Now that the rioting, or rather looting, has spread to such places as Brixton and Enfield, it can clearly be seen for what it is: criminal opportunism. Whereas the initial trouble had, for good or bad, a pretext in the shooting of a man by the police, none of this subsequent trouble has anything to do with obtaining justice for that dead man, and everything to do with trying to obtain a new television or mobile phone.
The positive side, if there is one, is that the police now have an opportunity to round up all these little fuckers and throw them in jail and keep them there, and seeing as, for a change, they are directly targeting the police rather than their modus operandi of preying upon other young people, the police may have a touch more motivation to do so.
Something really needs to be done to break the nihilistic culture of street gangs in London. I don't really know what solutions would work, given that the society these kids have grown up in is so broken. Legalising drugs would help I think, by taking this massive trade out of the hands of criminals, and other libertarian policies aimed at ending the state-run educational and welfare ghettos would also benefit society in the longer run, but in the meantime locking up the perpetrators of crime would at least remove some of the symptoms. Other than that, the police could hand out firearms to all shop-keepers, which I expect would reduce the incidence of looting.
The positive side, if there is one, is that the police now have an opportunity to round up all these little fuckers and throw them in jail and keep them there, and seeing as, for a change, they are directly targeting the police rather than their modus operandi of preying upon other young people, the police may have a touch more motivation to do so.
Something really needs to be done to break the nihilistic culture of street gangs in London. I don't really know what solutions would work, given that the society these kids have grown up in is so broken. Legalising drugs would help I think, by taking this massive trade out of the hands of criminals, and other libertarian policies aimed at ending the state-run educational and welfare ghettos would also benefit society in the longer run, but in the meantime locking up the perpetrators of crime would at least remove some of the symptoms. Other than that, the police could hand out firearms to all shop-keepers, which I expect would reduce the incidence of looting.
2 comments:
"Looting" you call it - try this "looting" for size and tell me it's morally "different"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1287332/Council-chief-received-staggering-365-000-pay-quit-job-just-12-months.html
There's no need for inverted commas around looting, you and I know exactly what it means.
The morality of the matter you bring to my attention is neither here nor there, and certainly provides no justification whatsoever for criminal scum to smash the shops of businesses and steal things.
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