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UK Riots: Have you been affected?

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Carol Haynes:
History repeats itself (no surprise there, humans are pretty dumb after all), this article sums things up quite well: http://neweconomics.tumblr.com/post/8688511600/its-the-1780s-all-over-again

Talk about rebels without a cause.
-nudone (August 10, 2011, 10:23 AM)
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That article is a pretty good starting point for discussion - yes there is outright criminality in what has been going on but the political assessment that that is all that is going on is so far from the mark that it just shows how far from reality they live.

In the inner cities we are now into the third generation of young people in my life time where getting a job is about as remote as getting married after the age of 70 - when you have systemic unemployment through multiple generations in a family and all hope removed is it any wonder that kids feel disenfranchised and behave like animals? It is precisely how they are treated.

I think we are only seeing the tip of the problem in the current riots - in coming months I think the sense of isolation and detachment from the political process is going to spread through the poor communities but also into 'middle England'. Once the current cuts start to bite and Thatcherite unemployment starts to be the norm, interest rates rise and people can't pay their mortgage or rent and the housing market drops back into negative equity (as it did in the 80s) the government is going to have real trouble. Add to that rising inflation, the destruction of pension scheme, the decimation of the welfare state and I think we are in for a rough time and as usual it will be poorer communities that will see the worst of the violence and upheaval.

My only consolation for the future is that I haven't brought children into the world - the future is exceedingly bleak.

A further response to 40hz - the UK is in a really bad state at the moment, but in the next few years US debts are going to start to come home to roost and once the US government faces the fact that the current level of debt is completely unsustainable the US economy is going to cause even bigger problems across the globe than it has in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage disaster and current banking crisis. The US banking crisis has been the catalyst to push at least four European companies over the edge - before the economic systems reset worldwide I can see a lot of countries going down the toilet - the one facing the biggest problem being the US. I dread to think what will happen when the rich in the US take their money and run leaving huge debts and no way to pay them!

In the UK we already have businesses threatening to take the cash and run - not least this week Barclays Bank - simply because they want to sustain the totally obscene way they do business. I actually bank with Barclays but who do you switch to? All the banks in the UK are now multinationals whose only concern is profit - they have no interest in the customers or the economy except in as much as it affects the bottom line.

Its all too depressing, and there really doesn't seem to be anything other than flames at the end of the tunnel.

"There is no such thing as society"
"Unemployment is a price worth paying"
both quotes from Margaret Thatcher

The Tories have learned nothing since - and the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties have, in the main, joined the Tories. How will anything ever be fixed?

steeladept:
I actually bank with Barclays but who do you switch to?
-Carol Haynes (August 11, 2011, 07:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
I agree with a lot of what Carol stated here, except for the political hackery - though they are all thugs, I don't agree with the fact that it is one party that pushed it all and the others joined the party.  If that were the case, then there would be a real opposition party.  No, my take is it is two side of the same crooked coin - both pulling away from each other and taking as much from you as they can in the process.

As to this statement, however, you switch to you.  You store your wealth in precious metals (coins are easiest), especially gold and silver as they are the most common and hence most exchangeable.  You exchange it at spot rate (or as near as possible) for the money to pay for goods where vendors don't accept the metals and use it in place of money in as many places as you can (outside the current paper scam they call currency). When you make money, via normal paper currency, you exchange as much as reasonably possible into these metals and, ideally, store them yourself in a safe place, outside the banking system entirely (and ideally outside the government's reach).  That is the only real move you can make away from banking institutions these days.  Sure they sell the gold (et. al.), but if they want paper money - let them have it.  The governments are going to inflate the value away anyway.  Gold is the only monetary standard that has never deflated or inflated.  It is essentially worth the same today as it was in Roman times over 2000 years ago.

Renegade:
There's a good amount of rhetoric coming out of the UK gov't now.

One of the things I've heard is about "taking action" over social media... Yeah. That's a good idea. Let's add censorship to the list of tools government has to work with.

If these things go through, they will spill onto the world stage as well. Other countries will follow suit.

Not. Good.

Renegade:
Hmmm...

Maybe censorship has an adversary:

http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/iphone/story.html?id=5242521

Researchers from the University of Waterloo and University of Michigan say they have developed technology that could make it "virtually impossible" for oppressive governments to censor specific websites in their countries.
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I take it that they mean countries like the UK when they say "oppressive governments". :P

Renegade:
More on that topic:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/08/11/london.riots.social.media/index.html?npt=NP1

Open-Web and free-speech advocates immediately objected to Cameron's language.

"It may be tempting to smother that kind of speech when a government feels it is under siege, as Britain seems to feel that it is," wrote Matthew Ingram of tech blog GigaOm. "But doing this represents nothing less than an attack on the entire concept of freedom of speech, and that has some frightening consequences for any democracy."
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