People drink too much in the UK.

It's pretty scary.

notice how much publicity there has been for that kid who was killed, the one with the soap star sister? you don't see that much media coverage for a black kid do ya.

tommydski wrote:People drink too much in the UK.

It's pretty scary.

It's great! I don't feel like as much of an alcoholic since I moved here.

honeyisfunny wrote:

Rimbaud III wrote:This shit is going to play itself out time and again in our lifetimes. The real issues here are poverty and inequality.

Yes and no. I think I speak for most of my friends who live locally in saying we are exceptionally NOT well-off. Mugging one of us is a fairly pointless exercise - financially at least.

The 'mugging' aspect is in reference to Hall's study in 78. His wider point is one about moral panic - which over time will shift from one issue to another - and the political capital wrung from it by the state. Currently, we're fixated with fear of gun/knife-toting teenagers, that's the only difference. Also, the act of violence itself isn't necessarily perpetrated for financial gain. People are attacked for a lot less. I've been in hairy situations where there's been a warped perception that I've 'disrespected' someone when it's clear that the confrontation was being put on as a show of machismo for the benefit of my attacker's friends.

honeyisfunny wrote:The increase in violence and 'pointless' violent behaviour (by that I mean violence without motive, violence for the sake of it - a random punch or act of vandalism for example) is largely down to the people who commit the acts knowing far more about the law and how it works than they ever used to.

Kids know they can't go to prison, they know that even if they're caught on CCTV camera doing something that it's highly unlikely they'll be prosecuted and even if they are the punishment will be minor. The Police are in a helpless situation but what makes it worse is that when something happens and you have to deal with the Police they often convey this helplessness to you, the victim.

I was considering this last night watching a panel discussion on Channel Four as they wheeled out a victim of knife crime that had been rendered totally paralysed by it. His attackers served half of their sentences - five years in one case. I think you're right about punishment being disproportionately lenient, especially where violent crime is involved. Serious crimes should involve serious sentences.

Yuck. That made me sound like a Tory politician.

honeyisfunny wrote:Kids are always going to be bored. They're always going to fuck with stuff. But now, especially where I live, it's totally lawless. And the kids are so stupid that they will knife someone eventually or shoot someone (as has happened) because there is no ceiling on their behaviour.

To say it's because they're underprivileged is kind of missing the point. Most of the random acts of violence carried out locally to me have no financial motive at all. Someone I know's wife was really badly beaten by a gang of kids (13/14 yrs old) who tried to steal her dog while she walked it.

Mmm, I haven't suggested that these acts of violence are committed to enrich the perpetrators. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm saying that I believe the anomie has arisen out of a systematic refusal to address some fundamental issues. Right or wrong, I think the aggression comes out of a sensation of futility.

How much violent crime do we see in white-middle class Britain?

When you have nothing, and are made to believe you are worth nothing, what do you have to lose?

Moral panic theory:




NOT CRAP.

I had typed out a three paragraph response but I found that diagram pretty much explained what I had wrote.

Rimbaud III wrote:Hall's study in 78

I have a copy of Policing The Crisis somewhere, and it is without doubt one of the most awesome sociology books ever. A tour de force.

I haven't read all of the above pages so forgive me if I am repeating what others have said etc.

The media love a knife killing - certainly at the moment - so they tell us more about it cause it's less effort than actually doing any real journalism.

We are all affected and influenced by the media but who do you think is most influenced?
My guess is ignorant little estate spugs who are totally ignored and alienated by society on every day they are not stabbing some poor fucker.

They feel looked at when they misbehave.
This is important.
Do you think these children got much attention when they are growing up?(sic)

We love looking at them.

It makes us feel all righteous etc.

It's a cycle we are all complicit in but like so many things it's a side show.

I note that the particular increase in press idioc... (sorry) frenzy follows hot on the heels of a couple of white kids with apparently pertinent connections to Harry Potter and East...fucking...enders.

Fuck knows what happened to these French fellas. I'm ready to be wrong but I'd be surprised if this was random or only connected to a 'simple' burglary.

I refuse to let little cock ends or (the greater problem) the press cripple me into thinking I'm going to be stabbed whenever I leave the front door.

I doubt cheap supermarket booze helps matters.

Which reminds me - I'm off to buy some.

There's a short analysis on the BBC here which I think is helpful.

Mark Easton on the BBC wrote:Between the years 2002-3 and 2006-7, the number of these children admitted to hospital with knife wounds in England "almost doubled" we are told. From 95 cases to 179. A rise of 88%.

However, over the same period, the numbers of under-16s admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds has gone down from 253 to 181. A fall of 28%.*

So, 84 more children were admitted with stab injuries than five years earlier. But 72 fewer children were admitted with gunshot injuries.

{*= I've manually corrected a typo they corrected later in the article -sparky.}

holmes wrote:i agree, to use poverty as an excuse rather than the fact these people are just fucking scum is a complete cop out. my great great grandfathers worked down bloody coal mines all day and didnt go around stabbing everyone.

I don't like this argument: it is as wrong as saying your gran smoked twenty cigarettes a day and died in a skiing accident when she was 90, hence smoking is not bad for you. As RIII says, you don't see so many middle-class kids going around stabbing each other.

"Fucking scum" is pretty close to old NF talk. Understandable if you've been beaten or mugged (I have along with most of us here, it seems), but still dodgy. And this:

holmes wrote:i think we should just round up these people and fucking kill them.

...is fucked.

holmes wrote:i agree, to use poverty as an excuse rather than the fact these people are just fucking scum is a complete cop out. my great great grandfathers worked down bloody coal mines all day and didnt go around stabbing everyone.

holmes wrote:i think we should just round up these people and fucking kill them.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.


Would you, sir, go so far as to say that the Poor are our Affliction?

Rick Reuben wrote: But I'm sure people will still blame the tools of violence ( like guns or knives ) more than the two headed enemy: weak economy and orchestrated psychiatric warfare against the population.

Find me one post on this thread blaming these 'tools', as opposed to the dozen or so blaming economic and social blight. For that matter, find me anything anywhere that blames the actual existence of knives themselves to be the problem. Handguns are outright banned in the UK; gun crime is still a problem. No-one apart from the most rightwing nutjobs are blaming the laws.

As for 'orchestrated psychic warfare', if you mean 'late capitalism atomising society', I'm right with you. Otherwise, you're on your own.