Blair: 'Riots Not Caused By Broken Society'

[dipsydoodle]

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has weighed into the debate over this summer's rioting, accusing David Cameron, Ed Miliband and his successor as Labour prime minister Gordon Brown of not properly understanding and addressing the underlying causes.

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"The big cause is the group of alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour," he claimed.

"The truth is that many of these people are from families that are profoundly dysfunctional, operating on completely different terms from the rest of society, either middle class or poor.

And, in a thinly veiled attack on Prime Minister David Cameron's critique, he said: "We are in danger of the wrong analysis leading to the wrong diagnosis, leading to the wrong prescription."

http://news.sky.com/home/article/16053854

[oldironside]

1. The thing is...

... he may or may not have a point. But given his record in other areas, who's going to listen to him?

[non sociopath skin]

2. Yesterday's Man.

Fortunately.

The Skin

[dipsydoodle]

3. Well just for a change

I think he's close to getting it right.

Personally I think the origins go back to changes in the education system across the '70's and '80's which led to less discipline at school. My children are 40 and a few days short of 42 so I am relating directly to those periods - not just reading comics on the subject.

I still regard them as being complete fucking amateurs, other than the looting aspects , compared for example with the London football firms. By the middle of the week following commencement of activities word had gone round for all of the firms to team up and take on the looters. Fortunately the looting fizzled out anyway which was probably just as well - most of the looters wouldn't take to well to meeting Mr Stanley.

[non sociopath skin]

5. Which particular changes did you have in mind?

Pardon me for being a little cynical, but I'm old enough to remember when the education policies of the 50s and 60s were blamed for less discipline in schools which the education policies of the 70s (Callaghan and Williams) and the 80s (Thatcher, Joseph and Baker) were supposed to be putting right.

Not to mention those of Blair and Blunkett in the 90s.

The Skin

[fedsron2us]

4. Maybe I am being simplistic but riots in the UK

have a strange correlation with severe recessions and high unemployment amongst young adults. The Guardians analysis of the court cases arising from the riots reveals that the majority of those convicted appeared to have no job.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-magistrates-court-list?mobile-redirect=fa

The riots also tended to be centred on major cities where extremes of wealth and poverty coexisted in relatively small geographic areas.

I cannot help noticing that too many people at the heart of British politics are keen to seek moral and social solutions to the unrest rather than economic ones. Maybe this reluctance is due to the fact that this would reveal that the neo liberal economic order that has dominated policy making under both Tory and New Labour is quite literally bankrupt.

[dipsydoodle]

6. They do make it clear they making an assumption

aside from which some of those below 18 may still be at school.

Quote for you link :

People facing court charged with riot-related offences are overwhelmingly young, male and unemployed - although WE ARE ASSUMING THAT last from the lack of jobs recorded in court reports. Those who are pleading guilty are receiving prison sentences - or being passed onto higher courts for stiffer sentencing. Out of the 1.7m cases heard in magistrates courts last year, only 3.5% were remanded to jail, and about 10% of violent crime cases get remanded. These figures from this week show a rate of 50-60%.

"strange correlation with severe recessions" How many examples of rioting with aggravated burglary and looting do you want to quote ?