Job Discussion Forums

[Sashadroogie]

Has it happened at last? Are we witnessing the long-predicted awakening of the proles, who are rising up against their capitalist piggie masters?

Or is it just more hooliganism and a generally yobbish collapse of civilization?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCw9_avTlYs

[dean_a_jones]

See this is exactly the kind of self-indulgent, brutish behaviour that takes places when a country is not governed by a firm hand. Luckily for me, I left London for greener pastures.

::looks over shoulder::

[Sashadroogie]

Yip. They need a Great Leader to sort all this anti-social behaviour out...

[eurobound]

To hell with your talk of proles and capitalist piggie masters. This is theft and violence, nothing more. There are no political motives behind this thuggery. This needs to be quashed right now. If the Police aren't capable of quashing it, then send the armed forces in. All the fashionable debating can be saved for later.

[Sashadroogie]

Interesting. Police gets capitalised but armed forces, no.

[eurobound]

Yes, that's because I was referring to the armed forces of me and my mates.

Pedant.

[eurobound]

In Tottenham, shops were being burnt by these animal thugs and the inhabitants of the flats above were having their lives put in mortal danger as a result.

In Britain, arson can carry a life sentence. I hope they find those responsible and carry out that sentence on them in full.

They could share a cell with Charlie Gilmour.

[spiral78]

We are pedants by nature: language teachers, after all!

As for London, well, I'll go with the OP's option 2: hooliganism and yobbish (what the heck is that?) collapse of civilisation.

[eurobound]

From the Press Association LiveBlog;

'� Many areas of London are braced for further rioting after widespread attacks in areas including Hackney, Lewisham, Peckham, Croydon, Ealing, Clapham, Bethnal Green, and Enfield
� There will be 16,000 police officers on the streets of London tonight - an increase of 10,000 from last night
� David Cameron announces that Parliament will be recalled on Thursday to handle the crisis
� Plastic bullets have been considered by police chiefs as a tactic to bring the unprecedented rioting in London under control.'

Use real bullets for the first hour. The level of rioting may decrease remarkably thereafter.

[johnslat]

Dear eurounleashed,

Where, I ask you, are the strong leaders of yesteryear when you really need them? Stalin, Mao, Hitler or Mussolini would have never put up with this nonsense.


Regards,
John

[Isla Guapa]

It sounds like hooliganism to me too. Yobbish also had me puzzled. Here's what the Reverso online dictionary has to say:

yobbish

If you describe a boy or a man as yobbish, you disapprove of him because he behaves in a noisy, rude, and perhaps violent way in public.
(BRIT)
INFORMAL adj
(disapproval) (=loutish)
...yobbish football supporters.

[eurobound]

Hi John.

Violent thugs are tearing my city apart. I live in Bethnal Green and my family and most of my friends live in Tottenham.

I could take the fashionable view that these people are rioting, looting, and engaging in arson on a terrifying scale because they are being cruelly kept back by 'The Man,' or because they see no future, or because the Tories have made cuts, or because a local gangster recently got what he deserved from the Rozzers.

Alternatively, I could view them as they really are; cynical, opportunistic thieves, morally bankrupt rabble rousers, and dangerous criminals intent on taking out their vague but uncontrollable feelings of rage on law abiding members of society.

Apologies to any posters if I have made any grammatical errors in the above post. I know those things are the most important in times like these.

[eurobound]

[johnslat]

Dear eurobound,

The problem - as has often been illustrated in "riot-control"," both here in the States and elsewhere is that escalation on the part of law enforcement almost inevitably leads not to quelling a disturbance but to inflaming it.

"Escalation
The clearest cases of authorities contributing to rule breaking involve escalation. As with facilitation, authorities� intervention is conducive to deviance. However, secrecy need not be involved (the facilitation can be overt), and the final consequence is generally not consciously, or at best publicly, sought by controllers when they initially enter the situation. 2 It is not simply that social control has no effect, rather that it can amplify. (In the language of cybernetics, this is a case of deviation amplifying feedback [Cf. Maruyama, 1963]�in everyday language, snow-balling or mushrooming.) In escalation the very process of social control directly triggers violations. In urging that attention be focused on the deviant act as such, Cohen has written:

The history of a deviant act is a history of an interaction process. The antecedents of the act are an unfolding sequence of acts contributed by a set of actors (1965: 9).

Nowhere is this logic clearer than in the case of escalation. Five major analytic elements of escalation are:

An increase in the frequency of the original violations.
An increase in the seriousness of violations, including the greater use of violence.
The appearance of new categories of violators and/or victims (without a net diminution of those previously present).
An increase in the commitment, and/or skill and effectiveness of those engaged in the violation.
The appearance of violations whose very definition is tied to social control intervention.
Escalation may stem from initial or post-apprehension enforcement efforts.
Police involvement in family conflict, crowd, and automobile chase situations can contribute to violations when none were imminent, or it can increase the seriousness of these situations. In responding to challenges to their authority or to interpersonal conflict situations, preemptive police actions (euphemistically called by some, with a sardonic smile, �constructive coercion� and �preventive violence�) may lead to further violence.

A three-year study of police-citizen incidents in New York City notes that �the extent to which the handling of relatively minor incidents such as traffic violations or disorderly disputes between husbands and wives seemed to create a more serious situation than existed prior to the police attempt to control the situation� (McNamara, 1967). Family disturbance calls are an important source of police injuries to citizens and vice versa. Bard has similarly observed that �there is more than ample evidence that insensitive, untrained, and inept police management of human problems is a significant breeding ground for violence� (1971: 3). Certain styles of intervention are likely to provoke aggressive responses.

An English policeman characterized the 1960s� riot control behavior of American police in some cities as �oilin� the fire.� Police responses to crowd situations offer many examples of escalation (Marx, 1970; Stark, 1972). Provocative overreaction (referred to by another English policeman as �cracking a nut with a sledgehammer�) can turn a peaceful crowd into a disorderly one. In the 1967 riot in New Haven, for example, a small group of angry but as yet law-abiding blacks marched in the street�to be met by police tear gas; this then provoked a small riot. Or in Detroit a small riot emerged during the Poor People�s March when, during a meeting in a large hall, police inside the building tried to push people outside, at the same time that mounted police outside were trying to push people back inside. Such police reactions and subsequent arrests may occur in the most benign of circumstances, such as at sporting events or concerts."

Sorry - should have added the link before:

http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/ironies.html

The police have a tremendously difficult job - determining just how much force will produce a good result when, once force is applied, it becomes nearly impossible to control the escalating cycle of violence.

Regards,
John

[eurobound]

Thanks for the post, John. I have read it and will read it again tomorrow. It is a long and interesting post but I am leaving work now to get home as early as possible in light of what might happen in my area again later this evening (I normally don't finish until 7.30pm and have a 50 minute commute home.)

In the meantime, for anyone interested, here's an article from The Metro where Home Secretary Teresa May vows to do nothing useful about the riots whatsoever.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/871781-london-riots-the-army-will-not-be-used-to-stop-violence-says-theresa-may