Well I live in an area that was quite badly hit on Monday, yet I am totally unaware of any "vigilantes" on the streets of South Croydon. Shops and restaurants were open as normal this evening. Also there are still cities that have not been affected that would have made good targets.

Dalston was one area where the vigilantes confronted the hooligans handed some of them over to the police.

Well I live in an area that was quite badly hit on Monday, yet I am totally unaware of any "vigilantes" on the streets of South Croydon. Shops and restaurants were open as normal this evening. Also there are still cities that have not been affected that would have made good targets.

Dalston was one area where the vigilantes confronted the hooligans handed some of them over to the police.

Great, nice to see my old stomping ground has stayed the same. It was a thriving community back then, nice to see the same community spirit is still there.

---

anyone sitting outside trying to protect their property could be labeled a "vigilante". It is only when they go too far(as often happens) that it becomes a problem rather than a short term solution.

---

Janice

anyone sitting outside trying to protect their property could be labeled a "vigilante". It is only when they go too far(as often happens) that it becomes a problem rather than a short term solution.

True Janice...on this occasion they felt they were helping the over-stretched police so kept their actions within the law....citizens arrest as it is known.

Some of the accused who have already appeared in court.....

Lifeguard(Really?) Don't think he'll be in that profession for much longer.

Postman (got fed up with delivering letters, so decides to have a few free takeaways).

Schoolboy aged 11 (where the hell were the parents?) Probably too busy drunk or doped to the eyeballs.

Millionaire's Daughter aged 19 Hmmn, parents refused to comment. Wonder if this will hit their market research company?

Plenty of others named & shamed too, & the list of professions makes me wonder...do these people have a screw loose?

---

Some of the accused who have already appeared in court.....

Lifeguard(Really?) Don't think he'll be in that profession for much longer.

Postman (got fed up with delivering letters, so decides to have a few free takeaways).

Schoolboy aged 11 (where the hell were the parents?) Probably too busy drunk or doped to the eyeballs.

Millionaire's Daughter aged 19 Hmmn, parents refused to comment. Wonder if this will hit their market research company?

Plenty of others named & shamed too, & the list of professions makes me wonder...do these people have a screw loose?

As I said earlier, these were not the people I was seeing on the streets on Monday night. I have yet to see any evidence that the real culprits are even close to being arrested.

From the Mirror website today:

Home News Top Stories
London riots: Young rioters say they're proud to steal
By MELISSA THOMPSON and RACHAEL BLETCHLY, Daily Mirror 11/08/2011

LJ Youth from Pembury Estate in Hackney London.

BABY-FACED and softly-spoken, he seems much younger than his 16 years.

But just days ago LJ was rampaging through Hackney throwing bricks, looting shops, torching cars and attacking innocent people.

On Hackney’s Pembury Estate most people ran off when we approached, but LJ agreed to speak on condition he remained anonymous.

He denied the trouble was triggered by the death of Mark Duggan, shot by police in Tottenham last Thursday.

“People say it started ‘cause of Tottenham,” he said, “but that had nothing to do with what happened.

“People did what they did because they could. So what if we get caught? Prison’s full so no one’s going to go there, are they?”

Surveying the boarded-up buildings, LJ has little sympathy. “I suppose you could say people got carried away,” he shrugged. “I threw bricks because they were there.”

Insisting he hadn’t looted himself, he said he saw people “carrying bags full of stuff”, from cigarettes and alcohol to trainers.

“I saw kids who were eight years old, everyone got involved. They just went in and grabbed what they could. Why not?”

Attitudes were similar in Manchester on Tuesday night where two lads loitered.

Admitting they had been looting earlier, the lad said: “Why are you going to waste the opportunity to get new stuff?

“We could afford to buy stuff, but it’s not about that. It’s about the Government – them taking stuff away... in my case I don’t go to college no more cos I don’t get paid, do I?

“The Government aren’t in control. If they were we wouldn’t be able to do it.” His mate piped up: “Yeah, what can they do? I’ll keep doing this until I get caught. My family don’t know where I am – they think I’m just out.”

But his pal bragged: “I told my mam I’m here. She said ‘Get home, you’re in trouble’ I said ‘no’ and just put down the phone.

“When I get home nothing will happen. I might get shouted at but that’s about it. I can live with that and just keep doing it.”

The boys had no fear of a criminal record. One said: “Prisons are overcrowded so what are they gonna do – give me an asbo? I’ll live with that.”

---

Plenty of others named & shamed too

I hope they name and shame them all. I hope someone sets up a website where they are all named so that in future employers, landlords etc can identify and shun them.

---

flaming balloons

Plenty of others named & shamed too

I hope they name and shame them all. I hope someone sets up a website where they are all named so that in future employers, landlords etc can identify and shun them.

So future employers won't employ the already unemployable.

Yeah, that'll help.

---

Reality Internet Personality

So future employers won't employ the already unemployable.

Yeah, that'll help.

Yes I agree here too. I would say that on top of any court punishment
that they receive they should also do a certain amount of community
work. So bringing them into contact with the "Real world" and not just
that little introverted world that they themselves live in.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Caring costs – but so do riots

"These rioters feel they don't actually belong to the community. For years, they’ve felt cut adrift from society

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Shops looted, cars and buildings burnt out, young adults in hoods on the rampage.

London has woken up to street violence, and the usual narratives have emerged – punish those responsible for the violence because they are "opportunist criminals" and "disgusting thieves". The slightly more intellectually curious might blame the trouble on poor police relations or lack of policing.

My own view is that the police in this country do an impressive job and unjustly carry the consequences of a much wider social dysfunction. Before you take a breath of sarcasm thinking "here she goes, excusing the criminals with some sob story", I want to begin by stating two things. First, violence and looting can never be justified. Second, for those of us working at street level, we're not surprised by these events.

Twitter and Facebook have kept the perverse momentum going, transmitting invitations such as: "Bare shops are gonna get smashed up. So come, get some (free stuff!!!!) F... the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! Dead the ends and colour war for now. So If you see a brother... SALUTE! If you see a fed... SHOOT!"

If this is a war, the enemy, on the face of it, are the "lawless", the defenders are the law-abiding. An absence of morality can easily be found in the rioters and looters. How, we ask, could they attack their own community with such disregard? But the young people would reply "easily", because they feel they don't actually belong to the community. Community, they would say, has nothing to offer them. Instead, for years they have experienced themselves cut adrift from civil society's legitimate structures. Society relies on collaborative behaviour; individuals are held accountable because belonging brings personal benefit. Fear or shame of being alienated keeps most of us pro-social.

Working at street level in London, over a number of years, many of us have been concerned about large groups of young adults creating their own parallel antisocial communities with different rules. The individual is responsible for their own survival because the established community is perceived to provide nothing. Acquisition of goods through violence is justified in neighbourhoods where the notion of dog eat dog pervades and the top dog survives the best. The drug economy facilitates a parallel subculture with the drug dealer producing more fiscally efficient solutions than the social care agencies who are too under-resourced to compete.

The insidious flourishing of anti-establishment attitudes is paradoxically helped by the establishment. It grows when a child is dragged by their mother to social services screaming for help and security guards remove both; or in the shiny academies which, quietly, rid themselves of the most disturbed kids. Walk into the mental hospitals and there is nothing for the patients to do except peel the wallpaper. Go to the youth centre and you will find the staff have locked themselves up in the office because disturbed young men are dominating the space with their violent dogs. Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped. The border police arrive at the neighbour's door to grab an "over-stayer" and his kids are screaming. British children with no legal papers have mothers surviving through prostitution and still there's not enough food on the table.

It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped. Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.

Our leaders still speak about how protecting the community is vital. The trouble is, the deal has gone sour. The community has selected who is worthy of help and who is not. In this false moral economy where the poor are described as dysfunctional, the community fails. One dimension of this failure is being acted out in the riots; the lawlessness is, suddenly, there for all to see. Less visible is the perverse insidious violence delivered through legitimate societal structures. Check out the price of failing to care.

I got a call yesterday morning. The kids gave me a run-down of what had happened in Brixton. A street party had been invaded by a group of young men out to grab. A few years ago, the kids who called me would have joined in, because they had nothing to lose. One had been permanently excluded from six schools. When he first arrived at Kids Company he cared so little that he would smash his head into a pane of glass and bite his own flesh off with rage. He'd think nothing of hurting others. After intensive social care and support he walked away when the riots began because he held more value in his membership of a community that has embraced him than a community that demanded his dark side.

It costs money to care. But it also costs money to clear up riots, savagery and antisocial behaviour. I leave it to you to do the financial and moral sums."

---

Reality Internet Personality

Plenty of others named & shamed too

I hope they name and shame them all. I hope someone sets up a website where they are all named so that in future employers, landlords etc can identify and shun them.

So future employers won't employ the already unemployable.

Yeah, that'll help.

Yea, well thank you for writing off the 9 year olds up to school leaving age as already unemployable. But they will be unemployable if such name and shaming takes place. And rightly so.

---

flaming balloons

Plenty of others named & shamed too

I hope they name and shame them all. I hope someone sets up a website where they are all named so that in future employers, landlords etc can identify and shun them.

So future employers won't employ the already unemployable.

Yeah, that'll help.

Yea, well thank you for writing off the 9 year olds up to school leaving age as already unemployable. But they will be unemployable if such name and shaming takes place. And rightly so.

Yep, so the only life left to them is to sell drugs in a gang to make money! Makes perfect sense.

---

Plenty of others named & shamed too

I hope they name and shame them all. I hope someone sets up a website where they are all named so that in future employers, landlords etc can identify and shun them.

So future employers won't employ the already unemployable.

Yeah, that'll help.

Yea, well thank you for writing off the 9 year olds up to school leaving age as already unemployable. But they will be unemployable if such name and shaming takes place. And rightly so.

Yep, so the only life left to them is to sell drugs in a gang to make money! Makes perfect sense.

Agreed (with your point, not your sarcasm). Then they can complain some more about those rotten kids these days, and complain about everything they're lacking to be a decent human being.

Somehow, I think we can go all the way back to the beginning of our sentient ancestors and see the same ill-fated logic and disconnected gap between generations and classes.

This sent a chill down my spine

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

---

Here's another link; http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/7337

"Any persons convicted of criminal acts during the current London riots should have all financial benefits removed. No tax payer should have to contribute to those who have destroyed property, stolen from their community and shown a disregard for the country that provides for them."

I'm going to sign up when I can. It's a bit busy right now...

"The e-petition entitled “Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits” has now passed the threshold of 100,000 signatures and has been passed to the Backbench Business Committee to consider for debate. It will continue to be available for signature once the site is re-opened."

---

flaming balloons

Plenty of others named & shamed too

I hope they name and shame them all. I hope someone sets up a website where they are all named so that in future employers, landlords etc can identify and shun them.

So future employers won't employ the already unemployable.

Yeah, that'll help.

Yea, well thank you for writing off the 9 year olds up to school leaving age as already unemployable. But they will be unemployable if such name and shaming takes place. And rightly so.

Yep, so the only life left to them is to sell drugs in a gang to make money! Makes perfect sense.

Agreed (with your point, not your sarcasm). Then they can complain some more about those rotten kids these days, and complain about everything they're lacking to be a decent human being.

Somehow, I think we can go all the way back to the beginning of our sentient ancestors and see the same ill-fated logic and disconnected gap between generations and classes.

If you are going to punish them, punish them, but realize that for life means you are going to have to feed, clothe and put a roof over their head for life. If you want to rehabilitate them, then rehabilitate them.

But this case is a 9 year old. Life sentence at age 9?

As to the adult offenders, we can go into different philosophies. But actions for life are for life. Deny them a way to make a living and the result is more criminals. Can society afford this?

---

PM Cameron said in a statement to Parliament today, that he has instructed the Home Secretary to look into the opertaion and possible curbing of social networking sites.

Sorry Blurf, when criminality is involved, it has got naff all to do with censorship.

Just like in Syria and Egypt.

---

PM Cameron said in a statement to Parliament today, that he has instructed the Home Secretary to look into the opertaion and possible curbing of social networking sites.

Sorry Blurf, when criminality is involved, it has got naff all to do with censorship.

Yep all Twitter folks are bad folks so let's just shut it down. The ones who use it to keep in contact with family members they are concerned about will now lose that bond.

Sorry that's censorship

---

If you are going to punish them, punish them, but realize that for life means you are going to have to feed, clothe and put a roof over their head for life. If you want to rehabilitate them, then rehabilitate them.

But this case is a 9 year old. Life sentence at age 9?

As to the adult offenders, we can go into different philosophies. But actions for life are for life. Deny them a way to make a living and the result is more criminals. Can society afford this?

I think that everything is up for debate right now. The rioters probably cannot understand the anger in England right now. If a family is evicted from a council house in Salford because one of it's members have been convicted, even if it's a nine year old whose parents have been unwilling or anable to take responsibility to ensure they don't raise kids who have no regard for society, then so be it. Let them emigrate to Mars for all I care. But I do care that they are suitably punished.

---

flaming balloons

PM Cameron said in a statement to Parliament today, that he has instructed the Home Secretary to look into the opertaion and possible curbing of social networking sites.

Sorry Blurf, when criminality is involved, it has got naff all to do with censorship.

I'm sure glad SCOTUS didn't take that stance when it came to VCRs and copyright infringement in the US.

Just because a technology can be used for nefarious or malicious means, doesn't mean it should be sanctioned or censored to fit people's need to feel safe. Blame the situation, blame the people, but the technology only exists because of the inventor's attempts at making the world a better place through innovation.