[Politics] Protests/rioting in lots of places

[chickens]

How does this calm down / end?

Starmer's strong words were never going to deter anyone. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that because of him in any way, but those involved in the rioting are not going to pay heed to anyone in authority suggesting they will feel the full force of the law etc.

I guess it was hoped that some rapid prosecutions and the handing out of stiff sentences would male people think twice, but will it be a strong enough deterrent? Thousands have been involved in this and the majority won't be brought to task. If you wear plain clothing and a mask/balaclava there's probably limited chance of being recognised and receiving that morning-after knock on the door.

In 2011, I recall feeling worried that the bad guys had figured out that with sufficient numbers on the streets, they could overwhelm police forces. This feels like it's got the potential to escalate beyond that, and now there seem to be indications that Muslim groups are also mobilising,

So, how does it end - any ideas?

Can’t be certain, however the fact that the trouble appears to be being created by individuals travelling to towns suggests that arrests will start to have an effect. (Smaller crowds, fewer agitators)

Until the full “I’ve lost my job, I’ve been given time inside” stories begin to filter through the various Facebook/WhatsApp/Twitter groups I’m not expecting this to die down. It will take time, I’m reckoning on at least another few days of this.

I like to think the police are building profiles of all the online agitators too.

To my mind, these rioters have already lost. They’ve no legitimate cause for their actions, their “inciting incident” was a crime where the perpetrator was arrested at the scene, so they should be applauding the police for their bravery, not fighting them.

There is, fairly quickly I suspect, going to come a point where these people turn up in a town to cause trouble, and find an exponentially bigger crowd there to tell them to f*** off, to the extent that they don’t even leave the station.

They’ve already lost. People are, on the whole, decent.

 

[Bodian]

Correct. No right wing involved.

No violence either - seemingly more directed at getting something on the TV.

 

[Bakero]

Correct. No right wing involved.

Except the right wingers who have been terrorising cities around the country for the past few days provoking a reaction from other citizens.

Scanning through the thread I've noticed a few "bad guys on both sides" type posts and claptrap about the horseshoe theory. Obviously, violence (not in self-defence ) from anyone must be condemned but let's not forget how we got here.

 

[jcdenton08]

No violence either - seemingly more directed at getting something on the TV.

Disturbances after hundreds at Birmingham demonstration - BBC News

Several vehicles and a pub are attacked in Birmingham.

www.bbc.co.uk

“During the evening several vehicles and a pub, The Clumsy Swan in Yardley, were attacked by a group of Muslim youths, who broke away from the main demonstration and were wearing masks and carrying weapons.
The vehicles were close to Stechford police station.
The West Midlands force said there had been at least three cases of criminal damage, one offence where someone was seen carrying an offensive weapon and one of assault.”

 

[Bodian]

Disturbances after hundreds at Birmingham demonstration - BBC News

Several vehicles and a pub are attacked in Birmingham.

www.bbc.co.uk

“During the evening several vehicles and a pub, The Clumsy Swan in Yardley, were attacked by a group of Muslim youths, who broke away from the main demonstration and were wearing masks and carrying weapons.
The vehicles were close to Stechford police station.
The West Midlands force said there had been at least three cases of criminal damage, one offence where someone was seen carrying an offensive weapon and one of assault.”

Yes. But that is a different incident. I'm not saying there is no violence - I was saying there was nothing in the incident / clip you were citing.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

"The disturbances included several days of rioting in London motivated by negative sentiment towards a minority group. They began with a large and orderly protest against a new parliamentary act, which was intended to reduce official discrimination enacted by a previous law. Lord George Gordon, head of the majority, stirred yp fear and hatred when he argued that the law would enable the minority to join the establushment and "plot" against the country. The protest led to widespread rioting and looting, including attacks on Newgate Prison and the Bank of England and was the most destructive in the history of London."

All a bit familiar? This was the Gordon Riots of 1780 and was aimed at Catholics. Find a common enemy, ideally a minority, use your influence to stir up shit, give the prejudiced, the opportunistic and the lunatics permission to destroy.

 

[jcdenton08]

Yes. But that is a different incident. I'm not saying there is no violence - I was saying there was nothing in the incident / clip you were citing.

It’s from the same location…

 

[wellquickwoody]

I was having a wry smile earlier today at the thought of a right wing riot in Brighton. Perhaps PPF and his two younger cousins will kick a litter bin or two over? But in reality there is nothing to laugh at. Although I do not really think that ANTIFA would allow anything too serious to occur. Crawley could be much more of a powder keg.

 

[Triggaaar]

Well you appear to be saying despite these examples of where we know the political/institutional Government (recent and historical) have covered up “the truth”; in some cases willing to allow innocent people to be jailed or die instead of be served natural justice, that when tricky issues arise connected to the already politically sensitive issues of immigration (legal or illegal) the same political/institutional establishment can be trusted to provide “the truth”.

No, I didn't say that. I didn't say they are telling the truth, I simply asked what is the root cause of the violence.

The moons aligned on the Southport attack in a way that they haven’t before. Within a matter of days a soldier was violently stabbed outside his house (immediately not considered terrorism but mental illness), police officers violently attacked at Manchester airport (where only part of the story was first made public by the media). Then children in Southport were attacked and despite the 3 casualties the same mental illness not terrorism position was adopted.

People have been angry about immigration and it’s problems for ages, and people have been protesting about immigration issues for ages, the politicians (all flavours) know this, many of the protests have been non violent and therefore not of media interest. Violent attacks are dealt with in a particular way by politicians and media, the mental illness card has been over used, as we can tell by the Huw Edwards case.

Ok, so you're saying that the root cause is immigration. But the attack in Southport was not carried out by an immigrant, he was a Christian who was born here. Have you got evidence that the attack in Kent was by an immigrant? Regardless, I'm not sure what you want the government to do? Our government were trying to fly illegal immigrants off to Rwanda, what do you want them to do? It's not an easy problem to solve.

These comments you're making about mental illness are just silly. Huw Edwards is being portrayed in MSM as a an absolute wrong'un. He's not mentally ill, he's a disgusting pervert, and MSM aren't saying otherwise. Obviously they wouldn't have said that until he was found guilty of crimes though. We're not being told it's all mental illness.

Because you probably follow some really nasty racist people on social media, you won't get a good picture of the crime around the country. Instead you'll get cherry picked examples where the perpetrators are ethnic minorities, which will colour your view on the cause of crime in this country.

Starmer and the political/institutional establishment have to lay the blame in these riots solely at the “far right” thugs, because otherwise they will have to unwind some of the complex problems relating to immigration and expose the political/institutional establishment to criticism. So like scandals in the past the truth will be suppressed

The scandals from the past that you mentioned, like cash for questions, were uncovered by mainstream media. The political establishment didn't tried to hide it, only the guilty parties.

People throwing bricks at the police, setting fire to buildings and looting shops, in the name of sorting out our immigration problems, are going to get accused of being far right. We've had many peaceful protests in this country recently, and they get covered in the media.

and we continue on a well travelled road of deceit and misinformation by the political/institutional establishment. That is how politics works in this country these days.

These days? The Hillsborough disaster was in 1989 and cash for questions was 1994. You've got your head in the sand.

Anyway, you've said that the problem is immigration. The Tory party wanted to reduce illegal immigration, but failed. Labour now want to reduce it. You no doubt want to stop it. What is your magic recipe for successfully stopping it?

 

[Triggaaar]

https://www.reddit.com/r/uknews/s/ujWYYlsXnT

Sigh. Female journalist forced off air in Birmingham.

Edit: just for clarity, not right wing thugs on this occasion, but by a Muslim gang wearing balaclavas shouting “Free Palestine”. Scary how they encircled the camera operator and journalist

They didn't force her off air. She had a security team with her and wasn't in danger.

 

[jcdenton08]

They didn't force her off air. She had a security team with her and wasn't in danger.

Well, they… they did…

 

[Zeberdi]

Well you appear to be saying despite these examples of where we know the political/institutional Government (recent and historical) have covered up “the truth”; in some cases willing to allow innocent people to be jailed or die instead of be served natural justice, that when tricky issues arise connected to the already politically sensitive issues of immigration (legal or illegal) the same political/institutional establishment can be trusted to provide “the truth”.

Since when was any Government of any political persuasion ‘truthful’ about everything or puts all information into the public sphere?

I don’t, and neither do millions of others. The moons aligned on the Southport attack in a way that they haven’t before. Within a matter of days a soldier was violently stabbed outside his house (immediately not considered terrorism but mental illness), police officers violently attacked at Manchester airport (where only part of the story was first made public by the media). Then children in Southport were attacked and despite the 3 casualties the same mental illness not terrorism position was adopted.

I don’t believe there’s any connecting theme here - violent crime is actually decreasing but the media always respond more loudly if the victims are police, a member of the armed forces or, rarely, young children - they whip up even more media frenzy if the perpetrator is from an ethnic background. Racists use a perpetrator‘s ethnicity to fear-monger because they know that is one of the most useful tools to ”justify” and spread their racist-agenda - not every murder by someone with a Muslim/Asian background is terror related - people from ethnic minorities have mental health problems too.

People have been angry about immigration and it’s problems for ages, and people have been protesting about immigration issues for ages, the politicians (all flavours) know this

Agreed

many of the protests have been non violent and therefore not of media interest. Violent attacks are dealt with in a particular way by politicians and media, the mental illness card has been over used, as we can tell by the Huw Edwards case.

Starmer and the political/institutional establishment have to lay the blame in these riots solely at the “far right” thugs, because otherwise they will have to unwind some of the complex problems relating to immigration and expose the political/institutional establishment to criticism. So like scandals in the past the truth will be suppressed, and we continue on a well travelled road of deceit and misinformation by the political/institutional establishment. That is how politics works in this country these days.

Part of the “complex problems relating to immigration“ is that it is not as complex or of the magnitude that the hard right/far right make out.

That said - We had the Brexit referendum- people voiced their (misguided imo) anger then. We withdrew from Europe. Reform won a handful of seats in the GE. The Tories were annihilated because of their sleaze and lies and broken promises about immigration.

Within the first few weeks of being a newly elected Government, Labour has introduced legislation to:

”strengthen the border with a new Bill that modernises the asylum and immigration system, including launching a new Border Security Command. The command will deploy more police and investigators to smash the criminal smuggling gangs, tackling the problem at source. The Bill will give law enforcement new enhanced counter-terror style powers to destroy the evil business model of human trafficking. “

King’s Speech July 2024.

That’s how politics works by voting at the ballot box

The King's Speech 2024

His Majesty’s most gracious speech to both Houses of Parliament.

www.gov.uk

 

[nevergoagain]

Not so brave with the police on this encounter, was she?

Will likely get flamed for this but that's not my point. For the offence she has committed, and I do hope she gets done, is it normal to kick doors in to perform an arrest like that, I can understand if she's refused to answer but clip doesn't show that. Also not a particular fan of her phone number being published on that tweet and thus on here TBF.

 

[carlzeiss]

They didn't force her off air. She had a security team with her and wasn't in danger.

And was able to drive away safely as the protestor failed to slash the tyres of their vehicle

Masked man 'stabs tyre' of Sky News van in city after reporter forced off air

A man was caught on camera appearing to stab a van tyre before an eyewitness said 'he's going to do the same to us'

www.birminghammail.co.uk

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

That’s how politics works by voting at the ballot box

And it's at times like this you really appreciate this

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

A bit of a tangential issue. But has this been a good week for the police? I mean I'm sure that's not what they are thinking at the moment. But every news story which they are in the middle of has generally not been putting them in a very good light for quite some time.

Here they've been quick to make arrests, calm under pressure (apart from Rowley), organised and responsive. And public support for making sure there are more of them must be at a real high

 

[The Clamp]

The military isn’t needed. Wrong job, wrong audience even. Police more than capable and better trained / experienced in. Besides, the bigger issue is what to do with these things after arrested. No point if CPS and MoJ has insufficient HMP capacity and/or can’t even process them. Who’d want to be in either service though? “It’s Tommy this, and Tommy that…” We treat our security services and police with total contempt and hypocrisy in the main.

All good points.

 

[Jim in the West]

People have been angry about immigration and it’s problems for ages, and people have been protesting about immigration issues for ages, the politicians (all flavours) know this, many of the protests have been non violent and therefore not of media interest.

If we have a relentless wave of anti-immigrant propaganda (MSM, politicians, dangerous idiots like Laurence Fox etc etc) then people WILL get angry about immigration.

People would likely also get very angry if ginger-haired people were blamed for all of society's ills. Imagine year after year of Daily Mail headlines about the swarms of ginger-haired people taking our jobs, using our precious NHS services, and so on. However, another narrative is possible - and much, much more accurate. Ginger haired people are not, after all, taking all our jobs. They are mainly doing jobs we don't want to do - or, often they are highly qualified and working everyday to save lives in the NHS. They often have to face severe prejudice, and have to escape persecution in their own country (in the case of ginger-haired people, this would likely be Scotland or Ireland).

We could solve much of the "problem" of immigration if we realised how beneficial it was, and the MSM adopted a different narrative which celebrated people who came here.

 

[portlock seagull]

Will likely get flamed for this but that's not my point. For the offence she has committed, and I do hope she gets done, is it normal to kick doors in to perform an arrest like that, I can understand if she's refused to answer but clip doesn't show that. Also not a particular fan of her phone number being published on that tweet and thus on here TBF.

I really don’t care. In such times, got to visibly show justice will be served even if a few days after your idiocy. She’s obviously being used as a warning to others and I’ve no problem with that however it happens.

 

[Justice]

x.com

twitter.com

No violence either - seemingly more directed at getting something on the TV.

A guy minding his own business smoking outside a pub got attacked by around ten thugs.
You are correct if we selectively choose the sky reporter clip then yes no acts of violence occurred in that one particular clip.