England, Whose England?
12/8/11 10:57![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsIn recent days, kids have run riot in London. Not just black kids, but white kids too. Not just poor kids - one girl was driving a car when stopped by the cops and had a load of looted gear on board. In court it turns out that her parents came from a million pound mansion in Kent. She has her own tennis court at home, and was out looting with friends.
Yes, our society has relative poverty and social deprivation. But this was not a food riot like you see in Eastern Europe and the developing world. We had a Nike Trainers riot, a flat screen TV riot.
Poverty in England is about moral and spiritual poverty. poverty of ideals and aspirations. the kids in a poor area who wants to belong to something greater than their own family have nothing much to look at beyond the gang on the corner of the street.
The Churches do not meet their needs or speak their language any more. The cops, the schools and the local firms are in no sense ' theirs', they belong to other people and work against them , not for them. And often , their parents will say the same.
We in Britain need to do an assessment of what is going on. When our police cannot protect our homes and shops from rioters, we have to remember that these shops and homes belong to us. If the State cannot furnish the means to keep them safe, we must look to our own selves.
The law says that a citizen can make an arrest if s/he sees an arrestable offence being committed. I know this because I wear a public service uniform myself and make it my business to find out. And police are telling me that if I see a gang of youths, or even a single pickpocket in action, that I should report it, but not intervene personally. And the Union is telling me that if my co worker gets attacked, I have to "stand back and assess, then call for assistance". Ok, and what if I get called to assist? Well, I must call the police if need be. I must not 'put myself at risk'.
Even on the street, our Neighbourhood Watch is told to "report crime, but do not confront anyone, wait for the police to deal with it".
Well, we in England did as we were told this week. like good children, we stood back for three days and watched as the clueless coppers and all the other 'grown ups' failed to save shops and homes from being destroyed. The image of a woman jumping from the first floor window of her blazing home was flashed around the world.
But then, first in London and then elsewhere, some of us stood up, grabbed the nearest weapon and took back our streets own from the feral rat boys who were pillaging our land. Men in their 50s, with little in the way of training or equipment, stood shoulder to shoulder with adult sons and grandsons and chased away the rioters and the looters who had run rings around a gallant but politically hobbled police force, who had orders from on high to 'stand back and observe'.
Ok, the dawn raids of Thursday and Friday produced a slew of court cases - but will the woman in Croydon get her home back? will the shopkeepers of Tottenham be able to stay in business?
It is shameful that a firm that went on trading during the Great Depression, and withstood the Blitz of London by Nazi Germany, was put out of business and burned to the ground by yobs in hoodies while the police stood back.
The people of Britain are not stupid, but we are complacent. We build the Trade Unions that build the Labour Party that built the Welfare State. But we who are Socialists have cast those pearls before swine and raised a generation of youths who do not appreciate the sacrifices that were made on their behalf, and who think nothing of burning, looting and mugging their fellow citizens.
What is needed is not an American style 'Second Amendment'. What we need is a Citizens Movement that will give us back our laws and our public bodies. Not only must parliament and police be accountable to us, but the Law itself has got to start treating us like Adults - like Citizens, and not Subjects.
Citizens should have the right to form Local Citizens Committees, electing its own officers in the manner of a Trade Union branch. We should also have the right to form self defence associations, like the Guardian Angels, free from police harassment and interference.
Local Citizen Volunteers Associations should be free to organise, train and and equip their members to do traffic control, first aid, fire fighting and flood prevention drills, as well as law enforcement - and the police and politicians should sit down , shut up an let them get on with it. The nanny State has failed to look after us, and it is time we stood up and took back the right and the ability to look after ourselves.
Yes, our society has relative poverty and social deprivation. But this was not a food riot like you see in Eastern Europe and the developing world. We had a Nike Trainers riot, a flat screen TV riot.
Poverty in England is about moral and spiritual poverty. poverty of ideals and aspirations. the kids in a poor area who wants to belong to something greater than their own family have nothing much to look at beyond the gang on the corner of the street.
The Churches do not meet their needs or speak their language any more. The cops, the schools and the local firms are in no sense ' theirs', they belong to other people and work against them , not for them. And often , their parents will say the same.
We in Britain need to do an assessment of what is going on. When our police cannot protect our homes and shops from rioters, we have to remember that these shops and homes belong to us. If the State cannot furnish the means to keep them safe, we must look to our own selves.
The law says that a citizen can make an arrest if s/he sees an arrestable offence being committed. I know this because I wear a public service uniform myself and make it my business to find out. And police are telling me that if I see a gang of youths, or even a single pickpocket in action, that I should report it, but not intervene personally. And the Union is telling me that if my co worker gets attacked, I have to "stand back and assess, then call for assistance". Ok, and what if I get called to assist? Well, I must call the police if need be. I must not 'put myself at risk'.
Even on the street, our Neighbourhood Watch is told to "report crime, but do not confront anyone, wait for the police to deal with it".
Well, we in England did as we were told this week. like good children, we stood back for three days and watched as the clueless coppers and all the other 'grown ups' failed to save shops and homes from being destroyed. The image of a woman jumping from the first floor window of her blazing home was flashed around the world.
But then, first in London and then elsewhere, some of us stood up, grabbed the nearest weapon and took back our streets own from the feral rat boys who were pillaging our land. Men in their 50s, with little in the way of training or equipment, stood shoulder to shoulder with adult sons and grandsons and chased away the rioters and the looters who had run rings around a gallant but politically hobbled police force, who had orders from on high to 'stand back and observe'.
Ok, the dawn raids of Thursday and Friday produced a slew of court cases - but will the woman in Croydon get her home back? will the shopkeepers of Tottenham be able to stay in business?
It is shameful that a firm that went on trading during the Great Depression, and withstood the Blitz of London by Nazi Germany, was put out of business and burned to the ground by yobs in hoodies while the police stood back.
The people of Britain are not stupid, but we are complacent. We build the Trade Unions that build the Labour Party that built the Welfare State. But we who are Socialists have cast those pearls before swine and raised a generation of youths who do not appreciate the sacrifices that were made on their behalf, and who think nothing of burning, looting and mugging their fellow citizens.
What is needed is not an American style 'Second Amendment'. What we need is a Citizens Movement that will give us back our laws and our public bodies. Not only must parliament and police be accountable to us, but the Law itself has got to start treating us like Adults - like Citizens, and not Subjects.
Citizens should have the right to form Local Citizens Committees, electing its own officers in the manner of a Trade Union branch. We should also have the right to form self defence associations, like the Guardian Angels, free from police harassment and interference.
Local Citizen Volunteers Associations should be free to organise, train and and equip their members to do traffic control, first aid, fire fighting and flood prevention drills, as well as law enforcement - and the police and politicians should sit down , shut up an let them get on with it. The nanny State has failed to look after us, and it is time we stood up and took back the right and the ability to look after ourselves.
Re: Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi
Date: 12/8/11 17:51 (UTC)It isn't for kids - it is for people aged 14 to say, 55, or even older. You join, you learn first aid, traffic control, fire fighting , flood defence drills, you do al sorts of stuff that might be useful and helpful to the ocal community facing a crisis.
After 2 years on probation as a newbie,or less if you come in with previous experience, you get to do riot control and keeping law and order on the street.
And if that means hitting rioters and looters, so be it.
The idea that we can spend money and get people to be nice as a result is widely discredited. We need people prepared to clear the streets by force, by going into harms way and doing it to the rioters before they do it to others.
And sadly, the Police and political class isn't up for that it seems. National service , where kids will learn to use guns and get fit will just give us muggers who can shoot straight and run faster, as well as giving politicos the cannon fodder to send off to war.
Create a Civil Guard, give it a constitution limiting it to serving in their local community and assisting other associations in Great Britain, let them elect their own officers and national leaders and lets see how much we return to the world we used to know.
Re: Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi
Date: 12/8/11 18:34 (UTC)Citizens' Militias may be a sop to social order, but it doesn't take the criminal generals off the street. The bright ones should be part of our society, not predating upon it. There are few mechanisms which help the very bright from the underclass to achieve in our society excepting via criminality. Successive governments inflating educational attainments didn't quite give those folk the opportunities they wanted thereby contributing to the restoration of social order, though it did provide for a burgeoning middle-class group of semi-higher educationalists to empire build: just as Thatcher's NHS internal market bollocks provided an extra two tiers of bureaucracy in the NHS.
We always seem to find solutions to problems we never had, ignoring the problems we do have. And what we have now is a generation of disaffected youth without conventional hope of achieving high incomes without criminality. And these young folk see the trappings of wealth flaunted about them in all the media they have access to. And just maybe some of them see that if only they had a first in Maths they could have been a 'quant' and brought the world to the edge of bankruptcy and yet still have gotten their bonuses.
As is they're going to get the inside of a prison cell, because we live in a society that not only has Twitter and Blackberries, but also surveillance cameras on every street corner and every two hundred yards. The powers that be know who they are.
Don't you just love the modern age.
Me, I'd beat education into them for their own good. But that costs money. Citizens' Militias are much cheaper.
Re: Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi
Date: 12/8/11 21:05 (UTC)And who would they be, I wonder? Seriously, this whole riot was planned on the internet when someone shouted about getting free stuff, and was over when Millwall fans said that they would kick the s**t out of anyone who came on their manor with mayhem in mind. I don't get that it has, or needs, a general.
My take is that I never learned that much in school . Ok, I got 3 O levels, but my real education began when I left the 6th form.
I am not saying that I am anti corporal punishment in schools, but no - you can't beat enthusiasm and commitment into folks . Either they want to win in life or they don't. And some people who try really hard to win get beaten down so often that they just give up.
We always seem to find solutions to problems we never had,...
this whole paragraph is made of win. Ok, we will never stop the ex-Etonians of this world getting off with more than their fair share. our present prime minister once belonged to a club of weathy young men who went out and trashed hotels for fun , but at lest they had the money to pay for the damage themselves.
Today, we may not be able to stop the bankers trashing our economy, but dammit , at least we know how to stop chavs trashing our streets.
one more thing : I never was any good at Latin - what does the headline mean ?
Re: Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi
Date: 13/8/11 09:24 (UTC)The motto of the schoolroom at Winchester College.
Re: Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi
Date: 13/8/11 19:11 (UTC)But learning isn't something that you can just pick up through practice.
I can play chess, I made it onto my school team, but even though I made captain, I never was and never will be an International Grandmaster. i just don't have the talent to that level. I never made it to top stream in maths, either.
However, learning to keep the school rules and making a decent life for myself as an honest citizen is not beyond most people, and it it that that schools must impart.
I fully accept that it would be a damned sight easier if parents and teachers were allowed to use a cane now and then. Some kids do not respect anything else apart from physical punishment, and if that is what it takes to get them off the streets , that is what they should be given.