DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

"Should he be reacting to these criminal provocateurs in that way by coming back? I think that is kind of rewarding them.

staring at this at wondering what mental gymnastics are required to get from the first sentence to the second

why burn/break down M&S in brixton though?

Uh, some of the rioters are a bit dense perhaps?

I'm seeing a lot of Tweets from north London D&B folk about the thievery and looting of the financial class, and how a few trainers and tracksuits are no comparison to socialized banking. None of those tweeters are running around looting, but they've got friends and family with fuck-all but rented walls around them in those areas who believe that if you want to get away with crime the best way is to put on a posh suit and go to work on some trading floor where the coke dealers are also making a killing - and not getting searched every 200 metres for cannabis. Not a single mention of inter-endz issues being behind destruction in particular areas. A commenter from N15 on that Guardian opinion piece pointed out that after he got a good degree, applications for jobs where the Tottenham address was on his CV were unsuccessful or unacknowledged altogether, whereas those sent out c/o a relative's posher address resulted in many many interviews. That is the reality of the situation these kids are facing, even if they do as well as he did.

Had a peek at Inspector Gadget - the cops' blog - and IG is shitting it that the Duggan incident has been 'Stockwelled' by the IPCC's initial reports. He also mentioned that sparseish policing happened because a lot of Home Counties cops didn't answer their phones this weekend to avoid a call-out, as they are passively trying to highlight proposed cuts to the force.

thievery and looting of the financial class Yeah, stick it to Allied Carpets and the local hairdresser. Because who's the real criminal, yeah? The man in a suit, yeah?

(I agree with most of your post but this political defence of straight-up looting is ridiculous)

Um, the M&S in Brixton was NOT burned or broken down? Couple of broken windows, in less bad shape than the shops on Pall Mall during the last big demo.

This just fucks me off, the over-exaggeration of the rioting in Brixton because, basically, loads of people were reporting violence and rioting in Brixton BEFORE IT EVEN HAPPENED. Like, seriously, my twitter timeline was full of people going "look! the H&M in Brixton has been BURNED" and posting pictures of a shop in ENFIELD. And 30 seconds later, confused girls going "LOL, I'm standing at the bus stop by H&M right now, it's fine, WTF?" And making out there was a riot in Brixton when there was a council-sanctioned street festival.

The people who were actually there were reporting that the majority of the tension was coming from over-eager policing of that festival. Seemed like there were a lot more people invested with the *idea* of rioting in Brixton than there ever were actual people, in Brixton, rioting.

starting to think this whole riots on the streets thing is just an attempt to get boris to come back from his holidays, an attention-starved cry for mayoral proximity

Yeah, stick it to Allied Carpets and the local hairdresser. Because who's the real criminal, yeah? The man in a suit, yeah?

It's always the way tho, isn't it?

And if you want to stick it to a high street name that's fucked around with its employees livelihoods whilst the executives and investors get away with their investments, picking on a chain run by Lord Harris is a pretty good one.

The people who were actually there were reporting that the majority of the tension was coming from over-eager policing of that festival. Seemed like there were a lot more people invested with the *idea* of rioting in Brixton than there ever were actual people, in Brixton, rioting.

Was there in the afternoon and actually thought the police presence was a bit on the sparse side given the circumstances. Otoh I'm glad they didn't cancel the event, which I imagine they probably considered.

god i fucking hate "ghost town"

― lex pretend, Monday, 8 August 2011 10:21 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

*wrestles hand away from keyboard*

I'd agree as far as 'using it to represent the current discord on the street' cliche is concerned.

I'm not endorsing the comments, just acknowledging that they exist! Mostly because it drives me crazy to see middle-class people wondering if these 'youths' are capable of Thoughts About Economics and whatnot. I think we're all reacting in our various ways to constantly being told there's no money by people who are on their way to RAF Northolt to catch their G5 to Davos. Most of those brownfields box stores up by the North Circ where most looting has taken place are there because huge corps get massive, massive tax rebates for building in 'deprived' areas and giving a few low-responsibility MW jobs to 'local people' from 'communities' - did we think those people were too thick to notice?

Also ironilol, but only in passing so let's not leap off and make it a topic, is that all the 'expensive' goods bigots say poor kids covet/are thieving are produced for pennies by Chinese factory slaves.

OH HOORAY, BORIS CAN WHACK ON SOME MORE SUNBLOCK - THERESA MAY COMING BACK FROM HER HOLS.

I think we're all reacting in our various ways to constantly being told there's no money by people who are on their way to RAF Northolt to catch their G5 to Davos.

But... but... We Are All In This Together... surely?

T.May returns from hol

Which, funnily enough, was the one demand the rioters made.

They have, indeed, won.

There's a difference between not assuming they're illiterate idiots and projecting thoughts onto them.

xpost sorry, beg pardon?

xpost again ah.

xp Sorry suzy but you are endorsing them. Just as depressing as the predictable establishment attempt to depoliticise the riot is the refusal of some on the left (especially the drooling riot-porn voyeurs over at DSG) to distinguish between different kinds of behaviour in a riot. Setting fire to a police car is a political act. Setting fire to Allied Carpets, smashing up local traders or trying on trainers outside Foot Locker - these are not and it's absurd to pretend that certain shops were especially hard-hit because of tax rebates or executive bonuses as opposed to just having the most enticing stuff. It's not like the black bloc on the TUC march who vandalised banks as symbolic gestures (I don't like them but the intent was clearly political) - it's nicking trainers. What's the defence of Wood Green where there were next to no police because they were all in Tottenham, hence no confrontations, and the looters were just on a shopping spree?

lol i guess this millionaire cunt has solved the economy in the past 12 months

It's interesting, to me, at least in *my* neighbourhood, the shops which seemed to be targeted for the most intensive looting, and also destruction (like, burning down a shop seems to me to be expressing a lot more anger than just peeling back the shutters or smashing a door in) were the trainer shops. Like, down my way, a lot of phone shops were targeted for smashed windows, peeling back the shutters, and it's obviously small, portable, high value consumer goods. But JD Sports and Footlocker were the ones that were not just looted, but utterly torched.

I'm trying not to draw conclusions, because I wasn't there, I haven't spoken to anyone who was rioting (in fact, no one seems to have - there's lots of people talking to "experts" about rioting, but no one talking to anyone who was there doing it) but you could read that in two ways: 1) ha ha LOL chavs be wanting trackies and trainers coz they chavs LOL or 2) these are vastly overinflated-in-price consumer goods, marketed intensely at urban areas, exploiting both the people making them for pennies a day and also more importantly they are marketed so heavily in poor and minority as signifiers of affluence, status symbols, exploiting the people to whom they are being sold at huge prices.

And it does say something to me, that they're not just *stealing* the things, but venting huge amounts of anger at the shops selling them. We may not see those shops as appropriate targets, but I do wonder what they represent to the people trashing them.

But then again, I recognise that I've been infected with a lot of semi-marxist anti-consumerist thought recently, I do *not* think of "looting" as a completey non-political action within these contexts. In a society that routinely values corporations and consumer goods as more important than people, I do think that looting *can* (not always, but it certainly *can*) be a politicised act in and of itself. It is certainly a way of registering discontent which might be voiceless otherwise. But I do not know, it is simply musing on observed damage.

Well, it can take a mass of people to loot a shop, and only a few to torch one.

DL, I don't think it's wise - or strictly accurate - to assert that my posts constitute an endorsement for the looters' actions; you can't expect to be permitted to tell me how I feel about this - my emotions and POV are for me, not others, to determine.

Also, KDT is pretty OTM.

nah looting is just poor people making the most of a bad situation and capitalising on a chance to get expensive and overpriced goods that they crave for free. simple as. no one is angry at nike or footlocker, they just WANT that stuff. yeah its pushed to them a lot which feeds the desire and places pressure on them to get this stuff by hook or crook but ultimately they just want this stuff. theyre not fucking over footlockers as a political gesture, other than 'fuck you footlocker for being out my budget', which is the same reason for looting any other shop.

i think anger can be unfocused though - just cos theyre not taking on explicitly political targets like banks, doesnt mean theyre not angry at things beyond their control. someone on lbc said that we are much more lenient and empathetic in how we look towards riots in other countries than we are here which is prob true.

Also banks kinda hard to break into, for obvious reasons, about all you're going to be able to loot are the little pens on chains and some withdrawal slips

^^^Saw a lot of pix of capsized, demolished cashpoint housings.

x-posts I don't think it's that simple. Poverty isn't simple, the psychology of coveting and the manufacture of desire is not that simple. I think it's a bit more comlex than "I want stuff, for free" - because of the targeted nature of the stuff being taken. Why do they want *that* stuff so badly, as to riot to get it? (Which is the picture being drawn with these descriptions of "opportunistic looters")

Why *is* Footlocker "out of people's budget" when the shoes cost pennies to make?

I dunno, there might be nothing to it, in that I'm reading now about jewelry shop grabs and Curry's mobs and Nando's being destroyed. (Why Nando's? You don't think there's a political or race/class based edge to the stereotype of Nando's customers in inner city London?) I guess it's my background to look for patterns to seemingly random events. But when I see specific things being targeted, I wonder if there's something to it. The property damage over Brixton Hill into Streatham was anything but random. I wonder why.

these are vastly overinflated-in-price consumer goods, marketed intensely at urban areas, exploiting both the people making them for pennies a day and also more importantly they are marketed so heavily in poor and minority as signifiers of affluence, status symbols, exploiting the people to whom they are being sold at huge prices.

This is correct I think, and in a riot there's an opportunity to get them for nothing.

And it does say something to me, that they're not just *stealing* the things, but venting huge amounts of anger at the shops selling them. We may not see those shops as appropriate targets, but I do wonder what they represent to the people trashing them.

This is where the cognitive leap takes place I think. Not convinced they're venting anger AT Foot Locker or JD Sports or wherever, in the way they're venting anger at the police. It's more likely to be rage that's just boiling over into smashing things, but I don't know for sure, none of us do.

^^^Saw a lot of pix of capsized, demolished cashpoint housings

Yes, saw those too. From banks tho?

Sorry suzy, obviously I can't read your mind but I was just responding to the substance of your posts. There wasn't a lot of distance there.

titchy OTM - it's too easy to project anti-consumerist theory onto looters. Karen, you honestly think the people looting Foot Locker thought for a moment about the injustice of Asian sweatshops? From a certain political angle society has always valued corporations and consumer goods above other people, ergo all looting is always justified as a politicised act - well no, it isn't. A riot is composed of so many different agents and agendas that it's impossible to generalise about what the looters thought but the history of riots indicates that the initial political impetus - the arrest, the shooting, the baton charge - leads to a chaotic situation which sucks in all kinds of people, including some (by no means the majority) who just want to take shit for free and some who will vent

Karen, you can do better than strawmanning anyone who thinks looting is wrong, and a shitty, self-defeating element of a riot which enables many observers to completely ignore the real and important tensions behind the initial violence, as "ha ha LOL chavs be wanting trackies and trainers coz they chavs LOL". And "opportunistic looters" does not imply that people riot to get consumer goods. Quite the opposite - it means that they use the cover of an existing riot to take stuff.

I think they're venting anger at a system where shoes made for pennies are out of their budgets because they're exploitatively marketed as providing "urban status" or some such thing. Is that a vast cognitive leap? I don't think it's an either/or with venting anger at the police, more of an and/both.

x-post

Oops, "and some who will vent" was a fragment of a deleted thought.

xpost - its not just 'i want it for free', it is very much about manufacturing desire to a group that doesnt have that much money to spend there, which is perverse, but how does currys target this group, or ikea, or nandos even? (what book are you reading about this btw - i might pick it up). thats just opportunism and anger boiling over. but the footlocker thing is similar to how you used to get stories about people getting robbed for their trainers. pretty much everything is overpriced. its why currys was targeted (expensive electronic goods), phone shops (stuff people need but is still wallet-lightening). nandos is bizarre cos thats not exactly that expensive but its just a place where a lot of young kids like to go, same as footlocker.

Is the progression of anger at "*why* can't I afford this?" while in a situation of expressing anger at "the system is unfair" is not such a quantum cognitive leap.

Phone shops are like banks though, in that their stock is locked away and all that's on display are dummy versions?

A lot of the stuff that was taken wasn't just covetable, it was easy to sell on for cash - portable, valuable and difficult to trace.

There would have been some stock out front in the phone shops, wouldn't there? Nobody bothered breaking into Gamestation in Wood Green as all they have in the main section are empty boxes.

DL, I carefully stated that I did not think that *all* looting was a political act, but that I did not think that looting was *categorically* a politics-negating act. Please stop disregarding my actual words while accusing me of strawmanning? Thanks.

DL, I'm still confused and quite clearly need a man to explain - where in my posts am I endorsing behaviour rather than reporting it?

Suzy, don't worry, DL isn't actually talking to us at all, but to straw liberals in his head.

Good recent posts KDT...I'm broadly of the same opinion, i think there's a lot of subconscious or unconscious anger/motive and some of the reactions about this are really black and white about what/who/why is a target

I think we're all reacting in our various ways to constantly being told there's no money by people who are on their way to RAF Northolt to catch their G5 to Davos. Most of those brownfields box stores up by the North Circ where most looting has taken place are there because huge corps get massive, massive tax rebates for building in 'deprived' areas and giving a few low-responsibility MW jobs to 'local people' from 'communities' - did we think those people were too thick to notice?

Reads like an endorsement to me. Maybe I'm the confused one.

xp Karen, I didn't say you thought all looting was political but that it seemed like the logical extension of your argument - or are only trainer-looters political?

"Is the progression of anger at "*why* can't I afford this?" while in a situation of expressing anger at "the system is unfair" is not such a quantum cognitive leap."

i cant really argue with that. but without wanting to sound like the daily mail, while i sympathise with the view that the system and corporations are out to exploit disenfranchised groups on both ends of the production scale, these kids havent been taught the idea that 'if you cant afford it, you cant have it'. for all the apparent media literacy and media savvy-iness of todays kids, funny how they arent so literate that they cant resist what theyre being fed.

"*Why* can't I afford this?" is surely more likely to be "why don't I have the job/income/opportunities to afford this?" rather than "are these overpriced given they are made for pennies in sweatshops?"

I mean in that context it's pretty undeniable as to why there'd be anger to vent.

xpost - its not just 'i want it for free', it is very much about manufacturing desire to a group that doesnt have that much money to spend there, which is perverse, but how does currys target this group, or ikea, or nandos even? (what book are you reading about this btw - i might pick it up). thats just opportunism and anger boiling over. but the footlocker thing is similar to how you used to get stories about people getting robbed for their trainers. pretty much everything is overpriced. its why currys was targeted (expensive electronic goods), phone shops (stuff people need but is still wallet-lightening). nandos is bizarre cos thats not exactly that expensive but its just a place where a lot of young kids like to go, same as footlocker.

Currys - incessant advertising, "interest free" credit, wide screen tv American style fridge the sine qua non of modern life

Ikea - the Nike of furniture, cheap but aspirational

Nando's - aspirational Wimpy, happy chef mcdonalds, whatever

All agents in the manufacture of desire, all selling things with a high degree of unattainability to the average unemployed youth.

yep.

yep to matt dc's last post that is

I'm sorry, DL but going from "this subset of situation X is potentially Y" to "the logical extension is that ALL subsets of situation X are Y" is a very basic error of logic and I'm not going to bother continuing this thread with you because, like, most of us learned not to make those errors in 8th grade maths.

don't see anything more complex here than

all the cops are over there <--- we can nick stuff over here ---> and not get busted

kinda admire the torturous attempts to blame this on david cameron tho :D

Karen I'm trying to work out what you're saying and therefore asking for clarification. You're finding ways to avoid those questions and chuck insults.

A lot of the stuff that was taken wasn't just covetable, it was easy to sell on for cash - portable, valuable and difficult to trace.

yeah this leapt out at me too - not convinced it's so simple as looters wanting things for themselves.

i don't think rioters are expressing anger against capitalism - the capitalist mindset is, i think, hugely embedded in them. it's been constantly drummed into kids in poor areas and estates that their best way out is via capitalism x protestant work ethic - work hard and you can be an entrepreneur, set up your own business, make money. stealing consumer goods to sell on (if that's what was going on) seems an oddly logical manifestation of that.