Rioting Beer

[hsb]

Poms have got a bad name for this type of thing all over the world, just look how they behave at the soccer. So very brave in a mob of hundreds.

Ahem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism

Brits on holiday in Torremilinos 'lashing in the fountains and shouting at the locals has got nothing to do with the riots going on at the moment.
I doubt many of those involved have even been abroad and football fans have even come out in numbers to protect their neighbourhoods - Millwall being one.

Danny Baker's twitter (prodnose) has been pretty amusing on the riots, go back a couple of days for gems such as

Incredible. To attack Tottenham Apple Store rioters must first book appointment with trained "Loot Genius".

Police arrest 18 looters at Enfield Argos. All found waiting in foyer for their stuff from the warehouse.

https://twitter.com/#!/prodnose

I think we're seeing our first real taste of 'Big Society' over there. It'll all simmer down soon enough, school holidays at the moment init.

 

[Bribie G]

Britain has always had a dark and very violent "underclass" system which is only now emerging in Australia. Back in the 1970s when I arrived here I was impressed by the lack of the "Jasmine Allen Estate" classes (for those of you who ever watched "The Bill") in Australia back in those days of genuine full employment - . Tyneside in particular was horrendous, I could have taken you down to the Bigg Market area on a Saturday night and within five minutes you'd be curled up in a foetal position whimpering "take me home mummy". Dead bodies in alleys, massive punch ups etc. My Dad was a sergeant in the Special Incidents Squad and they would wade in with huge batons - he used to bring his home and it was one heavy mofo - made out of some sort of tropical wood that was almost as dense as cast iron. And it had chips in it



When United used to play the likes of Celtic in a home game, the city would empty, shop fronts would be boarded up and anyone not looking for a riot would flee. You can't really judge what is going on by Australian Standards unless you have actually lived for a while in a country the size of Victoria with three times the population of Australia and the still very inflexible class system. Big problem for the police is that with the huge Nannyfication of the UK their hands are somewhat tied nowadays and a quick disclocated shoulder or knee to the ballocks five or six times around the corner out of sight of the media isn't really an accepted police tactic nowadays.

 

[hsb]

Nice 'Jasmine Allen' reference there Bribie!
I agree the 'rozzers' get a pretty raw deal these days, just individual people trying to do their job without getting hurt/sued/sacked etc.. Under pressure themselves from the huge sweeping cutbacks in the public sector that have really cemented a good old fashioned 'culture of fear' in the general population.

As for the riots - Kids with nothing to lose really, who hate the OB instinctually for whatever reasons. Lose lose for the OB as you say.

I was shocked to see an article yesterday in the SMH that implied that London was some kind of happy-go-lucky 'playground' for Aussies in their youth with no problems/dangers that was under risk from these recent riots. IMO you haven't 'lived' in London if you haven't been mugged! It's a City that would leave you in the dirt if you fell and maybe lift your wallet whilst you were down there if the opportunity arose. Sure it's a great place and most people have generally happy experiences but there's an ugly side just lurking beneath the surface, same as in all British Metropolitan areas.

Britain has really lurched backwards to division and hatred over the last few years, if I lived in a Council flat in Hackney or Peckham or Tottenham, I think I'd be tempted to smash things up a bit, nothing to lose, lot of anger there.

 

[Dave70]

Science knows there is a direct correlation between light exposure and depression. The vitamin D starved English get on average around 1400 sunshine hours a year out of 8760. Even miserable old Melbourne cops 2200 hours a year. Add to that, it's pissing down with rain for over a third of the year and is it any wonder Londoners are getting cross.
Maby they should rip down the CCTV cameras and install heat lamps?

 

[Spork]

Only caught the tail end of this on the news, but 3 people killed. I think they were trying to protect property from rioters and were run down by yobs in a car.
Bring back national service?
Send them all to the colonies?
I don't know.

 

[Bribie G]

Science knows there is a direct correlation between light exposure and depression. The vitamin D starved English get on average around 1400 sunshine hours a year out of 8760. Even miserable old Melbourne cops 2200 hours a year. Add to that, it's pissing down with rain for over a third of the year and is it any wonder Londoners are getting cross.
Maby they should rip down the CCTV cameras and install heat lamps?

I actually had schoolmates with bandy legs from rickets (vitamin d deficiency)
Finland is worse, although Helsinki is no longer the suicide capital of the world. Found a hilarious site:

My favourite one:

Sakke and Ville are sitting in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. They've been drinking for three days straight and they finally run out of booze.
Sakke says to his mate "Hey, go and look in the tool shed and see if there's anything to drink there."
Ville comes back with a bottle of methanol, and says "We could drink this, but we'll go blind!"
Sakke slowly looks around the cottage and out the window, and says "I think we've seen enough."

 

[Synthetase]

The world needs to realise that open market systems are an abject failure and are leading to degradation of civilisation. You need tons of low paying factory jobs in a society to keep the 'simple' occupied and drunk. Exporting every low value job off to the third world is what causes this **** in the first place.

Close down cheap imports and give people jobs and some purpose and nobody will have to see them cause they will be going to some hole to work, proceed to a pub, get smashed, go home and go rabbitty! Ideal society imho.

If we were to take this argument to its logical conclusion, we might as we pack up and march back into pre-industrial times. Time to throw away all that cool looking stainless equipment, guys. The industrial revolution did in the 18th and 19th centuries what globalisation is doing now: it took jobs from one place where the cost of production was high (cottage industries like weaving, etc) and exploited cheap energy and machines to push production up and prices down.

Good economies have always exploited material that was on hand to do well what others could not, and turn a profit at the same time. We could all look with rose tinted glasses at Australia's loss of low-value manufacturing or, we could move with the times like every other successful economy has done for centuries and accept that others can do it cheaper than us. Find something we can do well that others can't and exploit that.

As an example, your average iPod costs ~$200 in the shop. It costs about $5 to assemble that in China. The vast majority of the money flow goes to Apple for the design and marketing of the iPod, the rest goes to companies like Arm who design the chips inside. The actual manufacturing process adds very little value to the end product.

Closing borders to trade would drive up inflation for what exactly? The industries of yesteryear like coach making, coopers, and wheel wrights are gone and no-body mourns them. Why should the current change be any different?

 

[pk.sax]

Well mate, unfortunately... the industrial revolution did not physically shift productive physical activity out of society. Globalisation did.
Much as we would like to live like a higher, evolved creature, we are basically animals - brain does not function independently of the body. Tire one out and the other feels it too and vice versa. We need the guidance and stimulation that hard work provides. Why do you think was hard labour a form of punishment once!

Money comes and goes. FFS, India was left bone dry and poor at the end of the British occupation, it bounced back, its human capital that once lost takes a lot longer to recover. Its not aptitude, its attitude that is lost. Globalisation forgets that the sweatshops in China pay workers next to nothing. Consider Australia, we have very very expensive labour here - comparatively speaking - Those prices are mostly fed by 2 things - people can just work in retail and sell things, that absorbs a lot of the workforce in our cities, and the resources & building industry. The second is pretty unique to Australia, we have the land and resources to spread, people can be gainfully employed. I see newly arrived Irish and English carpenters, tradies... they don't get work back there, its bad. We blame the 'young hoodlums', but forget that those kids needed to learn the lessons of life watching their parents. When you have hard working people losing jobs all over the show the value of work decreases. The importance of work decreases. And the worst impact of that is what the next generations learn. I really doubt that if they had better things to do with their time they'd be rioting.

I have South African colleagues at work, hear them tell you how it is over there now since the world started trading with them. Its a far more dangerous place. You can't devalue hard work and still have respect for it. Do you really respect someone that does a 10 hour day of hard work?? When you can buy 10 hours worth of work done by someone in China for 20 bucks, its lost its value....

this is what I'm talking about... kind of putting it mildly.

 

[ledgenko]

SPORK ... dont offer to send them here .. Aunt Julia will have to Negotiate another agreement with the Malaysian goverment .. next thing you you NSW will be a state of Malaysia ... actually .. NOT A BAD IDEA .. at least they may have a better idea how to win state of origin !!!!

"FLAME SUIT ON !!!"

 

[Newbee(r)]

Being an Australian I see it as my duty to support the under dog. Watching the footage of the riots you can clearly see that the coppers are the underdog. They had the gear to fight a running battle against organized rioters. But they found something completely different and lost control.
I am surprised to here people talking like middle east dictators. bring in the military, shoot them, bash them, hang them, cut their hands off, lock them up for life.
It is obvious there a bigger problems. The up side of the whole thing is it takes the focus of the fact that some country in the world is broke.

Agree with the support for the old bill and - well yes, to an extent on your commentary. If it was your store, your grannies flat door kicked in and robbed, your car on fire.......?

High unemployment is certainly an issue, but there is a point where someone says, hey, I'm going to do this. And - hey, I couldn't be arsed working, or studying so I can get a job, and hey, I'm ok living on welfare paid by the people who's store they just looted and torched. These guys are coordinated rioters, growing in strength.

The posts you are reacting to are of course emotive - and of course, less actually suggesting line the bastards up and shoot them - what they reflect for the less literally inclined, is more a case of - who the fk do they think they are?

If they are protesting about wanting a job, they would go do it at a political site - not loot for the latest iphone. Glad to see the global community is posting pictures and footage to identify and lock the buggers up. My 5 cents.

 

[Synthetase]

Well mate, unfortunately... the industrial revolution did not physically shift productive physical activity out of society. Globalisation did.

So China, India and Eastern Europe aren't societies? I'll let them know. :S

It's irrelevant where the work goes: the fact is, it moves to the party that can do it better (where "better" is defined by the consumer - usually cheaper). This has always happened. It happened when the Portuguese stole the spice trade from the Middle East in the 16th century by sailing directly to India, it happened during the industrial revolution and it is still happening.

Much as we would like to live like a higher, evolved creature, we are basically animals - brain does not function independently of the body. Tire one out and the other feels it too and vice versa. We need the guidance and stimulation that hard work provides. Why do you think was hard labour a form of punishment once!

Because slaves are cheap?

As the saying goes "if you want to compete, work smarter, not harder".

Money comes and goes. FFS, India was left bone dry and poor at the end of the British occupation, it bounced back, its human capital that once lost takes a lot longer to recover. Its not aptitude, its attitude that is lost. Globalisation forgets that the sweatshops in China pay workers next to nothing. Consider Australia, we have very very expensive labour here - comparatively speaking - Those prices are mostly fed by 2 things - people can just work in retail and sell things, that absorbs a lot of the workforce in our cities, and the resources & building industry. The second is pretty unique to Australia, we have the land and resources to spread, people can be gainfully employed. I see newly arrived Irish and English carpenters, tradies... they don't get work back there, its bad. We blame the 'young hoodlums', but forget that those kids needed to learn the lessons of life watching their parents. When you have hard working people losing jobs all over the show the value of work decreases. The importance of work decreases. And the worst impact of that is what the next generations learn. I really doubt that if they had better things to do with their time they'd be rioting.

I have South African colleagues at work, hear them tell you how it is over there now since the world started trading with them. Its a far more dangerous place. You can't devalue hard work and still have respect for it. Do you really respect someone that does a 10 hour day of hard work?? When you can buy 10 hours worth of work done by someone in China for 20 bucks, its lost its value....

The value of a days work is ultimately decided by the market, not emotional pleas for personal respect. ie: If I don't want to buy what you produce, your labour is worthless to me. The reason this "hard work" is worthless is because anyone can do it - it's unskilled. There is (at the moment) no shortage of people willing to work long hours in ****** conditions for crap pay in developing countries. This is changing, of course. Wages in China (particularly in the east) are on the rise, and lower value manufacturing jobs are moving steadily west across the country or being exported to Africa. This has already happened in Australia and other developed economies. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it frees up the workforce to produce higher-value things, and wages and living standards rise accordingly.

Closing Australia's boarders to international trade would slash the gains in living standards attained by this country. People would either have to pay a lot more for the things they currently buy owing to the huge increase in the cost of labour - leading to a huge loss in spending power; or, wages would have to be reduced, leading to a huge loss in spending power. This would drive inflation through the roof. I can't see Australians being particularly happy at that prospect. God knows, you introduce a (mostly) revenue-neutral tax the government actively wants you to avoid paying and they're already baying for blood.

 

[hoohaaman]

Remember:

"The British people have taken for themselves this motto 'Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe.'"
Churchill's message to the the Germans.

In 1940 and 1941, when German planes were making devastating nightly bombing raids on London, shopkeepers put notices on their bombed shops that said "Business as Usual."



If the tribulations of world war couldn't crush the spirit of the English citizen / shopkeeper, I doubt a gang of teenage yob will.

This will pass. They'll pick up the pieces and carry on.

The parasites will retreat back to their filthy ghettos and the miserable lives of boredom and welfare, trying to plot their next move with IQ's around room temperature.
**** the lot of them. Bullies and hoons.
Desperate people loot stores for food and water, not ******* i phones, designer track suits and expensive running shoes.

THIS

And what makes the resilience of the Brits even more remarkable,is they have been doing it in one form or another for a thousand years.

 

[Glenn Brown]

I thought this was supposed to be a brewing forum? :huh:

 

[Newbee(r)]

I thought this was supposed to be a brewing forum? :huh:

...and it is.... this one's been brewing and bubbling for a while now! Although it is off topic

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

One council in london has kicked out a family involved in the riots from their council housing estate, and plan to kick out anyone involved....

 

[DUANNE]

One council in london has kicked out a family involved in the riots from their council housing estate, and plan to kick out anyone involved....

it would be good if the aussie gov did this. kick all the convicted dealers and so forth out of theyre comision housing. there would be a lot of empty blocks of flats pretty quickly.it always makes me mad when you see these poeple parking a brand new merc or beemer out front when poeple who really need the housing are going on a 3 year or more wait list.

 

[booargy]

Good drink would be Depth Charger