Don't dare to diss me

An interesting article on Spiked by Neil Davenport who, apart from blogging and writing is a politics teacher based in London (though he does not tell us where exactly in London). His point:

New Labour kids’ have been more flattered, mollycoddled and freed of responsibilities than any generation before them. These days, as young people progress through the education system, they learn that there is a whole raft of medical reasons why they can’t write neatly or behave properly in class. They also know that if their exam grades are slightly disappointing, they can always blame the teachers. And New Labour’s social-inclusion charter also means that schools cannot automatically throw kids out, even in the sixth form, for not working hard enough or for their poor behaviour. Local education authorities can fight to ensure that a suspended child is reinstated and then attack the school for failing to provide ‘adequate support’ to address the pupil’s ‘psychological issues’.

Historically, one of the functions of schools has been to teach children the importance of personal responsibility. Punctuality, enforcing homework deadlines and reining in disruptive behaviour are all important mechanisms for socialising young people. School is not about teaching kids to be blindly obedient to authority, of course, but it should guide them towards becoming morally autonomous individuals with a sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. However, New Labour’s therapeutic framework, which has infected a great deal of England’s education system, has effectively destroyed these civilising values. As any teacher will tell you, teenagers are now strikingly adept at screeching from the therapeutic hymn sheet. The ‘how dare you?!’ line they indignantly trot out effectively says: ‘How dare you pass judgement on or criticise me? It will damage my self-esteem.’

Read the whole piece. Well worth it.

Riots, hmm?

It is true that I have not yet pontificated on the recent disturbances but in the meantime I have become rather tired of several opinions. In the first place, these were not riots but lootings; in the second place, they were not particularly large in the scheme of things; thirdly, London did not look like there had been a second blitz; fourthly, this was not unprecedented and Britain is not the country of Mrs Miniver, as some commentators, particularly on the other side of the Pond, think. Anyway, I shall pontificate anon. In the meantime, you want to know about riots? Well read about the Gordon Riots of 1780 (Wiki is relatively reliable in this case).

A few links

Everyone has been pontificating on the lootings and there is no possibility of linking to all. In fact, I shall probably pontificate myself in the fullness of time. However, here are a couple of interesting articles.

One is by Jonathan Foreman (full disclosure: he is a friend with whom I have been exchanging messages on events in the last few days) in the FT. [If the link doesn't give you the article, go through Google.] Mr Foreman says that the whole theory of "reactive policing" is wrong and has been proved so many times over, most particularly in the last few days.

The police should not be relying on CCTV but should be present on the ground.This endemic overreliance on technology also deforms policing culture: officers lose any sense that their job is to deter crime by their presence alone, rather than just to react. This attitude was all too apparent after the riots when officers, and then the home secretary, seemed puzzled that the public was not satisfied with assurances that (thanks to CCTV) most of the looters would be caught.

The looters are being caught but how much would it have been if the whole sequence had been stopped on Monday night by police action.

A tough article by Allister Heath (also a friend - this is turning out to be one of those postings) in Wednesday's City AM.

The cause of the riots is the looters; opportunistic, greedy, arrogant and amoral young criminals who believe that they have the right to steal, burn and destroy other people’s property. There were no extenuating circumstances, no excuses. The context was two-fold: first, decades of failed social, educational, family and microeconomic policies, which means that a large chunk of the UK has become alienated from mainstream society, culturally impoverished, bereft of role models, permanently workless and trapped and dependent on welfare or the shadow economy. For this the establishment and the dominant politically correct ideology are to blame: they deemed it acceptable to permanently chuck welfare money at sink estates, claiming victory over material poverty, regardless of the wider consequences, in return for acquiring a clean conscience. The second was a failure of policing and criminal justice, exacerbated by an ultra-soft reaction to riots over the past year involving attacks on banks, shops, the Tory party HQ and so on, as well as an official policy to shut prisons and reduce sentences. Criminals need to fear the possibility and consequence of arrest; if they do not, they suddenly realise that the emperor has no clothes. At some point, something was bound to happen to trigger both these forces and for consumerist thugs to let themselves loose on innocent bystanders.

But while all three main parties are responsible for flawed policies that have fuelled this growing underclass at a time of national prosperity – 5.5m-6m adults now on out of work benefits, a number that has been roughly constant for over two decades – the argument made by some that the riots were “caused” or “provoked” by cuts, university fees or unemployment is wrong-headed. Just because someone is in personal trouble doesn’t give them the right to rob, attacks or riot.

Actually, he is not entirely accurate. The lootings were not the cause of anything, they were just that: looting, arson and vandalism on a major scale. Let us not dignify this with the name riot.

Charles Crawford (not quite a friend but a good acquaintance) talks of the death of common sense. I have never been quite sure how Charles managed to survive in the FCO for quite as long as he did and not lose his clarity of thought.

And finally, Ed West (something between an acquaintance and a friend) gives an interesting twist to the subject. Polygamous societies, he says, are naturally violent. And let us not forget, that polygamy can and does exist without the people in question bothering to get married.

Tomorrow or, rather, later today I shall try to return to normal blogging. Inshallah or Deo Volente. I am being serious inclusive here.

ADDENDUM: One more link, also on The Commentator, which is fast becoming a must-read site. Owner/publisher Robin Shepherd writes about the Left squirming as their edifice collapses.

But this is what happens when the collapsing social edifice is so plainly your collapsing social edifice. The truth is too painful to confront. For starters, let’s not forget that the essential political context in today’s Britain is that we have just come out of 13 years of Labour government, while the new coalition is both in its infancy and overwhelming concerned with bringing down the massive levels of debt bequeathed by its predecessor. It hasn’t had time to leave its mark yet, and it’s hard to imagine any reasonable observer suggesting otherwise.

Even more devastating for the Guardian and company is that the high-tax, high welfare-dependency, regulation-saturated, relativistic, multi-culturalist society that we live in bares the unmistakable imprint of the thinking being spewed out of the pages of Left-wing newspapers for decades.

Internationally, the Right may have won the Cold War, but domestically, the socio-political culture war has largely been won by the Left.

To be sure, the riots that have swept London and shocked the world were not led by people with a political axe to grind as such.

Nonetheless, people respond to, and become formed by, the broader physical and cultural environment around them.

And from the crime-ridden council estates in which they were brought up, to the sink schools they went to which taught them nothing, to the courts they have encountered that refuse to jail them, to the welfare departments that stump up cash for them without question and to the prevailing relativism that says concepts such as right and wrong are to be derided and laughed at, that physical and cultural environment was constructed by the British Left.

The only problem with that analysis in my view is that the Left is not squirming but is being self-righteous and whiney in turn.

Meanwhile ...

... the BBC has done a round-up of the lootings riots being reported across the world's media. The Pakistani analysis seems spot-on, which does not surprise me. But there are one or two gems:

Iran, for example, has called on the British police and authorities to exercise self-restraint when dealing with the troublemakers. If the Iranian authorities were following their own advice during the various disturbances, one shudders to think what it would all have been like if they had not exercised restraint.

The Russians are advising the British to get tough with the various ethnic youths who do not wish to be part of British life. One cannot help feeling that they are confusing several different recent episodes. (No separate link, so need to scroll down on the BBC page.)

The Chinese fear for the Olympics (nothing like this would have happened in Beijing) and opine that the British police face two problems: cuts in funds and loss of credibility after the phone-hacking scandal. Again, a similar situation would not have arisen in China. Phone-hacking is completely authorized and done by the authorities only. Credibility cannot be lost.

They can't even invent their own slang

In the last few days I have noted the number of times the scum rioters have been referring to the police as the feds. What on earth do they mean? We have no feds. That is American. Then I glanced through Sarah Sands's column in the Standard today and found this about the newly sanctified Mark Duggan:

Shortly before he died Mark Duggan sent a message to his girlfriend: "The Feds are following me." This piece of urban slang presumably derives from the American FBI. Gangs are apparently united with the Guardian classes in their admiration of The Wire.

These people can't even invent their own slang. I despair.

Fighting back in Enfield and Southall

The West Londoner reports (various) that people in Enfield have had enough, came out on the streets and are protecting their property, their families and their friends. They do not deserve to be called vigilantes by journalists, both from the Guardian (Paul Lewis) and the Telegraph (who knows?) or by Nick du Bois, the local MP.

At 21.00 the West Londoner reports that in Southall the Sikhs are out in force by the gurdwara (the Sikh temple, since you ask). Together with yesterday's story of the Turkish and Kurdish shopkeepers in Dalston and its environs driving off the gangs of looters with baseball bats, these point to a trend.

Parliament recalled

The Boy-King has spoken. Parliament will be recalled on Thursday to deal with the lootings riots caused by society's failure to provide unemployed lads and lasses with all the latest goodies for free. It is not entirely clear to me or to anybody what that will achieve. What will Parliament do? Jump up and down and say how terrible it all is and can we now go back to our hols? That will help the people whose homes, shops, businesses, livelihoods have been destroyed.

16,000 police on the streets of London tonight. Where will they get them from? Also, will they be properly equipped? There were various places where the police had to stand their ground without proper riot gear. That's what comes when money is spent on the latest computers and new cars instead of the necessary equipment.

Shepherds Bush seems to have been spared so far. But Ealing to the west had a rough night and there was trouble in Notting Hill Gate, about 1 mile to the east. And that reminds me: the Carnival is happening in a couple of weeks' time. Will be interesting.

And another thing: if Parliament comes back on Thursday, will large numbers of police be needed to protect the MPs?

I am not updating

There is no point in my updating about the riots. My own area is safe at the moment but the various gangs of looters are circling round and trouble flares up in different areas. West London may be next though we have already had some trouble in Ealing Broadway.

The West Londoner is continuing his excellent work. And the Guardian's constantly updating blog gives an account (at 10.47) of Turkish shopkeepers in Dalston seeing off the looters. Way to go. An example of the Big Society.

No there is no looting, I mean rioting here

It is a little surprising, given that this is West London, the hub of gang culture, that there are constant fights and arrests here (though there has not been a murder in my street for three years so, clearly, things are changing) and Westfield shopping centre is just down the road, that the lootings riots motivated by hatred of the establishment especially the oppressive police have not spread here. Perhaps, the Somali gangs are too busy murdering each other and running illegal shisha cafes and the other gangs are still so backward in their political education as to think that they would prefer to choose the highly expensive clothes they buy rather than grab the first thing that they can, even if that means paying.

From the above paragraph readers might surmise that I am not impressed by the highly politicized explanations given by some analysts most of whom, curiously enough, do not live in London and have no real understanding of the different areas and what happens in them. Parts of Tottenham experience serious trouble every week-end and often on week days as well. The gangs are very real, indeed, and have little to do with alienation experienced by people who have nobody to vote for. If these people or their "community leaders" think that the police are not on their side, they are, we all hope, absolutely right. It is not the job of the police to be on the side of violent gangs who terrorize local shopkeepers, mug passers by on the streets, sell drugs (well, OK, I do think the drug laws should be changed but the police works in the legal environment that is created by others) and, when all else fails, have violent fights with each other.

The real problem, as expressed by many of the inhabitants of Tottenham, Enfield and other places, is that the police is insufficiently on the side of the law-abiding inhabitants. There are many reasons for this and the infamous Macpherson Report had much to answer for. The police were no longer on the side of the law-abiding members of ethnic minorities but on the side of the criminals from those communities. A discussion of all the other problems would take at least one long posting and today I want to stick to what is happening now.

I would, however, like to describe a scene I witnessed near here some weeks ago. There are many small supermarkets on Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush Green, Goldhawk Road and all around them. Most of them have boxes with fruit and vegetables outside. A tall and strong-looking young black lad went past one of these shops, picked up an orange and started eating it. A young member of the Asian shopkeeping family (no, I have no idea whether they are Muslim or Hindu and it is of little significance) remonstrated and got a volley of abuse back, the chief of which was the young lad with the orange demanding that some respect be shown to him. He was being "dissed" when asked to pay for the fruit he was consuming. It was not clear to me whether he was asserting that he was going to pay in the fullness of time or not. One of the older shopkeepers came out, broke up the fight, shooed his young relative back into the store and let the lad go with his orange and whatever else he picked up on the way. He then told the young relative off. It was clear to me what was happening: the shopkeepers wanted no trouble with the disrespected lad and his friends and thought that the loss of some fruit was a price worth paying. Clearly they did not think of calling the police. Notoriously, the police do not even list shoplifting when compiling their crime statistics.

This small episode is being echoed in the complaints of the people of Tottenham right now. Far from complaining about police brutality, they would like to know why the police had not been prepared for the looting and arson anti-establishment rioting and were not out in force protecting people and their property.

As these riots have spread, certain things have become obvious. There are no geographic or any other kind of links. Simply in several areas of London where there are already gangs in place, some of the smarter organizers decide to target shopping areas and bring their mates together via cell phones, twitter and whatever other expensive communication network is available to them. These are not the "wretched of the earth". The police are thinly spread and are somewhat hampered by the knowledge that if they do use a certain amount of force, there will be uproar on every side of the political divide about "police brutality". The same people who are calling for tougher action now will be screaming in horror if there are pictures of police going in with batons or deciding to adopt the Continental method of water canons.

It is, of course, about time we worked out what the police are for and what do we want them to do. Possibly the events of this week-end will open up that discussion but I am not holding my breath. And while we are on the subject, is it not about time we started worrying just a bit about the very large underclass of all colours, races, religions and ethnic groupings that we have in this country?

ADDENDUM: I have found an interesting blog that is following events closely.