I haven't seen anything like it in my lifetime, but then I'm unable to recall the Brixton riots. Now apart from the fact our reletively civilised country has had images captured of it looking more like a third world pit, something else really troubles me; the reaction of the public.
Now most of it has been appaul at the behaviour of the looters and rioters. So far so good. People should be appaulled and I'd be more worried if they were not. But my concern rests largely with the reaction after that.
Rather inevitably as events are going on people are asking why this has happened. The disturbing thing is that people start looking for 'big' explanations rather than the small. Socio-economic factors being the obvious and easy choice. Essentially many of the looters (although not all) are from poorer economic backgrounds. In addition we're going through econonmic hard times, so I can see it is going to be exceedingly popular with some people to say that the reason for the riots is due to the economic climate. This is wrong, and dangerous.
To begin economic times are hard, but they aren't really THAT hard. When one can't get food for yourself and your family, I appreciate that a natural tension develops. This is because when a hard working man can't obtain sufficient food for himself and his family, it is highly likely (unless there is a famine going on) something wrong with the way society is structured. Riots usually result in unheaval and so it is almost a logical reaction. This isn't what is going on at the moment.
For all our economic hardship everyone still have food and clothes and the government is still doleling out the benefits are usual, no crisis there. This is further supported by what is being looted; bread? Oats? Clean water? No. What is being looted is DVDs, CDs, wiskey, wine, in other words luxuries, things that people don't need, but want.
People don't need rose wine any more than I need fresh pressed orange juice each morning. It is nice, but not essential. In other words, it is something one has to work for. If the work isn't around that is unfortunate, but that is how economics works. Give it a couple of years and there will be money around again... unless all your businesses have been burnt to the ground by looters, that is.
This is not the only thing that shows that the riots are not about economic needs. Swansesa, South Wales, is a bit of a dive. Not completely, but it certainly isn't Cambridge. There are few highly skilled jobs to work towards and the average income is quite low. So too in the Rhondda Valleys, so too in Glasgow, and yet no one in these areas are rioting. A quick glance at the BBC news website for Scotland reveals that it's main story is about roads being flooded. The only arrests in both Wales and Scotland have been to do with people encouraging rioting on facebook and other social media sites.
Now, when one considers that the Welsh and Scottish have just as many deprived areas as the English, clearly it can be seen that this is nothing to do with poverty.
There is one explanation and one alone, there are people, who want things that they haven't worked for and they have no concern for those who have. They are selfish and believe they have a right to things that other people have, even if those people don't really have them at all. After all does a shop keeper really 'own' the widescreen TV on the shop floor? Legally it is his, but it doens't mean he watches a good TV at home, it is his, but his to sell to someone else, it is his livelyhood. Further the retail industry has been sufferring of late, which actually suggests no one really has the money for these things at the moment.
So what is the cause of the riots? Greed. Pure and simple. I want, I don't want to wait, I want it now, and I don't care who suffers as a result. A similar but slightly different kind of greed that makes the banks try to stop the UK from regulating them properly, while giving themselves huge bonuses. I want, I want now, I don't care who suffers. Although at least with the banks the sufferring is slightly less direct than with the rioters.
This then is the first thing that needs to be acknowledged by society. Greed is what has caused this, greed and a desire to put 'me' first and screw anyone else, "stuff your neighbour" if you will. Any talk of lack of opportunity or feeling 'let down' by the government it looking in the wrong place. It also undermines the behaviour of those who are also poor, but aren't burning down their neighbour's shop.
The second issue society needs to, and no doubt will consider, is what to do to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again. That is a good reaction. Self-reflection is an important requirement for improvement in almost any aspect of one's life. But the issue is that we have stopped 'self-reflecting' and started 'government blaming'.
Now don't get me wrong. Anyone can read the rest of my blog and see that I do my fair share of slating the government. There is no doubt there. However, there is a time and a place. This is neither the time nor the place.
The government after all have no interest in either ruining the economy or having riots in the street. Both look very bad on the government and so we can rule out intentionally damaging either. After all even if David Cameron is a millionaire, he has his money in shares just like everyone else and so he wants the economy to improve even if it is for no other reason than for his own bank balance to increase.
But the main issue is, and this really needs to sink into our consciousness as a society:
THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT CONTROL EVERYTHING.
If they could, then the thing that we really need to worry about is not a few rioters in the street but the fact we have a totalitarian government so powerful it can control everything and everyone. That would be far more dangerous and probably result in far more suffering event than what we have now.
Further just logically people forget that the resources of the government are finite. We seem to thing that government is an everlasting stack of cash. But really the governments resources is only what you and I earn. Which means their resources are only our resources. Are you feeling the pinch? So in the government then. Can you only just make ends meet? Well that means the government can't tax you any more and if they do that will decrease the amount you can spend and that will hurt the economy. So basically since the police resources depend on the government and the government on us... and we're all broke. We need to start thinking of the government as the people who keep the basics of life ticking over, not the people who solve all of lifes problems.
Further, money, contrary to popular belief, can't solve all problems. Sending someone to university doesn't make them more intelligent. Giving someone £20 doesn't make them more moral and paying someone to do A-levels doesn't make them more hard working. So throwing money at the the problem won't make it go away. Giving the police more money would just mean more people in prison. Which means we'd need more money for prisons. Then they are always going to come out of prison and some point and the cycles starts again. It is incredibly expensive. The Budget for national offenders is around £4Bn. The home office has a budget of around £11bn together that is more than all the devolved spending in Wales.
The people who caused this were individuals. As a society we need to choose whether we accept this sort of behaviour and make excuses for it or whether we realise that it is we who dictate social norms and it is we who decided what is acceptable. We do it as parents and/or friends and/or work collegues and/or partners.
Listen to the clip on this website, then ask youself one question. Have WE (the people) go this balance right?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
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