Pat Condell on the English riots

Riots in England

There has been much hand-wringing and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the past couple of days, most of it utter garbage. One thing is certain: this wasn’t about poverty, not in the material sense. If there’s poverty, it’s spiritual poverty, moral poverty and poverty of ambition. In countries where there’s real deprivation, they have food riots. Here we have flat-screen TV riots. [...] This wasn’t a political protest, or a demonstration against oppression, it was a grotesque manifestation of our shallow, instant gratification, I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now consumerist society, coupled with an extreme explosion of the kind of casual violence which scars our town and city centres across Britain every weekend. - Richard Littlejohn.

The looting was systematic and beyond control, on three separate occasions we were within 10 feet of shops being ripped apart. Nowhere was safe, from sandwich shops, to jewellery brokers. We kid you not when attacking a Texaco garage one of the girl rioters shouted “Get me a Lucozade”. – Stylenoir Magazine.

The recent riots in England should come as no surprise to anyone. If you’ve ever had to walk down the other side of the street from a bunch of ‘hoodies’, then you’ve seen the vacant arrogance in their eyes as they slouch on past. Visit any city centre on a Saturday night, and you’ll see young people whose reason for living is to attack their own consciousness with alcohol and other drugs, and who will not hesitate to employ physical violence against each other, or anyone else who gets in their way. Ask any experienced teacher, and they’ll tell you that there are children in our schools, and walking our streets today, who have no respect for anyone, or anything – not even themselves. Our country is no longer what it was.

For years now, the state has undermined the concept of personal responsibility. Only in Britain, for example, is a local council able to order someone to take down barbed wire around their own property in case any burglars get hurt. (See link.) The philosophical position behind that is so empty of morality, so intellectually corrupt, that it’s difficult for anyone from my generation to believe it can even happen. But throughout recent years the British state has taken – and enforced – the position that the perpetrator of a crime must not be seen as a lawbreaker who deserves whatever’s coming to him. No, the perpetrator must be seen as a victim. Small wonder that fifteen year old kids now see nothing wrong in criminal behaviour.

Richard Littlejohn has spoken about the spiritual and moral poverty behind these riots. Obviously the young people who are damaging other people’s property, and costing the working taxpayer a fortune as they go btw, have no operative moral sense. As for a spiritual life, well I doubt if any of them attended church on Sunday. They’ve had more important things to do, like breaking in their new trainers or watching stolen DVDs on their new flatscreen. And these young people have no ‘ambition’ because they see no need to work to get what they need, or want. They have been brought up to believe that what they need is theirs by right, and if there’s anything they want, then they can just take it. Ladies and gentlemen, the chickens are now coming home to roost. Britain has finally become a place where teenagers will burn down a petrol station just because they want a bottle of Lucozade.

God help us all.