I did predict rioting this summer in a previous post but I must admit that I didn’t think they would take the form that they have. I thought it would be like the riots in the early 1980s which were the result of the policies of that ghastly disgrace of a woman who went by the name of Margaret Thatcher.
Mind you I think that if you look back to those days when she was going about telling us all that there was no such thing as society then it’s quite clear that yet again we can lay the blame at her door. I’m making absolutely no excuse for the thugs and thieves who have been causing mayhem on the streets of various cities in England over the past few nights but a culture of greed and corruption has been nurtured over the past 30 years or so especially in the ‘institutions’ of banks, Parliament and the metropolitan police and youngsters can see that those who already have – get even more.
When we have people like David Cameron as our Prime Minister and Boris Johnson as the Mayor of London, and we all know how badly they behaved when they were young, then it’s difficult to listen to them condemning the behaviour of thugs when they themselves were thugs as youngsters. The only differences between Cameron et al is the fact that they were from wealthy families and when as members of the Bullingdon Club they trashed The Ritz and thieved from Fortnums, their parents were able to pay for the damage and for some reason wealthy people get off with it. They aren’t seen as thugs but just young men up to ‘high jinks’.
Almost the very first thing which Thatcher did when she got into power was to strengthen the police force and pay them more money. It quickly became clear that this was so that she would have them completely on her side when she came to tackle the miners and close all of the mines down. So when David Cameron announced that he was cutting the police force I was absolutely gobsmacked. He might call himself ‘son of Maggie’ but he didn’t learn much from her. It’s obvious that the police decided that they weren’t going to do much to stop the trouble on the streets. Why would they when they don’t feel that their jobs are safe? It was in their best interest to step back and look overwhelmed, in the hope that there would be an outcry about the lack of policing and Cameron would have to do yet another U turn and cancel the cuts to the police force.
There hasn’t been any trouble in Scotland and that’s probably because they don’t want to be seen as following in the footsteps of anyone in England. The same thing happened when English football so-called supporters were famous for being hooligans. There was never any trouble in Scotland because the Scottish football supporters liked to see themselves as being above all that nonsense – and they were. But the authorities in some countries have been advising people not to travel to the UK which is very annoying especially as the Edinburgh Festival has just begun.
It has been great to see the communities in England rallying round and clearing up and we should never forget that there are far more decent people than there are mindless morons around.
