London Riots

[straightXed]

An absolutely mindless riot, no reason or point behind the riots now in their 3rd day. So many young, people who seem as young as 12 or 13, none of them are there because of the shooting in tottenham. People looting and smashing businesses with no discrimination. Torching shops with peoples homes above them, entering and looting peoples homes, smashing and burning public transport and peoples cars.

In the current economic climate these people will have cost people their jobs and businesses and had a profoundly devastating effect on communities as well as putting a huge strain on public services. Yet the people doing this damage are essentially having a laugh doing it! They simply do not care about what they are doing at all and this mentality is seemingly becoming more and more common in young people here. They just want to cause damage with no justification and have no care for the consequences to others or to themselves. So whilst there doesn't appear to be a political motive i feel this is an alarming social issue, particularly the inability for the police to contain this as well as this inexcusable behaviour becoming so rife.

[xsecx]

what actually sparked it? All the media here says that it was a police shooting, but doesn't really go into any real detail and now it's just about the scope of riots themselves.

[mouseman004]

I never understood why individuals are willing to completely destroy the place that they live, regardless of the social or political motives that happen to be behind them. I understand protest and I understand gathering over a common cause, but I don't understand why it almost always turns into a situation like this. "Hey let's burn down buildings because it is probably a lot of fun!"

There also appears to be a lot of criticism in the news that the police are kind of sitting back and letting it happen.

[straightXed]

what actually sparked it? All the media here says that it was a police shooting, but doesn't really go into any real detail and now it's just about the scope of riots themselves.

The police shot a guy, mark duggan, who was believed to be involved in gun crime and was believed to open fire at the police but none of the people rioting seem to be mentioning that. Some that spoke on the radio yesterday blamed the government but didn't actually know who the government was. They also said it's to show the police that they can do what they want but repeatedly said it's good fun. The mindset of these people is impossible to understand and it's actually really scary.

[straightXed]

I never understood why individuals are willing to completely destroy the place that they live, regardless of the social or political motives that happen to be behind them. I understand protest and I understand gathering over a common cause, but I don't understand why it almost always turns into a situation like this. "Hey let's burn down buildings because it is probably a lot of fun!"

There also appears to be a lot of criticism in the news that the police are kind of sitting back and letting it happen.

It's a fair criticism to some extent but not the police who are at fault, cutbacks effected the police and what the police are allowed to do seems really restricted. It's a mob rule with completely indiscriminate movement, they don't care about the law, they attack fire services trying to save people and put out fires. The police are working really hard but it's not enough, one ridiculous thing I heard was that they don't want to bring the army in as that admits the police isn't able to deal with it, but 4 days of rioting shows that admission isn't really needed for people to come to that conclusion.