Britain riots: my two cents (or rather a rant)

[alexandral]

I rarely rant about political matters, but I do so occasionally. This is the day for ranting because I have not seen anything as scary as current British riots in my life (and I lived through the fall-out from the collapse of USSR which at the time I thought to be the scariest time of my life). I do find it doubly-scary because I have always thought that the level of life and opportunities existing in Britain (even now), even in the poorest places, are much higher than in many many places in less developed countries. So I can not quite understand: why? When there is rioting in third-world countries, like China, it is often attributed to the countries' "regime". What are we to attribute the British riots to? Democracy?

I find the situation scary and I find it appalling. But the thing I do not understand personally is what is happening with the Police and other forces responsible for keeping the peace in the country. Where are they?

For example, there is an article explaining "What could the police do to stop the rioting?" on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14459127. What it says is that Britain is not comfortable with the use of Water Canons, Baton rounds or Army forces. This is a typical phrase: "British policing traditionally did not rely on such methods" and that "In other countries they'd be deployed in the blink of an eye" (meaning Army forces). But seriously, may be this is the time to reconsider?

Comments

[raffaella.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect to see something like this happen so fast in England. I remember that there were riots in the 80s, like in Brixton, but I was a kid so I don't know if this is comparable. Plus that was a while ago, and I always thought the social tensions and the potential for violence weren't as bad as in France. I don't even know what to say.

I can't get a clear idea from the media -- is this happening in localised areas of big cities or is it more widespread? I'm asking because a few years ago, the "Paris" riots didn't take place in Paris proper, "just" in some localised poor suburbs (it was bad enough, though), which meant that if you lived and worked in Paris intra-muros, you wouldn't have thought anything was happening. This looks worse, if only because they've burned buildings and there are deaths already.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

Me too. I don't watch news all that often, so I found out about this yesterday from LJ, but it seems that the situation has escalated since then.

You can follow the progress on BBC special page, here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14449675.

This is a map of riots on Google maps:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=207192798388318292131.0004aa01af6748773e8f7

The most central place I know is Oxford Circus - I have been there , when vising London.