I think its the flouride.

John,
====================
Richard,

I suspect it is much like here in the States. I know lots of police officers and they hate the paperwork, but it's part of their job. They are required to document everything they do in the field in great detail because of scrutiny of what they do and the fact that they spend a lot of time in court.

Letting 30,000 police go to save money in the UK cannot be a good thing, especially that they appear to be short handed to begin with.

John

Now that the facts of the matter are known...
Bob, the true facts are not yet known and therefore that statement should never have been released. True or false, it was bad timing to publish that, the rioters will become more inflamed by it.
These unemployed feral kids of today have far more than I ever had as a teenager and I have worked all my life for what I have. They expect to be handed everything on a plate and anything we don't 'give' them they take by mugging and robbing.
I am due to retire next year but my State pension, to which I have contributed for 50 years, was initially eroded by the 'Sick, Lame & Lazy' of this Country being paid more in benefits than they could earn if they worked for a living but now we are paying benefits and giving free housing to any English and non English people who stake a claim. We've got teenage girls with 3 or 4 children, all to different fathers, who have never contributed a penny to our welfare system but are happy to bleed it for everything they can get.
So please don't tell me that I am "A bit quick to follow the official line". I and the other decent people of this Country are about 30 years too late.

Over the last 13 years immigration was encouraged by the Government of the day. The majority of the new immigrants found work that the current youth/rioters would not undertake. It would seem our unemployment benefits are too high.
Looking at TV video of the rioting mobs and those citizen volunteers turning up with brooms to clear up the mess there is a distinct lack of ‘Afro Caribbean’s’ amongst the latter. Enough said.
Unfortunately we cannot arrest & deport these rioters as the vast majority were born here.

Richard, thanks for your concern. However it's not my intention nor inclination at my advanced years to be part of anything that is being played out. We had sirens going off through the night as the Police were offf on another shout somewhere. But that could have been just another busy night in London.

My initial responses to Jay's well meant post was to simply voice my immediate anger and sickness as to what I was seeing, yet again. After the Ball, the social autopsy will be played out, again, and we will be off, again.

Just been seeing what's been done to Manchester last night. I have relatives there too. A nephew and niece with their own pre-teen family. They are staunchly proud Mancs, and will be thoroughly gutted to see what has happened to their city.

Peace & Love

Grazie

Grazie, glad that you are safe and keeping my fingers crossed that the worst is over for you and other Londoners. I'm a Salfordian, born and bred, but moved out of the City 11 years ago so although we are not directly affected by the rioting there, and in Manchester, it is extremely frustrating to see the devastation and fear that these, as one young lady on National news called them last night, 'feral rats' are causing.

Time to bring in the Rat Catcher!


Speechless[/link]

Edited to include link

......ugh . . . . .

And this is why my father went and landed on the French shore, June 6 1944, so that democracy and respect for people could be sustained? Was it?That "speaker" doesn't even KNOW who is in power today.

. . . ugh . . . . .

look, i don't condone the violence in any way, but really.....

what do people expect when even last night i watched cameron spout on about morals, ethics, etc.... so it's ok for the banks and big business to rob and gut the public to their hearts content (and with government backing and public funds), but when the masses rise up it's another story entirely?

My comments have been directed at containing the violence and how society has lost it's way. The morality of Banks is a separate and another issue. I kinda realise that there are double standards being played out. However, no matter how true it is, raising that now, plays into the hands of those wishing to sustain the violence - [i]the banks are teefs, so I is just getting what I want too [/I]- and looting and leaves those reading this confused and not a little depressed.

Grazie

BTW, what masses do you speak of? The "masses"' are outbthere sweeping up and attempting to refocus and get back to the grind of making an honest living. The "masses" have not risen up. But evidenced by the quiet reaction of those wanting a return to normality. Does that play to Cameron's narrative - maybe. The morality guff, coming from a politician, mostly leaves me cold.

Grazie

I found this article a very interesting read. I had no idea that this is what has been happening under the new government in the UK, I had thought at worst it was just a return to the old Thatcherism but even the reforms and the ideals that she espoused have been thrown out int favour of a return to a class system.
If that's the case then I can well see the day when the masses will be rising up, unless you're one of the elite seems like you'll be kind of stuffed.
When I was growing up a decent, free education was an entitlement, if you were smart enough and wanted it so was an university degree. If not a job in the manufacturing sector would put a roof over your head and give you some digninty. As I had to contribute to the family income, I got a job in a factory and worked my way up from there. Today good luck to any teenager trying to find a job in manufacturing, you seem to need two degrees just to make a latte.

Bob.

I agree Bob. Let's see what the coalition will do to counter that imbalance that the "silent" hard working masses have yet to voice. Once every 4 years? Unlikely.

Grazie

Problem is there are very few jobs. The EU wants to takeover and have created an open door for all its so called EU citizens. Because the UK is one of the richest countries in the EU empire it has mean't the biggest movement of people in the history of the world to the UK.. Imagine of you're polish for example and you earn £10 an hour in the UK. If you send the money home it's now worth £30 an hour or more. Wouldnt you undercut indigenous workers and work hard. Unions fought for workers rights only to have EU migration turn it on its head. The working classes in the UK have been shafted and no one dare say anything for fear of being called a racist.

Most new jobs created have gone to migrants who are often preferred to the percieved british working class who are often tarred as lazy and rotten. The working classes mostly law abiding keep quiet and vent their anger on different issues to afraid to speak out or even do anything different like vote for a non EU party like UKIP. The government would tell you leaving the EU would mean many job losses. But the British EU jobs are mostly highly paid for those with a preferred education and the right stuff. They would also tell you EU means cheap goods when actually it doesn't The UK is a member of the EU and although we pay Billions there is a large discrepency in what we pay compared to europeans and in some way why we are rightly called rip off Britain.

So why are our government doing this? The EU thats why. The EU takes billions from us and gives much back but not before taking a massive cut to finance their empire in brussels and their elitist life. The EU is a dictatorship that has forced its own constitution on us. Giving itself it's own army, judiciary, flag, anthem and makes 90% of our laws. All done without consent. They dare not give us a referendum even though they promise one before going back on it.

All our three main parties back the EU and is why its so hard to vote in a party that would take us out. Only one... UKIP offers an alternative. ALL the parties contain MP's that benefit in some way from the EU. Basicly kick backs and other incentives. But thats parliament for you They never miss a trick when it comes to upping their wages and they don't care what happens to the country unless of course it becomes a problem in the media. Many BBC elites are supportive of the EU as they see it as a way to expand the licence fee in the future. IEven telling the EU it's your BBC. The BBC are not as nuetral as you or others might think as their future is always controlled by governments and often tout the government line.

I guess the problems will continue untill EU workers are intermixed and the UK's wealth evenly distributed and as the euro has show will lead to a meltdown of ours and everyone else's economy's and country's in europe no longer exist only the EU dictatorship.

At the end of the day it comes down to huge wealth and power being made by the political and big business elite. The only people unafraid to vent anger are those with nothing to lose and no hope. But in the end we will lose including the greedy backstabbers at the top.

Mark,

The EURO should probably go. Here's why.

When the bonds start to spike in your smaller countries, the larger countries are called to bail them out. Now Italy and Spain gets in trouble, can't handle it, deficits grow, and the bond holders sell off making the bond market spike. Investors start buying German bonds and US Treasuries.

Then the European Central Bank has to step in to avoid a crash to bail them out only they are too big to bail out this time, but they start buying them anyway. They have become the last resort to save European countries from financial collapse as in Greece. The relief is temporary in terms of Italy. Italy had the third largest bond market in the entire world.

So what does the ECB have to do to save the Euro. I read that they have to TRIPLE the size of the rescue fund. Germany is against it (rightly so) The bailouts are threatening Merkel's support in Germany. They also know that it isn't going to work. Italy is too big to bail out. The problem is the ECB's function. Their function is NOT the well being of the people. Their function is to make sure the banks and financial institutions don't lose money.

That's been the ECB problem all along. Bank bailouts, not nation bailouts The taxpayers are using their tax dollars to bail out the banks via the ECB. A bank subsidy courtesy of people like you. They are doing the same thing in the US. The difference. Your media at least addresses the real problems rather than blaming the victims (the poor, the unions, the middle class, the homeowner) as they do in the US.. Exposing the relationship between the Murdoch empire (with it's monopoly bid for Sky news) and your politicians COULD NOT have happened in the United States because there is a lack of independent media here.

Our media monopolies even blamed the unions and the social safety net for the financial collapse in Greece to cover up the role of Wall Street, the ECB, and it's ilk in the collapse. I didn't see a single analysis of Goldman Sachs' role in the Greek collapse on any of the network or cable news programs. The US media used it as an excuse to attack the unions and the social safety net in Greece with the goal of justifying it here.

Now the banks in Europe are hoarding cash halting interbank lending. Why is the ECB regulating the European economy? With the Right Wing International Monetary Fund (led by the US) dictating policy the ECB will not use stimulus this time to deal with the crisis as they did in 2009. Now they attack the social safety net of the people of those countries because that is their objective. That will work in the United States (it's well on it's way already) because we have a complicit corporate media monopoly that are determined to help them do it and a public that finds the truth with their TV remotes or in the major propaganda sheets (newspapers), but in Europe where you have a free press there is no excuse for it.

Earlier you said:
Tony Blair took us into war telling us Sadam had WMDs ready to go in 45 minutes regardless of the rights and wrongs HE LIED to parliament and to the country. What kind of example does that set..
Blair lied? That story was never told here in the US. the Bush administration's massive lies have still not been exposed by the mainstream media to any important degree, the little that has been exposed is reported as "controversial", the little that has been exposed was not reported before his re-election in 2004 so as not to jeopardize it, and I can flat out state that Blair could have gotten away with it if he were President of the US. It would have been reported as "he said, she said" , that "everyone in the UN and the rest of the world thought the same thing", and discredited by the US corporate media to protect Blair and his agenda. Wrong as the BBC can be at times, it is effectively banned from any significant programming here in the US because they report things they don't want the US population to hear. Al Jazeera is completely banned despite it being available in most places in the world, but they don't hesitate to steal their footage in the US corporate media when they need it without giving them credit for it.

The people need to pressure their individual politicians to dump the Euro and the ECB and you will be on your way to recovery because you will then be free from the grip of Wall Street and it's Right Wing agenda. It won't be easy, but the alternative is going to be far worse.

John

President Bush started the ball rolling when he changed the rules at fanny mac and freddie mae that forced them to give poor mexican immigrants and those who couldn't afford loans. They promptly sold them to UK and EU bankers who knew they were worthless but bought them because they made the company look very profitable on paper and so got huge bonuses. This was to all intents and purposes DECEPTION and FRAUD.

Your inept Bush is responisible for the worlds credit crunch but only because greedy bankers who should have gone to prison took advantage. In fact much the same way looters in London are doing.

However due to public ignorance the banks managed to blame it on obscure bad borrowing and victimised British people by refusing to lend them money after the public paid billions of there debts.It's all so unbelievably STUPID it would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Cameron has told parliament and the country we will not be affected by the euro crisis but as you so RIGHTLY point out WE pay the ECB which has agreed to bail out faltering countries and this will mean LIMITLESS money will be needed and so has the potential to break all countries in the EU.

The EU will fall and so will their euro but not before they wreak havoc on all of us.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for a freely trading europe and world but not stitched up by a dictatorship pretending to be democratic while stealing country's and mixing us into countryless EU citizens with the elite at the top and a new mongrel working class. It won't work. People need to feel they have roots and sense of who they are.

The real problem we all have is the rise of China and the west would do well to unite. But it doesn't need to be at the expense of national identities and cultures. It should be through relationships cooperation and trade agreements.

China now has most of the worlds money through our years of our steady import of cheap goods that has left us all with little manufacturing and jobs for working classes. It would be easy to put a tax on chinese imports to create a level playing field but we have all grown accustomed to cheap goods.

Take that away and the public will vote in a government that will give it back at least that's the fear. I think most people would pull together and understand the logic if given the chance But then those in power wouldn't be able to create the environment they want to enable them to take the wealth and power they crave.

Bad times ahead for all of us then.

I'm going to take a completely different stance and will I'll probably get flamed for it, but I'm going to throw this out there, anyway.

We can discuss uneven distribution of wealth, left and right politics and the global financial crisis, but in my opinion 99% of what we're seeing is just basic primate behaviour. Humans have had a few thousand years of cultural evolution and we all like to think of ourselves as a 'civilised' species, but underneath that thin veneer of civilisation we're still pretty much the same naked ape we were 100,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens first branched off. Someone once said (later paraphrased by Rimmer on Red Dwarf) that any society is only three meals away from anarchy, but more often than not hunger is not the only motivator. People need only be somewhat disgruntled and then the rest of it is simply a snowball effect of running with the mob as a way of getting all of that built up anger out of the system. We've seen it all before, in every major war, in every genocide, in every crusade. Later we read about it and can't believe people would be so cruel, but then it happens again and again. We've even seen similar behaviour when the local soccer or ice hockey team loses an important game.

We've heard of 'pack mentality' and that's based on the understanding that even reasonably well mannered family dogs will behave in an uncharacteristic fashion when running loose with other dogs, once they get caught up in the excitement of running with pack. One minute Fido is curled up by your feet, wagging his tail, and the next he's at the front of the pack, helping pull down and tear apart some hapless creature that started to run in fear, stimulating the chase. Having worked with all sorts of animals my entire life, I can say that dogs have nothing on primates. In fact, few animals are scarier than a primate. Reptiles, which include some of the most feared animals, will only kill for food or self defence, whereas most primates are intelligent enough to be malicious. Having worked with our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, I can say that we come by our violent nature honestly. I love chimps, but ask any zookeeper that works in a zoo with a large chimp troop which animal they'd least like to accidentally get locked in with and my bet is they aren't going to say crocodile, lion or tiger.

All of this looting, burning and rioting (even killing, as of the past couple of days) clearly has nothing to do with the guy the police killed, probably has a bit to do with the global financial crisis and even more to do with an uneven distribution of wealth, but at a very base level what's going on is people running with the mob because they're caught up in the moment and because they think they can get away with it.

well put crocdoc ;-)

but i still blame the bankers ;-)

"but ask any zookeeper that works in a zoo with a large chimp troop which animal they'd least like to accidentally get locked in with and my bet is they aren't going to say crocodile, lion or tiger."Ha! Just this past week I accidentally dropped a polarizing filter in the Llama pen of our local zoo. When I got the staff to retrieve it, I said, "At least I didn't drop it in the tiger's cage." She said, "The tiger's a piece of cake, it's the otters I worry about." Go figure!

...Jerry

Poor and disillusioned? Hardly.

I think you'll enjoy The Exterminating Angel.

Bob.

And the image reads Fiscal. = yellow sign

"but ask any zookeeper that works in a zoo with a large chimp troop which animal they'd least like to accidentally get locked in with and my bet is they aren't going to say crocodile, lion or tiger."
=====================================

Ha! Just this past week I accidentally dropped a polarizing filter in the Llama pen of our local zoo. When I got the staff to retrieve it, I said, "At least I didn't drop it in the tiger's cage." She said, "The tiger's a piece of cake, it's the otters I worry about." Go figure!

=====================================

So I ended up calling the zoo and asked them "which animal they'd least like to accidentally get locked in with" and they replied:

"Any of them, getting locked in with any animal keeps us safe from the animals that visit the zoo".

John