As London burns and the injured get mugged the internet is awash with outrage and incredulity that young people can behave in such a manner. Twitter is into overload and every other post on Facebook is riot-related as we all virtually holler our own two-pennith worth. The general (and possibly reactionary) consensus appears to be that the perpetrators of these crimes are 'fucking retards' and 'assholes' with many advocating that the army and a few water cannon be brought in. Helpful as these suggestions may or may not be, the crux of the problem surely runs far deeper than simple name-calling and subsequent loss of liberty.
We know, without doing too much research, the demographic of the people involved: The Lidl Class. Ill-educated people from ill-educated backgrounds whose families and communities have been steadily marginalised by successive governments so that they have given up on life, hopes and dreams, preferring instead to sit at home, feeding on a diet of subscription TV, watching soaps, X-Factor and their mates on Jeremy Kyle, while ignoring their children. We know that some of them are benefit cheats. We know that some of them severely lack any parenting skills. We know that some of them have no time for education, preferring to earn some semblance of a living through crime. We know that they are skint and we know that they are depressed and bitter.
To simply write these people off is to exacerbate the problem. To arrest and deal harshly with the offenders and see this as job done is to invite unrest in the future. By then, rioting may have progressed from the 1980s trend of setting fire to police vehicles, to the current looting and burning of shops, to eventually setting fire to Buck House, Number 10 or Parliament itself. Perhaps they'll bring their Dobermans and Rottweilers. The trend in rioting does not offer hope that future riots will be more peaceful events than they currently are. Instead of granting police extraordinary powers for these anticipated future riots, shouldn't we be looking at ways to placate citizens so that we may instead not anticipate them at all, thereby affording us genuine surprise if they do occur?
The resigned acceptance expressed on internet forums and social networking sites ("scum will be scum" etc) suggests that many of us already know what the problem is. However, the vitriol directed at the hooligans responsible for the unrest suggests that we may have difficulty recognising it.
For more than a decade young people have been systematically targeted and criminalised by the state with the first ASBO handed out in 1999. I wonder how many of the kids involved in the rioting and looting had nothing to lose by virtue of the fact that they were already registered crims, already known to the police? Seen by the police as easy pickings, children have been routinely harassed in their own backyards for years. In a 2006 Channel 4 documentary one 12 year old on a Leeds housing estate revealed that he was stopped and asked to empty his pockets 11 times a day by the police; without ever leaving his estate. That child will now be 17 or 18 and, if (by some miracle of one god or another) he managed; never to get caught daubing graffiti; never to get caught with a sixteenth of hash in his pocket; never to get caught throwing stones at an already dilapidated bus shelter; never to get caught shouting obscenities; never to get caught underage drinking, and somehow develop a healthy regard for authority, he may be a well-rounded, law-abiding individual now. If, on the other hand, he didn't, he may be contemplating getting a few mates together, going out in Leeds tonight and helping himself to a flat-screen TV and a handful of shirts. The same Channel 4 documentary revealed that all bar one police force in the UK (South Wales for the record) were, at that time, on monthly cash bonuses of between £50 and £250 for nicking repeat underage offenders. Head up to the estates. Easy money.
In the coming days, weeks and even months the offenders will be rightly rounded up and dealt with severely by the courts. But what happens next? The offenders go to prison and their families remain in shithole estates. The rest of society turns it back again, grateful that the attention-seeking has stopped. On the estates, emotions fester, younger siblings and sons vow revenge and jailed rioters become heroes. The bleakest of futures awaits. Anger and bitterness, much in evidence before these riots, come to the fore. Already-existing community feelings of victimisation and alienation are wholly reinforced. Improvements to estates are not made. Investment in youth activities does not happen. Education is not a priority. Hope and ambition are scarce. Day-to-day, poor-diet living is the norm. There is no respect for authority - even when you've done nothing wrong they treat you like you have anyway. Success is measured in material possession. Items such as flat-screen TVs, a comfortable sofa from which to watch it, cars, the right clothes, jewellery and phones are must-have. Much of this is stolen, some purchased on the never never. Poor financial management and lack of education is rife. The prospect of a job? Minimal. These are the lessons the next generations on these estates are learning, and for each generation that passes on this ever-establishing order, the sense of 'them and us' gets greater and greater, until it is entrenched. Meanwhile, those of us lucky enough to be free from the trappings of such poverty and distress carry on blissfully - even gratefully - unaware, until it kicks off again - at which point the line between 'them and us' becomes blurred, with both parties claiming to be "us".
One senior police officer described the looting as "greed, not anger". This greed is learned: Bankers brought the world to its knees yet were awarding themselves huge bonuses just 12 months later. The expenses scandal brought to light the true extravagance afforded to MPs and many of them, after paying back the money, went unpunished - as if returning the money somehow negated the fraud. Rupert Murdoch's regime will break the law in the name of profit. Television depicts success and greed in direct correlation. Government ministers announce swingeing cuts before taking their families abroad on their jollies. Utility companies announce huge profits and price hikes in the same sentence. Meanwhile, role models and heroes of the Lidl Classes include classless footballers, X-Factor judges, porn stars and Phil Mitchell, none of whom manage to combine wealth with much taste or intellect.
David Cameron's July 2006 call to 'hug a hoodie' is now attracting some ridicule (Cameron softens crime image in 'hug a hoodie' call) but maybe not for the right reasons. Cameron was not suggesting we embrace criminals but was instead recognising that not everyone living on an estate in abject poverty (by western standards) is a villain. Regard a kid with suspicion for long enough and he will eventually come to appear suspicious. There is a certain self-fulfilling prophecy at work. Cameron was suggesting that we don't scowl disparagingly at what we might perceive to be young hoodlums but instead treat them as we would anyone else in the street, ie courteously. It is certainly an unconservative view and, while not an ignoble one, it is neither realistic nor enough. For one thing, huge parts of the population never see the poorest people in our society. The Lidl Classes have their own pubs, shops and malls now for Christ's sake! The nearest shopping mall to the nearest estate where I live houses a Lidl, a Farm Foods, two Poundstretchers, a hairdressers and a Ladbrokes bookie. Round the corner there is a pawn shop, and drug dealers and loan sharks are not hard to find. Sainsbury's have stayed away. Waitrose have not bothered. Marks & Sparks see no point. I do not go there. Only Tesco, themselves the subject less than four months ago of ultimately violent protests in Bristol - leading to more than 30 arrests - have tried to muscle in, albeit up the road.
Major investment is required. It is the only way to dispel the utter hopelessness that has been allowed to brew and fester on our country's poorest estates under successive governments for 30 years. Voices need to be returned to people. And people need to be educated so they know how to use them.
If I, Johnny Despondent, your humble Sports Correspondent, were the Prime Minister, I would, after after giver her a very public bollocking, set about righting the wrongs of Margaret Thatcher, beginning by replacing all the housing she sold off. It is too late to try and regenerate the worst housing estates in the country. They are mired in their misery. Using the same pot that is currently paying for all the extra policing, plus raising more by seriously scrutinising the defence budget and pulling troops out of places they are neither required nor requested, I would embark on a building programme throughout the country, throwing up cheap housing as quickly as possible. There would be plenty of work for uneducated labourers who could be selected from the over-crowded estates they currently inhabit. They would feel a sense of pride and community if they were building their own or their children's new homes. The economy would get a kick-start as construction companies vie for tenders and begin purchasing the required materials. Community gardens for on-going cultivation would be incorporated. And councils would need to plan how they can eventually buy the properties local to them at cost price from the government over the next 20 or so years. I believe this would give people a sense of purpose and belonging. Earning a wage and paying your own way is a source of pride too many people under the age of 35 - children and parents - are completely oblivious to.
Government ministers can talk in their chambers until they are blue in the face, reeling off the "completely unacceptable" and the "they will be found and severely punished" lines again and again, but rather than pander to ad captandum why don't they actually do something about it before it gets even worse? It would be late, but not too late.
We know, without doing too much research, the demographic of the people involved: The Lidl Class. Ill-educated people from ill-educated backgrounds whose families and communities have been steadily marginalised by successive governments so that they have given up on life, hopes and dreams, preferring instead to sit at home, feeding on a diet of subscription TV, watching soaps, X-Factor and their mates on Jeremy Kyle, while ignoring their children. We know that some of them are benefit cheats. We know that some of them severely lack any parenting skills. We know that some of them have no time for education, preferring to earn some semblance of a living through crime. We know that they are skint and we know that they are depressed and bitter.
To simply write these people off is to exacerbate the problem. To arrest and deal harshly with the offenders and see this as job done is to invite unrest in the future. By then, rioting may have progressed from the 1980s trend of setting fire to police vehicles, to the current looting and burning of shops, to eventually setting fire to Buck House, Number 10 or Parliament itself. Perhaps they'll bring their Dobermans and Rottweilers. The trend in rioting does not offer hope that future riots will be more peaceful events than they currently are. Instead of granting police extraordinary powers for these anticipated future riots, shouldn't we be looking at ways to placate citizens so that we may instead not anticipate them at all, thereby affording us genuine surprise if they do occur?
The resigned acceptance expressed on internet forums and social networking sites ("scum will be scum" etc) suggests that many of us already know what the problem is. However, the vitriol directed at the hooligans responsible for the unrest suggests that we may have difficulty recognising it.
For more than a decade young people have been systematically targeted and criminalised by the state with the first ASBO handed out in 1999. I wonder how many of the kids involved in the rioting and looting had nothing to lose by virtue of the fact that they were already registered crims, already known to the police? Seen by the police as easy pickings, children have been routinely harassed in their own backyards for years. In a 2006 Channel 4 documentary one 12 year old on a Leeds housing estate revealed that he was stopped and asked to empty his pockets 11 times a day by the police; without ever leaving his estate. That child will now be 17 or 18 and, if (by some miracle of one god or another) he managed; never to get caught daubing graffiti; never to get caught with a sixteenth of hash in his pocket; never to get caught throwing stones at an already dilapidated bus shelter; never to get caught shouting obscenities; never to get caught underage drinking, and somehow develop a healthy regard for authority, he may be a well-rounded, law-abiding individual now. If, on the other hand, he didn't, he may be contemplating getting a few mates together, going out in Leeds tonight and helping himself to a flat-screen TV and a handful of shirts. The same Channel 4 documentary revealed that all bar one police force in the UK (South Wales for the record) were, at that time, on monthly cash bonuses of between £50 and £250 for nicking repeat underage offenders. Head up to the estates. Easy money.
In the coming days, weeks and even months the offenders will be rightly rounded up and dealt with severely by the courts. But what happens next? The offenders go to prison and their families remain in shithole estates. The rest of society turns it back again, grateful that the attention-seeking has stopped. On the estates, emotions fester, younger siblings and sons vow revenge and jailed rioters become heroes. The bleakest of futures awaits. Anger and bitterness, much in evidence before these riots, come to the fore. Already-existing community feelings of victimisation and alienation are wholly reinforced. Improvements to estates are not made. Investment in youth activities does not happen. Education is not a priority. Hope and ambition are scarce. Day-to-day, poor-diet living is the norm. There is no respect for authority - even when you've done nothing wrong they treat you like you have anyway. Success is measured in material possession. Items such as flat-screen TVs, a comfortable sofa from which to watch it, cars, the right clothes, jewellery and phones are must-have. Much of this is stolen, some purchased on the never never. Poor financial management and lack of education is rife. The prospect of a job? Minimal. These are the lessons the next generations on these estates are learning, and for each generation that passes on this ever-establishing order, the sense of 'them and us' gets greater and greater, until it is entrenched. Meanwhile, those of us lucky enough to be free from the trappings of such poverty and distress carry on blissfully - even gratefully - unaware, until it kicks off again - at which point the line between 'them and us' becomes blurred, with both parties claiming to be "us".
One senior police officer described the looting as "greed, not anger". This greed is learned: Bankers brought the world to its knees yet were awarding themselves huge bonuses just 12 months later. The expenses scandal brought to light the true extravagance afforded to MPs and many of them, after paying back the money, went unpunished - as if returning the money somehow negated the fraud. Rupert Murdoch's regime will break the law in the name of profit. Television depicts success and greed in direct correlation. Government ministers announce swingeing cuts before taking their families abroad on their jollies. Utility companies announce huge profits and price hikes in the same sentence. Meanwhile, role models and heroes of the Lidl Classes include classless footballers, X-Factor judges, porn stars and Phil Mitchell, none of whom manage to combine wealth with much taste or intellect.
David Cameron's July 2006 call to 'hug a hoodie' is now attracting some ridicule (Cameron softens crime image in 'hug a hoodie' call) but maybe not for the right reasons. Cameron was not suggesting we embrace criminals but was instead recognising that not everyone living on an estate in abject poverty (by western standards) is a villain. Regard a kid with suspicion for long enough and he will eventually come to appear suspicious. There is a certain self-fulfilling prophecy at work. Cameron was suggesting that we don't scowl disparagingly at what we might perceive to be young hoodlums but instead treat them as we would anyone else in the street, ie courteously. It is certainly an unconservative view and, while not an ignoble one, it is neither realistic nor enough. For one thing, huge parts of the population never see the poorest people in our society. The Lidl Classes have their own pubs, shops and malls now for Christ's sake! The nearest shopping mall to the nearest estate where I live houses a Lidl, a Farm Foods, two Poundstretchers, a hairdressers and a Ladbrokes bookie. Round the corner there is a pawn shop, and drug dealers and loan sharks are not hard to find. Sainsbury's have stayed away. Waitrose have not bothered. Marks & Sparks see no point. I do not go there. Only Tesco, themselves the subject less than four months ago of ultimately violent protests in Bristol - leading to more than 30 arrests - have tried to muscle in, albeit up the road.
Major investment is required. It is the only way to dispel the utter hopelessness that has been allowed to brew and fester on our country's poorest estates under successive governments for 30 years. Voices need to be returned to people. And people need to be educated so they know how to use them.
If I, Johnny Despondent, your humble Sports Correspondent, were the Prime Minister, I would, after after giver her a very public bollocking, set about righting the wrongs of Margaret Thatcher, beginning by replacing all the housing she sold off. It is too late to try and regenerate the worst housing estates in the country. They are mired in their misery. Using the same pot that is currently paying for all the extra policing, plus raising more by seriously scrutinising the defence budget and pulling troops out of places they are neither required nor requested, I would embark on a building programme throughout the country, throwing up cheap housing as quickly as possible. There would be plenty of work for uneducated labourers who could be selected from the over-crowded estates they currently inhabit. They would feel a sense of pride and community if they were building their own or their children's new homes. The economy would get a kick-start as construction companies vie for tenders and begin purchasing the required materials. Community gardens for on-going cultivation would be incorporated. And councils would need to plan how they can eventually buy the properties local to them at cost price from the government over the next 20 or so years. I believe this would give people a sense of purpose and belonging. Earning a wage and paying your own way is a source of pride too many people under the age of 35 - children and parents - are completely oblivious to.
Government ministers can talk in their chambers until they are blue in the face, reeling off the "completely unacceptable" and the "they will be found and severely punished" lines again and again, but rather than pander to ad captandum why don't they actually do something about it before it gets even worse? It would be late, but not too late.
