Naming & shaming those UK Rioters

Now that the testosterone levels of the country have fallen slightly, the fires been put out, burnt cars towed away and countless broken windows swept up, the true price of these riots is plain to see.

In total 5 people lost their lives, including a man found shot in a car in Croydon and 3 men who were hit by a car in Birmingham. The latest death was that of pensioner Richard Mannington Bowes, who received critical  head injuries when he was attacked in the Ealing riots on Monday night. Like the 3 other men in Birmingham who were trying to protect their neighbourhoods when killed, Mr Bowes was attacked simply for trying to stamp out a fire. Yes, it’s enough to make your blood run cold and boil at exactly the same time.

The last week has all been about identifying, hauling in and prosecuting those horrible specimens responsible and the whole spectacle has certainly made for some interesting viewing, or at least a glimpse of some of the countries worst parents. Many have stood outside the court, effing and blinding at the press and declaring Thug Junior and Minni Oik to be a ‘misunderstood’ little angel in Adidas.

The mother of the 11-year-old who stole a £50 waste bin from a trashed Debenhams store – the youngest looter to be prosecuted – swore and yelled abuse as she left court. Not a shock this one, considering his dad was only recently released from prison after serving time for theft. Mouldy apple didn’t fall very far from that rotten tree did it.

But there is now a glimmer of hope for the country following a long and very depressing week: some parents of underage looters are happy to shop their own kids to the police.

One such mother, on spotting pictures of her 15-year-old son trying to prise open shutters of a shop in Salford, was so disgusted with his behaviour and no doubt horrified that her own sprog was capable of such violence, that she promptly frog-marched him straight down to the police station and handed him over herself. Another father said that if his son had done the crime, then he deserved to have the book thrown at him and would have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Now that people are being rounded up and marched through the court system at quick speed, what’s alarming to hear (aside from the fact that so many were children) was that many of these looters held positions of responsibilities within their own communities: a care worker with a 2-year-old child of her own, a postman, a lifeguard, an aspiring social worker and a teaching assistant. Heck there was even a ballerina twirling her way through the streets and a millionaire’s daughter running around filling her Louis Vuitton swag bag with stolen electrical goods, cigarettes and alcohol worth £5,500.

Photos of looters have already been posted online and in some city centres so the public can help police identify them. Perhaps however, just to drive the message home a bit more,  the police mug shot of every person charged should be posted (along with their name and a list of the items they took) up on big notice boards around the towns and areas in which they robbed.

Given that these yobs have all desperately tried to shield their identity from the cameras (and their parents) while scuttling in and out of court, I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate being quite so publicly named and shamed.

So just to set the ball rolling, here are a few for the Hall of Shame – and what a bloody dodgy lot they all are! Perhaps if they were going to steal from shops they should have stopped off at Boots first to pocket some soap, a scrubbing-brush and a comb.

ffrs

Spare the Rod? No, bring back hardcore discipline.

More outbreaks of thuggery took place last night and even more juvenile delinquents were out swarming through the streets like a plague of locusts, looking for a free pair of trainers, a new flat screen TV, or in the case of some, bags of Basmati rice and a wooden rocking horse.

TV? New Mobile? Designer Trainers? No, let's take the rice.

Many of these masked and hooded looters were only in their mid teens, but some of them were as young as ten. Yes, that’s ten. As in should be at home and under the constant supervision of an adult.

Quite why a child of this age, or even those of 14 or 15, are allowed to be roaming the streets with nothing but violence on their minds is a mystery to any parent who has even the tiniest bit of control over their child’s whereabouts.

But many of these parents I guess are too busy blaming the government and those who pay their taxes for the shitty life they feel they have, not to mention the disappearance of their ‘Layabout Allowance’ and ‘Dysfunctional Benefit’. The ones that are paid with those taxes.

So it’s not a great surprise they probably wouldn’t have noticed or batted an eyelid when Thug Junior and Minni Oik got down from the table without saying ‘Thank you’ and skipped off into town to hurl a couple of petrol bombs and rob a few shops.

Now I’m well aware that I exist in a totally different world to the one in which many of these rioters live, and for that I’m very lucky. Well actually that’s not true. It’s not all down to luck is it. Potentially the fact that many generations of my family made an effort to listen and learn at school and worked bloody hard once they left had something to do with it. There were certainly no silver spoons being shoved into any of our mouths as babies and no titles or inherited wealth to rely on.

One massive difference that’s very apparent between our 2 worlds is a small matter of discipline, something that these feral little rats out there have obviously never encountered.

Go back a generation (in most parts of society at least) and there was a little something called respect. Respect (mixed with a helping of fear) for teachers, parents, the police and anyone with authority really. And unlike today, where these yobs think they ‘deserve’ respect from everyone and their brother, children back then accepted, or were at least resigned to the fact that respect was something you were given as you grew up and earned it.

When I was at school (a good one admittedly) we didn’t really do anything more rebellious than carve our initials in the desk or pass notes. We were expected to stand up when a visitor entered the room and wouldn’t dream of addressing a teacher by anything other their correct name. We had to keep our socks pulled up, our mouths shut in lessons unless asked to speak and our grubby little feet off  ‘Central Hall Carpet’ – which we did, even though we felt it was a pointless rule.

So discipline was pretty much a given and the punishments for misbehaving ranged from being hit across the hands with wooden rulers, smacked around the face (unacceptable even then but it still happened) whacked with a cane, made to stand outside the classroom, being sent to see the head, given detention or being suspended and, in the extreme cases, expelled.

These days (at some schools) it’s the pupils hitting the teachers with rulers and fists, throwing books at each other, threatening violence if they don’t get their own way, leaving the classroom when they feel like it or simply not turning up to school in the first place.

And why do they act this way? Because they get absolutely no structure, guidance or discipline at home either. Some parents just don’t seem to care that the only qualifications their vile offspring will earn are an ASBO and a criminal record, or that the only lessons in life they’re learning are how to get free handouts for doing bugger all.

These riots are down to ‘poverty’ and being part of a ‘suppressed and ignored society’ these angry hoodies all say, but this is a little hard to take seriously when they’re out on the loot dressed in £100 designer jeans and organising the nightly violent get-togethers on a £300 smart phone. They really need to look up the definition of  ‘poverty’ in a dictionary, but apparently Waterstones have been left well alone, so that’s not likely to happen.

It’s also rather funny how these kids openly resent everyone in this country who works hard to earn their money, yet they idolise soccer players who earn in excess of £100k a week and rap stars who wear diamonds in their teeth and blow a years worth of benefits on one bottle of Champagne. This sort of wealth is OK is it?

So can the actions and shocking attitudes of this apparently ‘lost generation’ all be blamed on the area in which they may live, the state of the economy, the government in power, the high unemployment figures, the state of the education system and a society as a whole that seems to treat celebrity, material wealth and overnight fame as the Holy Grail? No, I really don’t see how they can.

There may be many problems in this country, but none of them can be used as justification by this small group of pathetic individuals who are rioting for fun, stealing for kicks and destroying countless livelihoods and homes because they think they can.

And if all of these reasons above were the only thing to blame, then every child from a single parent family at a badly performing school in a deprived area would be out on the streets. But they’re not are they. The majority are at home with their parents being disciplined, trying hard at school and going on to achieve something with their life.

So in answer to those who are now wondering if it might just be down to a generation of parents being a little too soft on their kids, the answer is yes, of course it bloody is.

These pint-sized hoodlums need to face the consequences of committing this sort of crime. They don’t need a caution, a slap on the wrist or even an ASBO, they need old-school, hardcore discipline. So never mind ‘Spare the Rod, Save the Child’, some parents need to start using sharp sticks and electric cattle prods to get their unruly brats inline.

London riots – why, oh why?

This isn’t a great week to be British and watching the news for the last few days has been something of a depressing affair. Following the shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday by armed officers in north London, there have been 3 nights of mindless violence with buildings being burnt and shops being looted all across the county.

Mark Duggan - with his pretend gun.

The protest was meant to be in retaliation to the shooting of Duggan, but really it’s just an excuse for thousands of moronic, feral thugs to come out in protest about how incredibly tough their pitiful little life is.

There was no real justification for that sort of protest in the first place. Mark Duggan was a self-styled ‘gangster’ who was being chased by police at the time he was shot. He was also, let’s not forget, brandishing a gun. The fact that he didn’t fire the gun at the police first is neither here nor there. Nice people who haven’t done anything wrong don’t tend to roam the streets with a firearm. And quite frankly, if you don’t want to get shot then don’t carry something you shouldn’t have or give the police a reason to think you’re dangerous.

Of course Scotland Yard have apologised to Duggan’s family for the “distress” caused to them in the wake of his death. But it’s hard to imagine Duggan, his family or ‘crew’ apologising to a police officer’s family had the boot been on the other foot. Far from it, if he’d been the one left still standing on Thursday then he’d have probably high-fived his little friends and gone off to boast about how ‘he’s the man’.

So, injustice at this death aside, what the hell have these riots been about? From what I’ve seen it’s all about smashing windows, grabbing what they can and running away with their loot tucked up a hoodie. Wow, what a hard-hitting social and political statement they’re making. Why on earth aren’t the British public nodding with agreement and sympathising with their grievances?

Having seen footage of the rioters hurling anything they can at police, burning cars and robbing people as they lay injured on the ground, I’m not sure what’s scarier. That mob mentality can cause such wide-scale destruction in such a short space of time, or that people of a certain age in this country can be so incredibly thick.

gkgk

gkgk

You only have to hear the comments they come out with when asked for their reasons for doing this. Apparently – and don’t quote me on this as none of them can actually speak anything resembling English – it seems their main gripe is that life’s not fair, they don’t have enough money to buy some sweets and they don’t get enough respect. Oh, where do you even start with that lot?

First off, you little low-life runts, life isn’t fair. Grow up and get over it. Secondly, perhaps if you’d shut your mouth a bit more, turned your mobile off and actually engaged your ears whilst in school, you might have educated your one lonely brain cell. Not to mention realise you need to take some responsibility for your own future and that Don’t Care + Won’t Try = Waste of Bloody Space.

If nothing more, they might at least have learnt how to speak properly when being interviewed on TV. And, come to think of it, realised that if you’re admitting to being a looting little thief, then perhaps it’s not wise to announce it to the nation.

These hard-done by kids complain that there is terrible unemployment where they live (which of course there is), that benefits are being taken away from them (which hopefully they will be) and that ‘the rich’ – that’s those of us who work to bring in an income – have too much. Oh yes, they also whinge that they ‘don’t get no respect’ from the police so they’re not going to give them any in return.

Quite why these weapon-welding delinquents think the world owes them anything is beyond me. And quite why they believe  the police should be respecting their ‘freedom of expression’ is probably passed anyone in my generation and beyond. If it wasn’t so deeply depressing to hear some snivelling little layout bleating to the camera about how ‘we’re going to get the Prime Minister and the government and the rich people’, it would be laughable.

Now Teresa May – that’s our Home Secretary who’s meant to stop the crime – may want to continue to use ‘traditional’ police methods to stop the riots, but perhaps she needs to face up to the reality that the sort of person involved in the riots need something a little more intimidating coming towards them than a policeman in a helmet. They need water cannons, stun guns and bloody tanks with spikes on the front if necessary.

Or, they could drop a large net on them from above, fly them off to the North Atlantic and drop the lot of them in. I’d like to imagine none of them ever listened long enough to learn how to swim. I don’t believe for a second that 99.99% of the British public would actually have an issue with this. In fact I think they’d happily chip in to pay to have it done.