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If anything, 2016 was a big step backwards.
If you ask me most of the damage has been done in just the last two years. The tories brazen anit-immigrant grandstanding on the Rwanda policy in particular have normalised anti-immigrant sentiment. Combine that with social decay due to austerity and post-covid cost of living increases and you have a powder keg just waiting to go off.
Money often seems to be the driving force of a lot of the vitriol I see and hear - from refugees getting free hotel rooms/cars/houses at UK taxpayer's expense, to not being able to get a dentist appointment, all because there's not enough money for people 'who belong here'.
If the same people waste their disposable income on grifters like Farage, then when it all goes wrong they'll be demanding his head on a platter. Money is their obsession, plainly not spending it on 'others'.
Not standing up and denouncing it by the Tories and Reform is taken as encouragement and support to the arseholes. This is deliberate by both Tories and Reform.
What shocks me is how social media and the terrible state of political discourse has emboldened people to think that populist, far-right, racist tropes are just an acceptable conversation point everywhere, like the weather or the football. We are seeing the sharp end of normalised bigotry, and it feels like we’re starting from a 1970s square one to deal with it.
Baroness Warsi (who I still struggle to see remaining a Tory) puts it well. She says that racism and islamaphobia in particular now passes ‘the dinner party test’, where people at polite middle-class gatherings now feel free to be openly racist
If you ask me most of the damage has been done in just the last two years. The tories brazen anit-immigrant grandstanding on the Rwanda policy in particular have normalised anti-immigrant sentiment.
Another element here is that, in the main, this has been at its most vitriolic when coming out of the mouths of second-generation immigrants - Patel, Braverman, Cleverly, Badanoch and Sunak, the former PM himself - rather than the usual Tommy Robinson types.
Its lent the blatant demonising of others an air of legitimacy in certain peoples eyes
Pull that ladder up behind yourself
So people are rioting because they think the perpetrator is an illegal immigrant? But he was born here? So he's neither illegal, or an immigrant?
Rrriiiight......
I see ANOTHER mental health client who slipped through the cracks and was lost to follow up or not followed up at all. I see reports of bags of meds taken from his home, largely untouched. Sad that people aren't rioting for reforms and increased budgets for mental health trusts across the country.
So people are rioting because they think the perpetrator is an illegal immigrant?
Don't think they're rioting about that one specific incident any more. It's now just a generic uprising of white supremacist anger. Essentially a bunch of insecure macho white men who see this as their opportunity to get some 'payback'. I reckon it'll all die down in the next couple of days when they see fellow rioters being given multi-year sentences for throwing bricks or fighting with cops.
Far right letting of steam in riot temperatures at the start of a Labour Govt.Kind of reverse 2011 riots. Police helicopter overhead dealing with them here.
Compared to the Gaza Hate Marches™, these riots are quite mild, understandable even.
If you ask me most of the damage has been done in just the last two years. The tories brazen anit-immigrant grandstanding on the Rwanda policy in particular have normalised anti-immigrant sentiment
Part of the problem is that they've done that alongside record immigration. The fact that it's been non-EU migration, largely enabled by brexit doesn't help when lots of very thick people voted for brexit in the belief it would reduce it.
Looks like the nobheads in Rotherham have taken it to the next level and are trying to burn people alive
https://Twitter.com/mrbrendancox/status/1820092148202483875?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ
Compared to the Gaza Hate Marches™, these riots are quite mild, understandable even.
I see what you did there, 😉
2016 has normalised all this, and the genie isn’t going back in the bottle anytime soon.
2016 saw a xenophobic (certainly) and racist (mostly) campaign win a vote. Of course it emboldened people to be more open about their prejudice. A day or two after the referendum the 'Polish Vermin go home' notices started appearing - I think in Boston, but I may be mistaken. The vote to Leave was the single biggest step change in 'acceptability' of xenophobic/racist views in decades in the UK.
The campaign for Brexit absolutely kicked this all off, it was sold to the knuckle heads as a way to get rid of foreigners, especially funny foreign looking ones, remember the Farage posters. Brexit made being openly racist OK again amongst certain demographics.
The Torys have absolutely doubled down on hate since Brexit but it was Brexit that started it.
My hope.
The next few days and weeks are going to be unpleasant but I think fast effective action will be taken against rioters, and I hope against the cheerleaders too. They have a legitimate right to protest no matter how odious their cause; this to be clear is not legitimate protest, it's illegal protest and pure theft and looting.
But it'll also galvanise the moderate Brits that outnumber the hard right. Including those that aren't particularly on SM and aren't so aware of the threat - well it's now in their high street and on their TV screens. As they've been singing as they barrier in front of mosques and refugee hotels "There are many many more of us than you"
Brendan May, no idea how yesterday started, none at all
https://twitter.com/bmay/status/1819988274300997762
Looks like the nobheads in Rotherham have taken it to the next level and are trying to burn people alive
At this point the current police strategy of dispersing these people and trying to id them for prosecution afterwards needs upgrading. People need to go to prison for a long, long time for this.
Mild, understandable even
True, it's such low level disorder. Someone trying to burn me and my kids alive is just a normal Sunday afternoon. Why all the fuss?
People need to go to prison for a long, long time for this.
I’d start with Viscount Rothemere and the editors of the Daily Mail, see above Twitter link
Looks like things have ratcheted up a notch in Bolton,
At one point, amid a further cry of "Allahu Akbar", some began throwing eggs at police officers - before then charging around streets in the town centre.
From the BBC live feed.
Depressing but not unsurprising to find knuckle heads in many communities.
People need to go to prison for a long, long time for this.
Nazir Afzal on X: "A reminder After the Aug 2011 riots, police & my prosecutors examined all the video evidence for MONTHS identifying & bringing offenders to justice - 1000s of them Some didn’t get arrested till a year later! Prison was the usual sentence My boss was someone called Keir Starmer" / X
.
Looks like they're going to be
An unannounced impromptu statement from Starmer following the Rotheram events suggests he's beginning to worry. This is going to turn into a big problem for him if he doesn't get a grip. All the tough words about 'full force of the law' ring hollow when you see a dozen riot cops cowering behind shields being attacked by a crowd of rioters who massively outnumber them. Where are all the cops? Funny how they can get thousands of cops in place for a pro-Palestine demo but can't find any to combat far right racists.
And Bolton looks like it could turn into a full on race war. I don't think it's too alarmist to suggest someone's going to get killed soon.
Reports that protests planned in Derby this afternoon, hope MrsMC and youngest get back and out the railway station in case it turns nasty.
Rotherham is really unpleasant, hopefully some very serious charges can be brought. But Bolton worries me most - if it ends up with hotheads in the minority communities taking to the streets as well, it's playing straight into the racists hands.
Funny how they can get thousands of cops in place for a pro-Palestine demo but can’t find any to combat far right racists.
There's a lot of cops available easily to the Met. Not so many in Rotherham, especially when protests may kick off in other places. Those 20,000 missing coppers due to austerity would come in quite useful this weekend.
Where are all the cops?
This is where the “dispersed disruptions” are much more dangerous than one (or a few) organised large marches will ever be. You can’t draft in police manpower from around the country if the gatherings are spread widely.
An unannounced impromptu statement from Starmer following the Rotheram events suggests he’s beginning to worry.
Thuggary?, I’d call it domestic terrorism
Could we save the Rwanda policy by shipping the Nazis to Kigali? I'd chip in for Thomas Yaxley-Lennon's one way fare.
A lot of South Yorkshire police were doing overtime in Hull last night.
I’d call it domestic terrorism
Absolutely. Some of what we've seen qualifies under S1 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and I hope we get the chance to see some of the perpetrators classified this way. Particularly those involved with the organising or inciting of it online.
Could we save the Rwanda policy by shipping the Nazis to Kigali? I’d chip in for Thomas Yaxley-Lennon’s one way fare.
Rwanda would probably want to renegotiate when they realise that the calibre of deportees is substantially lower than they were expecting under the Conservative policy.
Summer school holidays are an all round shit show in the UK, the same lot who are our rioting this week are usually out nicking stuff, fighting in pubs, driving around like idiots and generally being unpleasant/hanging around in groups intimidating people.
As soon as the summer heat and no school hits they get bored and fired up and use any excuse to look for trouble.
This has clearly been building up for a while a til a suitable excuse was found to create some carnage and 90% are just the aforementioned idiots tagging along for something to do.
People would be very shocked if they ever realised how few police are actually on duty in their town at any particular time and how far they are from a police officer. If there's 170000 officers in total then there will only be about 35000 on duty at any time across the whole UK. Many of those can't be deployed to public disorder.
Rotherham is really unpleasant, hopefully some very serious charges can be brought. But Bolton worries me most – if it ends up with hotheads in the minority communities taking to the streets as well, it’s playing straight into the racists hands.
They're already out there and I'd hope they're all dealt with equally harshly. We can't have groups of armed thugs wandering the streets without consequences. That doesn't appear to be the case though and different groups appear to be getting a very different response through the fear of disturbances spreading.
Summer school holidays are an all round shit show in the UK
Sorry, have to point this out, not the UK, just England and Northern Ireland. While we have knuckle draggers up here, who predominantly wish they were English, and bare remarkable similarities to the trouble makers in NI, we simply don't have anything like what's happened over the past few days in England
This an opportunity to hammer Farage
But how.
By politicians constantly publicly criticising him and demanding that he explains the misinformation he spouted and the rhetoric which did so much to fuel the violence and riots?
Why should he get away with it by quietly slipping into the shadows? The spotlight should be shone on the attention-seeking arsehole so that no one forgets his role in sowing division and whipping up hatred.
Farage will eventually be seeking the limelight again when things quieten down, he always does, but why wait until then? Why allow him to set the agenda?
The idiots actually torched a library last night in Liverpool because they couldn’t get to the mosque they were trying to attack.
Literally burning books, though I’m pretty sure they’re all too thick to get the direct reference to 1930’s Germany
https://Twitter.com/cllrnicksmall/status/1820063303332204984?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ
By politicians and the Press constantly publicly criticising him and demanding that he explains the misinformation he spouted and the rhetoric which did so much to fuel the violence and riots?
And not just him, of course, other purveyors of dangerous political misinformation are available
I haven't got much of take that makes sense on all of this but suffice to say hasn't rioting and hooliganism/racism always been a factor of the UK and flares up every now and again in different forms? How do you guage overall escalation?
How would you measure if this was worse than the football stuff back in the day?
2nd) Successive governments underfunding stuff leaves us exposed when the tipping point is reached.
A la NHS, Pandemic - when are going to learn?
3rd) Right wingers making excuses for their team by saying 'they're bored lads.'
Stick a JSO T-shirt on them and they're public enemy number 1.
I really can't see a good solution to any of this stuff now. Society is too hard wired to hate all the wrong things.
The UK really has sunk to become a dregs of society country. The state of these so called "protestors"... fat, covered in sh*t tattoos, cheap sports gear, horrific teeth.... they look like fat ugly cavepeople. I'm ashamed to be British right now, what are people viewing this across the world and in Europe thinking!.. The police/GCHQ need to ensure the people in the filming of that Rotherham hotel fire get prosecuted for attempted murder/arson.
Been arguing with various quarter wits on Reddit. What's become apparently clear is they have no idea what's actually going on with regards to immigration numbers
They think asylum seekers numbers are significantly higher than they are, by like a factor of 10+
They have no idea about work visas or student visas
They think people are just rocking up to the country with no visas and we're letting them in
They have no idea how essential immigrants are to our economy (14% of NHS staff were born overseas for example)
They have no idea how our immigration levels compare to other similar countries (it's almost always lower here)
When I've shared official, credible, respectable links to evidence all this, I've been accused of cherry picking stats. Apparently this isn't the kind of research they like when it comes to doing your own research
Amidst the horrific scenes shown on Twitter there are some lighter moments, such as finding members of the far right who were giving nazi salutes whilst draped in the St George flag getting the absolute literal 10 tonnes of shit kicked out of them, this I approve of.
Literally burning books, though I’m pretty sure they’re all too thick to get the direct reference to 1930’s Germany
Those parallels need drawing very clearly and very publicly
I’m ashamed to be British right now
I'm not - they've shown themselves to be a minority and public reaction has shown the majority are against them.
Most other "western" countries have the same issues
Those parallels need drawing very clearly and very publicly
Gary Lineker tried to gently draw some parallels with the 1930s a while back, got quite the backlash. Some quarters of England just aren't ready to hear the truth about the direction we're heading in.
I’m ashamed to be British right now, what are people viewing this across the world and in Europe thinking!..
Do you think this sort of thing doesn't happen in other European countries, such as Germany for example?
Plenty of European countries could teach Britain a thing or two about harassing immigrants and torching accomodations for asylum seekers.
Nazir Afzal on X: “A reminder After the Aug 2011 riots, police & my prosecutors examined all the video evidence for MONTHS identifying & bringing offenders to justice – 1000s of them Some didn’t get arrested till a year later! Prison was the usual sentence My boss was someone called Keir Starmer” / X
Nazir Afzal is a great guy. I realise we already have a DPP but maybe there's a comeback super-sidekick type of role for him. I can imagine him doing a rather good job.
Whenever anything like this happens it really gets me depressed for a few weeks, the problem is the last few years have just felt like one thing after another.
I try to avoid the news but realistically it's impossible these days, and I feel a duty to be somewhat clued up on current affairs.
I’m ashamed to be British right now, what are people viewing this across the world and in Europe thinking!..
Though I know what you mean, I'm not. I just despair at the moron level shown by a small minority of us. And I want to see the dog-whistlers like Farage, Y-L and Tate etc made accountable as the terrorism leaders they look a lot like. Let a court decide that one.
It might be good to take some of what's going on as motivation to go more the opposite way than we normally would - volunteering to help clean ups, time given immigrant support charities, something to a local mosque just to tell them local people are there for them? Something that swings things further back the right way.
Tens of thousands out on the streets this weekend, absolute chaos.
Luckily it's Brighton Pride and not all that other nonsense. It's all too depressing for words. ?
Sadly there's a video doing the rounds of a group holding up a junction in Middlesbrough checking cars one by one and only allowing white people through.
^ That's the taxi service buggered then!Walking into town soon.Got me 55rs to hand.?
I guess that universities in England don’t start until late September?
simpler to house any migrants in the halls of residence for the time being.
free up the hotels in Sunderland.
or just rebrand those hotels as ‘university of whatever, Sunderland campus’.
To be honest it's been one long/slow riot round here for a year or so.I blame Thatcher.
Well I blame 6music for failing to promote diversity and multiculturalism through a Sunday slot (12-2pm), devoted to extreme metal.
the last time England rioted in 2011, you could see the rioters run past Borders and Dillons with a puzzled expression.
best to disguise ourselves as bookshops??
Sadly there’s a video doing the rounds of a group holding up a junction in Middlesbrough checking cars one by one and only allowing white people through.
Including one ****wit whining "he nearly ran me over" when, for some odd reason, someone decided that they preferred not to stop.
best to disguise ourselves as bookshops??
They burnt one library.
And I want to see the dog-whistlers like Farage, Y-L and Tate etc made accountable as the terrorism leaders they look a lot like
I'd like to see these shit-sturring scum dumped on a piss wet thorough little island covered in bird shit 20 miles off shore. And left there. With absolutely nothing.
Then used for bombing practice.
Could we save the Rwanda policy by shipping the Nazis to Kigali? I’d chip in for Thomas Yaxley-Lennon’s one way fare.
Not really fair on Rwanda.
Do you think this sort of thing doesn’t happen in other European countries, such as Germany for example?
Plenty of European countries could teach Britain a thing or two about harassing immigrants and torching accomodations for asylum seekers
Sadly true.
In East Germany loads of asylum accommodation had been set alight the last few years.
Not really fair on Rwanda.
Stick them on the bibby stockholm with a couple of containers of stella and then about 10am whilst they are sleeping off the hangover just tow it out and leave it to float off.
Gary Lineker tried to gently draw some parallels with the 1930s a while back, got quite the backlash
Backlash from the right wing media, with the likes of GB news, Talk tv and the mail/express leading the way. They're the enemy, they're the ones driving all this.
.
As to immigration. The numbers are quite simple.
1.2m people came to the UK last year, and near 535,000 left. So net migration is about 685,000.
However, 670,000 died in the UK last year, and 605,000 were born. Obviously those born won't be entering the workforce any time soon, so overall theres not a great deal of change. Except for the fact there are more working adults
.
Either way, having more people at working age is beneficial, and we all know immigration often provides an economic net benefit to the U.K. economy, as well as helping to maintain the working-age population while also plugging the current skills gap in many industries.
Well just come back from my efforts to find a shop open.Nearly everything closed(shops and pubs).Linthorpe,Parliament Rd and Union Street looked like war zones!Lots of windows boarded up and burnt out cars.Only police I saw in the whole town were outside a damaged Tesco. Chavy youth and angry Asian people(understandably)about looking dangerous.I was glad to get home.
PS,With all the glass out here my bike is being mothballed.
Anybody who thinks sending masses of immigrants to one of the poorest towns in Britain is a good idea has clearly never lived in the real world.O saw the net result tonight.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight PCC Donna Jones (Tory, shocker...), just wants to let the government know that the rioters are just misunderstood little flowers...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czk00ykdl75o
I try to avoid the news but realistically it’s impossible these days, and I feel a duty to be somewhat clued up on current affairs.
No, it’s not, and why do you? I haven’t watched any news at for the last couple of days, and the only current affairs I’ve been paying attention to involves the clown show that is Drumphs campaign, just for the shits’n’giggles.
God only knows how those poor people in those hotels feel — they've likely escaped unimaginable suffering and danger to reach the country they heard was supposed to be civilised, only to find an angry mob literally trying to burn them alive.
I try to avoid the news but realistically it’s impossible these days, and I feel a duty to be somewhat clued up on current affairs.
No, it’s not, and why do you?
Because people being clued up on current affairs is the only way that things will change in a positive way?
There burning the snowdome down in Tamworth .
The bastards.
I’d like to see these shit-sturring scum dumped on a piss wet thorough little island covered in bird shit 20 miles off shore. And left there. With absolutely nothing.
If they’re that desperate to fight Muslim “extremists” then ship them of to Somalia
for alpin, think the clip has been removed, but it was this guy
https://twitter.com/kj__1996/status/1820074464819765339?s=61&t=27Xz8oI3pGlaNEQvowJBcg
Here’s an old clip of “punch a nazi” (not from these riots), shows the correct technique to use when confronting a nazi
https://twitter.com/lilaaron911/status/1268634751688007680?s=61&t=27Xz8oI3pGlaNEQvowJBcg
There burning the snowdome down in Tamworth .
The bastards.
It's a slippery slope towards fascism when even the Labour MP is dog-whistling away to appease the far-right.
https://twitter.com/SarahEdwardsTam/status/1818240122103484735
Wheelie bin girl gets her comeuppance…
Was that the one in the last page that was on remand or something?
**** about find out indeed.
I did like how they made the minimal amount of movement to avoid that bin.
I did like how they made the minimal amount of movement to avoid that bin.
Loads of these roioters getting (illegally) doxxed on X, loads. Obviously I'm not posting any of that.. Amazingly, lots already have criminal convictions for, well, you name it.
Anyway...
here is the Dildo of Consequence in action:
https://twitter.com/LutsandDefoe/status/1820031385656078544
This is pretty remarkable!
https://twitter.com/MusaAdnan/status/1820021351043735929
Off to kip now. 🙂