arses off they'd be able to secure a minimum wage boring dead end job which would see them through.Not this generation they have no chance,their mates or relatives have been to jail and they know the restrictions on their freedoms is hardly worse on the inside than it is on the outside,hence jail doesn't work as a frightener. I've seen it up close and personal,it's truly sad but a lot of them don't even care for their own lives and will put it on the line for a bad word of even a shifty look.The usual threats from Cameron et al are seen as just another challenge they'll face it and win or die in the attempt.The vigilante noises being made are very scary not just because a lot of it is being driven by fascist/racist loony tunes but because it won't scare the kids and it may well result in a huge amount of bloodshed.
Just because she's looking at it from a "middle class perspective" doesn't make the article any less quality through critical thought. It may even reach more people for that very reason.
Fair comment. I have been distracted by "stuff" in my own life and have not been paying as much attention as I should have to what has been happening in the UK. I take your point about the tone, and the middle class slant, - but the Guardian's readership is mostly middle-class, albeit of the more liberal minded variety - and at least it seeks to offer a more rounded analysis and explanation for what has been happening than can be found elsewhere.
In any case, I have been waiting for something more than the "mindless thugs" line I have heard far too much of. The word "mindless" annoys me when used in such contexts. It used to be used liberally about the IRA - the standard description was "mindless terrorists", when, in fact, if anything, both terrorists and rioters have shown themselves to be very mindful.
For the past year, since the change of Govt, the Observer (which I have read since I was a teenager quite a number of years ago) has been quietly logging & noting all of the cuts and other changes targetted at the less well off and less powerful in UK society. It is all a deeply depressing picture, not helped by the leaderless situation the police have found themselves in, in the wake of the NOTW phone hacking scandals.
Well from an academic standpoint it's possibly a reasonable article and don't get me wrong amongst the other dross being printed it is quite reasonable.It's just that as I see it Williams lives in her middle class bubble (she lives not far from me in her little middle class enclave ) and at a guess probably only interacts with working people when they clean her home and (if she has them)look after her children.She I would imagine (keep in mind this is just my opinion although I'd be surprised if I'm wrong) is looking at this from the outside with all the ignorance that implies,hence the newly discovered tribe comment.It's all very well for the liberal to wonder about conditions of the dispossessed poor it's an entirely different thing to live amongst them and see the crap the put up with day in day out.
That is exactly what is wrong with this "new media". These "Liberal writers" really need to take a long look at themselves.
Okaaaay. o_o
Pardon me for asking this but it is a genuine question. I notice from several threads that you show quite a scornful attitude towards the middle class and I'm curious why. Sometimes it sounds like you're on a mission to prove your superior social awareness so as to guilt-trip anyone who isn't showing unconditional sensitivity towards, dare I say, the underclass? Did you come from really rough beginnings and now self-loathe? I just don't understand the bitterness.
I do take some of your points but I find myself always taking them with a grain of salt because it comes across as though there's some personal friction beneath the surface.
I just read the article.
I must say, that I've got no idea what she was going on about.
Was there any summing up in the article or conclusion, it just rambled here an there?
The summary at the top seemed a bit ridiculous and the bit about the looter scum who was talking about looting pissed me off a bit. I suppose she was 'brave' in that she was telling the truth, but I would more describe that person in more colourful language.
Guess the journalist is another clueless rich bint who writes for the Guardian (I don't dislike the Guardian, or all of their female contributors, I'm just generalising for fun).
And Peterkro, you know I don't see much of these 'dispossessed poor' you're talking about, the first people up in court are teachers and scaffolders (scaffolders can make some good money). I think a large spectrum of youths turned up, which happened to include chavs as well.
I think you can safely say that a broad range of some of the worst of us were there, for the most awful unjustifiable reasons, and that perhaps with the exception of the first day the Police should have come down as hard as they did in the city for those protests (funny (sic) that they didn't).
I must say, that I've got no idea what she was going on about.
Was there any summing up in the article or conclusion, it just rambled here an there?
The summary at the top seemed a bit ridiculous and the bit about the looter scum who was talking about looting pissed me off a bit. I suppose she was 'brave' in that she was telling the truth, but I would more describe that person in more colourful language.
Guess the journalist is another clueless rich bint who writes for the Guardian (I don't dislike the Guardian, or all of their female contributors, I'm just generalising for fun).
And Peterkro, you know I don't see much of these 'dispossessed poor' you're talking about, the first people up in court are teachers and scaffolders (scaffolders can make some good money). I think a large spectrum of youths turned up, which happened to include chavs as well.
I think you can safely say that a broad range of some of the worst of us were there, for the most awful unjustifiable reasons, and that perhaps with the exception of the first day the Police should have come down as hard as they did in the city for those protests (funny (sic) that they didn't).
I did! Twice, although not top to bottom, read it in patches - it's difficult to read articles when you have more pressing tabs calling out for you to review.
No way I'm going to try to read it again, so I'm sticking with my assessment that, as she's a journalist, by default she probably can't tell her arse from her elbow, unless she's sitting down.
Self loathing? Hardly, because you don't understand something sticking a nice neat label on it achieves nothing.I've tried the "he who dies with the most toys wins" game and it's boring dull and pointless,essentially I'm interested in humans and their interactions.I've actually not got a great deal against the middle classes except perhaps their propensity for liberal guilt induced hand wringing about the conditions most people live in whilst enjoying the fruits of their luck and not doing anything about it,maybe their overblown sense of entitlement grates as well.Superior social awareness? Again hardly, any of us only needs to take a cursory glance outside ourselves to see the reality of life for most people in this and other countries,contributing to that by trying to climb the greasy pole demeans me as well as others so thats a no go.
Besides all that I like living in the gutter,you meet a better class of people there.
Read the article and offer fair comment on it rather than offer cheap, glib, sexist sneers. If you can't be bothered to inform yourself of what is under discussion, then save your breath - and your contribution - until you can.
Peterkro, seriously, the Guardian is not the class enemy here; they are one of the few media sources which is read by the derided middle classes who will actually seek out and read a more nuanced and informed worldview. Direct your fire at those who deserve it more.
To a certain extent, I agree with you. However, the tone of your comments reminds me of the sort of left wing meetings I used to attend while a student in college where the hard left derided the softer left and both were so busy sniping at each other that they over-looked the fact that the right had won the cultural conflicts, and made off with the lion's share of the loot while re-writing the rules of political, economic and cultural engagement.
By the way, I'm not sure that you "meet a better class of people" in the gutter. Deprivation, humiliation, alienation, poverty and unemployment are not good for anybody, not the individual nor society, let alone the gilded heights of the economy.
Agreed.
The reason I'm taking the piss out of the Guardian is that it has all the things needed to be a really great newspaper but always fails at the last jump.I say this as someone who read it everyday for years to the extent my brain would sub consciously rearrange words, letters,paragraphs and indeed whole stories during the years it won it's name the Grauniad. There is lots to like for instance it took real balls to go with the headline "Hamilton you're a liar and a cheat" before they had secured the evidence to prove it.But don't forget they backed the LibDems in the last election and have previous form as supporters of the Liberals.
That was at least partially a joke.Don't get me wrong I can recognise structural violence in the people around me and it's disgusting.What amazes me is that in spite of that most people are funny,sharp,generous and loving in spite of their deprivations,which is the real "meeting a better class of people".The middle classes bore me to tears with their constant withering about house prices and aren't the Unions awful disrupting my trips to go shopping up west and isn't this a nice little South African wine with a cheeky bouquet (forgetting a bunch of black people are getting subsistence wages to produce it while some racist ex supporter of Apartheid rakes in the profits.
Workers control in Industry,pest control for the bourgeoisie. (it's a joke)
/rant
A guy in Glasgow was arrested by police for trying to organise similar rioting/looting on Facebook.
It better not spill up to Scotland, though if it did, I doubt it would spread to Edinburgh. We're in the middle of our 'Edinburgh Festival' and every club and most pubs are open till 5am, not to mind the all night activities going on. Any rioting would be overpowered by the mass amount of tourists and locals out beyond at midnight. Well, I'd hope so anyway!
See 1.12pm
Edinburgh, like Glasgow, has it's areas of severe poverty and it wouldn't surprise me if there are a couple of isolated incidents of a group of youths putting in a shop window but nothing on the scale as England. Racial tensions are at a pretty low level just now as well, indeed even after the murder of Kriss Donald in 2004 the BNP trying to capitalise were sent packing.
I am very wary about the BNP trying to do the same here, I've heard that the little ****** has been writing some racist filth on Twitter (not bothered to waste my time reading it.)
And I can't stand your better class of people with their clogs and their Woodbines. Every section has its bores.
Kilamite; they can trash the Attic at The Pleasance - may find some people in there still searching for comedy.
Cheers,
OW
That may make some sense to you,me I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about.
These Woodbine-smoking cloggie scum should remember their place and show some respect for the authorities. This is a democracy: they have been granted a vote, dammit, what more do they want? They should be grateful.