FWIW DB, I didn't find much wrong with your post - in fact, stripped of any 'national identity' issue, the observations could just as easily have been made by a standard Brit and targeted at Cameron and his Eton buddies. There are still class issues here of sorts, although I recall seeing some research a year or so ago that seemed to suggest that almost everyone in the UK saw themselves as 'middle class' - even those who patently weren't.

Personally, I think the concept of class is as flawed as the concept of national pride - you can take pride and credit in what you do yourself, not what your forefathers did, and not what other people who just happen to live in the same country as you did.

Cause of the riots?

IMO there are lots of short term causes, parental issues, education issues etc... but I think the  main long term cause is that there are no longer enough jobs for those people who are not 'clever' - I don't mean that in a judgemental way, it is just a fact that some people are not as clever as others, and in the past they would be employed in basic manual labour jobs - many of those jobs are gone now. This leads to a sense of hopelessness etc .. why bother trying if you know you will fail, and there is no job there for you anyway. That isn't the cause of the riots as such, but it will certainly create an 'us and them' mentality that makes riots more likely.

As I see it, the riots were started by 'the disenfranchised', (for want of a better word), and were then expanded by opportunistic anti-establishment rioters from all kinds of backgrounds.

Why? Who knows? maybe cos we have seen recent scandals involving MPs, the press, bankers and the police - ie. 'the establishment' has been caught with its hand in the till - so why not get what you can whilst the 'establishment' is off guard.

there's a very well written article in the Telegraph today which basically covers the reasons behind 4Eyes last para http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

Many of the rioters probably do believe/justify their actions by a version of that, perhaps less articulated, but mentally they may well feel it provides a 'reason' to act as they do.

Combine that with having 'nothing to lose' (if you don't have a job and live on the breadline what does getting arrested take away from you?), with it being nice warm summer evenings when schools out and with the belief that the people being hurt are faceless corporates (and in that many people are guilty - how many of us exaggerate insurance claims or keep the wrong change in a shop? Its a different end of the same slope) and you have an atmosphere where a lot of people go along for the ride thinking what they're doing doesn't really hurt anyone important.

I don't believe any of the above is an excuse for what happened btw, but I can see how people might be on that slope. Its hard to tell whether people stopped rioting because the police got harsher or because they realised that the people they were making homeless, and the people who died, were no longer faceless and things had gone too far. I do think most people do have that 'switch', but perhaps not set at the same level, or perhaps just some people aren't used to thinking through what their own actions might result in?

T-shirt marketers here?  (There used to be at least one.)

My friend went to London and all I got was this lousy 46" lcd tv. (courtesy reddit)

Please bow your heads and join me in this Chav prayer for England....

Our father, who art in prison, even mum knows not his name

thy rioting done, you`ll read it in the Sun, in Birmingham much as it is in London

give us this day our welfare bread & forgive us for being true wankers

as we forgive those who got ASBOS against us

lead us not to an employment situation but deliver us free housing

for thine is the petrol bomb, the plunder & its glories

forever and ever...I`m a dickhead.

Rofl:)

or.. The other rioters prayer  .......Our father, who art in prison, my mum knows not his name, thy Riots come, read it in the Sun, in Birmingham, as it is in London, give us this day our Welfare bread & forgive us our looting, as we're happy to loot those who defend stuff against us, lead us not into employment but deliver us free housing, for thine is the tellys, the Burberry & the Barcardi, forever and ever...Innit !!!!

Some of this is more complicated than any soap opera:

QuoteThe teenager, who boasted of having had "the best day ever", was arrested after her mother recognised her in footage of the disturbances in Enfield on Sunday night.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/17894/Riots-Dancer-and-wouldbe-lawyer.6817236.jp

yeah, I should have deleted that paragraph... it didn't come out right. Plus, I didn't really think the Queen would say that ... publicly, at least:)

... don't forget, our Royal Family are broadly speaking of German descent

True, they have been here a while, so, being as we are a tolerant nation, we accept them as British now - but they, and their hangers on and in-bred relatives aren't really representative of the rest of us

>German

Hang on a moment 4Eyes, what about all those Jutes, Angles and Saxons and the like that came to loot and then decided to stay and build a semi-detached?   

ah, I'd like to put you in a room with Nick Griffin and watch you explain that to him!

QuoteHang on a moment 4Eyes, what about all those Jutes, Angles and Saxons and the like that came to loot and then decided to stay and build a semi-detached?

I don't understand???
Why hang on a minute?
That is exactly my point.

They are 'us' in the main part - 'angle-land' = England.
Vikings, Jutes, Saxons, Angles all came over here and interbred with the local celtic 'british' that were here - starting from the when the Romans buggered off in the 5th c. AD. A good percentage of our older 'Nobility' are descended from the Normans (1066 and all that) - still newcomers, but I think we can make an exception as it is nearly a thousand years.

Angles, Saxons and Jutes could be described as 'Germanic', the Vikings as Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, the local Brits as a mixture of Celt and the previous original Brits (usually thought to be of Iberian origin). The Normans were not of French origin, but were of Scandanavian origin originally (Northmen became 'Norman' etc) so we can relax on that score .

That mix became 'English' (and to a much lesser extent, Scots, Irish and Welsh).

The royal family, on the other hand, are not 'us' in the same sense, being far more closely descended from later 'proper' Germans (amongst other inbred European royalty). The family name was only changed from Battenberg to Windsor as a reaction to WWI.

Of course most family tree calculations ignore a whole load of relatively untraceable forefathers on the female line, and tend to focus on one or two exotic ancestors whilst ignoring the thousands of boring farmers, serfs, thieves and rapists.

Fortunately, in the case of the royal family, this is not quite as difficult, partly because there are better records kept for European Royalty, and partly because of the inbreeding. As a result, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that compared to most Brits, they are relatively un-british in their origins.

Its a historical fact and easily verified.

It matters little, of course, but is useful information to know whenever you have to deal with some pompous tit who thinks he is related to the Royal Family - you can just tell to f**k off back to Germany.


OTOH. if you want to talk to a real Brit, you want to seek out Adrian Targett.

QuoteCheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to approximately 7150 BC

QuoteAs a means of connecting Cheddar Man to the living residents of Cheddar village, he compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) taken from twenty living residents of the village to that extracted from Cheddar Man's molar. It produced two exact matches and one match with a single mutation. The two exact matches were schoolchildren, and their names were not released. The close match was a history teacher named Adrian Targett.

Quoteah, I'd like to put you in a room with Nick Griffin and watch you explain that to him!

Happy to - would strongly appreciate if the room was sound proofed and without windows - I want the chance to describe what happens later as 'an unfortunate face-brick related accident'

Me? I'm of American mindset, Italian by blood, and Irish by Beer:)

£22k was raised for that Malaysian student in the end   amazing.

Quote from: 4Eyes on August 15, 2011, 08:54:17 PM
Vikings, Jutes, Saxons, Angles all came over here and interbred with the local celtic 'british' that were here

And even the "original Brits" were settlers from Northern Europe. As were the Celts who came after and had themselves a few centuries of peace before the Romans came over.

An Englishman's veins are filled with Northern/Central European blood.