UK riots: The end of the liberals’ great moral delusion. David Starkey's Newsnight race remarks: hundreds complain to BBC | Media. The BBC has received nearly 700 complaints about the historian and broadcaster David Starkey's claim that "whites have become black" during a discussion about last week's riots on Newsnight. Of those contacting the BBC, 696 were protesting about Starkey's comments, and 21 complained the debate was chaired poorly and he was treated "unfairly". The media regulator Ofcom also had complaints and an online campaign by an organisation called gopetition.co.uk demanding that the BBC issue a public apology for "unacceptable comments" had attracted more than 3,600 signatures by mid-afternoon . The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, described Starkey's comments on race as "disgusting and outrageous".
Speaking at Haverstock school, his former school in Chalk Farm, north London, Miliband said it was "absolutely outrageous that someone in the 21st century could be making that sort of comment". CNN presenter Piers Morgan described him on Twitter as "a racist idiot" and said he had committed career suicide. UK riots: Big Brother isn't watching you | UK news. I no longer live in London. I've been transplanted to Los Angeles by a combination of love and money; such good fortune and opportunity, in both cases, you might think disqualify me from commenting on matters in my homeland. Even the results of Britain's Got Ice-Factor may lay prettily glistening beyond my remit now that I am self-banished. To be honest when I lived in England I didn't really care too much for the fabricated theatrics of reality TV.
Except when I worked for Big Brother, then it was my job to slosh about in the amplified trivia of the housemates/inmates. Sometimes it was actually quite bloody interesting. Particularly the year that Nadia won. Early in that series there was an incident of excitement and high tension. "Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing we want you to say the opposite of," said the channel's representative. The only question I can legitimately ask is: why is this happening? That was never my cup of tea though.
Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure. Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why? I have been saying for years that it was coming, and why it was coming, and what could be done to stop it. I have said it in books, in articles, over lunch and dinner tables with politicians whose lips curled with lofty contempt. So yes, I am deeply sorry for the innocent and gentle people who have lost lives, homes, businesses and security. But I am not really very sorry for the elite liberal Londoners who have suddenly discovered what millions of others have lived with for decades. Just look and see how many shops are protected with steel shutters, how many homes have bars on their windows.
As the polluted flood (it is not a tide; it will not go back down again) of spite, greed and violence washes on to their very doorsteps, well-off and influential Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally. Gangland culture takes over where UK society leaves off. Commentators around the world have rushed to link the London riots to the protest movements in Arab countries which sparked revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, and near civil war in Syria.
Of course there are similarities in every street disturbance, but in this case trying to draw comparisons is a dead end. It does not get us closer to understanding what was happening in either case. This is easily illustrated by contrasting the risks that the young people ran. Thousands of Arab protesters have been shot dead by police and the army. In Britain, the police have not used live rounds, plastic bullets or even water cannon against the rioters. In Britain, not a single political demand has been advanced, though police harassment of the black community is undoubtedly a spur. The looters themselves have justified their actions variously - "the police are to blame for not stopping us"; "we want to show the rich we can do what we want"; "we are getting back our taxes.
" Page 2 of 2 One-page article. Leading article: Liberalism has improved Britain – its defenders must speak up - Leading Articles, Opinion. Less predictable, perhaps, was the near-unanimity on parade in Parliament on Thursday, where MPs from all parties vied to identify a malaise that stemmed, as they saw it, from a destructive moral laxity pervading Britain. From parenting to education to policing, a cross-party consensus called for discipline, toughness and the re-establishment and enforcement of boundaries. It could be argued that, in their clarion calls, the politicians were doing no more than reflecting the public mood. An e-petition demanding the withdrawal of state benefits and council homes from those involved in the disturbances has soared to the top of the 10 Downing Street website.
A poll we publish today has 78 per cent of those asked supporting automatic prison sentences for anyone convicted of rioting and 54 per cent agreeing that Mr Cameron failed to provide the necessary leadership. True, some aspects of social policy may have had unintended, even malign, consequences. A palpable change in the national mood. How to recover Britain’s streets for civilisation. What isn’t behind the London riots. If the revelation has puzzled outsiders, it has confused Britons no less. The mood here is a mixture of rage, fear and bafflement. Not that we’re not used to riots: We are. England caught fire during that other royal-wedding year, 1981. But 30 years ago, the battle lines were relatively clear. Race was central, especially in the predominantly black south London neighborhood of Brixton. Even though the troubles ignited last week after the police killing of a black Briton in the north London area of Tottenham, the copycat outbursts since have lacked that racial dimension.
The Guardian’s Zoe Williams has called these the “shopping riots,” noting the way the mobs move from malls to main-street stores, avoiding confrontation with the police, in contrast with the 1981 rioters, who actively sought it. I walked the length of Tottenham’s High Road on Wednesday, as demolition crews removed what was left of the large carpet store burned to ash on Saturday. Mark Steyn: Lessons for us from London in flames | london, want, book - Opinion. Mark Steyn: Lessons for us from London in flames LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 08: A rioter throws a rock at riot police in Clarence Road in Hackney on August 8, 2011 in London, England. Pockets of rioting and looting continues to take place in various boroughs of London this evening, as well as in Birmingham, prompted by the initial rioting in Tottenham and then in Brixton on Sunday night. It has been announced that the Prime Minister David Cameron and his family are due to return home from their summer holiday in Tuscany, Italy to respond to the rioting.
Disturbances broke out late on Saturday night in Tottenham and the surrounding area after the killing of Mark Duggan, 29 and a father-of-four, by armed police in an attempted arrest on August 4. Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images The trick in this business is not to be right too early. 55 cartoons on the Walll Street rollercoaster Hey, why not? Why do they need a Dutch hooker? Here's another line from my book: UK riots 2011: Liberal dogma has spawned a generation of brutalised youths. By Max Hastings A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.
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!” ’ I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today. Rich pickings: Hooded looters laden with clothes run from a Manchester shopping centre It was fun. If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries. They are essentially wild beasts. So who is to blame? Riots without responsibility | Shaun Bailey. The looting and rioting over the last few days have been committed by a very small proportion of this nation's young people. They have shown us – the "grownups" – what can happen when a minority decide to take things that do not belong them, using violence as an intimidation tactic.
But let's get this straight at the outset: these events have not been motivated by a single, unifying cause. Let's not crudely simplify this week's violence – for if we do so, we will fail to learn the lessons that really need to be learned. I believe there are four main aspects to the riots: young people being opportunistic; young people wanting to show those in authority who is boss; a general anger and angst among young people; and politicians jumping on the bandwagon to forward their own beliefs. Word up, kids – smashing up your neighbour's business or setting fire to someone's home is pure criminality. How do I know this? For me, the deepest issue at play here is one of responsibility. London’s burning: a mob made by the welfare state | Brendan O’Neill. Many commentators are on a mission to contextualise the riots that have swept parts of urban London and other British cities.
‘It’s very naive to look at these riots without the context’, says one journalist , who says the reason the violence kicked off in the London suburb of Tottenham is because ‘that area is getting 75% cuts [in public services]’. Others have said that the political context for the rioting is youth unemployment or working-class anger at David Cameron’s cuts agenda.
‘There is a context to London’s riots that can’t be ignored’, said a writer for the Guardian , and it is the ‘backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures’. The ‘mass unrest’ is a protest against unhinged capitalism, apparently. These observers are right that there is a political context to the riots. They are right to argue that while the police shooting of young black man Mark Duggan may ostensibly have been the trigger for the street violence, there is a broader context to the disturbances. ‘The police are just scratching their arses’ | Patrick Hayes. Following riots, fires and looting in the north London town of Enfield, last night a group of up to 300 local men patrolled the streets in an attempt to ‘reclaim them’. Such community action has been written off by some observers as vigilantism, even as the work of white racists who just hate black rioters.
In truth, the rise of citizen anti-riot squads in Enfield and elsewhere is testament to the absence of the authorities and the failure of the state to get a handle on the recent urban disturbances. ‘Why am I here? Because the police aren’t doing their job and someone has to’, said one of the so-called vigilantes in Enfield. ‘We’re here to stop people smashing up our town.’ A vigilante dressed as Wolverine goes some way to cut the tension in the deserted town. Gathering at the war memorial in central Enfield, the men discussed their plans to march through the streets in order to prevent further rioting. The group of vigilantes wasn’t due to begin patrolling until 9pm. UK riots 2011: London and Birmingham people forced to strip naked in the street. By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 00:51 GMT, 10 August 2011 This picture shows the shocking depths the thugs were prepared to plumb – stealing the clothes from a man’s back.
The taller, broader man already holds a pair of white and green trainers and a white T-shirt in his hands. Now, it seems, he wants the trousers too. The shorter man dutifully removes his jeans, leaving only his dark blue underpants and his white socks. Humiliation: A young man is forced to strip to his underpants in the street, having apparently already handed his T-shirt and trainers to a looter.
The image appeared on Twitter as internet rumours claimed that, on top of widespread violence and looting across London, thugs were even removing clothing from their victims. Several people on Twitter claimed there have been incidents of victims being stripped naked in Deptford, South London and Birmingham but, because of the very nature of the alleged incidents, the reports remain unsubstantiated. The year we realised our democratically elected leaders can no longer protect us | Jonathan Freedland.
The soul sinks at the pictures – of a woman leaping from a burning building, of the owners of a family shop seeing their life's work turned to ash, at the sight of a thug unzipping the rucksack still on the back of an injured teenager and taking from it what he wants. The soul sinks at the sight of people trashing the places where at least some of them live. There is another sensation you feel watching these pictures, and it is one with which we are becoming increasingly familiar, especially in 2011, the year the news refused to stop.
It is impotence. The most unsettling reports have been of policemen standing back, apparently powerless to stop people as they smash and burn and steal. It's deeply unnerving to see those we expect to protect us incapable and in retreat. Read the comment threads and Twitter feeds, with their demands that "this must stop", or even for looters to be "shot on sight", and you see the signs of impotent rage, the desperate desire for somebody to do something. Melanie Phillips On The UK Riots. Goodbye to the Enlightenment. Published in: Melanie's Blog An illuminating report on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme (0810) this morning said it all about the British riots. Some teenage thugs who were hooding up to go looting were asked why they were doing it. Maybe they couldn’t afford the trainers and other goods they were setting out to steal? Yeah, we can afford them, came the reply; but since the goods were there to be robbed, it was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up.
What about their parents? Did they know where they were? Some of the rioters and looters are as young as eight or nine. The parents are the problem; as are, almost certainly, their parents and their parents too. As I have been writing for more than twenty years, a society that embraces mass fatherlessness is a society that is going off the edge of a cliff. London riots: 'People are fighting back. It's their neighbourhoods at stake' | UK news. London riots: an officer from South Wales police in Hackney. Some business owners have taken to defending their property themselves. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA When the rioters came to attack the premises of Kurdish and Turkish businesses in Hackney's Stoke Newington High Street and Kingsland Road on Monday night, the owners were waiting for them. "It was between about nine and 10 at night," said Yilmaz Karagoz, sitting in his coffee shop next to a jeweller's shop that has been shuttered since Sunday when the rioting began and a pharmacy that closed a day after.
"There were a lot of them. We came out of our shops but the police asked us to do nothing. But the police did not do anything so, as more came, we chased them off ourselves. " On Green Street in East Ham a similar-sized group of rioters was chased away by several hundred Asian residents. Tuesday night there were further reports of communities taking steps to defend themselves. "We have to do things for ourselves," said Huseyin. Boris Johnson heckled in Clapham Junction over London riots | Politics. Who are the rioters? Young men from poor areas ... but that's not the full story | UK news. London riots: victim in YouTube video is Malaysian student | UK news. UK riots 2011: 16k police ready to use plastic bullets keep lid on London's looters.
Riots Spotlight London’s Troubled Youths. The World from Berlin: 'Riots Reveal the Decay of British Society' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International.