Well we can can all talk for ages but.. only time will really tell.. its just all very sad really.

The voice of reason ,someone who looks past their self interest and the need for rhe reinstallation of community .Margaret thatcher had many admirable strengths , but she did help create this self serving society we all live in .
I watched a documentary on Gang violence in kingston recently and a well respected daughter of a politician say one thing that stuck in my head and it was ''you cant have healthy young men sitting around doing nothing and not expect violence '' , this is our cities and towns now , just take a walk down your local high street and look into the eyes of some of the youth these days , they look angry .

well think about it really hard..
when you were a youth.. werent you angry too..
we all seem to forget the fire that comes with being young
i could have torn up the world were it not for the older
people in my life.. this isnt new.. its just no longer addressed
or not addressed properly
Everyone should just remember what it is they wanted during their own youth.... that will give you a glimpse & only a glimpse into todays youth because times have changed. But jeeshhh people.. cant any of your remember being young?

Yea course i can remember being young and working for nothing as an apprentice bricklayer for poor money but i knew like my father said ,once you got a trade you can at least earn enough to support a family like i am doing .
Get a trade now and youll be earning nowt , i know i work for nowt in the uk .
Any one with half a brain these days understands that perfectly respectable trades jobs just dont support a house , food ,, kids .
My father was right in my case because income for a brickie was 10000 a year when i first got a house , i have stated this before kids are going to be stuck at home but still have the desire to branch out and become independant ,except they cant do it .
Im not saying this is causing gang violence , but in lower socio economic areas where perfectly respectable west indian and indian mums and dads work day and night for nothing just to pay the rent , you can in some ways understand why the youth are being sucked into a life of easy money and crime and drugs .
They dont want a life like that for themselves where they have to work a 120 hours a month just to pay some property developing landlord his rent .Let alone run a car ,food ,etc etc etc .
The greater the division of wealth the more the violence and crime will increase ,we all know that . What the other half dont get they will eventually take , its the natural order of things and we live in a country were jumped up lords and greedy landlords and overpriced housing and low wages and pig swilling politicians . These are the people who are worried ,because they have it all to lose , the others have all to gain .

I think the way this discussion is heading is becoming dangerously close to making excuses for what happened, and frankly there is no excuse!

No, just trying to move on from the condemnation stage. Of course their actions were completely reprehensible and I don't think anyone here is saying otherwise.

But with that said, then what? How is it that this happened at all - surely all those people didn't just randomly wake up one morning and say to themselves "let's start a riot"?

I care about what is happening in the UK. I would like to see a more successful society - in some ways we have one, and in some ways we clearly do not, and I hope people better prepared and situated than I are also thinking about this and in a more sophisticated way than the "lock them all up" way.

I really don't get this.

The main thing there's no excuse for is letting it happen again. Yet your insistence that any investigation of the cause is in itself an excuse, prevents you from even starting this journey. You're part of the problem, not the solution.

At the end of the day I dont think any of us know what sitting in a council flat in a crap area with little chance of a job, with no immediate future and parents who dont give a sh!t would do to us.

Just think ...... most of you have something to look forward to. You obviously managed to get life with reasonable income to do things with. Some of the kids these days just have no light at the end of the tunnel, and thats what pushes them over the edge. What's going to change that? Nothing I'm afraid ..... and it aint just the UK that will eventually suffer

Some though would just say they are lazy good for nothings and should go out fruit picking to earn enough to get their bus fare there and back ..... yeah right

While I agree with Lion in Winter's post, I don't think we can argue that anyone "let it happen", (apart from the practicalities of policing etc.). I agree it is essential that causes must be sought, but the problem is very complex; for instance the violence and destruction are different issues from the looting which happened afterwards. Several possible causes will be put forward, but none of them will be solved overnight. The basic distrust of one group of people for another group of people will continue. As will the urge of a few to 'get what you can out of any situation' a philosophy which occurs across the social spectrum.
Unfortuately It could happen again.

Those taking a stance whereby the only possibly solution is punishment and the only possible cause is badness is blind fundamentalism that prevents society as a whole from developing solutions to this issue.

I agree with you. I was just saying that finding the root causes and providing solutions will take time and not be easy. Obviously governments and society in general have a duty to try.

Well at least fruit picking would stop them sitting around in a council flat and show a future employer that they are not work shy. And yes we have enough money to do the things we want within reason but every penny of it was earned by us. As I have already said we started out in a rough area in the north east in a one roomed flat with an outside toilet on low wages. All the different jobs I had I went out and found for myself. You have to do things for yourself not just sit around waiting for someone else to do it for you.

Thank you for illustrating my point
These are not the same times that you started off in. Things are different

I could go on about how I went off and started my own business back in the 80's and made it a huge success, but opportunities were there then ... now they are not. You go and pick fruit, you're not going to impress a future employer that you are available for work or not work shy ... they go for the cheapest labour every time, and thats why theres a lot of foreign labour doing it.

I cant seem to get the point over ... that you can go into the workplace these days and send out thousands of CV's, apply for any number of jobs, and get absolutely nowehere. I know. I know people who are doing it. Educated people going for low wage jobs, and they get nowhere.

Things are not that different, the unemployment figures are no worse than they have been at various times over the last 50 years. In one day last week when I was out I saw three places with adds in the windows or inside looking to employ people. Two were in different pubs (yes I have done pub work and waitressing) one was in a clothes shop (I worked in C&A's for three years when they were still around in the UK). So there are jobs to be had if people care to look for them. Yes things are different, for instance there is a minimum wage and a lot of british people are not prepared to work for that or to do what they consider to be dirty jobs or jobs that are 'beneath' them. I know one young man who left Uni and did not have a job for 5 or 6 years because he could not get something in the specialised area that he took his degree in. Eventually he took a job in another line completely and loves it so he wasted those years and scrounged off the rest of us while he did.
Anyway we are not going to agree so we may as well agree to disagree.

Cameron seems to be exclusively embracing the punishment/no excuses crowd. In words rather than deeds, anyway.