Why is Britain Burning ?

[Nintii]

Today while driving home I came a cross an interesting newspaper poster "Why is Britain Burning".

I'm not really one for watching the news on television or even reading the paper, I simply don't have the time for news corporation propaganda.

But I have a great love for the UK as I have childhood friends there and of course my mothers family hail from those distant shores.

 

So why is Britain Burning ?

 

Are these riots racial in nature, a "we've had enough" because of police harrassment of the Black minority which has now exploded into rioting because of the killing of local

Black family man Mark Duggan ... and I quote;

 

"Hardened north London gangster and drug dealer, or loving family man who would never seek confrontation? Two different portraits were painted of Mark Duggan, the 29-year-old Tottenham man whose death sparked the weekend's London riots."

 

The GOOD Mark Duggan

 

" ... a peaceful candlelight vigil at the Tottenham police station, where friends and family of Mark Duggan, a 29-year old, father-of-three Black man, were protesting his slaying by police. Duggan, a well-liked member of the community ... was riding in a taxi pulled over by police on the Thursday night ... ".

 

" ... He was a good man. He was a family man," one relative told The Guardian".

 

"Duggan's fiancee, Semone Wilson ... said ... Mark, whom she had known for 12 years, was "a good Dad" who "idolised his kids", she said. The couple were hoping to marry soon and move out of Tottenham to "start a new life together" with their three children, Kemani, aged ten, Kajaun, seven, and 18-month-old Kahliya. A fourth child, a daughter, was stillborn.

 

Speaking to Channel 4 News, Wilson said her partner was not a gangster and would run from trouble rather than shoot at police. "If he did have a gun – which I don't know – Mark would run. Mark is a runner. He would run rather than firing and that's coming from the bottom of my heart," she said. "They are portraying Mark as a gangster. Mark is not a gangster. He's not known to any gangsters or any gangs. He's not like that."

 

Hmm he sounds like a really decent guy to me, you know just trying to get by and raise a family .... or was he ?

 

The BAD Mark Duggan

 

But Duggan's Facebook page, under his alias Starrish Mark, pictures him in a T-shirt bearing the words Star Gang, and reports suggest he may have had links to that group and allied north London gangs such as the Broadwater Farm Posse and Tottenham Mandem.

 

The Voice, Britain's leading black newspaper, has claimed that both Duggan and his best friend, 23-year-old rapper Kelvin Easton, known as Smegz, "had links to the Star Gang", one of several criminal groups in north London whose turf wars have caused at least three deaths over the past few years.

 

Easton, described by the londonstreetgangs website as an "elder" of a group collectively called the Farm Mandem, was stabbed to death with a broken champagne bottle at the Boheme nightclub in Mile End, east London, in March 2011. The murder remains unsolved.

 

Duggan was born on September 15 1981 and attended St David's and St Katherine's, now Greig City Academy, in Hornsey. At the time of his death last Thursday he was under investigation by officers from Trident, the Metropolitan police unit responsible for gun crime within the black community.

 

Duggan's Facebook page carries more than a dozen photographs of him and a large number of messages left by friends. Several shots show him in gangster poses; in others he is dressed all in black, or shown gesturing from behind the wheel of a yellow sportscar with headlights blazing. Beneath that photo Duggan posted the message: "I aint even countin money no more, if it aint right it jus aint right, it does'nt even matter 2 me no more."

 

Other unconfirmed reports have alleged he was a known drugs dealer. Some of the messages posted by friends on his Facebook pages could suggest possible gang involvement, referring to Duggan variously as a "soldier", a "true star boy" and a "five star general". One of the messages left among the bouquets outside Duggan's family home yesterday referred to "Gang N17 Farm", the name of one of the Star gang's allies.

 

 

OK, so were the cops just doing there duty and following up on their investigation and he took a pot shot at them and they returned fire and killed him or what ?

Is this really the reason or are the riots just a criminal excuse to loot and wreck 'n burn all under the banner of racial harrassment hoping that will give it a type of legitimacy ?

Or are the youth in the UK really miffed because of unemployment and hopelessness for there future ?

And I quote;

 

"It would be a mistake to assign a political motive to the violence, looting and arson that has exploded in various British cities over the last few nights. It’s quite possible that not a single one of the arsonists, muggers and looters burnt, mugged or robbed anyone because she thought that was the best way to achieve political reform and social justice. However, it would be equally mistaken to deny that the rioting is a direct consequence of the actions of Britain’s politicians.

 

Over the last thirty-odd years our trusted leaders have killed-off British manufacturing – the primary source of the nation’s wealth. They have also colluded with international banksters, trans-national corporations and foreign governments to sell-off Britain’s publicly owned infrastructure: energy and water supplies, communications and transport. Then they sold off essential public services such as health and education. They indebted the nation’s future generation to the tune of hundreds of billions (possibly trillions) of pounds with their nefarious Private Finance Initiatives. Throughout all this a very tiny handful of people have become unbelievably wealthy, whilst the vast majority of Britons have seen their wages decline, or watch their jobs disappear altogether. When they can find employment (which is not an easy thing to do) the vast majority of young Britons must now work longer hours for less money and in worse conditions than their parents did. They cannot hope to retire at the same age as their grandparents did, and they cannot hope to receive as good a pension as their grandparents had.

 

“People are angry and frustrated,” community activist Osagyefo Tongogara told AFP. ”If you have a community with high levels of unemployment and cutbacks in welfare then this is what you are going to get.”

The fact is that the neoliberal economic policies of the Conservative, Liberal Democrat, and Labor parties have created an under class of young people with no jobs, no prospects, and no ties to the larger community.

 

Youth unemployment in the UK is more than 20 percent, and it’s even higher among Black and other minority youth. Young people’s participation in the workforce is at its lowest level in 20 years because job opportunities are so sparse. Those fortunate enough to find work tend to work in low-paying service sector jobs such as sales clerks and restaurant and bar workers.

To make matters worse, the government’s recent austerity measures have fallen heavily on young people. The government eliminated the Educational Maintenance Allowance, which provided small stipends to low-income students to help further their education.

 

Prime Minister David Cameron’s austerity budget also cut 100 million pounds from the youth service budget, which meant that local governments could not provide jobs and other services to young people during the summer school break this year.

But according to The Telegram’s Mary Riddell, the cause of the riots is even more insidious. “Successive British governments,” writes Riddell. “Have colluded in incubating the poverty, the inequality, and inhumanity now exacerbated by financial turmoil. . . . If there are no jobs for today’s malcontents and no means to exploit their skills, the UK is graver trouble than it thinks. . . .(Austerity) bears a social cost. We are seeing just how steep that price may be.”

 

Racial or Economic or just plain Criminal ?

 

 

All quotes from: Left Labour Reporter, Dissident Voice and The Guardian

Edited August 14, 2011 by Nintii

[greywaste]

Britain is a nanny state that's too large to manage, buckling under it's own weight and many historians and economists believe it's been in decline for a long long time especially since World War 2 though.

 

I've lived in two of the areas that got trashed and have been to most of the others at some point so it was pretty saddening but not particularly surprising.

Many of those looters and "experts" that have been interviewed have tried to romanticise it or justify it but it's basically just feral behaviour and zero respect/contempt for society and law.

Edited August 14, 2011 by greywaste

[HeyYou]

Sounds a lot like what the american government is doing here....... Selling out to foreign interests/large corporations, all in the name of profit. (and getting re-elected.... as those self same corporations are the ones that provide campaign money.)

 

What is most ironic about the whole thing is, these folks are protesting, looting, destroying THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS. They piss and moan about 'how bad things are here', yet, their very actions are making matters far worse. Brilliant plan.

[SpellAndShield]

It's stopped burning for now; combination of austerity measures, people with no codex of ethics and too dependent on government welfare. This stuff will continue all over the West; inflation and fiat currency> violence...

[grannywils]

Nintii, thank you for that excellently written piece. For me at least, it provided a good perspective of the state of things on the other side of the pond. And, as HeyYou says, it does sound somewhat familiar....

[SpellAndShield]

Nintii, thank you for that excellently written piece. For me at least, it provided a good perspective of the state of things on the other side of the pond. And, as HeyYou says, it does sound somewhat familiar....

 

The US is not immune to this sort of stuff and as the Social Security cheque (which I assume you collect) as well as government entitlements across the board buy less and less because the dollar is continually debased we WILL see things of this nature. Inflation destroys the middleclass and the poor first...and those are the people who will go bonkers first as well; when people lose everything, they lose it. I have been living in the UK for a while and I saw his coming...hopefully I can get and will get out before the next set of (more violent) riots and looting takes place.

[ginnyfizz]

The sources of "All quotes from: Left Labour Reporter, Dissident Voice and The Guardian" kind of says it all really.

 

It's CRIMINAL. Pure and simple. Greywaste has it right. I have no sympathy for the types who will burn someone out of their home so they can loot a plasma TV. The planned austerity measures haven't even been brought in yet! And the cuts, when they come, will hit the middle class professionals as hard as anyone. Oh it really helps the job situation, does it not, to burn out a 100 year old business, and wreck the corner shop built up by an Asian businessman who arrived here with a bloody sight less than any of the ferals who have looted his place, and throw back the kindness that led him to give them credit when they claimed they were too poor to pay right in his face?

 

Remember I work with some of these people. I guess they're upset because they are going to have to try and find work. Boohoohoo.

At least I work with them for the time being, I'm about to be made redundant. Hey, does that mean I am going to go on the rob? Hell no. I have to get another job.

[grannywils]

Ginny, I have no sympathy for looting, etc. either. My comments have to do with the state of the economy in Britain being somewhat similar to that of the U.S. I thought there was a great deal more to Nintii's post than that report of the looting. As least I was certainly able to get more out of it.

 

Stardusk, yes I am collecting a rather pitiful Social Security check which is hardly enough to live on. And now the government (which considers it an "entitlement" - having forgotten that I worked humahumahuma years putting money into it) is considering taking it away.

 

Oh yes, all of this information is eminently clear to me.

[marharth]

You should be attentive to the causes and find solutions.

 

The riots are criminal and stupid, but ignoring the fuel of the anger won't help a thing.

[HeyYou]

You should be attentive to the causes and find solutions.

 

The riots are criminal and stupid, but ignoring the fuel of the anger won't help a thing.

 

Then maybe you should have a chat with the folks doing the rioting..... after all, the government didn't hold them at gunpoint, and say: "Go Forth, and Riot!"

 

We saw pretty much the same behavior with the Rodney King debacle. And he wasn't even killed. This is all a matter of the cops say one thing, but the neighborhood paints him as something completely different. Now, if the cops had video of this guy stepping out of a cab, and firing a couple shots at the cops....... would things be any different? Or, would those folks that are rioting just have some other explanation for why he fired at the police, and still blame the cops for his death?