Rioting for 'fun'?

So a small minority of youths around England are engaged in a prolonged period of criminal activity; destroying business', personal property and homes, looting and endangering life. The net result? Less prospects for themselves, a huge public liability to repair damage, a greater chance of arrest for handling stolen goods, even less chance of buying or renting their own home in the future, and the possibility of having the shadow (whether caught, prosecuted or not) of manslaughter or murder over their heads.



Who are these mindless morons? And what is their motivation for this campaign of destruction and fear?



Spectators are suggesting they are the ‘dissaffected’, ‘futureless’ and any number of adjectives which describe them as hopeless and hard-done-to. One spectator suggested that, ‘the young of today all want to be rich and famous but without doing the hard work to reach those achievable ambitions.’ Indeed, perhaps just 2 years ago, a survey of 8-15 year olds in schools across England suggested that the level of ambition in up to 80% of them was to ‘be a celebrity’, ‘be rich and famous’, ‘win X-Factor’, ‘be a professional football player’ ‘win Big-Brother’ or ‘win the lottery.’ The remaining 20% were a mixture of ‘don’t know yet’, ‘be a Doctor/Surgeon’, ‘be a Lawyer’, ‘be a plumber’ and other useful skilled jobs and professions. 20% with realistic and worthwhile ambitions; A sad indictment for us all.



But why? I think significantly more than 20% of the population of families in Britain have credible, comfortable homes to live in, good food, a nice car, a massive TV and more gadgets than you could hope to play with at once? More than 20% of the parents of these families are capable of instilling basic social values into their children? Well of course there are and they are…. We are talking about a scurrilous minority of people here – not a blanket of everyone under the age of 25 (note that one of the rioters detained yesterday was 47)!



What is clear however is that while a very small percentage of people (and it is a small percentage because that is after all how economics work) achieve fame and fortune, it is the ever widening gap between (I’m not going to use the cliché ‘have and have-nots’) the haves and have mores that is capable of inflaming that all too human emotion of ‘jealousy’. And we have all at some time experienced that emotion and know how incredibly destructive it can be. We keep hearing about ‘average UK income' as over £25000 per year – whether correct or not, the figure is irrelevant when some professional footballers, movie stars and recording artists are receiving that much in 1 day – in some cases in an hour. And let’s not forget the Fund Managers and Bankers who have dragged the world economy to the edge of the precipice but are still be awarded unfathomable bonuses for failure – in some cases at the expense of the public purse, but in most cases at the expense of the investor who is left with no dividend or negative equity.



But this does not excuse the calculated behavior of these so called 'dissaffected' haves...



For indeed, the youths and people who are rioting ‘have.’ The have-nots are too busy scrabbling for there next meal to waste energy smashing in windows. Notice all of the rioters have quality clothes on their backs, the latest most expensive trainers and of course plenty of time and energy to spare. None of them are hungry or thirsty, cold or exposed.



But whilst they’re violence is counter productive and can do nothing but harm, it is difficult to ignore that Society and more importantly Governments are ignoring the growing divide between the working / middle classes and the Super Rich, and if, like the rioters and 95% of the British populace you fall into the former (i.e. your not super-rich), it truly is obscene. And unfortunately, so long as there are so many politicians in Government that fall into the latter category, earning over £100K a year from their duties and probably up to a further £250K a year from ‘non-executive director-ships,’ and ‘consultancies’ – things are unlikely to change. And of course not all our politicians are earning that kind of money, but if they hang on for long enough, they will – or if they fiddle their expenses and are ‘retired’ – they walk away with a £1 million resettlement payment which is certainly worth their honour.



So how does the Metropolitan Police and other regional Police forces handle the rioting which will surely follow tonight? The Army? What Army? They’re deployed, recovering or living in Germany… Plastic bullets? Well that ‘less than lethal weapon’ could insight further violence when another possible ‘innocent’ is maimed. But have they considered ‘marking’ the rioters? What about firing permanent dye pellets at them? There are food dyes available that are non-toxic, bio-degradable but extremely hard to wash off skin… Surely these youths would be less prone to commit crime if they new for a fact they would get caught? And then what? Well, what can you do with extremely dissatisfied, violent people? Easy – show them what real dissatisfaction is and what real violence is; give them a set of Khakis, boots and a helmet and send them to the front of every foot patrol currently in Afghanistan; we’d much rather that these 'dissaffected' and unsatisfied, hard-done-to 'hard-men' get shot or blown apart than the brave young men who are currently out doing the politician bidding for less than £25K per year, and living in tents in one of the dirtiest, most primitive countries on the globe.



And if these rioters come back – well, they’ll at least know the difference between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ and understand the significance of violence.