Got it in one - by Richard... Thursday, August 11, 2011

Got it in one - by Richard... Thursday, August 11, 2011

How short the collective memory of the nation is. A bit of violence from the "underclass", a massive amount of hype from the media, and it's "scumbags" this and "scumbags" that. The police and the politicians become the heroes of the hour, blood lust rises in the chatterati, who talk gleefully of putting water cannon on the streets, and The Boy draws drooling admiration from people who should know better.

The corrective from Theodore Dalrymple, therefore, is extremely welcome. "The riots in London and elsewhere in Britain are a backhanded tribute to the long-term intellectual torpor, moral cowardice, incompetence and careerist opportunism of the British political and intellectual class", he writes. His further observations are equally delightful:

Relatively poor as the rioting sector of society is, it nevertheless possesses all the electronic equipment necessary for the prosecution of the main business of life; that is to say, entertainment by popular culture. And what a culture British popular culture is!

Perhaps Amy Winehouse was its finest flower and its truest representative in her militant and ideological vulgarity, her stupid taste, her vile personal conduct and preposterous self-pity.

Her sordid life was a long bath in vomitus, literal and metaphorical, for which the exercise of her very minor talent was no excuse or explanation. Yet not a peep of dissent from our intellectual class was heard after her near canonisation after her death, that class having long had the backbone of a mollusc.

But, as before, we note that there is no recognition of this amongst "the British political and intellectual class", a class that mourned the passing of the gutter press News of the World, describing it as a "fine newspaper".

One only has to look at the preposterous Cameron, pontificating from his lectern placed by his lackeys in front of No. 10, to know that all is not well with the world. "For too long there (has) been a lack of focus on the complete lack of respect shown by these groups of thugs…", says this fool – oblivious to that central fact that respect is not given but earned, and he and his ilk have done nothing at all to earn it.

A leader so lacking in self-awareness, coming up with shallow, frankly stupid nostrums for a problem he does not understand and has been part of the making, is a man who is going to make that problem worse.

And it cannot be said often enough: the British "political and intellectual class" are part of the problem, not the solution. But perhaps the bigger problem is that so many people believe, or allow themselves to believe otherwise. It seems to me that the people, as well as the politicians, need to do some growing up.

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Knee-jerk garbage - by Richard...

Soundbites about "water cannon" and “plastic bullets" from The Boy may sound tough. But the professional plod advises against.

This is Hugh Orde. As one of only two officers in the country to have ordered the use of water cannon and baton rounds in public-order policing, his professional judgment is it would be the wrong tactic, in the wrong circumstances at this moment:

Both require an extremely precise situation. The use of water cannon, while logistically difficult, works against large stationary crowds throwing missiles at police or, as I witnessed in Northern Ireland, at other communities. It achieves distance between police and unlawful crowds that is often vital.

Utilising baton rounds, an even more severe tactic, is fundamentally to protect life. When I ordered their use, again in Northern Ireland, my officers were being attacked by blast bombs and live fire. I would always use both with a heavy heart, but it is always an issue of proportionality.

What we have seen so far from these riots, involving fast-moving and small groups of lawless people, is a situation that merits the opposite end of public-order policing.

Why politicians feel the need to utter these extravagant, but utterly useless sound bites, thereby making complete fools of themselves, is one of those mysteries that will never be solved. The Boy might be better advised if he kept his mouth shut on operational matters. On these, as with many other things, he does nothing but betray his own ignorance.

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We cannot tolerate this - by Pete... Wednesday, August 10, 2011

There is simply no excuse for this mindless theft, criminality and looting. We should be united in telling them we will not tolerate this behavior in our communities. They must know that they will be caught and they will be punished as severely as possible. At this time, no options are off the table. The looting in Hackney is particularly unacceptable, and will be stamped on hard.

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Corrupt and decaying from top to bottom - by Pete...

Well, I think we can finally say that socialwelfarism has utterly failed as a project. The case made to me was that welfare, if nothing else, stopped the great unwashed rioting and looting on the streets. This week demonstrates fairly well that it doesn't even do that.

We have a state school system producing kids who couldn't and won't get a job and a wider population who thinks the Easter Bunny will pay for their retirement, housing and day to day needs. Meanwhile, thanks to the cultural gas chambers we laughingly call schools, British business would rather not employ Brits if there is an alternative.

We have a justice system that serves only itself and its welfare clients, while occasionally slapping down the odd tax payer to ensure their obedience to the state. It is a system that works for the perpetrator, not the victim.

And who are these kids tearing down our cities? It is said they are the disenfranchised who have no stake in "our society". Kids who feel there is no reason to comply with the basic rules of civil society because it does not pay dividends. Their obedience is required, but for what?

There's a kid I know who has not had a proper job in over ten year years. I say kid because, for all that he is a grown man, he has remained kid by way of remaining a client of the state. Cosseted with a head full of silly notions about where money comes from, and all that he is "entitled" to. The reason I continue to help him is because he has not yet given up. He still wants a job and has not resorted to criminality.

He is one of the rare ones who, every week, goes walking round the industrial estates asking for work, applying for anything he can find. But he has no skills. He has nothing to offer them. He has no work experience of value, no qualifications of value and very little natural ability.

What makes him different from the rest of his generation is his willingness to find work. I think most by now would have quit looking and found a way onto the incapacity benefit system. And after ten years of ceaseless heartbreak, I wouldn't blame him, and I would actually support such a move.

The continual humiliation of going round and round inside the welfare system, a mere statistic in a creaking bureaucracy, fighting for a pittance that makes the difference between starving or not, erodes the soul. To be routinely told you have nothing of value to offer, even if that's true, cannot be good.

And what has government done in this regard. They have fed him on false hopes. He has been round the system, on this or that training course and placement scheme. His list of "qualifications" is now longer than some graduates I know. But these "qualifications" are a contrivance of government, neither useful to, nor demanded by business.

The kid has what is known as a European "Computer Driving Licence" without possessing any marketable computer skills. The course is useless, the material is easy and all that is served by it is a fat cheque from the government to the public and private bodies who award such junk.

This all at a time when public spending was at an all time high. We have to face the simple fact that it doesn't work. Throwing money at the problem simply perpetuates it.

Abandoned by his parents and abandoned by the school system to become just another human life on the scrapheap before it has even begun. I have done what I can to help with remedial education but you can't deprogramme all that sense of entitlement. That lesson has to be taught first hand. But it will probably never happen for him.

You could certainly say he has no stake in society. He is certainly "disenfranchised". Thanks to the mechanisms of the state and his background (generational welfare), his fate was sealed early on. He has every right to be angry and frustrated, which indeed he is, but he is not out looting this week.

He has always, with the intervention of friends and distant family, known the difference between right and wrong. He has been known to shoplift the odd tin of beans on the odd occasion when a giro has not gone as far as feeding him. Anyone who has been on the dole long enough, with no family to speak of, would probably confess to likewise. Who of us would not?

What keeps him from rioting is the hope that eventually something will come up, that he will get a break in life. He is perhaps more optimistic than I would be. All evidence suggest that he will not. Especially not now we're looking down the barrel of a global market meltdown.

But for every one of him who does know the difference between right and wrong, there is evidently a legion that does not. Or maybe does, but does not care. Obedience will bring them nothing but a miserable, unhealthy, unproductive life. One could even say my young friend is dumb, expecting that he will get somewhere pegging his hopes on the system he finds himself in.

We have just enjoyed ten years of unprecedented wealth and opportunity, but for most of these kids, those opportunities weren't available to them, not speaking Polish being one of the many reasons. All we have done by maintaining a welfare underclass is subsidise a pressure cooker that is now blowing its top. Much like the banking crisis, we have thrown money at a problem to delay the inevitable, only to feel the consequences much harder later on.

After decades learning bit by bit that petty crime is tolerated and they can get away with it, that underclass is now probing the system to see what else they can get away with. The answer is: a lot. This is simply all our chickens coming home to roost. Welfarism, a useless police force, a court system whose moral compass is spinning round faster than ride at Alton Towers, and state school system which at its very best is unfit for purpose.

While that is obvious to most, the statists are fighting for their agenda. They cannot allow the liberation of the poor. The poor are their livelihoods, their clients, their power base. And so the Left must present it in terms of social division. There are vested interests who, once again are trying to make this about race.

We must not allow them to succeed. These are black and white and Asian kids. They are all victims of the state welfare system. If we allow this to become a race debate as we have the last few times, we will simply get more of the same: more red tape for the police, more equality surveys, more outreach workers and more ghettoisation.

The race riots of decades past are no different to these riots in some senses. They are also the result of state mechanisms not only allowing, but facilitating ghettoisation of society, if not by race and faith, then by class. I have always said that if you subsidise poverty, you will always have poverty. We need to stop it. Welfare at best needs to be a temporary lifeline, not a lifetime habit.

But in amongst the disorder, we also see mass larceny by people with full time jobs. Opportunistic theft by supposedly respectable people. Are we a society in moral decline? Were we ever of high moral fibre? We like to think we are more civilised than other countries because of the values we teach. But we're not. Order is kept because most people live under the illusion that they will be caught if they do bad things. Now they've worked out they won't be. This theft is brazen and is done with impunity.

We know from experience the police will not investigate, let alone catch thieves on a day to day basis. There is no reason to think this will be any different when the lid has blown off the pressure cooker. There was a time when the police would come to a crime scene and take fingerprints (this was my earliest memory of a police encounter), this in the days before super computers.

Now, for all the police resources they will simply turn up, give you a crime number and refer you to your insurance company. Consequently insurance premiums drive up costs for everyone.

The police have largely abdicated from routine police work. They have virtually given up on enforcing narcotics laws. Whatever your views on drugs, the law is the law. But now we have police making their own minds up about which laws to enforce. The law is so out of step with the people, and so unpopular, that if the police want to maintain a level of order, they have to decide which laws to uphold and which to ignore.

The law has made a mockery of itself. We have a law engine spewing out law after contradictory law. Not knowing which way to turn, enforcement becomes neglected in populist areas and so a quota or a crackdown to suit the political zeitgeist is launched resulting in knee-jerk unpopular policing. That is how we arrive here.

So again we draw the same conclusion: this is a crisis of politics. An establishment that does not know what it is for. But that is hardly surprising when that same establishment has abdicated government to other powers. The rot starts at the top. Our government is dysfunctional, without direction, without ambition, without guiding principles and is mired in the institutional larceny of the parasite class.

The immigration system is creaking, the roads are broken, our armed forces in complete disarray, the DVLA has lost the plot, Social Services are bandits, the welfare system is swamped and our energy grid is rapidly running toward rolling blackouts while parasitic corporates asset strip the country for everything it's worth. And what do we see in government? Children with their infantile preoccupations following one media bandwagon to the next, fire-hosing more borrowed money at problems they created.

Now the streets are littered with broken glass, and the burnt out husks of building still smoulder, we again ask what can government do? The answer is nothing. It has demonstrated beyond any doubt that it is incapable of taking grown-up, difficult decisions. Again, that is reflected in the wider population.

We are flat broke and yet we march to stop cuts. We praise the bravery of the police when they stand idly by while the criminals wreck our cities. We are a nation of infants under the illusion that only government can, or should, come to our aid.

Until we reject this notion, put government back in its place and ask the question of what government is actually for, we will be back here again and again. Government is not a creator of jobs or wealth. And nor should it be. In recent years it has been the biggest obstacle to jobs and wealth.

The only way the bulk of our youth can have a stake in society is if we create opportunities for them. We will not give them opportunities by confiscating wealth and redirecting it to the manyforeign corporates who build government-mandated projects. Wealth must be left in the hands of those who earn it, to spend as they see fit and to care for those they find deserving.

But while our masters get fat off the proceeds of big government, it is not in their interests to introduce any meaningful reform. They need to subsidize the poor to secure their power base. If we want significant change we must throw the scraps from their table back at them, boycott government involvement in our lives and starve the beast. We must rid ourselves of them and start doing things for ourselves.

They do this to us because we let them.

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Getting it wrong again - by Richard...

In my considered view (disagree with me if you dare), one of the best proponents of critical analysis on the block is Simon Jenkins. And, on the riots issue, he does not disappoint. Outsiders witnessing the urban riots this week, he writes, could be forgiven for assuming that Britain's cities were now run by the police and the home secretary.

There may be municipal councils and in London an elected mayor, but they are nowhere to be seen to be in control. They have no real power and therefore little or no public status as civic leaders. At the front line are the police, and behind them only the central power of the state.

The "nationalisation" of the riots by the home secretary and the prime minister inevitably inclined government to overreact. Ministers and opposition leaders raced back from holiday, parliament was summoned and sports fixtures cancelled.If ministers had wanted to induce a sense of panic, they could hardly have done better. Yet below them is only a vacuum of authority and accountability.

Thus does Jenkins make powerful points. In this top-down society of ours, when we have problems, the media and the chatterati look not to the local communities and their politicians, but to the centre, whence the prime minister takes over. Instead of that, we need local leaders with real power, he says.

You can see why I would like this thesis as, only last night, I was writing that "I would sooner have it that the responsibility goes where it belongs - not to a plump old Etonian, but to individuals and the communities in which they live".

It is they, I wrote, who should be empowered and encouraged to take responsibility for their own safety and security, with the assistance of the police. Such security is not within the capability of a prime minister to deliver, and nor should a national politician be entrusted with that task.

Illustrating quite how far our commentariat have strayed from that path, however, is "I'm often been a critic" Tim Montgomerie, displaying orgasmic delight of knicker-wetting intensity at the behaviour of his hero, Supercam. "This is the best I've ever seen him. He's angry. He's determined. He's found his mission", trills Montgomerie. It must be love.

Needless to say, the police are no better. One of the most powerful influences here is our old friend Philip Selznich and his theory of "self maintenance", the driving force behind any hierarchical institution. The police, intent on maintaining the structural integrity and expansion of their own organisations, are the last to be interested in sharing power with mere "citizens".

Charles Moore, however, did mention the Home Guard and we recall that, on 14 May 1940, Anthony Eden made a radio appeal for volunteers. Within seven days, 250,000 had attempted to sign up. Similarly, the police force was massively expanded, with a corps of special constables (right).

Rather turn to the top-down solutions, with their water cannon, plastic bullets and increasing state thuggery we should be thinking in terms of enlisting thousands of "citizen police", giving them armbands and baseball bats, and putting them on the streets. With a hundred guardians on each corner - reclaiming the streets for the community - the violence would stop instantly.

Between Mongomerie's dampened knickers and Cameron's rhetoric, however, the capacity for our political classes to get it wrong is endless. They just can't help themselves in their headlong retreat from reality.

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Don't forget the alienated middle class - by Richard...

Phillip Johnston in the Failygraph argues that "the police lost control of the streets not in Tottenham, last weekend, but many years ago". Elsewhere in his piece, he also notes the change in the official attitude to crimes against property, "where thieves are now being treated in the same way as motorists whose cars have remained too long in a parking space".

Several points emerge here. Firstly, Johnson is probably right about the timescale. The police have lost it – and did so many years ago. But much of the reason is not because thieves are treated in the same way as motorists, but the other way round. By and large, motorists are treated the same as thieves ... or, in many cases, far worse.

Thus, it is not just (or even) the "underclass" that is alienated, but the largely middle-class motoring community – which includes most of the middle class.

Certainly, in my long career, which has necessitated driving hundreds of thousands of miles, the police have done me more harm – financially and physically – than the legions of the underclass, who have "only" burgled my house five times. They have taken far less than the police have extracted from me by way of fines – the thefts in any event being covered by insurance.

But there is then the other dimension.

The police enthusiasm for chasing the motorist, the plague of the speed camera, the use of parking as a revenue generator – and the relentless efforts on enforcing fine payments – contrast sharply with their complete lack of enthusiasm for protecting my home and property, and their inability ever to trace any of the offenders who have stolen property from me and mine.

Add to that, the arrogant, cocky attitude of so many of the police that one meets, their reported incompetence and corruption, their violence and aggression, and you have a situation where the police have lost the trust and respect of the communities they serve. From being friends and allies, the police have become the class enemy - the enemy of the middle class.

What you then get is the trickle-down effect. The middle classes do not riot and loot ... not yet. But the general loss of respect and mutual support creates an atmosphere of distrust and indifference to the police, which reflects in those most prone to violent disorder.

We saw in the Mirror piece, the reference to "witless morons", applied to the rioters. Yet, in my book, that best describes the police themselves.

But then we get The Boy up on his hind legs prattling about a "sick society" as if this was something new, and something from which he and his kind can divorce themselves. More to the point, he is saying that "... there are pockets of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick".

Yet the "pocket" to which this description would best apply is his own. And he, more than most, has contributed to the distrust, to the point of loathing, of our politicians, which have made the world he inhabits so sick.

Yet, it seems that none of these people have mirrors ... or anything approaching self-awareness. They rely on their mantras, their superficial analyses and their knee-jerk responses, oh so clever and so full of shit. Sadly, therefore, days into this crisis, not one of the paid commentariat seem close to understanding what is going on.

And this is why, one suspects, things are not going to get better.

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Sow the wind - by Richard...

Three Asian men were killed last night as they tried to defend their business from rioters in Birmingham. According to reports, the deceased were two brothers and a friend had just emerged from a mosque, and were among large numbers of local people determined not to allow the fluid series of grab-and-run attacks in the city centre to spread to their area. A car is said to have mounted the pavement and mowed the three down.

The Asians, of course, not the only ones who are fed up with police inactivity. On the streets of Enfield, a group of 70 men patrolled their streets late into last night. They were one of several groups in the area determined to take a stand against rioting and to help the over-stretched police force.

One of those involved in the patrol, Nick Davidson, said a lack of action from police prompted their decision: "We've had enough of the police just standing there... while people are looting and ruining the whole area. Everybody here pays tax and we've all had enough of it. We're sickened by the police doing absolutely nothing. "They're not policing our streets, we have to police them", he says.

However, the Birmingham incident is the first report of confrontation with the British Asian community or inter-communal violence. This would take the disturbances onto a new level, saysThe Guardian ... a classic, when it comes to understatement.

Sow the wind, brothers – reap the whirlwind. When you get a breakdown in the basic apparatus of the state, the consequences are never pretty. Some are suggesting that we are on the verge of a new English Civil War. Even a few days ago, I was of the view that we were in a pre-revolutionary situation, but did remark that, when the turning point is reached, "events occur at a terrifying speed".

It is too early to tell whether this is the whirlwind. My guess is that the weekend will be the decisive moment - tired plods, overstretched and bad-tempered. There is plenty of inflammable material around. A few new sparks and we would be living in a terrifyingly new country by Monday.

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It was "we" wot dun it - by Richard...

London spent a fairly quiet night, with the plods being rooted out of their comfy offices and put back on the streets where they belong. It says something of modern policing, however, that the Met-Plods employ 32,500 officers together with about 14,200 police staff, 230 traffic wardens and 4,300 plastic plods. Yet, only by Herculean effort, and with the assistance of 20 other forces, do they manage to put 16,000 plods on duty in the city.

However, as The Guardian and many others gaily inform us, in a fourth night of rioting, the violence has spread to some of England's provincial cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and Leicester. If that trend continues, it may mean that some of the provincial "services" want some of their plods back.

Politicians and police planners may then have to confront the aphorism to which we have on occasion referred: "there are more of us than there are of them". They police by consent, or not at all. There are limits to how many plods can be put on the ground, and how long they can be kept there.

That has not in any way checked the torrent of EVM pouring from the MSM, and particularly the print media. Yet we would do well to remind ourselves that the views expressed are those of a failing industry, that is haemorrhaging circulation as fast as the plods are losing support. The media no more gets it right than have the plods, or the politicians who rely on them for protection.

One of the many prize contributions of the day from this failing industry comes from Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror, who launches into a vitriolic condemnation of the: "illiterate, swaggering thugs who have sucked up benefits like their mother's milk". These are the "witless morons", writes Parsons, pronouncing that the riots are "a crime against all the people who live their lives with quiet decency", and "a crime against the working class of this country".

That and much more positions the Mirror firmly against the rioters. Parsons has no truck with the "apologists" who bleat that "it is about unemployment, or police violence, or the cuts in public services". That is all rubbish, our man of the people firmly declares.

All very well and good – but never mind the intellectual inconsistency. "The people who are out on our streets robbing, burning, looting, throwing bottles and putting people of the minimum wage out of a job are self-pitying scumbags. There is no justification for what they do. This is beyond all politics – and beyond all special pleading", Parsons informs us. "The riots have no moral authority".

And then, tucked into all that are these two sentences: "In the end – softened up with their human rights, pampered with a benefits system that was meant to protect the vulnerable – we get this shabby shower. We have produced a generation that is good for nothing but, paradoxically, is afraid of nothing".

It is the last of those two sentences that gives the game away: "We have produced a generation ... ". That is "we" - us ... not the rioters. We, the collective, society, its politicians, teachers, hoards of social workers, sundry bureaucrats, police, members of the "justice industry" and all the rest. "We" have produced a lost generation.

So yes, you can blame the "self-pitying scumbags". Go for it. We must set the plods free to root them out. But if one stops for just one short moment, a little voice might ask, who really are the "witless morons"? Who is this "we" that produced a lost generation? Who are the real "scumbags"?

Uncomfortable thoughts, those ... better not to think. Bring on the water cannon and the plastic bullets. Those are much easier to deal with.

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That word "respect" again - by Richard...

You do not have to subscribe to the liberal-left agenda to understand the role of "respect" in society. In fact, this is as much a right-wing concept and one with which the military is entirely familiar. So fundamental is this concept that one could argue that, without it, there can be no society. And thus, we argue that the loss of respect is a significant causal factor in these riots.

Furthermore, we are not alone. Esther Addley talks a great deal of sense, writing about: "A generation who don't respect their parents or police". If there is a fault in what she writes, it is that her article is cast too narrowly. The broader point is that the loss of respect is not just confined to her subjects. One only has to read the forum attached to this blog to appreciate how far respect has been eroded across the board.

Looking at this from an entirely personal stance, I would readily concede that I have almost no respect for politicians, precious little for the institutions of state, and none at all for the police. Nor, I would suspect, am I alone in such a stance.

Now, the point is that if we are so lacking is that vital quality, why is it that we should be so adamant in expecting that those who many would prefer to think of as the "lower orders" should have any respect for the very institutions that we shun? Putting it personally again, how can I expect them to have any respect for the police when I have none?

In order then to take this thought further, we then have to remind ourselves that respect is not given but earned. If the "lower orders" do not respect our institutions, that is not their fault. We lack institutions which are worthy of respect, and capable of earning it. Of this, really, we must not lose sight. And when we fully take that on board, we might then start to make some progress.

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