I consider myself to lean strongly to the left politically but if I hear one more person excuse this behaviour by claiming it's down to poverty and lack of oportunity I'm going to scream !! I'm in Brazil at the moment and I think every single one of the rioting pratts should be flown over here and dumped in the middle of a Rio favella and then told.. this is poverty.. this is lack of oportunity.. what's your excuse? I'm with Itrepid on this one, (not often I can say that), the only "poverty" that people in the UK suffer is one of "poverty of luxury", I don't believe for a second that any of these rioters come from families where there is such a lack of money that they can't afford to eat for example. None of these people are desperate to survive, not a single one of them will sell their stolen goods to buy food or pay the rent or bills etc. I have absolutely no sympathy with their actions, because there is zero justification for them. No jobs? no seriously, there are jobs, just not ones that they would ever consider lowering themselves to do. leave those jobs to the immigrants, working in mac donalds is beneath them despite the fact they may have never done a days work in their lives. For those involved that do have jobs etc all I can say is "shame on you".

Quote from gezmoor :

I consider myself to lean strongly to the left politically but if I hear one more person excuse this behaviour by claiming it's down to poverty and lack of oportunity I'm going to scream !! I'm in Brazil at the moment and I think every single one of the rioting pratts should be flown over here and dumped in the middle of a Rio favella and then told.. this is poverty.. this is lack of oportunity.. what's your excuse? I'm with Itrepid on this one, (not often I can say that), the only "poverty" that people in the UK suffer is one of "poverty of luxury", I don't believe for a second that any of these rioters come from families where there is such a lack of money that they can't afford to eat for example. None of these people are desperate to survive, not a single one of them will sell their stolen goods to buy food or pay the rent or bills etc. I have absolutely no sympathy with their actions, because there is zero justification for them. No jobs? no seriously, there are jobs, just not ones that they would ever consider lowering themselves to do. leave those jobs to the immigrants, working in mac donalds is beneath them despite the fact they may have never done a days work in their lives. For those involved that do have jobs etc all I can say is "shame on you".

I think everyone with a functioning moral compass agrees with you here.

Well said.

Quote from gezmoor :

I consider myself to lean strongly to the left politically but if I hear one more person excuse this behaviour by claiming it's down to poverty and lack of oportunity I'm going to scream !! I'm in Brazil at the moment and I think every single one of the rioting pratts should be flown over here and dumped in the middle of a Rio favella and then told.. this is poverty.. this is lack of oportunity.. what's your excuse? I'm with Itrepid on this one, (not often I can say that), the only "poverty" that people in the UK suffer is one of "poverty of luxury", I don't believe for a second that any of these rioters come from families where there is such a lack of money that they can't afford to eat for example. None of these people are desperate to survive, not a single one of them will sell their stolen goods to buy food or pay the rent or bills etc. I have absolutely no sympathy with their actions, because there is zero justification for them. No jobs? no seriously, there are jobs, just not ones that they would ever consider lowering themselves to do. leave those jobs to the immigrants, working in mac donalds is beneath them despite the fact they may have never done a days work in their lives. For those involved that do have jobs etc all I can say is "shame on you".

I say send them all to the most poverty stricken places on earth to learn a lesson.

I've seen a couple of reports suggesting that EMA reform (which still provides funds for the less-wealthy students) was a reason why some rioted (which is complete bollocks). But it really does make a mockery of welfare if it's basically a bribe to stop people rioting. "What's you job?" "Well basically I get paid not to riot." Also what is even more frustrating is people blaming hip-hop!

I think in retrospect what I witnessed was quite a large mix of people looting. The fact is if people think they can get away with stealing something, quite a large chunk of them would actually risk it - rich or not so rich.

Quote from Intrepid :

Also what is even more frustrating is people blaming hip-hop!

I think that's a pretty reasonable explaination to be honest, given the nature of messages seen on BBM, and their attitude, **** DA PO-LEEC YO

Quote from BlueFlame :

I think that's a pretty reasonable explaination to be honest, given the nature of messages seen on BBM, and their attitude, **** DA PO-LEEC YO

That's like blaming WW2 on Robert Wagner. It's just nonsense.

Quote from gezmoor :

I consider myself to lean strongly to the left politically but if I hear one more person excuse this behaviour by claiming it's down to poverty and lack of oportunity I'm going to scream !! I'm in Brazil at the moment and I think every single one of the rioting pratts should be flown over here and dumped in the middle of a Rio favella and then told.. this is poverty.. this is lack of oportunity.. what's your excuse? I'm with Itrepid on this one, (not often I can say that), the only "poverty" that people in the UK suffer is one of "poverty of luxury", I don't believe for a second that any of these rioters come from families where there is such a lack of money that they can't afford to eat for example. None of these people are desperate to survive, not a single one of them will sell their stolen goods to buy food or pay the rent or bills etc. I have absolutely no sympathy with their actions, because there is zero justification for them. No jobs? no seriously, there are jobs, just not ones that they would ever consider lowering themselves to do. leave those jobs to the immigrants, working in mac donalds is beneath them despite the fact they may have never done a days work in their lives. For those involved that do have jobs etc all I can say is "shame on you".

While definately true, that train of thought has one big flaw: relativity.

Of course, even if you're amongst the poorest chaps in europe, chances are there are still 4-5 billion people on this planet that are off worse than you are. But that doesn't matter to you, because you're surrounded by people who are better off than you. So relatively, in your environment, you're still the one who's off the worst.
And with humanity at large at a state of minde where you're not glad you have it better than someone else, but rather envy those that have it better, it's bound to cause problems, even if it seems silly and demanding if you broaden the perspective to a global scale.
Thus, you really can't outrightly dismiss the argument that it was poverty and lack of perspective .Just a small sidenote: education is "hereditary". Even with then opportunity to do so, children of badly educated people will generally not be well educated.

Quote from gezmoor :

that poor is not poor enough

The oversimplification of "they rioted because they were poor" is indeed not adequate. They are indeed poor, but not in pecuniary terms. I'd say they are poor in values.

The problem is not that they get money or don't get money. The problem is the value they themselves assign to this money. Society around them regards the specific money as "reward" and "punishment" at the same time.

Conclusively, I say they are the expected by-product of the society they exist in - a society which judges everything in terms of materialistic gain and considers state-given benefits only in terms of the money given and not the actual social benefit from a well organized programme with a goal in mind. For decades now they've been conditioned to this state of mind so it's no surprise they'd go for it.

Quote from gezmoor :

I consider myself to lean strongly to the left politically but if I hear one more person excuse this behaviour by claiming it's down to poverty and lack of oportunity I'm going to scream !! I'm in Brazil at the moment and I think every single one of the rioting pratts should be flown over here and dumped in the middle of a Rio favella and then told.. this is poverty.. this is lack of oportunity.. what's your excuse? I'm with Itrepid on this one, (not often I can say that), the only "poverty" that people in the UK suffer is one of "poverty of luxury", I don't believe for a second that any of these rioters come from families where there is such a lack of money that they can't afford to eat for example. None of these people are desperate to survive, not a single one of them will sell their stolen goods to buy food or pay the rent or bills etc. I have absolutely no sympathy with their actions, because there is zero justification for them. No jobs? no seriously, there are jobs, just not ones that they would ever consider lowering themselves to do. leave those jobs to the immigrants, working in mac donalds is beneath them despite the fact they may have never done a days work in their lives. For those involved that do have jobs etc all I can say is "shame on you".

I agree with most of this, but you have to realise that what most people are offering is not excuses, but reasons. There's a big difference.

Regardless of whether it should have happened, it did happen and steps need to be taken to stop it happening again, the main part of which is establishing why. You can't just say 'they were wrong to think and act like that' and then leave it at that.

Quote from xaotik :

Conclusively, I say they are the expected by-product of the society they exist in - a society which judges everything in terms of materialistic gain and considers state-given benefits only in terms of the money given and not the actual social benefit from a well organized programme with a goal in mind. For decades now they've been conditioned to this state of mind so it's no surprise they'd go for it.

That's why it was such a strange riot. Most riots tend to be against things. This was just an affirmation of the predominance of materialist values. As crashgate says above, you need to establish why this happened. I think you can make a fairly confident argument that it happened because these people have no imagination whatsoever.

I think if you want to know why people rioted then a more important question to ask is:

Why did I[or you] not riot?

What stopped us? What is so different between myself [yourself] and those who rioted?

It's very easy to just label them as lowlifes and criminals, but you have to realise that there was a significant number of people rioting and that a lot of them were people who surely would not normally steal? Or are we now saying that all teenagers commit burglary?

So what was different in them that they do not have the safeguards against rioting that I [you] have?

And once we've identified what that is, THEN we can ask why they don't have that safeguard - and that's the reason for the riot.

In other words, WHY do we have so many criminals and lowlifes pre-desposed to burglary?

It's the why of the why in effect... Because far too many people are just taking the easy media labels of "criminal" and "lowlife" and not thinking about the real causes... But what made them into criminals and lowlifes in the first place? - THAT's the question, and it needs answering by somebody of the same generation (not the likes of old bitches like me).

Becky the questions your are asking have answers buried deep inside the very nature of being a human. And no scientist has really started to scratch the surface yet.