Rioting in London/Urban living conditions

[Anonymous]

I hate to say it David, but Joe Sixpack is glowing and waving banners in the street telling everybody how good the feeling is…sad.

[Trace One]

I think you should be kicked off for posting that disgusting racist claptrap, that is always associated with racist attitudes – who are you kidding, and hiding behind?  I will erase that comment but you should erase that link –  it is traditional republican racist opinion, and to pretend you are ‘independent’ from that argument is denying the reality that you pretend to espouse. Your ‘alternate’ set of research is consistently presented by you as truth, reality, when in fact it is just blind predjucide. At least for the first time you qualify your opinion as ‘alternate set of research’ – yes you went way too far with that one..even subtracting the racist element that is associated with the ‘blaming single mother’s garbage, just ‘blaming single mothers ‘ garbage is equally as offensive.. You can pretend to divorce yourself from the societal implications ALWAYS made with that argument, but it is just like hiding an elephant behind a curtain.

And if you deny the correlation between racism and the ‘single mother’s argument, you apparently, as you have stated before, think that your super-rightist views spring like a vision from the ethos. I suggest you google ‘blame single mothers’ for some societal context to the statements you are making. It is the usual, and not new, by the way, republican racist rant. Sorry, Jason, your opinions are not isolated from the rest of the world. So I suggest to you before you post clap-trap like that you look into it a bit more to understand the implications of what you are saying.  I demand you issue an apology to single mothers, for a start, and erase that disgusting link.

[Trace One]

 Craig, read the link Jason posted. “Blame single mothers’ is the meme, and this is an argument that is always associated with racism. There is social context to one’s opinions, and if one wants to pal around with racist views, geuss what you end up with? Or perhaps it is  just as ok to pretend that it is only ‘single  mothers’ that ‘really concern you”. To me, I find that argument equallyas offensive and blindly predjudiced against a set of humans who deserve no blame.

[Heather Smith]

I didn’t know being a single mother was being promoted? haha. That is a desirable state? Nothing I was taught despite being raised by single women. Being a mother is hard work, mentally draining! I can’t imagine living in poverty as a single mother. Uff da!

I also see reference to a “weak police force”…we still have these problems in our country with a very harsh(in many instances) judicial system. We only have to look at the rates of incarceration and sentencing times for African American males to see that this is unfair and is certainly not helping our own society.
For the record, I do not think you are racist Jason. I think you are a nice person. I do think that this article makes a lot of veiled assumptions about the poor and the part I find most troubling is how often the writer compares these delinquents to animals and his own dogs. It is not hard to see the slippery slope of disdain leading to very undesirable consequences. Throughout history we see the dehumanization of others and it never leads to good…whether they are homeless, unemployed or other. It takes the responsibility off of our shoulders because we can crinkle our noses and just say it is because they are lazy or dirty or drunk. Send them to jail, push them out of our nice neighborhoods…we don’t want to see them! We don’t want to be reminded they exist!  Ayn Rand and others have called such people parasites and unfortunately this mindset dominates half of our political mindset. There are reasons we have these issues…and despite the writers assumption that a stronger police force would prevent this they only need to look across the ocean to us to see that it doesn’t. If anything I thank God they are not all armed to the teeth like we are.

[Ben Yahr]

Seriously Jason, turn off Fox News.  There have been no riots in Wisconsin come even close to fitting your “pattern”.

 

I’m also a bit confused by the original post: Sure, if you were to relocate people with few prospects for jobs or future prosperity from dense urban cores to the suburbs, that would indeed reduce the prospects of riots similar to the types seen in London.  But that idea is unbelievably wrong on some many levels.

 

A question to all- what sort of work do you expect the unemployed to find?  This is a huge problem in Europe, and obviously growing in the US.  There are no jobs. 

 

Until this is addressed meaningfully, no amount of urban planning, increased law enforcement, “immigration reform”, austerity measures, or tax reductions is going to do a bit of good in reducing discontent; and the possibility of people expressing their discontent violently.

[Boilerplater]

OK, what about the evidence that “entitlement” programs (wow, I hate using that term in a pejorative sense, the way Repubs do) have caused a decline in African American families headed by two parents.  I recall reading that the number was much higher before the ’60s.  Of course, a whole host of social factors have combined to reduce the overall rate of two-parent housholds in the overall population, such as greater social acceptance of divorce, women feeling empowered to leave abusive relationships, women attaining greater status in the workplace, and so on.

 

Hmm.  Maybe the building boom could be seen as a massive entitlement program for landscape architects.  It allowed our population to grow, and now that its gone bust, our population will shrink.  It will shrink to a level that is sustainable by our economy, right?  But no, we go in boom and bust cycles.  So should the government sustain us as “surplus labor” until the next boom rolls around?  By the same token, are there upsides to keeping such a large population sustained?  Do we need them to maintain a market for food and utilities?  Oppression of a people often results in higher rates of fecundity.  You find the same kinds of teen mom, multiple birth/multiple dad situations in inner city Belfast as you do in inner city US, don’t you David? 

 

Just so we’re clear, I’m asking blunt questions more as intellectual exercise than actual suggestions for policy strategies!

[Boilerplater]

So much for that theory:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025017/LONDON-RIOTS-The-heeled-join-downtrodden-looting-spree.html

 

He should’ve looked into the situation a little more before co-opting the events to serve his personal beliefs and prejudices.  He only had to wait a day more for his OWN PAPER! 

[Anonymous]

So should the government sustain us as “surplus labor” until the next boom rolls around?

 

You’ve got me thinking now.

[Heather Smith]

haha

[Anonymous]

Oh my!

[Boilerplater]

Here’s what some Brit architects have had to say about it:

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/8618373.article

I think its interesting that the idea that it is a problem of the disadvantaged and poor is assumed by all of them.  Its “those people” that are doing the rioting.  The architects that present themselves as more socially progressive tend to frame it as an urban design problem.

 

I followed that path for a while, that better design will result in a better society, but gave up on it.  Too frustrating, too many intractable arguments.  Just let me design a garden and let me sleep well at night!

[richard andrews]

senseless 

[Jason T. Radice]

Please stop advertising via link on this forum.

[Alan Ray, RLA]

Rational thought never has appealed to Tracie….

always a leftist agenda in her spews…..too bad to be so narrow minded so as not to be able to consider another idea of any kind.

…”and keep on thinking free”…..

[Anonymous]

Of course I read the article. I knew it was a bogus article when it leads off with.

 

He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” 

 

That doesn’t even sound like something anyone from America would say, least someone from the hood. Are you kidding me? A person that writes a story that begins with some made up b.s. like that is too stupid to disguise their slanted opinion long enough to keep a reader interested. It’s the same as the right wing garbage that gets served up as journalism in this country.

 

I will not go so far as to call the man a racist for posting a stupid slanted article. It’s not like he’s posted a link to the ‘Turner Diaries’ or something. Honestly, I think that’s too strong a label to stick on someone that believes what half of this country believes. We don’t need any more name calling in this country; we need to be able to sit down together and talk.

[Author]

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