London's Burning

[classicman]

<faints>

[gvidas]

DanaC, that it's a "primal yell" rings true to me.

I've never been even as close to London as Heathrow on a layover. But the idea that this comes out of a disenfranchised class and generation without the eloquence or clarity or whatever it takes to be recognized as "legitimately political" makes a lot of sense to me. In a certain way, that so many figures of traditional power dismiss the riots as apolitical and "just crime" is, itself, a sign that there is a deep, probably fairly widespread common cause -- one which is so endemic that they cannot even pretend to relate.

This seems maybe a relevant, if sort of anarcho-philosophical in a dense way, essay about the (previous?) apathy of British students relative to French: Reflexive Impotence

In it, he basically argues that there is a bleak future for young people, where they're simultaneously trained to be manic entertainment/stimulus junkies, but also to take on debt and join the rat race.

Reflexive impotence amounts to an unstated worldview amongst the British young. Many of the teenagers I work with have mental health problems or learning difficulties. Depression is endemic. The number of students who have some variant of dyslexia is astonishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness. This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatizing problems - treating them as if they were caused only by the individual's neurology and/ or family background - any question of social systemic causation is ruled out.
[...]
If the figure of discipline was the worker-prisoner, the figure of control is the debtor-addict. Cyberspatial capital operates by addicting its users; Gibson recognized that in Neuromancer when he had Case and the other cyberspace cowboys feeling insects-under-the-skin strung out when they unplugged from the matrix (Case's amphetamine habit is plainly the substitute for an addiction to a far more abstract speed).
[...]
It is worth stressing that none of the students I teach have any legal obligation to be at college. They could leave if they wanted to. But the lack of any meaningful employment opportunities, together with cynical encouragement from government means that college seems to be the easier, safer option. Deleuze says that control societies are based on debt rather than enclosure; but there is a way in which the current education system both indebts and encloses students. Pay for your own exploitation, the logic insists - get into debt so you can get the same McJob you could have walked into if you'd left school at 16 ...

The people who control the narrative freak out about their pensions or 401ks or stock portfolios going into the shitter when the economy collapses. But the youth, who are already predisposed to be somewhat angsty about what the future may hold, are watching the older generation lose their shit over it, too. Is it worse to lose it all, or to watch what could be yours some day get lost?

I have both a day job and an active entreprenurial pipe dream. But if I were there, or the riots here, I wonder what I would do: it doesn't seem that foreign. Every generation "theatricializes one's lack of prospects": mine did it with body decoration and narcotics. But, we had prospects.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analy...0sp58Y.twitter

[ZenGum]

It fixes most things.

[DanaC]

@ UG:

So because a relatively small number of people went on a rampage for a few nights we should utterly change the way we as a country function, and have functined for some considerable time?

The reality is that we have been slowly creeping towards more American style solutions to social problems and this is the result: social dischord.

The recent austerity moves have added to an already mounting tension.

This isn't about benefits culture and handouts. At least, I don't think it is. They weren't all unemployed, or from unemployed families. Some of the people arrested have had respectable jobs. One of them was a teaching assistant.

But for those that are unemployed, cutting their already low benefits payments and making it harder to claim is not helpful when youth unemployment is riding at 20.3% in some places.

At the same time the paths to college and university are getting harder to follow with abolition of the EMA (£30 per week educational maintenance allowance, given to low income kids going to college from school, to assist in paying for travel and books) and the tripling of university fees (used to be capped at c. 3k per year, now most o fthe universities have taken up the opportunity to raise fees and are charging 9k per year).

Schools meanwhile have become more segregated than ever along income/class lines, and the movement to an Academy system in many areas has resulted in a massive increase in school exclusions, with difficult to reach pupils far more likely to be excluded than worked with, than used to be the case. Many schools/academies are now specialising, with some offering a more vocational bent and others a more academic, I'll leave it to you to guess which areas have leaned towards academic specialisms and which areas are channeling their youngsters into plumbing and plastering.

Society has never felt more economically divided. Kids are growing up in the most consumerist society Britain has ever known, with social worth more tagged than ever to branded goods and having exactly the right stuff. At the same time they're flooded with a mix of messages around entitlement. That has nothing to do with the welfare state being too generous. We had a welfare state when i was a kid, and we had an unequal society and all sorts of trouble. We had second generation entrenched unemployed and a massive underclass, but this sense of lifestyle entitlement is new.

[DanaC]

A couple of things that i find quite interesting about this.

The timing of this is interesting. We've seen over the last couple of years a massive increase in youth involvement in politics. The debate over tuition fees galvanised a large section of the young people of Britain into action. Marches and protests and letter writing campaigns and planned (politely, with permission from the university authorities) campus occupations.

There was a huge rally in London, and kids from all accross the Uk flocked to it. Kids were ditching school and getting down to London with their mates, there were young people at the end of their university courses, protesting on behalf of younger friends and relatives, there were teachers and other professionals, many of whom were in their professions because they'd had access to university education through a combination of loans and grants without having to take on massive amounts of debt to do so.

There was a real sense of energy around their response, and engagement. There was then a lot of support from young people when it came to protests about public sector pensions.

Last year when the main parties were gearing up to the election, the Liberal Democrats heavily courted first time voters, and made tuition fees and student loans one of the central planks of their campaign. They made all sorts of promises, including a cast iron guarantee that if they were in government that they wouldn't allow any increase to tuition fees.

Young people joined the LibDems in droves. They were a huge part of their campaign. The twitter generation used social media to increase the footprint of the lib-dem campaign massively.

Then the two main parties failed to gain a majority, with many of their votes migrating to the Lib Dems, partly because of this youth response and it was down to the Lib Dems, the third party, to attach themselves in coalition to one of the two parties to form a coalition government. They formed a government with the Conservatives, and one of the first things that coalition did was abandon all the promises the libdems made to the young people.

I don't think it's any accident that this is occurring now. I think there is a general sense amongst a lot of young people that the adult world simply isn't interested in them or their views.

[Trilby]

"Control societies are based on debt," and the "debtor-addict" from the above article reminds me of an excellent book by Alain de Botton: Status Anxiety.

it's a great read and a great balm to the nuttiness of a society infatuated with the shiny bling of the material world. We are such suggestible creatures and western civ. has indoctrinated the youth to believe it is their god-given RIGHT to wear 300.00 sneakers. And if you don't wear them - well then, you are nothing but trash.

Making people feel like shit about themselves -

Capitalism at it's very, very best.

[ZenGum]

Wait a minute.

One of them was a teaching assistant.

SSSSuuuuunnnndddaaaeeee?????!!!!!!!

[infinite monkey]

Well with all the folks here who have her phone number and speak to her, I'm surprised no one has tried to call.

[DanaC]

She's in Aylesbury. Haven't heard any reports of trouble in or near aylesbury.

[grynch]

Originally Posted by DanaC

She's in Aylesbury. Haven't heard any reports of trouble in or near aylesbury.

unfortunately... that doesnt mean much....
.
I've not heard of any reports on mainstream news of trouble in Oxford, High Wycombe or Brighton but I have first hand reports of some trouble in each place... not whole-scale rioting but troubles..

so....

[DanaC]

Ok, fair enough.

We've had comparatively little in my borough. A few little flareups,nothing the police weren't able to deal with. But Leeds, about a 30 minute drive away, has seen some fairly serious rioting.

[infinite monkey]

Are you going to try to call her? Sarge? Bunny? Bri?

I don't have her number.

[Pete Zicato]

Maybe this'll help with the looting.
.
.

[classicman]

Interesting interview from a couple girls:

Consider what an unnamed girl told a BBC reporter to explain why she and others looted local shops:

“It’s the rich people. The rich people have got businesses, and that’s why all this has happened. We’re just showing the rich people we can do what we want.”

We’re just showing the rich people we can do what we want. And what they want is not to be paid more for working less, or anything else out of the anti-capitalist’s textbook. It’s extremely unlikely these girls have or want jobs, given their age and behavior: One generally doesn’t take a day off work to smash the windows of an off-track betting parlor and make off with its flat-screen televisions.

No, what they want is just to take what the rich people have.

And where could they have gotten such a notion? Try the ideology they’ve been spoon-fed since birth, just like their parents and, by this point, their parents’ parents.

Yes the writer is skewed, but unfortunately, there is some merit to what he says as well.