Another view of riotous England
Alan Carter, from Oxford, wrote from the south of France. (Where else would you expect an Oxfordian to go for a sunny summer holiday?)I think he bravely "typed" this on his mobile. (I edited a bit, adding capital letters and some punctuation.) Thank you, Alan.
While PM Cameron is intent on placing the blame for riots on the deficiencies of the people in England, Alan Carter points out that there's enough blame to go around and around.
The riots have various 'dimensions'. Firstly, what I call 'remote control policing' - cameras everywhere, policemen nowhere. That's good for one or two shopliffters on a Saturday afternoon, but it's useless against 100s of people.
Secondly, 'preventative' arrests to neutralise gangs in the week before the Notting Hill carnival whipped up bad feeling in vulnerable areas. Then the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan (who was in a cab with a converted firearm) was the catalyst in an already fraught situation.
Thirdly, what happened to the summer camps? Answer - victims of budget cuts in the 90s. My suggestion is the same as for all the crises today (or le crise): How much would it really cost to fix it?? How much did summer camps cost for deprived kids? £1000s? How much damage was done by riots ( bad publicity etc)? £millions...
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Labels: civil society, policy, UK
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:25 AM
3 Comments:
A New York Times editorial today, agrees with the sentiments that Alan Carter expressed.
Wrong Answers in Britain
"Mr. Cameron, a product of Britain’s upper classes and schools, has blamed the looting and burning on a compound of national moral decline, bad parenting and perverse inner-city subcultures.
"Would he find similar blame — this time in the culture of the well housed and well off — for Britain’s recent tabloid phone hacking scandals or the egregious abuse of expense accounts by members of Parliament?…"
One of the more sensible NYT editorials recently. I pointed in a similar direction in my letter to the editor last week: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/opinion/the-roots-of-the-unrest-in-britain.html?_r=1
Ex-PM Tony Blair has more thoughts on the causes of violence in the UK:
Blaming a moral decline for the riots makes good headlines but bad policy
"Britain, as a whole, is not in the grip of some general "moral decline". I see young graduates struggling to find work today and persevering against all the odds. I see young people engaged as volunteers in the work I do in Africa, and in inter-faith projects. I meet youngsters who are from highly disadvantaged backgrounds where my Sports Foundation works in the north-east and I would say that today's generation is a) more respectable b) more responsible and c) more hard-working than mine was. The true face of Britain is not the tiny minority that looted, but the large majority that came out afterwards to help clean up.
"I do think there are major issues underlying the anxieties reflected in disturbances and protests in many nations. One is the growing disparity of incomes not only between poor and rich but between those at the top and the aspiring middle class. Another is the paradigm shift in economic and political influence away from the west.
"Each requires substantial change in the way we think and function..."
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