The riots have caused an enormous amount of interest and comment. I feel that there should be one thread that contains the base discusion of it so that other threads are not filled up with it. At the moment the once pleasant Nest is full of hateful ranting against the hooligans
You can all negative rep me if you feel like it for having a contrary opinion â and on the Nest I seem to stand alone
Let me at least state my position.
I donât think there is a single excuse for the violence. It has nothing to do with killing a man in Tottenham last week. It is about opportunistic mindless violence thuggery and criminal opportunism.
The question though is how do you respond? I am sure if I were clever I could find a suitable quote which shows that the more violent society is in dealing with its criminals the more that society descends into violence. We have evolved from a society that hanged starving children for stealing a crust of bread into one where a murderer can walk free after only a few years in jail. One extreme to the other.
Instead of the knee jerk reaction I have seen here today how about thinking about what laws you want to have in your society and what you are prepared to do to implement those laws. How far do you want to go â Singapore still birches people who drop chewing gum on the streets, some muslim countries still cut off limbs or stone people for offences â do you want that level of punishment? If not where do you want to stop and what do you want to do? Remember that the laws you pass have to apply to everyone â even your own sons and daughters â are you all so lucky that none of you have a child who could have got on the outside of one of those riots yesterday â meaning to observe butâ¦..
I am not going to propose my own solutions as I do not know what we should do â yes I think we have got too soft on a lot of criminals but also I am aware that our society has failed and is failing a lot of young people especially. Unless we address how we start to provide everybody with some hope and âinclusionâ then we can only expect these type of events to continue
You can all negative rep me if you feel like it for having a contrary opinion â and on the Nest I seem to stand alone
Let me at least state my position.
I donât think there is a single excuse for the violence. It has nothing to do with killing a man in Tottenham last week. It is about opportunistic mindless violence thuggery and criminal opportunism.
The question though is how do you respond? I am sure if I were clever I could find a suitable quote which shows that the more violent society is in dealing with its criminals the more that society descends into violence. We have evolved from a society that hanged starving children for stealing a crust of bread into one where a murderer can walk free after only a few years in jail. One extreme to the other.
Instead of the knee jerk reaction I have seen here today how about thinking about what laws you want to have in your society and what you are prepared to do to implement those laws. How far do you want to go â Singapore still birches people who drop chewing gum on the streets, some muslim countries still cut off limbs or stone people for offences â do you want that level of punishment? If not where do you want to stop and what do you want to do? Remember that the laws you pass have to apply to everyone â even your own sons and daughters â are you all so lucky that none of you have a child who could have got on the outside of one of those riots yesterday â meaning to observe butâ¦..
I am not going to propose my own solutions as I do not know what we should do â yes I think we have got too soft on a lot of criminals but also I am aware that our society has failed and is failing a lot of young people especially. Unless we address how we start to provide everybody with some hope and âinclusionâ then we can only expect these type of events to continue