Bad things happening in London

[Yvonne183]

Yvonne, from your perspective and from your experience you are absolutely right, because your laws, culture and history allow for citizens' armed response to things like this. Ours doesn't, and it's too big a switch to start changing it suddenly, especially in response to one series of incidents like this. We do things differently here, and on balance that's how I'd like it to stay.

As for community tidying, these are hard, working-class communities, not effete liberals (like me lol) who are showing their ability to pull together in defiance of right-wing media declarations that it is their youngsters that have caused the destruction in the first place. All power to them.

OK, I admit that I live in a small rural community and am therefore very unlikely to experience any of the mayhem of the last few days and nights in the cities, but I have never and will never subscribe to the "stop violence, arm the police" rhetoric.

As a Glaswegian - and few cities in the world have a harder reputation - I'll stand up to anyone with my fists, but I'm not going to carry a knife or worse still a gun under any circumstances, and I mean any.

And for the record, knowing that there are almost as many guns in private ownership as there are people in the US doesn't make me feel safer when I travel to your country. Quite the opposite.

As I said before, you people in your country can live by whatever law you deem fit. If that means no one is allowed guns then more power to ya, it's your country.

I never said that our country is totally safe with all the gun ownership. The same exact thugs that rioted in your country also live in our cities. They cause similar mayhem as your thugs. The thing that bothers me is that when reading topics on web forums, people in the UK are always criticizing the US for our ways, our laws. We are criticized for being harsh on certain peoples in our country while the people of the UK are so understanding and so helpful with their social programs that we in the barbaric US don't have. Yet somehow with all the social programs you people still got riots. The US is far from perfect,but it gets tiring to hear from European cheese eaters how much they hate the US and especially the rural redneck Americans. There are no riots in rural America. When there is a disaster like a tornado, hurricane or flood in rural America there is no looting.

And quite a few people in rural America are poor, like in West Virginia, yet I have never read or heard about any riots in these parts of the US. If regular crime statistics were compared between poor people of West Virginia and poor people in Baltimore City, you'd see a wide difference of statistics between the two areas. So saying poverty or right wing policies are to blame is nonsense.

One day, soon I hope, people will wake up and see that these are just thugs, nothing else, just thugs.

As far as feeling safe, I feel a lot safer going to an American football game than i would to an English football game.

[russtafa]

i think this thing has really rattled the status quo and the government or the police wont be held in such respect by the taxpayers of pommie land any more and there will be a demand for change in the way the way the country is policed and governed

[Edwoodwoodwood]

Photos from the Daily Mail on-line of just a few of the rioters caught on CCTV.

Now without making light of it we all know who Colonel Sanders is don't we, wtf is he doing getting caught on CCTV.

[SammiValentine]

As far as feeling safe, I feel a lot safer going to an American football game than i would to an English football game.

]

you could not be safer at a "soccer" game nowadays. its a family game, bring a jester hat, eat a hotdog and boo your own team for not entertaining.

[robertlouis]

]

you could not be safer at a "soccer" game nowadays. its a family game, bring a jester hat, eat a hotdog and boo your own team for not entertaining.

That's true Sammi. And it's always been hard to fight and cry at the same time.

[SammiValentine]

Are there people there as bad as those maggot kids from Harry Brown? I wanted to empty an MP5 at the movie screen when I saw the film. Decent people getting abused by street urchins is never good.

Simply depends on location..

[robertlouis]

There are certainly estates in the cities where the police tacitly accept that the rule of law doesn't normally apply and gangs hold the power - pretty much the Harry Brown scenario.

[maaarc]

As I said before, you people in your country can live by whatever law you deem fit. If that means no one is allowed guns then more power to ya, it's your country.

I never said that our country is totally safe with all the gun ownership. The same exact thugs that rioted in your country also live in our cities. They cause similar mayhem as your thugs. The thing that bothers me is that when reading topics on web forums, people in the UK are always criticizing the US for our ways, our laws. We are criticized for being harsh on certain peoples in our country while the people of the UK are so understanding and so helpful with their social programs that we in the barbaric US don't have. Yet somehow with all the social programs you people still got riots. The US is far from perfect,but it gets tiring to hear from European cheese eaters how much they hate the US and especially the rural redneck Americans. There are no riots in rural America. When there is a disaster like a tornado, hurricane or flood in rural America there is no looting.

And quite a few people in rural America are poor, like in West Virginia, yet I have never read or heard about any riots in these parts of the US. If regular crime statistics were compared between poor people of West Virginia and poor people in Baltimore City, you'd see a wide difference of statistics between the two areas. So saying poverty or right wing policies are to blame is nonsense.

One day, soon I hope, people will wake up and see that these are just thugs, nothing else, just thugs.

As far as feeling safe, I feel a lot safer going to an American football game than i would to an English football game.

I agree with everything you wrote with the exception of the cheese eaters while it can sometimes be annoying - even dumbfounding to listen to their ubiquitous voicing of their opinions concerning the state of affairs in the states, I see them as analogous to back seat drivers. they have some legitimate concerns about how the US is driving the car and where the car is ultimately headed. in some instances their criticisms have real merit - in others you just gotta treat it like the fear and or resentment induced white noise that comes along with being the driver.

[robertlouis]

As I said before, you people in your country can live by whatever law you deem fit. If that means no one is allowed guns then more power to ya, it's your country.

I never said that our country is totally safe with all the gun ownership. The same exact thugs that rioted in your country also live in our cities. They cause similar mayhem as your thugs. The thing that bothers me is that when reading topics on web forums, people in the UK are always criticizing the US for our ways, our laws. We are criticized for being harsh on certain peoples in our country while the people of the UK are so understanding and so helpful with their social programs that we in the barbaric US don't have. Yet somehow with all the social programs you people still got riots. The US is far from perfect,but it gets tiring to hear from European cheese eaters how much they hate the US and especially the rural redneck Americans. There are no riots in rural America. When there is a disaster like a tornado, hurricane or flood in rural America there is no looting.

And quite a few people in rural America are poor, like in West Virginia, yet I have never read or heard about any riots in these parts of the US. If regular crime statistics were compared between poor people of West Virginia and poor people in Baltimore City, you'd see a wide difference of statistics between the two areas. So saying poverty or right wing policies are to blame is nonsense.

One day, soon I hope, people will wake up and see that these are just thugs, nothing else, just thugs.

As far as feeling safe, I feel a lot safer going to an American football game than i would to an English football game.

I agree with most of what you say, Yvonne, although I do think that any comparison involving the rural poor is misleading. What we've experienced here in the UK is essentially an urban phenomenon, albeit with a few copy-cat events in smaller cities and some towns. Crime in the countryside in the UK is just a blip in comparison with city statistics.

I also disagree with you to an extent regarding the impact of government policy on these events. Yes, there's no doubt that the upfront motivation is all about bling and grabbing what you can for nothing, but it's also very true to say that these people are part of a largely ignored underclass where unemployment has been the norm for generations and normal social rules and morality simply don't apply.

And if you'll accept the comparison, isn't that exactly the case at the top end of society too? Where the top "earners" can pull in 250 x what the guys at the bottom struggle for? And where the bankers simply tell the rest of us to fuck off while they play to their own rules and we all suffer.

[maaarc]

Photos from the Daily Mail on-line of just a few of the rioters caught on CCTV.

Now without making light of it we all know who Colonel Sanders is don't we, wtf is he doing getting caught on CCTV.

the colonel is an OG pimp!