British Government’s Response to the Riots: Who is “The Sick” one here?

Yesterday, 10 August our vainglorious Prime Minister announced that the communities from which it is alleged the ‘rioters and looters’ emanated from were “sick”. But more on who is really sick in our society later. In the meantime I’d like to pick up on an aspect of the state’s response (or apparent lack of) to the uprising that I referred to yesterday, namely my assertion that the forces of ‘law and order’ deliberately allowed fires to burn and shops to be looted, as it served to demonize the people involved as well as justifying the use of heavy firepower and a complete lockdown (which happened yesterday).

Meanwhile, Cameron, who has come under fire for the apparent lack of response by the forces of ‘law and order’ had this to say to the assembled MPs on the subject:

“There were simply far too few police were deployed on to our streets and the tactics they were using weren’t working,

“Police chiefs have been frank with me about why this happened.

“Initially the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue – rather than essentially one of crime.

“The truth is that the police have been facing a new and unique challenge with different people doing the same thing – basically looting – in different places all at the same time.” — David Cameron, BBC News, 10 August 2011. (My emph. WB)

The actual difference escapes me as far as it comes to imposing law and order on the streets between public order and crime but perhaps Cameron knows something I don’t?

“Basically doing the same thing in different places at the same time”? What does this mean? That somehow police in Clapham couldn’t respond to events and do it at the same time as police in Hackney and elsewhere? This is total nonsense!

Cameron is obviously a total cretin and one who thinks we are also cretins to swallow this load of hokum. Why did virtually all the major cities of England and Wales produce virtually simultaneous uprisings?

According to Cameron’s ‘analysis’, every criminal in towns across the land decided to go on a robbing spree at exactly the same time (now there’s one for the statisticians to ponder). Hence the BS about Twitter, Facebook and BBM somehow ‘facilitating’ the insurrection, which if true, would imply a conspiracy on a gigantic scale.

To expose this lie we need only look at the insurrections of the 1980s (which were far more intense and long-lasting than the current round) where TV coverage communicated it across the country, virtually instantaneously. Yes, of course people text each other now. Wouldn’t you if you were there? Elsewhere in the world we have been heralding the ‘Twitter Revolutions’, but not here apparently.

Rather than accept responsibility for creating the conditions that led to this vast outpouring of blind, destructive rage, the state had to transform this great throng of disaffected people into criminals rather than people at the end of their tether.

The streets may locked down now but for how long can the government afford to occupy so many working class ghettos without turning the country into a permanent police state?

Meanwhile, the BBC informs us that we can sign the following (it includes the link):

“More than 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for anyone convicted of taking part in the riots to lose any benefits they receive”

The assumption being I take it that all the ‘rioters’ and looters are on Benefits and thus deserve to starve? That the BBC informs us of such a despicable idea is an indication of the role the BBC plays in promulgating such Victorian, reactionary ideas. I assume that nobody has thought this through as someone in jail could not possibly receive housing benefit for example, but such is the knee-jerk reaction of the middle classes when there’s trouble brewing with the ‘lower orders’.

BBC Radio 4’s chief political correspondent, Norman Smith, has this to say on the ‘lower orders’, further reinforcing my contention that there was a deliberate lack of response to the uprisings:

“The looting and violence, they [the Tory Party?] argue, actually plays to one of Mr Cameron’s long standing narratives about the Broken Society.

“The response of ordinary people in coming together and cleaning up their local communities also chimes with his belief in the Big Society.

“Many traditional Tories, they say, will also have been delighted by his clear and uncompromising stance on law and order, with his promise of more arrests, more prison places and his dismissal of “phoney concerns about human rights”.” (ibid)

There you have it, “phony concerns about human rights” says it all. Millions of young folk abandoned in neglect have been transformed into a criminal class and will of course, under Queen Victoria’s rule, be dealt with accordingly.


Articles by: William Bowles

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