Friday, 12 August 2011

UK ‘riot’ culture: What does research say?

The rioting that broke out in London on the 6th August 2011, and then spread to other parts of the UK over the following week, saw extraordinary levels of crime, looting, and rioting for the UK.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said that action will be taken to restore order, but in the long-term questions about the power of police, the role of gangs in society, and the socio-economic impetuses behind the disorder all need to be taken into account. The public perception of the UK as a safe society has changed dramatically.
Research from Routledge explores these issues further. The articles are all FREE to access for a limited time

HERE

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Tory MP Louise Mensch calls for blackout of facebook and twitter

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.@LouiseMensch You used parliamentary privilege to make false accusations about @piersmorgan. Why stop others free speech? #handsofftwitter

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.
But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.
Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off...