Wednesday 10 August 2011

UK Riots; technology and gangs

People loot because they can, why not get free stuff. in the markets today after days of panic wealthy people and computer programs are buying up lots of cheap, but quality shares. the last few days they were selling them as fast as they can; times change. In the of mass technology, they change very quickly.

However, the most amazing thing about the UK riots has been the use of technology. When used in the Arab Spring this is a good thing, in Eltham, not so much. It shows that the power of technology in a phone (which is the same as a Government department may have had 30 years ago in terms of processing) is enough that with a small bit of cunning it can be used to out-fox modern police forces. Last night, knowing police were going ot London, other gangsters in the Country saw their opportunity.

it is not great, because this may mean to enforce law and order we need more police; but that is a price worth paying to defend our Country.

Amongst motives, I am not seeing much discussion about Gang culture. When I lived in South Central Los Angeles as a young man you could not sleep at night for all the gunfire. The place was wild and the police did their best to keep non gang neighbourhoods from getting to involved. It was chaos. What I can see even on the TV is that young gangsters are responsible for the vast majority of what we are seeing. the gangs in different parts of London are competing to see who can make the most carnage (hence the fires).

Gang culture is not borne out of any real social deprivation, it is a cultural issue and policing issue. it is a culture which says if your hard and tough you can take what you want and get what you want - who is to stop you. You earn respect this way. The way to break it is to target gangs and gang leaders, much as we would target Al-Qaeda. it is the gangs that lead people astray. Without them, kids are not led into a circle of violence. I hope the politicians understand this and make Trident and other police initiatives a top priority. Guido notes the lack of fathers and bemoans social policy; this is half right - gang culture is a cult of the gang and individual respect. Much comes from Caribbean and American black culture where having a wife is simply not the norm (for good reasons too, the slave owners liked passive women working their plantations not rebellious and tough men, so the women outnumbered men 10:1 - hence after freedom a culture grew up where men did not settle and even the women accepted this or else 9/10 would be single). The final thing to note here is anyone can adopt gang culture, so it is not really a race problem per se, though ti may be that some groups have a bigger problem with it than others.

The biggest load of tosh I see written is this is about youth unemployment, few of the people I have seen rioting are even old enough to have left school - it is no coincidence this is the summer holidays.

Am I right? What do you think?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Partly right.

Gang culture can be broken easily when ordinary people arm themselves and fight back. That "won't be allowed" by the state (in case people decide they have had enough crap from the govt as well) so the first gang that will need to be busted up is theirs. Hiring more coppers (or even not cutting their numbers) sounds like a plan to some but these riots are distracting people from the economic tsunami heading this way. There will not be enough cash to pay for the goons who protect the political scum never mind ordinary people.

Sean said...

Despite the fearless bluster, criminals don't wont or like getting caught.

Thus my tech solution which I think might help things is for the police to use paint ball guns with nanodots in the paint, a bit like smartwater.

Threrfore for you will be able to place a thug at the scene of the crime more effectively and thus increase the chances of conviction.

on current numbers I think they only have 200 that have been charges out of over a 1000 arrested.

Anonymous said...

chris cook has an excellent piece on this - some of which I have verified. Only last two paragraphs are contentions.

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2011/8/9/83025/46266

heres the gist of his intel, copy and pasted.

"# The Met has of late had some new and much better intelligence on the drugs trade in the UK, which of course is centered here in London, There was, for example, a huge haul of high grade narcotics on a cabin cruiser in Southampton just recently.

# The Met has been putting a lot of pressure on the drug barons in London - probably a planned operation to go on for several weeks before they say anything about it. Deliberately so.

# The man shot over the weekend, who apparently pulled a gun before he was shot by the police, was himself a leading light in the drugs trade in that part of London. The riots that followed locally were simple retaliation.

# The drugs barons are losing credibility among their own commanders and foot soldiers, who increasingly fear that they too are now vulnerable; they simply do not know where the police are going to strike next.

# So the drug barons urgently needed a show of strength, to show they could still call the shots. They organised the riots. The riot leaders have been filmed in urgent phone calls on their mobiles (cell phones) organising the next step. The summonses to arms and the next centre of rioting have been made through Twitter; it is planned, not spontaneous.

# The riots have been concentrated almost exclusively in those specific districts of London known to be the centres of the capital's drugs trade; very conspicuously so - that's where the footsoldiers generally live and so can be marshalled quickly. Obviously some local tearaways just want to join in as well, but the drug barons won't exactly object to that.

# It is (highly unofficially) in the police's interests to let the riot spread somewhat, to see how many rioters the drug barons can bring onto the streets, to see how many of them the police can photograph.

# Dramatic television coverage of shop and buses burning should also persuade the liberal tendency (of whom there are many, especially here in London) that the Metropolitan Police would now be fully justified in taking somewhat tougher action; the cinema-verite TV footage makes even the normal citizenry suddenly turn angry and militant. The police could then obtain greater powers without all those Civil Liberties types promptly jumping up and down in their cages.

# Sorted."

KoR said...

CU, yes I am sure there is a lot of truth in what you say. There may be some specific triggers, as anonymous relays, concerning the drug barons, but this is not really a new phenomenon. It's just the city mob.

It's been going in London for a 1000 years and certainly went on in ancient Rome. A mob is a temporary aggregation of gangs. All sorts of people join in for a variety of reasons. There is little point in analysing it ad nauseam -- it just needs to be dealt with.

Standard procedure is panem et circenses plus tough policing. It is the second part that failed recently. The poor get free education, free health care and a certain amount of free money from the taxpayer. Sometimes they want more.

The police have played this cleverly. By allowing the events to escalate before taking control they put themselves in a good bargaining position.

JS Grame-Smith said...

Really very bad for today's cultured world.Gang word is the one that corrupts the whole society and the whole world.

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Small Business IT Support

andrew said...

This is interesting.

Link between the psychology of riots and high volatility in the markets
information cascades

Mr Ecks said...

Anon 11.44

Rubbish

It is all a carefully thought out police plan to flush out drug barons by having substantial bits of London wrecked and set on fire until the bluebottles are ready for their cunning master/counter (or should it be counter/master) stroke/strike?.

Electro-Kevin said...

I disagree that because your great great grandmother had to put up with marital shit that you have to do the same with your woman.

For Chrissakes ! We Brits have had to adapt to every culture that has come here ... they should have been adapting to ours.

And if they can't let go of old culture how come they're so adept at adopting new - iphones and McDonald's ?

A common theme is that wherever blacks ghetto-ise this trouble happens.

It's happened in quite a few countries now and no other culture causes these problems.

I'm losing patience and tolerance with them fast.

Electro-Kevin said...

Salis Grano.

It wasn't going on for 1000 years. We had a cessation in gang culture for at least 100 years until the seventies.

This country was uncomparably civilised within my living memory. This new trouble is imported and threatens our reputation as an advanced nation.

Anonymous said...

CU, whenever age groups of 13 to 25 year olds get together They do not think as normal individuals, they they seem to act in a group and unfortunately they think in the lowest common denomination ie the most moronic, the brighter ones would not normally do stupid things.

Old BE said...

CU you are spot on.

Anon at the top is wrong. People can take control of the own areas without being armed to the back teeth. We don't need an arms race to add to our woes.

The country can also easily afford a massive increase in police spending, by trimming a tiny bit of the fat from welfare and other redistributive policies. The welfare budget swamps what is spent on police, courts and prisons.