ajdown
Posting in this thread
It's really sad that humans are capable of this kind of reasoning, something is seriously broken...
In cases with behavour like this, I'd use the word 'human' in its loosest possible sense.
5 yr old girl & 35 yr old man shot in Stockwell
- Thread starter wemakeyousoundb
- Start date
In cases with behavour like this, I'd use the word 'human' in its loosest possible sense.
Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
Oh, possibly.
Saw another guy on the triangle bit of St Matthew's today being filmed. Was a tanned looking guy with dark hair and 2 crew. Same people?
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Unfortunately, human beings are very capable of this kind of behaviour. Even a cursory knowledge of history would tell anyone this. To deny their humanity is stupid.
colacubes
Mr Hot Cookie
You're possibly right. All the news reports I've heard today on the radio have described 2 kids hiding in there and they were the intended targets. The police want to try and find who they are as they will probably know who the shooters were.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
It's really sad that humans are capable of this kind of reasoning, something is seriously broken...
I think that "reasoning" isn't an accurate assessment. As agricola indicates, there are people who feel entitled to behave like this, and when they're indulging in some self-reinforcing group-think about "honour", "respect" or "territory", reasoning goes out of the window, with stupidity and bravado taking over.
What are they defending or fighting over, anyway? Their shithole against the guys from the dump down the road who look and behave exactly like they do. Probably like the same music, fashion, sport, whatever, so what the fuck? Shoot someone from the neighbouring estate coz its a different postcode. Dangerous levels of stupidity. Have they caught them yet? I hope they do, before they shoot someone else....
Giles..
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
That's a very simplistic and highly prejudiced view.
The boy a few doors away was shot dead in similar circumstances to the people shot last night and was completely blameless too. A good boy with no gang involvement at all. He was in a shop with his Mum. My son, who does not have gang involvement either was often attacked for being 'out of his area'.
Maybe you think estates are dumps and shitholes but I bet you've never lived on one, nor come across the amazing funny bright good people who live on them, as I do. Attitudes such as yours, about people like me and mine, are part of the problem that marginalises and demonises entire sections of society.
The only reason this has made national news is that a five year old girl has been shot. On the whole people aren't much interested when teenage boys are killed.
kittyP
Pluviophile
Please don't misunderstand me, I abhor this kind of violence but we cannot possibly understand what it's like for these young people growing up in with the influences and culture that they do.
It's dog eat dog and even though we don't understand why they are arguing over a bit of shitty street in Brixton, does not make it totally unfathomable.
People have acted and thought like this since time immemorial (just with a vaguely different slant on it) but they just didn't have guns so easily to hand.
And when I say people, I mean all people, not just 'estate people'.
We all have a penchant towards fighting for what is ours. Even if we just do it in a reasoned verbal way.
Jackobi
swallows anything
But he wasn't the intended victim was he? The intended victims probably are very similar to the perpetrators, young, black, poor, undereducated, wannabe gangsters living at a slightly different postcode on an almost identical council estate.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
Doesn't make it right when "young, black, poor, undereducated, wannabe gangsters" get shot either. The difference is no-one much cares about that, indeed, some people seem to think their lives just don't matter at all. Which may have something to do with why things have got like this.
clandestino
no llevar papel
There was an excellent documentary on TV a few years back about gang culture, with the makers talking to a lot of gang members across the country, including in Tooting. The kids in the documentary talked very candidly about their lives and motivations, and the general conclusion was that when you have nothing much in your life - no money, no job, no prospects - the one thing you do have is the respect of your peers. If you lose that, then you really have nothing, hence the desire to keep that respect intact, no matter what.
Obviously there are plenty of other factors too, as Blagsta mentioned earlier, but that reasoning does make some kind of depressing sense. Depressing for the people who find themselves in that situation, as well as those bystanders affected by it.
I lived on an estate off the south circular for a year or so, and my memory of it was that it was regular folks living there. I think it's simplistic to just blame this on kids living on estates, even though some of the gang members may well do. It's not about where you live, more about everything else that's going on in your life.
Obviously there are plenty of other factors too, as Blagsta mentioned earlier, but that reasoning does make some kind of depressing sense. Depressing for the people who find themselves in that situation, as well as those bystanders affected by it.
I lived on an estate off the south circular for a year or so, and my memory of it was that it was regular folks living there. I think it's simplistic to just blame this on kids living on estates, even though some of the gang members may well do. It's not about where you live, more about everything else that's going on in your life.
kittyP
Pluviophile
^^ this
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
I've heard it described by a couple of chortling twats in a pub as 'ethnic cleansing'. I nearly got violently angry but decided it wasn't worth it so just left, shaking with rage.
kittyP
Pluviophile
That's terrible.
Were they also discussing how "jolly awful" it is that we don't own half the world any more?
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
The basic problem here is that we learn by what we see and not by what we are told. However we are governed on the basis that we will learn by what we are told and not by what we see.
Now get inside the head of a kid growing up in Brixton (or any number of other places). More often than not any parenting they get is from somebody who is overworked and stressed out, or from somebody who has no money and is stressed out, often both. So what they learn is from school, from the media, and from their peers.
At school, regardless of how good their teachers are, they are basically stuffed into an examination result machine and told that if they do well they may get a job. So they look at what getting a job means, and around them they see sweeping the street, serving behind the counter in MacDeadthings, getting up at 5 in the morning to clean up after a bunch of messy twats in some office or somesuch, all for damn all money and on short term contracts. Understandably many don't see any future through the education system.
From the media they get a clear impression that the right way to behave is to demand respect, treat any wrongdoing with physical violence, and to deal with feeling wronged in any way by seeking revenge. They see the people who should be setting an example engaged in fraud, nepotism, warmongering, and treating any sign of concern for others as a shameful weakness. No matter what anyone tells them they should be doing it's what they see that counts as the example to follow. Meanwhile they are bombarded by the message that their worth is to be judged primarily on their possessions, and that if they don't have much money they are worthless. They also pick up the clear message that to be young (and especially to be young and black) is to be seen by society at large as a threat. If they are "lucky" enough to come from a family where there is some attempt at bringing them up within a religion, the chances are it will be a simplified fundamentalist version that is big on smiting the ungodly and not too strong when it comes to forgiveness. For many of them there is nothing reaching them at all that could possibly be seen as teaching them to concentrate on doing the right thing themselves.
Which brings us to the peer group. The only people they get to deal with, in the most part, who treat them with any respect. The only people who set rules for them on the basis that EVERYONE obeys the same rules. So their sole source of a personal morality is down to their friends. In many areas that basically means that the ONLY people giving them an example they can follow is a gang based on street robbery and crack dealing. When they adopt a morality in which the key tenets are look out for your own; make money by whatever means necessary; respond to threat, disrespect, and transgressions, with extreme violence; seek sex at any opportunity; then there's nothing to contradict it other than what people who clearly don't give a damn about them say... but don't do.
It's a huge mess, but it's not entirely their mess, and it won't be fixed by treating it as if it is.
Now get inside the head of a kid growing up in Brixton (or any number of other places). More often than not any parenting they get is from somebody who is overworked and stressed out, or from somebody who has no money and is stressed out, often both. So what they learn is from school, from the media, and from their peers.
At school, regardless of how good their teachers are, they are basically stuffed into an examination result machine and told that if they do well they may get a job. So they look at what getting a job means, and around them they see sweeping the street, serving behind the counter in MacDeadthings, getting up at 5 in the morning to clean up after a bunch of messy twats in some office or somesuch, all for damn all money and on short term contracts. Understandably many don't see any future through the education system.
From the media they get a clear impression that the right way to behave is to demand respect, treat any wrongdoing with physical violence, and to deal with feeling wronged in any way by seeking revenge. They see the people who should be setting an example engaged in fraud, nepotism, warmongering, and treating any sign of concern for others as a shameful weakness. No matter what anyone tells them they should be doing it's what they see that counts as the example to follow. Meanwhile they are bombarded by the message that their worth is to be judged primarily on their possessions, and that if they don't have much money they are worthless. They also pick up the clear message that to be young (and especially to be young and black) is to be seen by society at large as a threat. If they are "lucky" enough to come from a family where there is some attempt at bringing them up within a religion, the chances are it will be a simplified fundamentalist version that is big on smiting the ungodly and not too strong when it comes to forgiveness. For many of them there is nothing reaching them at all that could possibly be seen as teaching them to concentrate on doing the right thing themselves.
Which brings us to the peer group. The only people they get to deal with, in the most part, who treat them with any respect. The only people who set rules for them on the basis that EVERYONE obeys the same rules. So their sole source of a personal morality is down to their friends. In many areas that basically means that the ONLY people giving them an example they can follow is a gang based on street robbery and crack dealing. When they adopt a morality in which the key tenets are look out for your own; make money by whatever means necessary; respond to threat, disrespect, and transgressions, with extreme violence; seek sex at any opportunity; then there's nothing to contradict it other than what people who clearly don't give a damn about them say... but don't do.
It's a huge mess, but it's not entirely their mess, and it won't be fixed by treating it as if it is.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
They were too young to remember the Empire, kittyp. It made it all the worse.
kittyP
Pluviophile
Oh they don't need to have been there at the time to be enough of a tit head to still want it
ajdown
Posting in this thread
... or it happens so often we've become desensitised to it.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
Wonder how much respect he's going to get for shooting a little girl. Who'd want to be in that gang.
Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
probably make out the bullet ricocheted and it's therefore not his fault
Jackobi
swallows anything
It is lazy thinking, instead of trying to understand why 'they' want to murder each other, just let them get on with it, so long as no innocent bystanders are hurt.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
See the politicians are wading in already. Here is Claudia Webbe --Labour party member, Chair of Trident and board director of one of New Labours ALMOs spouting off on C4 website:
http://www.channel4.com/news/girl-aged-5-gunned-down-in-london-shooting
Really irritates me that professional politicians get this airtime.
If Claudia thinks drugs is the problem then how about taking drugs out of crime by decriminalising them or legalising them. But then Claudia is in the Labour party and has made a good career out of this. So wont say that.
See her career here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Webbe
She also says more resources need to be put into poor communities. Quite so. Her party did bugger all when they were in power.
http://www.channel4.com/news/girl-aged-5-gunned-down-in-london-shooting
Really irritates me that professional politicians get this airtime.
If Claudia thinks drugs is the problem then how about taking drugs out of crime by decriminalising them or legalising them. But then Claudia is in the Labour party and has made a good career out of this. So wont say that.
See her career here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Webbe
She also says more resources need to be put into poor communities. Quite so. Her party did bugger all when they were in power.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Good point Eric and backed up by work of Professor Wilkinson on Inequality:
http://www.islingtontribune.com/news/2010/jul/prof-richard-wilkinson-inequality-trigger-violence
"Professor Wilkinson explained how quality of life was linked to how equal a country is rather than how rich it is. “More equal societies are more cohesive,” he said. “They have less violence, fewer drug problems and better health. A fairer society can improve the quality of life for all of us. We all know these problems are rooted in relative deprivation and social status. These problems get worse as differences get bigger.”
He added: “One of the main triggers to violence is how you’re looked at, disrespected, loss of face, people’s self-worth."
Why should your average working and law-abiding person give a toss about these little wankers shooting and stabbing each other over ridiculous and pathetic motives, though?
People choose this lifestyle of violence, intimidation of others and petty crime. This is not the desperate crime of the poor person stealing to feed their kids, is it?
Giles..
People choose this lifestyle of violence, intimidation of others and petty crime. This is not the desperate crime of the poor person stealing to feed their kids, is it?
Giles..
empathy?
Nanker Phelge
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
I feel for those caught up in this rotten mess. There's a lot more to the term 'Innocent Victim' than some people care to consider.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
Because it is attitudes like yours, so frequently expressed through the mass media, that causes them to decide that they may as well treat everyone else with the same lack of concern, sympathy, or understanding. To them you are simply an ignorant wealthy pillock who knows eff all and who commands even less respect. In that they are simply taking their cue from your attitude, it's just that you see each other as being in different "gangs".
You also miss the point in the last two sentences.
No they don't choose a life of petty crime. They just didn't grow up in a wealthy enough home to get to go to a posh school and then commit large scale fraud in cahoots with their cronies. However they see the example and do what they can, in their limited way, to emulate it. It wouldn't be any better if it was somebody stealing to feed their family. It would still be the same crime.
What I am most concerned about are the victims. I believe they are best served by taking a long hard look at the actual problems, rather than by everyone sitting around posturing and trying to appear as hard on criminals as possible.
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