It’s quite strange sitting here in Australia reading the BBC news website and seeing the disturbing images of riots that have swept across the UK, alongside an ad (yes ads appear on BBC outside the UK) encouraging me to visit the country. The ad reads ‘Britain. You’re invited.’ As my eyes look back at a picture of some looter walking out of an electrical store with his arms full, I think to myself, No you’re okay Britain, I think I’ll stay here.
This kind of violence could happen anywhere, of course. However, seeing video footage and images of masked ‘hoodies’ kicking in storefronts, setting vehicles and building ablaze, and looting shops, makes me wonder how such a situation has occurred.
Is Britain broken? I think in some respects it is. That was my opinion long before I got on a one-way flight to Australia. I had become increasingly alarmed by the nanny state, the breakdown of community, the widespread erosion of privacy rights, and the steadily growing reputation Britain seemed to earning across the world of being a nation of unruly drunks.
These riots will only add to that unpleasant and largely inaccurate generalisation, but do they tell a story beyond the headlines? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the UK, and if so can it be fixed?
On the BBC news website I listened to two girls talking about the riots, calling them fun. “It’s the government’s fault,” said one. “Yeah, conservatives, whatever, who it is, I don’t know,” agreed the other as she drank from a stolen bottle of wine at 9:30am.
On Australian TV news a reporter in the UK talked about how every shop in one shopping centre had been looted, apart from one, a bookshop.
Oddly enough, as I continued to look through the BBC news website, the Visit Britain ad dissapeared. Maybe it came to the end of its run, or perhaps someone in charge of the campaign realised that the timing was unfortunate, after all, it’s hard to sell the world on England’s green and pleasant land when its cities are on fire.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 10, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Terrible events indeed.
The UK does have a underclass, a class of people who don’t seem to play by the same set of rules as us, and are largely uneducated. I heard one guy being interviewed who thought it was perfectly acceptable to steal as he was poor, in his opinion he was just taking something back. These people’s idea of what is right and wrong is very distorted.
So what or who is to blame? I’ve said this for a while, but I think the 60’s brought about a bit of a moral vacuum that has now existed for the last 50 years. For the fist half of the 20th century we had a moral code, that rightly or wrongly came from or was based on Christianity which gave us absolutes or ‘truth’. With the 60’s came a questioning of those beliefs and absolutes. All of a sudden, there was no right or wrong, people were encouraged to come up with their own truths. Sex was no longer taboo, free love was encouraged. As a result we had a generation of single parents, which I’m sure most will agree is not the ideal. With each new generation the problems are compounded, that moral code is eroded further and further until we get to where we are today.
Something radical needs to change or this underclass will continue to grow and cause more and more problems.
Having said that, the stories I’ve read about communities coming together in the last few days have heartened me somewhat, of course they don’t sell the news as well as a burning building so they don’t get anywhere near the coverage. Yesterday in London, Liverpool and Birmingham, people used twitter in a positive way via @riotcleanup hundreds turned up to clear up the aftermath of the riots, these were the good people standing up and showing the world that not everyone in the UK is a thug. Or the communities in London and Birmingham that turned out in force to protect their communities. Interestingly, many of those groups were immigrant groups, Turkish, Seikh, and Muslim.
I was somewhat dismayed not to see lookers being batoned by the police, no images of kettling. Why were the police so heavy handed during the student protests, but not with the rioters?
So is Britain broken? Yes, but in a way I think many Countries are, you could look at the US with its gun crime and financial problems, Norway with its recent terrorism, or Zimbabwe with its torture camps.
How do we fix it? Of course there are no easy answers, it requires a concerted effort and significant resources over a prolonged period of time. I believe a combination of education and a more serious punishment system is required. These people need to understand that there will be a consequence to their actions, consequences that are unpleasant. One rioter put it this way ” i’ve never been in trouble with the police before, this will be my first offence, what are they going to do, give me an asbo”
I’d like to see anyone convicted of rioting/looting given a minimum sentence of 12 months in prison. Yes it will cost, but a clear message needs to be sent.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 11, 2011 at 12:45 am
You’ll probably won’t be surprised to know that there were riots on Park Road South last night :-)
Wrote the following comment on Aug 11, 2011 at 1:49 am
Hello Simon, Deb from Florida -USA
I was born in the US,grandfather was born in Durham,UK. In 1992 I visited Uk but only from London south to Kent-Cambridge-Bath-Sheppey and the Chunnel to France..I fell in love the moment my plane landed, but my dreams of this land were shattered at Westminster Abbey when I saw graffeti…ancient wooden handcarved works of art destroyed for the sake of an new generations lack of appreciation…
Glad to have seen Winsor Castle before its fire too.
I feel so lucky to have visited then before all this.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 11, 2011 at 7:23 am
There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”
Martin Luther King Jr
Wrote the following comment on Aug 11, 2011 at 7:25 am
it won’t last anyway, just wait till it rains
Someone tried to use Facebook to organise a riot in Plymouth.
Police RSVP’ed as attending
Wrote the following comment on Aug 13, 2011 at 11:59 pm
I must disagree with wilvo in his statement calling Norway broken. I believe that Norway is an example to many countries and to hold up the recent terrorism as some example is not at all correct.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 15, 2011 at 10:47 am
Your country needs to allow people to have guns because with guns this would not have happened. If the blacks wanted to loot my shop they had better like the taste of lead!
Wrote the following comment on Aug 16, 2011 at 2:19 am
@Grailz Yep, of course, guns make everything better. Criminals can obtain guns you know. So instead of looting and general damage we’d have had looting, rioting and deaths.
The stats on gun ownership reducing crime are not good, all you end up with is a huge number of deaths by guns, and not many of them are criminals. For example 90% of guns discharged in the home end in a family member being killed or injured. If gun ownership reduced crime, the US would be the safest country in the world, as it is you have the greatest number of gun related deaths in the world.
Guns make you feel safer, but in reality they make you less safe.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 16, 2011 at 12:34 pm
I havenot been shot yet wilvo but you bet your ass if the blacks want to home invade me or loot me then ill be killing me a nigger double quick.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 16, 2011 at 8:17 pm
@Grailz Ah right, so only black people invade homes & loot? Gosh, I’m so uninformed. Rhetorical question (look it up in a dictionary Grailz), why are racists always stupid?
Wrote the following comment on Aug 21, 2011 at 11:35 am
One person’s moral vacuum is another person’s liberation.
While the 1960’s did provide much in the way of a left-bent… a liberalism if you will… to the cultural sphere across both Britain and the US (as well as other nations), it seems a bit much to assume one decade alone could lead to the sort of moral decay one is suggesting exists today.
Certainly more conservative political movements have had their time in power since the 60’s, but I do not see that they returned any sense of morality to the greater social consciousness.
I’d further suggest the notion that Christianity could have an impact on the moral compass of the peoples of our nation most problematic. Which Christianity? The Catholic Church (hardly a center or moral righteousness)? Mormons? Lutherans? C of E? Jehovah Witnesses? Which is the right ‘brand’ of Christianity to lead us from the wilderness of decadence?
And what of those who do not bother to subscribe to religious teachings at all? It’s almost as if to suggest without Christianity there cannot be morality. I, as an atheist, remain a good, upstanding, moral citizen, but feel no need to cloak myself in religious dogma to get there. I’d suggest far more immoral and amoral harm has been done to the peoples of this planet in the name of religion than by any other cultural system.
No doubt some of the people involved in these actions were, are and will remain scum. No scruples. No morals. No sense of right or wrong. But it isn’t a lack of faith that drives their stupidity, but a sense of not belonging. A sense there is nothing for them in modern Britain. We have the same sort of sense happening here, but without the riots (as of yet). The disparity between the haves and have nots has grown so dramatically in the past decade such that civil strife is quite inevitable. Or so I believe.
Wrote the following comment on Aug 23, 2011 at 7:47 am
lol… just another normal night at the ESWA club then!?!