Perhaps literacy is an issue here.

getting busted for nicking a Jeffrey Archer paperback will not look good.

But I doubt that our glorious leaders will let that fact come out because it will go against their plans to shred benefits. If these people are all thought to be benefits scum then it will help maintain public support for slashing then abolishing benefits. If these are employed people it hardly fits in with their ideology. Though it would be representative of Thatchers Britain, when she said there was no more society by a me society or something like that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... court-list

It seems a fair proportion of the looters going through the courts are unemployed young men.

The analysis would seem to be, to me, to compare the percentage of defendants who are unemployed compared to the base rate of unemployment in the areas where the rioting occurred. If it actually was about unemployment and disaffection, you'd expect the rate of unemployment in defendants would be higher than the overall rate. If it was more about opportunity crime, you'd maybe expect the rate to be more in line. I don't think comparing it to the national base rate of unemployment would really tell us much...

Jon

Well that does support the idea that it is a kick back regarding our affluent society where so many have nothing.

John Humphries on R4 Today this morning suggested that those responsible were "BLAIR'S CHILDREN", rather than "Thatcher's", very relevant point that methinks...

Yes but their parents are Thatchers children. Both are responsible. Plus the parent, but if they are too busy working they cannot be everywhere. The blame can be placed on a number of people.

To be totally simplistic, the only person to blame is the rioter/looter them selves. They did their action out of their own free will, knowing what they did was wrong.

While they do deserve the vast majority of the blame, they were not doing it without encouragement from society, in the form that if you do not have this you are a failure. Society has some responsibility in allowing these people to grow up in a moral vacuum. The police for backing off completely the first night more concerned with convictions later than protecting the public immediately. If they had stomped on the riots the first night I doubt whether the copy cat riots would have even happened. This gave the looters the thought that they could get away with it.

I thought it was four meals? At least that's what my lab teacher used to say.

You can instill all of the moral values in your child you want, but all it takes is the wrong crowd for them to become a thieving, whoring drug-addict of a teenage mum with all four kids taken by social services.

As above, a kid is shaped by themselves and their world around them. This includes parents, siblings, friends, enemies, the news/media/society. We all have a responsibility to ourselves, to our kin and to society. In some ways, religion use to teach this kind of thing, reinforced by parents. Maybe it was all brainwashing, but for the time it was used, it largely worked.

Morals and values are decided by society themselves and change through time. Unless we change the current thinking, this kind of behaviour and attitude will degenerate.

Are you talking from personal experience? How about your three siblings?

A quick bit of digging suggests 3 meals for society and 4 meals for British society.

Yeah right, that might need some revision now.

Not really. Just a rant about one of the patients I saw recently. And I have only two siblings. Thankfully.

Religion may have been a method of brainwashing/control but I wonder how much better/worse it was compared to the current, largely atheist society. When I was younger, my views were more cynical but as I grow older, I find there is merit in a lot of things I used to dismiss, religion being one of them.