London Burning!

[Michael Alexander]

I thought that some of you might have posted this discussion online already.

What are your thoughts on the rioting going on in London?

How would you react if your business got firebombed?

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

Seems like they got to attend riot school in SA  -  all they need are the tyres!

I would go ballistic if it were my building and business they were burning, but to act upon what you feel would be to lower yourself to their level and to join in.  Why are the police and defence forces not doing anything about it????  I will for sure not blame the person who does take law into own hand here and shoot a few hundred of the looters.  They are burning houses of innocent people, leaving women and children homeless on the street, chucking elderley people from their homes. 

The saddest thing about this  -  the rioters who demolish and deconstruct and loot and commit arson and do what ever else today (on the 4th day) do not have the faintest idea why they are doing it.  You could go and ask them now and they will not be able to tell you what it is all about  -  all they know is that they love this 'free' feeling of anarchy and chaos they are creating, because it makes them feel powerful !  There is no reason behind all of this.  This hell broke loose because of a guy who was shot by the police for some unknown reason (and my question, was it really unknown or is blame shifted here to suit the mindless masses?)  These hooligans have no reason for this mass destruction action, but they get away with it, because the eyes of the world are on the puppeteers and they are so scared to touch anyones human rights. Bulls*t  -  there is no way to argue or reason with these people in a civil manner, for they will laugh in your face and continue with what they are doing. 

Let me rather stop right there ...   only my own opinion about it all.

[Robert Bruce]

Bring on the army and rubber bullets tonight. That is the only 'taal' they will understand. You are right - all they are doing is reacting to the promises of free goodies if you manage to break the shopfront windows and get in. They are "rioting to order". No way can it break out in other centres unless the criminals are co-ordinating it.  Water cannon and rubber bullets by the thousand tonight into the rioters will send out a good, well earned message to the thugs.

The problem is that there is no way thay comprehend the effect/impacts their destructive behaviour causes to their mums and dads pocket. Insurance goes up, prices in the neighbourhood shops increase etc etc etc etc.

They are thicker than the bricks they throw.

[SandyB]

Thicker than the bricks .    too true Robert ....

[Bob Molloy]

Don't allocate blame. First get a grasp of the problem, then fix it. The solutions are simple, in fact almost no-brainers.

Our problem in the West is that we have been sucked into the global market scam and in doing so destroyed local industry and with it the jobs which kept most people gainfully employed.

We then tossed those people on the social scrapheap, gave them a reduced living allowance and left them to it.
In so doing we created social anomie, alienation from society at large. The first generation believed the government line. The next endured it. This one is making society pay for it.

Putting a lid on the kettle (i.e. more police, more represssion, more punishment, more jails etc) does'nt help. The pressure will eventually blow it off. That's what we are watching today.

What is needed is a reduction in pressure. To do that it is necessary to reduce military spending, invest in local employment, education from early childhood to tertiary level, public health, sport and recreation.

The next step is to get out of the global market, use tariff barriers to protect local industry and ensure even the bottom level has a living wage. The Socialists had it right, but the Labour Party in Britain was hijacked by the Right Wing and that gave them the new generation of billionaires, put the country on its present slippery slope, pushed it into a series of dumb wars to support the US and bankrupted the economy.

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o&feature=player_embedded (via shareaholic.com) for a street level view of the rioting.

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

I remember in the bad old days when a few Policemen with shotguns and sambokke had no problem handling a situation like this........

[Michael Alexander]

Is it just me, or does it appear that the gene pool in the social UK state seems to lack intelligence...

A lot of those folk they interviewed seem to be high or to put it simply, dumb!



I am sure some liberal person out there will take offence to what I have just typed, but this is just an observation of mine....

[Michael Alexander]

I Just read this in the mail, I guess I am not alone in my thinking..

"Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters




A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black  reporter named Joe Strickland.

He said: 'Don't you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: "It was a great fire, man!" '

I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.


Manchester: Hooded looters with arm fulls of clothes run from a Manchester shopping centre yesterday evening
It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed 'the rich' and the police that 'we can do what we like'.

If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week's rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.

Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.

   



They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.

They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the 'feral children' on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call 'lives': they simply exist.

Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies.

Not only do they know nothing of Britain's past, they care nothing for its present.

They have their being only in video games and street-fights, casual drug use and crime, sometimes petty, sometimes serious.

The notions of doing a nine-to-five job, marrying and sticking with a wife and kids, taking up DIY or learning to read properly, are beyond their imaginations.


Undercover police officers have arrest looters in the Swarovski Crystal shop in Manchester. One looter lies injured and blood can be seen on the wall
Last week, I met a charity worker who is trying to help a teenage girl in East London to get a life for herself. There is a difficulty, however: 'Her mother wants her to go on the game.' My friend explained: 'It's the money, you know.'

An underclass has existed throughout history, which once endured appalling privation. Its spasmodic outbreaks of violence, especially in the early 19th century, frightened the ruling classes.

Its frustrations and passions were kept at bay by force and draconian legal sanctions, foremost among them capital punishment and transportation to the colonies.

Today, those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want.

When social surveys speak of 'deprivation' and 'poverty', this is entirely relative. Meanwhile, sanctions for wrongdoing have largely vanished.

When Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently urged employers to take on more British workers and fewer migrants, he was greeted with a hoarse laugh.


Birmingham: People wearing masks swig alcohol next to a burning car in Birmingham city centre last night
Every firm in the land knows that an East European — for instance — will, first, bother to turn up; second, work harder; and third, be better-educated than his or her British counterpart.Who do we blame for this state of affairs?

Ken Livingstone, contemptible as ever, declares the riots to be a result of the Government's spending cuts. This recalls the remarks of the then leader of Lambeth Council, 'Red Ted' Knight, who said after the 1981 Brixton riots that the police in his borough 'amounted to an army of occupation'.

But it will not do for a moment to claim the rioters' behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution.

Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.

This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.

It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion  which modern society finds  unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything  different or better.


Rampage: We are told that youths roaming the streets are doing so because they are angry at unemployment, but a quick looks at an apprenticeship website yields 2,228 vacancies in London
A key factor in delinquency is lack of effective sanctions to deter it. From an early stage, feral children discover that they can bully fellow pupils at school, shout abuse at people in the streets, urinate outside pubs, hurl litter from car windows, play car radios at deafening volumes, and, indeed, commit casual assaults with only a negligible prospect of facing rebuke, far less retribution.

John Stuart Mill wrote in his great 1859 essay On Liberty: 'The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.'

Yet every day up and down the land, this vital principle of civilised societies is breached with impunity.

Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.

So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.

The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.


Protection: Asian shopkeepers stand outside their store in Hackney that was battered by the looters. This time, though, they're ready to take them on
And what of the schools? I  do not think they can be blamed for the creation of a grotesquely self-indulgent, non-judgmental culture.

This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.

The judiciary colludes with social services and infinitely ingenious lawyers to assert the primacy of the rights of the criminal and aggressor over those of law-abiding citizens, especially if a young offender is involved.

The police, in recent years, have developed a reputation for ignoring yobbery and bullying, or even for taking the yobs' side against complainants.

'The problem,' said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester's Nuisance Strategy Unit, 'is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.'

Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken 'disproportionate' action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from 'the feds'.


Do rioters, pictured looting a shop in Hackney, have lower levels of a brain chemical that helps keep behaviour under control? Scientists think so
Figures published earlier this month show that a majority of 'lesser' crimes — which include burglary and car theft, and which cause acute distress to their victims — are never investigated, because forces think it so unlikely they will catch the perpetrators.

How do you inculcate values in a child whose only role model is footballer Wayne Rooney — a man who is bereft of the most meagre human graces?

How do you persuade children to renounce bad language when they hear little else from stars on the BBC?

A teacher, Francis Gilbert, wrote five years ago in his book Yob Nation: 'The public feels it no longer has the right to interfere.'

Discussing the difficulties of imposing sanctions for mis-behaviour or idleness at school, he described the case of a girl pupil he scolded for missing all her homework deadlines.

The youngster's mother, a social worker, telephoned him and said: 'Threatening to throw my daughter off the A-level course because she hasn't done some work is tantamount to psychological abuse, and there is legislation which prevents these sorts of threats.

'I believe you are trying to harm my child's mental well-being, and may well take steps . . . if you are not careful.'

That story rings horribly true. It reflects a society in which teachers have been deprived of their traditional right to arbitrate pupils' behaviour. Denied power, most find it hard to sustain respect, never mind control.


Mob: A crowd of people rush into a fashion store in Peckham
I never enjoyed school, but, like most children until very recent times, did the work because I knew I would be punished if I did not. It would never have occurred to my parents not to uphold my  teachers' authority. This might have been unfair to some pupils, but it was the way schools functioned for centuries, until the advent of crazy 'pupil rights'.

I recently received a letter from a teacher who worked in a county's pupil referral unit, describing appalling difficulties in enforcing discipline. Her only weapon, she said, was the right to mark a disciplinary cross against a child's name for misbehaviour.

Having repeatedly and vainly asked a 15-year-old to stop using obscene language, she said: 'Fred, if you use language like that again, I'll give you a cross.'

He replied: 'Give me an effing cross, then!' Eventually, she said: 'Fred, you have three crosses now. You must miss your next break.'

He answered: 'I'm not missing my break, I'm going for an effing fag!' When she appealed to her manager, he said: 'Well, the boy's got a lot going on at home at  the moment. Don't be too hard  on him.'

This is a story repeated daily in schools up and down the land.


Making a run for it: These four looters dash from the Blue Inc store in Peckham with looted goods
A century ago, no child would have dared to use obscene language in class. Today, some use little else. It symbolises their contempt for manners and decency, and is often a foretaste of delinquency.

If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.

So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.

They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.

They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.


Behind bins: Rioters in Hackney stand in front of a makeshift barricade
They are an absolute deadweight upon society, because they contribute nothing yet cost the taxpayer billions. Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential.

Most of us would say this is nonsense. Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline — tough love — which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.

Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people.

They are products of a culture which gives them so much unconditionally that they are let off learning how to become human beings. My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham.

Unless or until those who run Britain introduce incentives for decency and impose penalties for bestiality which are today entirely lacking, there will never be a shortage of young rioters and looters such as those of the past four nights, for whom their monstrous excesses were 'a great fire, man'.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html#

[Michael Alexander]

saw this on the BBC site..

"Officers from all eight Scottish Police forces are being sent to help colleagues in the Midlands and North of England deal with rioting and looting"

A case of an eye for an eye, fight violence with violence.....

[Robert Bruce]

Bob,

It is necessary to apportion blame and act on it quickly. Doing the softly softly approach has been a tried too often here and fails because the people for whom it is intended do not want to engage a program of social reform. It is too costly for them to waive their rights to the benefits provided by this social  system.

Millions of us in UK do think this week's events apply to a very select moronic criminal element alone. See the article above.

The Duggan shooting may have been the catalyst around which certain 'opportunists' appear to have seized on the moment as a means to show the authorities that they can do as they please and raise up a considerable force of likeminded citizens to go about destroying property and looting in any community they set their sights on. All this is done without fear of recrimination from a police force that is now the laughing stock of the world.

It is very possible that these people are (or were) ripping off the benefits system too. Who here knows? Living off a few burglaries does not necessarily pay the rent but these days in UK, the backlash against any reforms to the benefits system is met with complete abhorrance and dismay by liberal minded politicians, councillors and parents as a slight against those poor deprived people who continue to rip off the state because instead of being forced to go out and earn a living. By way of example - the lady who was video'd while skydiving despite ostensibly being incapable of walking or standing up for more than xx minutes. Also the man with a bad back who claimed longterm benefits becasue he could not leave his home to go to a job. All the while he continued refereeing footbal matches on the weekends! Yes this is a minority but their example sets an example for others within their community.

The question is - do they really, realy want help? Change can only happen when it is truly wanted and for the hardcore and fringe participants, work and moral ethic are a no-no because that is just too much like hard work man!

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

One question as such  ~  why do we always go and find some psycological excuse to justify criminal actions?

If someone murdered another there is always a 'reason' behind it  -  the criminal was abused or neglected when he/she was small.  When they rob ~ but they were hungry and grew up very poor. Many more examples can be given.

That is the bloody lamest excuses to shift blame from one self.  It is because the psycologists and whom ever put all of this crap on platters before them, that the criminals can get away with anything.   Should I now go and steal motorbikes just because my father never bought me one when I was a teenager.  Should I go burn schools because we grew up in the era where we got smacked good by teachers when you were not respectfull.   

It is a path you choose.  Yes, some who have malicious intent in their own hearts do choose to walk the wrong road.  Why do everybody that has ever been abused by parents not abuse their own children today, but only some?  Many kids who grew up poor and hungry has excelled and contribute positive to society today.

I agree with you, Robert.  Most of these young criminals live of the state, because they want to and just don't give a damn about sweating a single drop to earn their keep, but they can demand very good.  Exactly the same as here in SA. 

[Bob Molloy]

To repeat: first understand the problem and then fix it. Sounding off at the mouth about perceived iniquities is all well and good and satisfying but does not address the problem. If we haven't got a solution then we are part of the problem.

This latest from the Guardian by investigative journo Tony Gosling throws  more light on it.


There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored
Those condemning the events in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture

Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.

The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.

One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 - more than two a month - and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.

Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.

As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

These problems will never be solved because there is just to many humans in this world, humans are unwilling to face this reality and use every excuse under the sun to avoid this subject. To accept this reality makes us all guilty so we just stick our heads in the sand and hope somebody else is going to makes it all go away.

Our solution is to build more, bigger, faster, we like a big pyramid scheme going badly wrong.

They say that big rock in the sky is long overdue...............

[toonfandangl]

To repeat: first understand the problem and then fix it. Sounding off at the mouth about perceived iniquities is all well and good and satisfying but does not address the problem. If we haven't got a solution then we are part of the problem.

This latest from the Guardian by investigative journo Tony Gosling throws  more light on it.


There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored
Those condemning the events in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture

Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.

The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.

One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 - more than two a month - and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.

Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.

As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.

Agree with your post Bob! .............................................interestingly how its taken the heat off the Murdoch's empire troubles

[Robert Bruce]

Bob,

Let's not forget that what you say here,".. Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures..."

Correct. However these actions need to be placed in the correct context as fundamentally being the lagging result of previous governments' inabilities to correct what everyone in UK knew was wrong at that time. Even worse in recent times, is the inexcusable, lamentable and appalling failure of the Labour government's policies since 1997. I cannot repeat what I think of the twin gargoyles called Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

The deprivations felt by us all since Blair jumped ship and left Brown at the helm cannot be blamed on the coalition. The coalition is an easy scapegoat and it is way too easy to blame the coalition for the incredibly appalling state the previous government's tenure inflicted on this country.

The coalition has accepted the challenge to face up to what needs to be done and risk all to put matters right. Brave of them as it will no doubt cost them the next election and once again we will be frogmarched to bankruptcy by yet another inept Labour government. But as unpopular as it is, Cameron and Clegg have to act and carry out drastic measures to rid us of the national debt and bring in efficiencies the Labour party avoided like the plague.

God forbid that that school prefect Milliband should lead this country one day.

At some stage, somebody has to call a doctor to come help the patient recover to full health. The electorate did. Labour was wiped out at the polls as we accepted the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos and handed them the mandate to create and take the absolutely necessary tough measures to pull the UK back from the brink of bankruptcy. Then it became a question of who of those who cast a vote for a Tory or Lib Dem led government would be first to cry foul as the corrective measures rolled out.

The recoil was set and the fuse lit the instant Cameron announced the first of the required draconian cuts. The once clamouring pro-Cameron and Clegg anti-Labour campaigners quickly decamped then reverted to type and cried in pain while demanding a stay on further cuts. How fickle and spineless we all are! We do not like the bitter tasting medicine, but we secretly know it is for the best.

I don't like what has to be done. Nobody here does, but like it or not if stringent and bitterly distasteful remedial treatment is not provided immediately who knows what other ills will beset this once proud nation.

To keep on crying about underlying issues that fail to be addressed is falling on deaf ears. Regrettably it is a case of too many fantasists (not you Bob!) crying wolf far too often. The resources to begin positive change for the deprived sections of this society have been in place a long, long time. And they are still there - not being used. Why?

Yes there are failings in all spheres of society and government as proved by the Baby P tragedy. The teaching profession is in complete disarray. Who wants to put up with foulmouthed 10yr olds without recourse to appropriate forms of punishment? Why try to defend your property, your family and yourself from attack and harm if you know that the law will make you the wrongdoer.

I started P45camp UK Ltd, a non-profit organisation to cut across the longwinded and expensive recruitment process to help long-term unemployed people of all ages, ethnicity and skill level to market themselves, their talent, experience and skills/abilities to hiring businesses.

A P45camp was an event where employers needing staff gathered under a single roof with jobless people who were provided with a free and ideal opportunity to connect, engage and market themselves and their skills direct to businesses wanting to hire staff. The objective was for the out-of-worker to pitch his skills and him/herself well enough to walk away from the P45camp with a telephone number to call the next day to setup formal discussions about getting a job.

My own pitches to businesses to create interest were greeted with amazing enthusiasm. I also pitched colleges who offered me their facilities free of charge to hold the P45camp events at their premises. P45camp dovetailed with the colleges' government funded Train to Gain projects.

I got press and radio interviews. The PR machine resulted in me getting calls from out of work people to help setup P45camp events from Edinburgh to Exeter.

The Jobcentres jumped on the bandwagon too because P45camps could help relieve the pressures on them to reduce the jobless statistics. So the Jobcentre staff promoted the benefits of attending a P45camp to each jobless person as they signed on each week to receive their Giro.

Can you guess where P45camp received zero support and why?