British Riots Spurned by "Greed is Good" society

[RyanPsych]

London Mayor Boris Johnson opens his mouth so often that it is inevitable that he will make sense once in a while. That is the case with his statement that now is not the "time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers." Johnson is an ardent backer of the government's cuts program, but even he can see that slashing police numbers demoralizes staff and pubic alike.

However, his support for so-called "robust policing" shows the same Conservative Party, or Tory, lack of imagination over how to deal with the current wave of unrest in many English cities. Where robust policing gives way to police brutality is a moot point, although it is a detail to which the London mayor will pay little heed since his class will not be in the firing line.

This minted politician, who has basked in the lap of luxury all his life, has the temerity to claim that young people have been accorded an "endless sense of entitlement." That might well apply to young people of his background and that of the multimillionaires who clutter up Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet, but it does not correspond in any way to those rioting, looting and fighting the police in city streets. Johnson's comments indicate his utter ignorance of the current state of the country and the extent of social division. Over 30 years of neoliberal policies have eroded the postwar consensus, accepted by Labour and Tory parties, that government had a duty to avoid any return to the mass poverty and deprivation of the 1930s.

That consensus was laid down by the 1945 Labour government, with the establishment of the National Health Service, a welfare state, progress to comprehensive state education, modern local authority housing and a commitment to the goal of full employment. For sure there were political differences between the parties on issues such as public ownership, but even the Tories felt obliged to defend jobs and communities by nationalizing the Upper Clyde shipyards and airplane engine maker Rolls Royce. This consensus was shattered by ruling class demands to reverse the declining rate of corporate profits by reducing welfare spending and giving tax breaks to big business and the rich.

keep reading at: http://peoplesworld.org/british-riots-spurred-by-greed-is-good-society/

[Hydra]

1. TPTB are either doing this deliberately or getting lazy

I vote for "deliberate" among the smart ones, but it's quite possible that the less well endowed upstairs think that the plenty they find in their world is mirrored throughout the classes.

As if.