Violence on the streets

Yep that was one of them - spawn of naim_nymph? Smash the rich.

Debs, point taken, but that's a totally different problem and bankers aren't out ransacking their local community!

These guys I do despise, but they need to be tackled in a different manner, and theirs powers removed by the government.  However the banks seem to rule the government so it's catch 22.....

No, instead they ransack entire countries and scavenge their bonuses on the back of all tax payers. When Simon Johnson, ex Chief Economist of the IMF, stated on record that Josef Ackermann, CEO of Deutsche Bank, is one of the world's most dangerous bankers because of his insistence on a 20-25% return on equity ratio even after the financial crisis had happened, the message was finally drummed home even to those who still believed that the big banks are here to do a good job for society. They are not! The only way to achieve these sort of margins is to engage in high risk investments and the only way he can allow this to happen is because he knows Deutsche Bank is too big to fail and will be bailed out by the government and ultimately the tax payer, if push came to shove. What's happening on the streets of London is horrible but the real surprise is that none of us rebelled in a similar fashion when the banks were bailed out. They are the real cancer of society that you elude to when speaking about the misguided youths. In reality society is as much to blame for what is happening than the individuals that are now vandalizing London.

Just because some bankers behaved in a bad way and continue to do so in many ways does not excuse the behaviour that is going on that the moment from gangs of thugs across the country. Most people are pretty decent, but there are some on this planet who are not. Hopefully, our elected representatives will join together and use the best means available to stop this latest madness and do what they can to ensure it cannot happen again. When it comes down to it the motivation behind both no-good bankers and the current thugs is the same: greed - they may dress differently, but they are really just the same.    

There is always room for peaceful protest and freedom of speech and time for good honest folk who do rip people off and do not embark on mindless violence and destruction and theft. 

Thankfully, as a Persian King once said: These Things Too Will Pass Away

Here is George from All Things Must Pass

I'm not sure if this is what you meant to say, or whether you have omitted another "not" from the sentence.

Cheers

Don

Thanks Don 

I meant to say "There is always room for peaceful protest and freedom of speech and time for good honest folk who do not rip people off and do not embark on mindless violence and destruction and theft" 

This is only too true, sadly. I used to live in the East End of London, where this way of 'getting on the social' was regarded as normal by unmarried teenage girls who had no prospect, or intention, of getting a job.

Lend/borrow; some bankers traded beyond their means, some people lived beyond theirs, but just keep blaming the former naim_nymph et al. As for banks being bailed out, in essence the same is true for those with property.

Re the criminals; little to add to my first post.

Cheers,

OW

OW, can we at least agree that for some bankers and some of the disenfranchised underclass who are now rioting, ours is a something-for-nothing society?

Chris

As far as benefits go (and we're straying here, I realise), who's going to look a gift horse in the mouth?

I met a very nice woman recently, erudite and educated. She is 'a single parent', works 3 days a week, earning £11,000. She also receives £200 pm from child's father via the CSA. She also receives additional benefits via CB, CTC, WTC and housing benefit (plus something else which I can't remember, council tax paid maybe?) equivalent to another £12,000 every year. From us basically. She pays about £800 p.a. income tax and little, if any, N.I.. Like she told me though, what would possibly posess her to find a higher paying, full time job when she's bringing in £2,000 a month net?

All

Makes you ashamed to be British!!!!!!

Round them all up and put them in an old aircraft hanger and see what happens.  While there in their loot there homes.

Then burn it in front of them.

Or even, "While they're in there, loot their homes".

I think it's more a case of: "Stop taking those sleeping pills Ian and wake up to reality!"

But back to the real issues, it is all too easy to come up with one liner explanations, unfortunately these won't help much long term. If improvements are what people are even remotely interested in, they need to look at the wider picture and realise that complex issues require complex solutions. For anyone who actually cares the below article should be an interesting read:

"It is essential for those in power in Britain that the riots now sweeping the country can have no cause beyond feral wickedness. This is nothing but "criminality, pure and simple", David Cameron declared after cutting short his holiday in Tuscany. The London mayor and fellow former Bullingdon Club member Boris Johnson, heckled by hostile Londoners in Clapham Junction, warned that rioters must stop hearing "economic and sociological justifications" (though who was offering them he never explained) for what they were doing.

When his predecessor Ken Livingstone linked the riots to the impact of public spending cuts, it was almost as if he'd torched a building himself. The Daily Mail thundered that blaming cuts was "immoral and cynical", echoed by a string of armchair riot control enthusiasts. There was nothing to explain, they've insisted, and the only response should be plastic bullets, water cannon and troops on the streets.

We'll hear a lot more of that when parliament meets – and it's not hard to see why. If these riots have no social or political causes, then clearly no one in authority can be held responsible. What's more, with many people terrified by the mayhem and angry at the failure of the police to halt its spread, it offers the government a chance to get back on the front foot and regain its seriously damaged credibility as a force for social order.

But it's also a nonsensical position. If this week's eruption is an expression of pure criminality and has nothing to do with police harassment or youth unemployment or rampant inequality or deepening economic crisis, why is it happening now and not a decade ago? The criminal classes, as the Victorians branded those at the margins of society, are always with us, after all. And if it has no connection with Britain's savage social divide and ghettoes of deprivation, why did it kick off in Haringey and not Henley?

To accuse those who make those obvious links of being apologists or "making excuses" for attacks on firefighters or robbing small shopkeepers is equally fatuous. To refuse to recognise the causes of the unrest is to make it more likely to recur – and ministers themselves certainly won't be making that mistake behind closed doors if they care about their own political futures.

It was the same when riots erupted in London and Liverpool 30 years ago, also triggered by confrontation between the police and black community, when another Conservative government was driving through cuts during a recession. The people of Brixton and Toxteth were denounced as criminals and thugs, but within weeks Michael Heseltine was writing a private memo to the cabinet, beginning with "it took a riot", and setting out the urgent necessity to take action over urban deprivation.

This time, the multi-ethnic unrest and spread far further and faster. It's been less politicised and there's been far more looting, to the point where in many areas grabbing "free stuff" has been the main action. But there's no mystery as to where the upheaval came from. It was triggered by the police killing a young black man in a country where black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than their white counterparts. The riot that exploded in Tottenham in response at the weekend took place in an area with the highest unemployment in London, whose youth clubs have been closed to meet a 75% cut in its youth services budget.

It then erupted across what is now by some measures the most unequal city in the developed world, where the wealth of the richest 10% has risen to 273 times that of the poorest, drawing in young people who have had their educational maintenance allowance axed just as official youth unemployment has reached a record high and university places are being cut back under the weight of a tripling of tuition fees.

Now the unrest has gone nationwide. But it's not as if rioting was unexpected when the government embarked on its reckless programme to shrink the state. Last autumn the Police Superintendents' Association warned of the dangers of slashing police numbers at a time when they were likely to be needed to deal with "social tensions" or "widespread disorder". Less than a fortnight ago, Tottenham youths told the Guardian they expected a riot.

Politicians and media talking heads counter that none of that has anything to do with sociopathic teenagers smashing shop windows to walk off with plasma TVs and trainers. But where exactly did the rioters get the idea that there is no higher value than acquiring individual wealth, or that branded goods are the route to identity and self-respect?

While bankers have publicly looted the country's wealth and got away with it, it's not hard to see why those who are locked out of the gravy train might think they were entitled to help themselves to a mobile phone. Some of the rioters make the connection explicitly. "The politicians say that we loot and rob, they are the original gangsters," one told a reporter. Another explained to the BBC: "We're showing the rich people we can do what we want."

Most have no stake in a society which has shut them out or an economic model which has now run into the sand. It's already become clear that divided Britain is in no state to absorb the austerity now being administered because three decades of neoliberal capitalism have already shattered so many social bonds of work and community.

What we're now seeing across the cities of England is the reflection of a society run on greed – and a poisonous failure of politics and social solidarity. There is now a danger that rioting might feed into ethnic conflict. Meanwhile, the latest phase of the economic crisis lurching back and forth between the United States and Europe risks tipping austerity Britain into slump or prolonged stagnation. We're starting to see the devastating costs of refusing to change course."

The original article can be found here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm...ty-run-greed-looting

Unfortunately it is not just some bankers, the problem is systemic. It will require a complete rewriting of the financial system, new rules and regulations, a new sense of purpose even. If things remain the way they are, a meltdown of the global financial system might be next. It sounds horrible but maybe that's what's needed.

Chris,

Whatever the labels we give, the gist, yes - though like football hooliganism, other sections/labels are involved. Add 'want it now, can't wait' for the debt.

Cup of tea?

Cheers,

OW

Whether it is a banker  with a bonus or a thug with a stolen DVD player and trainers, a lot of us are  just plain selfish. We will take whatever we think we can get away with. We seek external justification for our actions, but at the end of the day it is really just all about us. I don't exclude myself from this characterisation. I fall somewhere between the two extremes I have just described.

In no way did I mean to suggest that every banker is evil. Most are normal people like me and you. In some ways who can blame the ones that are involved, after all we are all just human as winky aptly pointed out. It is the system that needs changing, people will follow suite, where there is no opportunity...

Capitalism has trained most people to be impatient for material wealth. For those who cannot get it as fast as it is portrayed on TV and other media influences when the chance arises - disarray in Policing and prompt response from the Gov't - some people [conditioned by two or three generations of the consumer and "rights but not responsibilities" society] are simply reminding us of why the liberal [ie left leaning] elite who have been in power in the West since 1945 have totally led us astray. 

We need to learn that for every privilege we have there is a concomitant responsibility ...

Unfortunately it will take two generations of moral strictures in bringing up children to behave to correct the current moral mess. Not in my lifetime, for sure. In reality, in the West, we no longer have the moral strength to accept a strict rule book at the level of democratic moral leadership, so we are doomed to not cure the underlying problem, while a kick-back will be to condemn the young who have committed these gross breaches of responsibility without considering those at fault for allowing these youngsters to get to a condition where they would consider such behaviour able to be contenanced. PC geniuses who will not allow discipline in schools or the home before calling in the social services [et cetera]. It is society that has failed the young, as much as the young failing society.

ATB from George

PS: In case anyone thinks I am some sort of northern Europesn fascist, my politics are left of centre, but peppered with a strong view that self-reliance is crucial. The self-reliance that allows for the acceptance of help, gratefully received, provided that the individual has put every effort into making a nice effort with their best skills first. Help should be for the helpless, and not for those too lazy to explore their own talent to succeed before admitting to a need for help ...

Like I said, the Bankers (is it conincidence that sounds like an obscenity?) are bastards, but no matter what you say, you cannot compare them to chav scum ruining the streets/towns/communities.  They need to be stripped of their bonuses and made pay back the debt to society that they owe.

However Chavs/thugs, need to be swept off the street and I would honestly say i'd have no qualms whatsoever about just deporting the lot of them to some desolate war torn country.

Thanks for your reply OW. Just milk please

Chris

Does one really exist in a vacuum without the other ?

As has been said here by more erudite members than me, the gap between Rich and Poor in this country has never been so great, yet we imagine that because the crimes of a 'few' seen on 24 hour tv news is greater than the crimes of a 'few' carried out on the stock market floor or the boardroom. That is just not so. Perhaps the police should have carried out dawn raids of Fred Goodwin et al. to put their respective crimes in perspective.

Whilst I have no sympathy with the fat cats in the banking industry, I am unclear just which specific crimes they have committed.

For example, is it one of gross negligence, gross incompetence (is that a crime ?), insider dealing or fraud, or what?

Cheers

Don

Fair comment Don, perhaps bankers per se have committed no crime, however in looking at the situation of rioting on our streets Cameron and co have been quick to distance themselves and their backers from any responsibility for allowing a situation in this country where tracts of society (the figure of 5% has been quoted elswhere) are so disenfrachised that they do not see the distruction of their own community as any great loss. I guess it's harder to riot at two in the morning if you feel you have something to get up for the next day.

The hands off approach of successive governments to the wholescale destabalisation of this and other countries will ultimately have a backlash. Is it right and propper to allow speculators to buy up companies, saddle them with debt, walk away with the profits and then ultimately watch whilst these same companies go under. The answer is of course no, however it should be yes, of course it's wrong ! With every failure people lose their livelyhood (more disenfranchised ?).

Toxic debt was all about maxamising profit without responsibility, surely. This comes home to roost when ultimately the Government on pulling the Banks out of the fire saddled us all with crippling debts.

Interesting to note that the very people being praised by the government, the police and firefighters are to receive no wage rise over two years (three in the case of Firefighters) are being made to work longer and receive less pension at the end of it,at the same time being asked to pay more, from 11.25% of their wages to 15% of their wages for this privelege ! Wait 'til they start rioting ! Meanwhilst two years ago 100 top employees of Goldman Sachs received £10m or over in bonuses ! Because their worth it no doubt !