What we're seeing here the end result of our grasping, egotistical society, with it's sense of entitlement and aggressive individualism.

We've got an 18 year old girl from Worcestershire at No.1 with a grotesquely egotistical pop record that perfectly soundtracks the times.

Me, me, me, me, me...

I genuinely don't think so.

I'm pretty sure this will be over in a couple of days and in years to come there will be footage of it on 'i love 2011' in the same way there is for the events in the early eighties, but this time with a grime soundtrack rather than The Specials.

Speaking of which, those events did start in communities with a real grievance against the actions of local police forces but quickly, as this time, degenerated into copycat rioting for riotings sake in towns and cities across the country, even Stevenage, where I was living, had a little riot in the new town centre. These events didn't change the way we lived our lives.

In this country people have started calling other people 'scum' as a matter of course, helped by the anonymity of the internet. Celtic fans call Rangers fans scum, Man U - Man City, Newcastle - Sunderland, probably Bristol Rovers/Bristol City for all I know...
...that's a basic bedrock of thousands of people cheapening the human race in the name of football.
Then there's all the rest of it. People on this website are already calling the perpetrators in this riot 'scum' no doubt the rioters call the police 'scum' (or 'filth' as was) and the Tories 'scum'. No doubt the police will think the rioters are 'scum' too. It's a scummy world.

As an optimist, I'd like to think that these events will push us closer to a tipping point. For too long, decent folk (i.e. the vast majority of us) have kept quiet while the key concepts that help underpin civilised society have been allowed to wither on the vine. A recalibration of the moral compass is required and it may take events like these to get more folk onside with that notion.

We have allowed successive generations to grow up without respect for (or fear of) authority. This is learned behaviour. The rioters know that they can act with relative impunity, because they will have experienced this at home, or in school, or on the streets. Their behaviour, in that context, should not surprise us. In fact, it's entirely predictable. I work in education and could quote numerous examples of unruly children (and families) being allowed to dictate terms to classmates, teachers, head teachers, police and local government officers.

Our abnegation of responsibility, our idiotic appeasement of anti-social behaviour and our fetishistic devotion to moral relativism and individual gratification must inevitably come at a price. We have created our own monsters.

As I said, I'm an optimist. We can turn this around.

...who's education hasn't graced them with the ability to distinguish between playing Grand Theft Auto, and real life. The fact that their chosen smart phone is the Blackberry might tell us a few things.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/riots-caused-by-society-or-la...

Once the printing on their knock-off trackie bottoms starts to run, they'll soon go home again, the silly boys.

I don't think the riots were about unemployment or anti-Govt or anti-cuts etc. It was opportunism and group (gang) behaviour.

The Police have had a bad year though. They looked weak and clueless and as ever their leaders were embarrassing. Only when they went at the rioters with armoured trucks did they look powerful; they must do more of that. If they can 'kettle' peace activists why can't they do that with marauding youths?

The stock markets are another matter though - I fear that financial issues could take a continual downward shift that will grind any recovery to a halt.

which is ironic, as the King's Road really is an Aladdin's cave of fancy crap.

It seems that it's all "good" and it's all about "showing the police and the rich that we can do what we want": http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

I'm a self-confessed leftie, who does believe that out-reach, community work, etc. etc. can help address many of society's ills. The way I'm feeling right now, makes me wonder what others of a less liberal persuasion are thinking, as currently I'm all for the police using water canon and baton rounds to drive these selfish, opportunistic looters off the streets.

...and then let loose. If we had any leadership in this country then that would happen. Issues like this and you start to see what the weak willed, self interested, David Camerons of this world are really all about. They were all on holiday until yesterday!

after WWII only once said POWs had rebuilt the country they invaded and laid waste to.

Instead of locking the rioters up, they should be made to clean up and rebuild what they have destroyed. Not only will they be less inclined to burn it down a second time, they may actually learn some useful vocational and life skills.

The BBC has just put on-line a report about the first alleged rioters to go to court:

"Among them were a graphic designer, college students, a youth worker, a university graduate and a man signed up to join the army. Some gave non-London addresses. "

Full story here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14460554

he spoke to a girl who had to flee her flat in Ealing. She and her partner gave up when they could hear the rioters in the street below goading each other to light fires. The unsaid subtext was that, had they stayed, they would have been burnt alive. As it was, the whole block was gutted. Not only are a number of people now homeless through no fault of their own but everything they owned is gone: personal stuff, photos, the paperwork and records everyone who has a regular life needs to function. They pretty much only have the clothes they are wearing. To add insult to injury, some of the other callers to the show tried to justify the violence as unemployed youth who had nothing to do because the youth clubs had closed due to cuts. When I was young, Ealing was a really nice place to live, known as Queen of the Suburbs.

Words fail me

BBC London, as the name implies, really has been the place for horrible stories like that, but also the genuinely heart-warming stuff from old and young alike.

The riots have changed me.

Last week's attire:
Jeans - T-shirt - casual shoes.
i.e. lazy.

This week's attire:
Black shoes polished to the nines (I can see my face in them), black trousers with a sharp crease, blue shirt.
i.e. dapper.

The reason?
I want to disassociate myself as much as I possibly can from the losers who are all really grey and ugly, not just in their actions, but physically as well.

I mean did you see the Miss Selfrdge Manc guy?
The love child of Wayne Rooney and Liam Gallagher.

Young robbers in Salford attacking the BBC camera crew for filming them trying to break into Bargain Booze and a Cash Generator store. Looters posting photographs of themselves and their bounty without covering up their faces. Arrests now taking place in Cheshire of those inciting violence on social media websites.

It was only just over a week ago, before the so-called "riots", that other youths tried to rob a florist shop in Manchester. The 72-year-old shopkeeper fought back and stabbed one of the robbers to death. The gang mentality may give them a false sense of safety and a cheap thrill but surely if this keeps on some shop owners are going to defend their businesses the same way. I think if my life or livelihood were threatened I might react in the same way too.

why, for example, Manchester, Salford, Birmingham had gone up but Teesside, Bradford and Newcastle hadn't (when perhaps some might expect they would). A short conversation with friends posited the weather as one factor: people don't riot in the rain. True, though the rain hasn't been a constant these last few days
But I wonder if something deeper is going on too. Is there something else cultural that is a brake in these places?

Not sure there are any firm answers to this, just an idle passing thought...

Just to go way back to the original poster.

Under what possible criteria is the fall of Saddam not historical?

Let's be honest, he's as mad as a hatter, isn't he?

He's my favourite Tory all the same and a great personality.

... orders a drink (through Telepathy, obviously).

Someone says something they don't agree with, or upsets them, they take one sip of the drink then they leave.

All that lovely booze, wasted.

yes..almost certainly ....put it together with the collapse of international markets, the uselesness of our political system, the increased polarization, the redundant self serving media et al... this could end in deep deep shit...
as for all the waffle about contemporary pop...grow up..not everybody worships dead men

..and it's crystal clear to me the role I HAVE to play. If the parents don't bother, it won't discharge my responsibilities to the children and society. This won't be fixed by policy, or investment, or schemes, or the birch. It will be fixed by contributions, big or small, from everyone and probably won't be fixed in my lifetime. But, we've got try.

I'm sorry if this has already been mentioned but for my two pennorth I think there's an awful lot of blame that has to be laid at the door of the celebrity worship we indulge in so much in this country. Kids think that if they get on Youtube they've somehow "made it" whether that's playing a musical instrument, driving insanely fast, kicking a shop window in or displaying all the goods you've nicked from JD Sports.

according to BBC website.

Do you think that's the whole thing fizzled out now?

And I'm no Guardian reader, but does anyone else feel that these events, sickening as they are, have given a lot of people the excuse they've wanted for ages to indulge in snobbery?

A sneering tone about 'chavs' has long been with us and it's often used as an excuse to mock those we believe are below us on the social scale, with their silly tracksuits, nasty rap music and love of designer goods.

These events appear to have legitimised this view for some people and I find it a bit distasteful. I feel that it's this kind of attitude that will fan the flames rather than pour water on them.

Of course it's right that we should condemn the looters and people who have caused destruction, harm and pain to many people, but the drawing of the line between them and us, particularly with reference to the type and amount of possessions people have seems to undermine the argument that this is not a social issue of 'haves' and 'have-nots'.

I fear that the knee jerk reaction to this issue will create further division by reinforcing the notion of a despised underclass and expose the contempt that many liberals actually feel for the people at the lower ends of the social scale.

That blog I linked to, and someone else has too, is terrific because it addresses the important practical issues. After all, assuming some of these people get sent to prison, what do we think is going to happen when they get out? The recidivism rate in this country is pretty shocking (I don't have the figures to hand). Unless we're going to lock 'em up and throw away the key, there has to be some joined up thinking.

I think restorative justice is the way to go here, in which the offender makes amends directly to the community, to the people who've been affected by his/her behaviour. Although its efficacy hasn't been proven beyond doubt, there are studies that suggest it works better than prison in reducing recidivism.

Was a woman, mid 20s, talking to her mate, she was wearing a tiny skirt, little more than a fanny pelmet.

She had a huge black bracelet thingy on her ankle, (deffo not jewellery - it looked to me like some sort of curfew tag), & she seemed to be enjoying the looks she was getting.

I am not proud of myself for thinking what I did, but it wasnt "Oh, poor girl, I wonder what opportunities she has been deprived of".

All I could think was "Fucking chav"

There's an excellent blog by Peter Oborne on the Telegraph website today. A brief extract:

The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: "We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility - in every town, in every street and in every estate." He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well[...]

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.

The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

"Anyone else feel as if we're witnessing genuine historical events?"

No. Once the initial protest degenerated into mindless vandalism and looting and the perps revealed themselves to be a bunch of sportswear-clad 15 year olds out for a free TV and a good time then it was doomed as a (small-p) political protest.

It will go down in history as a summer aberration rather than a successor to (say) the 1981 Toxteth/St Paul's riots.

Watching the Manchester riots this week, there was an interview with one of the looters who, amid his typically moronic rap-speak, kept saying “Do you get me?” at the end of every sentence. Innit?

I was reminded of the Matt Lucas character from Come Fly With Me who also kept saying “Do you get me?” which then developed into “Do you get me? Do you get me, though? It is of the upmost importance that you do get me”

There's been a certain amount of discussion on this blog about economic theory, but isn't the problem of the world economy essentially still one of overcapacity? The lifeblood of globalization has been the opening of new markets for surplus production. However, with the poverty faced by those in the developing world - people with little surplus income - the time honored exploitation formula has ceased to work. As a result, established capitalist economies turned to their domestic populations. By lowering the cost of money to near zero and creating an immense asset bubble in housing, global capital effectively colonized its own domestic population by opening an untapped market for surplus production. Consumer spending on a vast scale followed – fuelled by nearly limitless credit and rising property prices, inflated by the same expansion of credit, all sustained by governments desirous of economic growth. But now most of the Eurozone and the USA have reached the limit of their ability to service debt and have to borrow billions and billions just to keep the show on the road.

Capitalism as we know it in the western world is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions: the globalization and colonization solution for overcapacity has come to an end. Global capital is facing a dilemma: it has colonized and exploited virtually every populace and there's nowhere left to go (if they could go off-world they would). Governments of all political persuasions from New Labour to the Democrats to the Conservatives have eliminated moral hazard (i.e. they’ve been given the green light to speculate widely and take on extreme risk with the implicit guarantee that losses will be covered) and expanded credit, but it is clear that never ending growth is impossible. The globalised economy has screeched to a halt at the edge of an abyss it has avoided for a hundred years. There is no place left to sell overproduction.

Governments around the globe are borrowing (or increasingly creating) trillions in a futile effort to either inflate new bubbles or reinflate speculative bubbles that have popped. This reflation is likely to fail and and countries forced into insolvency.

Someone described the entire western financial system recently as being nothing but a massive ponzi scheme which has culminated in entire nations such as Greece, Portugal, the UK etc. being enslaved in imaginary debt. Like all ponzi schemes, however, it has to fail at some point. I don't know what the end game is, but I believe what we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of the entire financial system as we know it. Generating more money in the form of additional credit to lend to countries such as Greece on the brink of collapse in an effort to avert the crisis is only kicking the can down the road, and ultimately only causes their debt to accelerate at an incremental rate. We need a completely new economic and political system. The other question is: how we do get there?

Excellent, excellent stuff. I couldn't agree more about the whole world economy being a massive pyramid scheme.

Still, I don't know about you, but it give me great solace to know that a minuscule amount of people at the top of the scheme have already started and will continue to become rich beyond the dreams of Croesus.

Winessing history? Nah, but the rumbling's getting closer..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8655106/Im-starting-to-think-th...

Watching from across the Atlantic, it's fascinating to see how quickly everyone is lining up behind their ideological bulwarks and seeking to pin the blame on the other side. Lost amongst all the shouting is any sense that perhaps the toxic mix of a hyper-consumerist culture of commodity fetishization AND a zero expectation, no-consequence nanny state worked together to facilitate this disaster.

Not that this couldn't occur over here (it in fact did last summer, when the G20 riots in Toronto produced the spectacle of heavy-armoured police ranks assaulting peaceful protestors while leaving the black bloc troublemakers free reign in the rest of the downtown core) but the attempts to assign political blame are quickly pushed aside by massive public disgust at the both the property-destroying 'anarchists' (sic) AND the fascistic police response (mass arrests with few prosecutions, people rousted and dragged out of their beds at night, beatings, concentration camp-style holding areas where people were denied food, water and toilet facilities).

The fundamental difference is that it appears in the UK that you have an underclass who take strange pride in their (low) place in the social hierarchy and at the same time seethe over it. In North America, class resentment is muted by the widely-held belief that anyone can make their lives better, and a lot of very poor people genuinely believe one day they will be wealthy (how this will occur is often unclear, but the belief persists). Therefore property crime is hardly ever exculpated (successfully) by claims of social deprivation, whereas it seems many respondents to the UK unrest drag out the old 'society is to blame' canard.

I always thought middle-class bashing is a bit of a distraction from the main problem. It's like bullying the speckky nerdy while ignoring the antics of the rich bullies in the class.

If I had a pound for every faux-working class person scoring points by bashing the middle class, while quietly flying off to their Tuscan villa....well, ..I'd be able to afford a Tuscan villa.