well it must have worked - when they brought him out a sack of King Edward's had more starch in it.

There are large sections in Brussels , Antwerp which are now complete no-go areas at night , unless you desperately need to get mugged , murdered or raped ; the police conveniently ignore such facts ;
in the daytime , if you really have to be there ( try : Anderlecht ) , you are the only person in the usual european clothing and not speaking in Arabic very loudly , or in some unknown African lingo . Surrounded by mobs who live off the ( socialist ) state and have never done a hour's work in their lifetimes .
That's what our EUrope has come to , some call it "progress" and some know better ( and leave , if they can ) .

There are many people that believe there needs to be wars, ones big enough to require conscription, to stop this type of violence. Maybe men have a basic need to lash out. I do not know the answer, I doubt that anyone does.

Graham

The background feelings that came to the boil here are going on everywhere where there are disaffected youths with no stake in society, and who see the police as the enemy. I still think that the police should be allowed to go in hard and fast in cases of looting. It's like saving the banks. If the banks fail, society fails. If rioting and looting isn't stopped, society falls apart.

I really don't see any other alternative that is practical, because we are too far down the road to reverse our tracks. We used to have trust and respect in the pillars of the country, the church, the crown, the police, teachers, MPs. Now of course all these institutions are shown to be corrupt to a greater or lesser extent, and once the emperor is shown to be naked, there's no way to hide it.

Little johnny sees that 'everyone' is out for themselves, and has no respect for anything any more. He has no education, because the teachers/education system allowed him to go thru the system without even learning to write his own name. He has little chance of getting a bad job, and none whatsoever of getting a good one. He has as much chance of bettering himself as he has of learning how to shit diamonds.

In short he has nothing to respect, except 'artistes' that do as they please, are blinged to the max and draped with all the right labels. He respects the god of consumerism, and is nothing without the latest trainers.

Since he has no stake in society, and no fear of the police, because an asbo is all he'll get, and the prisons are full, the riot is just an exciting shopping spree with no barclaycard bill at the end.

Short of shooting him there is nothing that can be done to him to make him of worth to society.

He does, of course show 'respec' to the thugs out there, because he knows they will hurt him if he doesn't.

What we need, since he and his ilk can't be reformed, can't be given a job, and we can't lock them all up, is a way for him to learn to 'respec' the police.

If his friends come back from rioting with serious injuries caused by some good shooting from rubber bullets, preferably in the face, and they can't sue, because they were in a riot zone, and anything that happens to you there is your own fault, maybe, just maybe, the next time there is trouble he will stay indoors.

There you go. Plus there were no police getting injured, which is the last thing we want.

It's strange but I still feel able to walk down any street in London without feeling I'll be mugged, murdered or (!) raped. I'm sure that if I go down Brixton, or even Tottenham this evening I'll be fine. Same as when I lived in Madrid, although there were places where you had to be careful of pickpockets.
However I do try and avoid areas when there is a big football match going off.

I'm in two minds over the following story - and not because it's in the Mail, there have been reports of this elsewhere so it's genuine.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...h-Council.html

We often hear that prison doesn't work, so what does? What's the alternative? If we agree that serious crimes must be punished, what's your suggestion? Counselling? ASBO's? Community Service? The crims just laugh at those. Even prison doesn't worry them, it's a breeze, still get your drugs, don't need to work.

The thing that frightens these people most is work.

So lets get them working, HARD LABOUR.

It doesn't have to be productive, but of course that would be useful, just get them working 12 hours a day of hard manual labour.

Build a big prison somewhere in central Africa. Would help the local economy too by employing locals with machetes as guards

Starting with clearing up the mess created then rebuilding what they burned down.
The biggest problem is if they refuse, what do you do then.

Graham

The idea is that they are working for the right to receive social handouts, so you do not pay them anything extra.

If they fail to turn up or under perform you stop the handouts.

Start by summoning the ones that have never had a job since leaving school, recruit them for a month or so. Then move on to the long term unemployed etc.

Yes clean up the mess they caused, but move on to litter clearing, graffiti removal, clearing derelict sites and any other eyesores.

I don't like conscription, and neither does the army. The last thing they want is unwilling, unprofessional jerks.

I do notice that those most in favour of conscription are those least likely to be affected by it.

Odd, that.

Please don't go on to say prison is soft. It's certainly softer than the uS jails, the US, I gather locks up a bigger % of the population than we do, and their jails are full to bursting. Have a look at some of the programmes that go inside those places, and then remember that that doesn't deter people.

Don't think I'm being soft on people here. I simply want the problem stopped.

If I thought that harder punishment worked, I'd be all for it.

I'm not against the three strikes idea, but it does have to be used sensibly, and you will have to resign yourself to jailing people longtime.

People in jail often become so institutionalised, that they can no longer live anywhere else. There's an argument to say, that if that becomes the case then those people might as well stay there permanently. Of course if that is the case, then the accomodation doesn't have to be anything other than the most basic, as they aren't coming out, so reform is an irrelevance.

In short, I would say this. With first time offenders, the idea is to reform rather than punish. If they won't reform, the protection of society from them then becomes all that matters.

That does take us down the road to a type of society that we have tried to move away from.

Perhaps tho the idea that all men are redeemable is meaningless, or at least, that the people at the bottom in reality aren't worth the effort.