islebethere

That should be: appointing

LoveItaly

I started a thread here in the Lounge and also in the US forum regarding activist are planning on disrupting our SF/Bay Area service starting at 5:00PM tonight. The official announcement is in the SF Chronicle website.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MA5Q.DTL&tsp=1

janisj

"<i>I was rather stunned today to read that Cameron has raised the possibility of appointed an American -- William J. Bratton -- to head Scotland Yard.</i>"

The idea isn't stunning really. Bratton has a CBE for service to UK police. He is very well known/connected in UK police circles.

islebethere

Thanks, Janis,
I wasn't aware of that. What did he do to get the CBE?

farrermog

Just wait until the alienated progeny of corporate looters start hitting the streets.

321go

<<Since I can't shed any light on this situation I'm going to agree with all of you, however mutually contradictory.>>

Thank you, stokebailey - that was the funniest thing I've read on Fodors in quite a while.

tarquin

Rupert Murdoch and the paranoid owner of Fox News have done far more damage to the UK and the US by manipulation of politics through the media than these pathetic thugs could ever do.

Bert867

For a great comment, go to http://www.patcondell.net/

PalenQ

Britain and London needs a Super Cop from Boston and before murdertown LA to help teach British cops how to handle gangs and thugs?

Now that gives me a big laugh - soon all British cops will be armed with live ammo - after all 1 in 3 Brits in some Murdoch rag paper's poll said the flics should have used live ammo to quell recent riots - yeh that would restore order quick and make London more like Baghdad.

British police are not the problem - the problem is more sociological than most Brits here, the huge majority no doubt from the upper crusts of British society - would care to even think is possible.

Onward thru the fog and then expect such anti-social behaviours to exacerbate themsleves.

a fish rots from the head - in this case former thug himself David Cameron - himself from a flithy rich background.

willit

"most Brits here, the huge majority no doubt from the upper crusts of British society - would care to even think is possible."

Bizarre. Is it paint thinners season again?
The only "upper crust" member I can think of is no longer here, and that is only because he went to a posh school.
Number two choice. If my assumptions are correct came from an Anglo Irish Liverpool working class background and worked his way up through a grammar school education (apologies if I am wrong)

The rest of us "regulars" - I don't see many upper crust among us. Not yobs, not oiks but certainly not "posh".

My grandfathers were an Able Seaman and a Dockyard worker turned builder. My father was bright and went to grammar school and worked himself out of the terraced areas of Portsmouth. My siblings and I were the first generation ever to go to University.

Just because we don't necessarily agree with your trans-Atlantic analysis of all the UK's problems, doesn't mean that we are all "of too high a social class to understand" - maybe you are incorrect and the problems are more complex than the simplistic "uprising of the oppressed"

PalenQ

I doth recant my allegations of most here, like most Americans here, are in the upper tiers of society - should have said in the comfy zone, unlike the poor slobs in dreary parts of dreay British large cities. Upper crust was not a good term - I should have said comfy. In any case only a handful show ANY sympathy for the plights of the lower classes and just cannot seem to think why they may be revolting - well they are revolting to most Brits here but...

willit

I'll accept comfy

Politically, I am pretty much the wet Liberal. I have a great deal of sympathy for those caught in the poverty trap, for those who are struggling to better themselves, for many who can see no way out. I have no sympathy whatsoever for those who think looting televisions and robbing diners in restaurants is some sort of political statement.

annhig

The "Catnick" and "Cornwall looting" photos seem to deepen my understanding as much as anything.>>

????

stoke - just got back off holiday, and accounts of Cornwall looting have been grossly exaggerated to the point that i see no evidence of it at all.

are we talking Cornwall Mass.? or Cornwall UK?

or did i miss the point? [after no sleep whatever on the boat, that would not be altogether surprising!]

willit

"or did i miss the point?" Yes. See Jamikin's post

"Looting in Cornwall gone Wild:
http://i.imgur.com/C5XQm.gif"

annhig

thanks, willit.

I always said that the inhabitants of Cornwall were intelligent.

annhig

My grandfathers were an Able Seaman and a Dockyard worker turned builder. My father was bright and went to grammar school and worked himself out of the terraced areas of Portsmouth. My siblings and I were the first generation ever to go to University. >>

same here, willit. my grandparents were a factory worker, a nurse, a policeman and a serving girl, and neither of my parents went to University. [ok, i know that this is beginning to sound like a Monty Python sketch, but you get the idea].

whilst i cannot really claim ever to have known poverty, I've always had to work for a living and come from working class stock.

more to the point, I've represented kids caught up in this sort of thing before, and making a social protest was the last thing on their minds.

PalenQ

explain then why kids from poorer backgrounds I would think at least end up in the dock for anti-social behaviour more than kids from middle class or up backgrounds?

and therein lies perhaps an answer to part of the problem - unless of course there is no difference which I cannot fathom.

Times have changed since your parents brought themselves up by the bootstraps - jobs for seamen and dock workers and sudch as long gone I believe - yes it used to be, like here stateside - that folks could work in say the auto industry and not even with a high school diploma and earn a handsome salary and yes their kids went onto college - the first generation in their families to do so.

but where are these types of jobs now? McDonalds' salary going to let you raise a family in middle class style?

Times have changed and I think it's the same as here - upward mobility has come to a dead halt and us and you will be facing more and more unrest as folks, justly or unjustly, demand more of the pie.

Yes poverty produces thugs who do not care about the welfare of others and will rob and loot if they can - and yes it is not an overt social protest- but that is my main point and I really believe that - as the disparity in incomes becomes greater between middle and lower classes here and over there expect more such behaviors, lamentably IMO as those who do not have have no compunctions against looting.

I am not sure folks can 'work themselves out of poverty' as easily as your grandfather did - a lot lot harder as now physical labor is not in great demand and if it were many of those low lives I think would hop at such jobs and see a future. Now with high-tech jobs demanding an education the most advantaged kids get the upper hand as their parents can afford a good university (no longer free as once was, right?) and tutoring, etc. And thus the class division here and there is becoming IMO much more rigid and harder for poor folks to bring themselves up by their bootstraps.

Bitter

"explain then why kids from poorer backgrounds I would think at least end up in the dock for anti-social behaviour more than kids from middle class or up backgrounds?"

One huge problem no one likes to acknowledge is the break down of the family unit in the poor communities. There are far too many single mothers raising too many kids. This has been a huge problem in the Black community, but may be on the rise everywhere.

What may be worse is that kids are being raised by their grandmothers who, let's face it, did not do a very good job raising their own sons and daughters. (Hence grandma's involvement with the grandchildren).

But at least the left attacked our former VP for his criticism of Murphy Brown.

RM67

FFS Bob - have you been paying no attention at all?

Many of the rioters were in paid employment or studying for top tier degrees (law, accountancy, engineering to name but three, chefs, teachers, social workers). They would hardly be considered desperate or lacking in prospects.

Also, try to understand that 'underclass' and 'working class' are not interchangeable.

stokebailey

Sorry, Ann. I get a kick out of how the gull strolls into the shop all nonchalant and then scurries out with the loot.