No...just surprised.

Cardiff's a very sleepy place for a city. There were some isolated incidents in Canton and Butetown, but nothing major. Also, there's no evidence of this - but perhaps it's because Scotland and Wales have centre-left governments?

http://www.south-wales.police.uk/en/con ... nd-small-/

I doubt that the leanings of the government had that much impact. The initial riot was caused by the police incompetence, failing to respond to the family's request for information. All the others were criminally motivated. There were rumours of a riot in Brighton but nothing so far.

Few more...

Can't even spell 'lose.'

A funny thing was I was talking to a friend about this and we agreed that all it will do is turn them into criminals. If you gave them just food vouchers they would have to steal for the other things that we all take for granted. Even if it were just a beer with friends on Saturday night. The people who proposed this did not think it through. Hopefully our MP's will see that this plan is fatally flawed.

It's knee jerk reaction but there is a degree to which it's the expression of the dilemma we face.

One of the things both sides of the political spectrum have been going on about is 'entitlement' - basically, the idea that if you have a person who essentially has lived their entire life on state handouts and, in a lot of cases, seen their parents and everyone they know living on state handouts, then they have no real sense of the conceptual value of things because they've never assimilated the equation 'to get that I must put in this much effort'. Essentially, everything they see or own cost them nothing. Then they see stuff which the same system says they can't have, because this otherwise benevolent entity that gives them stuff for nothing has said 'no, you can have this much but NO MORE' and there's no way they can understand where the line is drawn, because they have never developed this internal scale of value. And this causes resentment of jealousy - 'I got that and it was free, why can't I have this for free as well?' It's maladjusted thinking but it's quite logical given the circumstances these same people have been brought up in. They are in a sense institutionalised, and the institution in the welfare state. Note this does not absolve them of blame - they patently know they shouldn't be doing what they are doing. They know that in taking things which they weren't given, they have breached societies rules. But they know society gives them stuff anyway, so what do they care?

The really difficult question is - how do you break that cycle? How do you stop people from getting into this mode of thinking, when the environment they've always lived in practically envelops them in it? The harsh answer is exactly what the petition is suggesting - stop giving them stuff. You can't feel entitled if nobody is giving you anything. If they get nothing for free, everything they get will be through their own effort and therefore they will begin to understand notions of value as they will have to earn things the way 'normal' people do.

The obvious problem with that is it's expecting someone who has two broken legs to get up and sprint. If you turf half of these people onto the street or stop giving them stuff, they won't make it. They've got no 'societal survival skills' because they've never had to develop them. It would be like telling a five year old 'Right, you can stand on your feet and not poo yourself regularly, so you'll have to find a place of your own. Fill in this mortgage application form'. It would be, in essence, sink or swim. Some of them would learn to swim, get jobs, become a functioning member of society. Quite a lot of them wouldn't. They'd end up begging on the streets and some of them (seriously) would end up dead as soon as we had a harsh winter.

It's very tough love. But... if you value the wellbeing of society as a whole over the wellbeing of any given individual, then you'd maybe be able to live with it.

For a lot of people, that solution is simply inconceivable. It comes across as a form of social ethnic cleansing. You can't sacrifice the individual for the common good. To them it's saying 'These people can't contribute, they're not like us. So let's just make them go away'. To this other group, the environment that this problem created is the one we created ourselves and we can't make the people unlucky enough to be born into it take the punishment. The solution is obviously not to make them go away, the solution is to make them like us. To teach them the value of things, the notion of the nobility of effort and how earning something through your own hard work makes getting it feel somehow better than if you stole it or were given it.

In every one of these communities in London and Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham and also Cardiff and Glasgow and Sheffield there are people trying to do that, working long hours for little reward, other than the idea that they are making society better for all of us by pushing that toxic environment away. But they are few and the problem is huge.

I don't have the solution. Nobody does. The politicians certainly don't. I personally believe you can't just disown people regardless of what they do; I don't believe that of child killers, so why would I of someone who nicked a DVD player from Dixons one night? And yet I also don't know how to break the cycle but I do know you won't break it by carrying on doing what we're doing now and, if I'm honest, I think some of these communities... the people trying to help are tilting at windmills. The job they're trying to do is almost the definition of a sysiphean task. And there are people out there who don't want to be helped. Who understand the way normal society thinks but are too lazy or self-centred to care and will take what they can get by whatever means they can get it and sod the rest of us.

We're in a hole. I hope at least this is a wake up call and that maybe now we'll stop digging. How we get out again.. I didn't bring a ladder, did you?

Jon

There's a phrase I heard once in a Japanese animation about a NEET, to the effect of "hunger motivates work". The subject complained for a long time when his family stopped enabling his lifestyle, and then when he was truly hungry he worked incredibly hard and became a model citizen. It wasn't an easy step, and it required the support of a local baker who first paid him in food for doing a few chores.

I did a quick search and found there are variations of it in every culture. One such example is Proverbs 16:26 translated as "He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth it of him." (King James) or "The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on." (New International)

Hasn't it also been said that deprive a society of three meals and you have anarchy? It will be a fine balance trying to pull that one off.

A fine line indeed.

Perhaps instead of paid work, some other beneficial use of a benefit claimant's time should be compulsory in order to be paid.

Any suggestions what could "keep them out of trouble and off the streets"?

I used to go to "job club" when I left university, but that was just a couple of hours a week. Extremely useful though since it gave me access to a word processor for typing CVs and applications, something I couldn't afford to buy myself.

At least that would instill some value in their lives. Trouble is that every job these days has so much H&S that they would spend more time watching videos than doing anything. That probably wouldn't be cost effective for some time.

Well many of those arrested were employed. So immediately scape boating blacks or unemployed will be a knee jerk reaction. Also benefits are not a driver of crime. Certainly not If they are enough to live on. If the rest of society pulls away then it can be a driver. Look at the range of stores looted. All types. This is was almost entirely he thought that they could get away with it that motivated them.


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- Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

Although probably not for much longer...

It would be interesting to know how many of our statistical assumptions are accurate. I automatically assumed that a far greater percentage of the looters were unemployed than the national average. However, none of the riots kicked off until after 5pm...

It fundamentally starts in the home, I think. It starts with parents instilling in their children what is right and what is wrong, and how you behave when you're outside the home in public.
Today, I watched scores of holiday makers come through our shop (we took a reasonable four figure sum today), and the children from toddlers to teens were all rude, pushy, obnoxious and I don't think I once saw any parental intervention.
One woman was stood watching her 3 kids of 2, 10 and 15 year old run about the shop tipping things off shelves and not bothering to pick up what they'd spilt. She didn't apologise to me, or ask them to stop, or pick things up. She'd given up on them.
I had similar comments from the cafe staff, the animal keepers, the presenters. Someone had a child trying to get their hands into a feed bucket to 'help' feed one of our animals, and despite being told firmly no, his mother was still egging him on.

Those kids, in 15 years time, having never been told no (and a lot of them moving into colleges like mine with a real culture of 'everyone must pass') will have a sense of entitlement.
When they are told no, or that they've failed, or that there's an expectation of them in a job (or wherever) they don't agree with they simply won't put up with it. We're seeing it with the seasonal staff we've taken on. One girl's already left because she wasn't allowed to leave 15 minutes early, another one's had more sick days than I've had in 5 years and asks for a fag break after the first 20 minute of being at work.


I desperately hope I'm wrong, but give it another 15 years and I suspect we'll be seeing more of the same.

Not to be a total dork about it, but the H&S induction at my workplace takes about half an hour and anything additional to the basic (Manual Handling etc) is done 1:1 with a trainer and takes about 4 hours. There's plenty of productivity that can go on in the meantime.

The only industry that it's a real ball-ache in is construction, so just don't use that industry....I could do with a volunteer to help me with my scanning and filing, don't need much H&S for that.