The Guardian has a whole stream of articles, each under the heading “UK Riots”. Actually pretty well every mainstream media outlet is using the term “UK Riots”, as a simple google search affirms.
Bollocks. These are English riots. Glasgow is as poor as North London or Salford, but people up here are not burning out their neighbours. Newsnight Scotland last night had a discussion of what was happening in England, which it struck me could as well have been a discussion of Haiti.
I have the cheering thought that whether it is the sickening sight of the looters or the sickening sight of David Cameron, it must be crossing numerous Scottish minds that England is a liability best jettisoned.
I think this being blown out of proportion. The media need to stop marketing this. Media is promoting and encouraging this outrage. If it received less coverage then people might stop causing trouble. And the police they need to get heavy handed…..our government loots other countries wearing suits and ties with posh accents, and the hoodies loot us ….how ironic
craig you seem to be forgetting what happened in cardiff on tuesday
Genoves
Why would anyone care what happens in Cardiff?
Craig I follow your site every day. Fantastic stuff!
However think you have lost the plot on the riot topic.
Understanding the causes is not about excusing the behaviour but about finding effective solutions – plastic bullets, water cannons and prison are none of these.
Milne has written a good piece in the Guardian today on the subject (“Riots reflect a society run on Greed & Looting”)
…Maybe Scotland’s society is free of such vices?
Panic over, Dave n Bozza frightened those ghastly
criminals back into their hovels, hurrah!
Mike D,
Sadly not, but it does have a greater sense of community. Milne’s piece is good. I don’t disagree about the causes of society’s woes at all. I disagree with the left’s romanticisation of vicious looters – with an extreme anti-social motivation – into noble proletariat revolutionaries.
Crime is linked to IQ and testosterone, people who have high levels of testosterone and low IQ are the most likely to commit crime. High IQ and low levels of Testosterone for example in Asians leads to extremely low levels of crime. put simply if you got balls and no brain you are going to jail,
If I was PM I would order MI5 to find the guys who robbed that Malaysian student. Put them in the stocks on Trafalgar Square and allow the public to show their opinion in whatever way they felt suitable.
Larry,
I am not entirely convinced Asians have higher IQs and lower testosterone. Sounds more like a stereotype than scientific fact. IQ is any way extremely influenced by environmental factors. Testosterone I have never given much thought to…
It’s no coincidence that Scotland gets the lions share of funding, whilst paying the least stealth taxes and has nowhere near the number of migrants that have burst the housing seams of England to bursting point.
Brown and Blair, for some reason only known to these 2 Scots, seem to think Scotland not capable of buckling down to lower funding, paying the same stealth taxes and taking in so many new citizens in such a short period of time.
Don’t be so up your own backside, Craig. But for the grace of the Labour Party ……
Also those committing crime grew up under New Labour they are the seed of Blair and his ideas. Also how much is the media at fault Murdoch has degraded every place he has been allowed to spew his vile excuse for entertainment, what about our role models? Premiership footballers, Amy Whinehouse, Sluts and rappers, also the effects of fluoride in the food and water supply. Tottenham is a test tube for liberalism, Enoch Powell was right the education system as a source of morals and values has been dismantled.
“Glasgow is as poor as North London or Salford, but people up here are not burning out their neighbours”
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Given that it’s been raining in Glasgow all week and that Scottish police are being deployed in English cities, Scotland may not be out of the woods yet.
Dear Craig Murray
thanks for taking the time to respond to my post, in financial markets a traders success is linked closely to the “digit ratio” the ratio of the length of one finger against another the difference is accounted for by levels of testosterone. What would you believe is the average IQ of those in prison?
Studies of sex offenders in Germany showed that those who were treated to remove testosterone as part of their sentencing became repeat offenders only 3 percent of the time. This rate was in stark contrast to the usual 46 percent repeat rate. These and similar studies indicate testosterone can have a strong bearing on criminal behavior.
MJ,
Yes, I hope that the deployment of the Scots police in England is coming from English not Scottish budgets.
Helen, after England has lived off Scottish hydrocarbons for three decades, we really don’t need that nonsense.
Larry,
I quite believe that bit. It was the characterisation of Asians I was doubting.
not sure I share the optimism expressed in the post. Rather fearful that it is simply that the people who might participate and organise are either too drunk drugged, or too thick, or are already in England.
It is very complacent to think Scotland is not like England -that we are intrinsically better people.
The social dysfunctionality many are blaming, is the consequence of many aspects of political process and we are all aware of the very general causes, even if it difficult to nail all the connecting parts and find causes.
20 years ago I was aware of the development of a mindless brutal sub-culture in Scotland when I met, by chance, a thick-headed thug I had known at school. He gloated to me about the triumph of having hounded and terrorised a teacher out of his job. “I saw him dee’in his postie round” quoth this wonderful creature. The teacher, who i knew well, was a very decent, slightly nerdy type of chemistry teacher (what does anyone expect a chemistry teacher to be?) but was seen as ‘fair game’ and was given little or no protection by the management, or the authority. It was beyond disgraceful, and yet the then Headteacher was promoted to a position as some kind of parachuted in ‘superhead’. The period of ‘managerialism’ of new labour simply cemented the same ideas, ensuring that people of poor quality, with no, little or a politically suspended critical faculty have been promoted to a position where they have determined the most craven, gutless pretence of social and civil values, and kowtowed to and empowered the worst, most ugly elements within our communities. I know of head teachers who, and education authorities which, have been terrified of the local gangsters ‘political’ clout, allied to some corrupt or witless idiot councillor, and as a result will tolerate the children of such people to run amok and terrorise schools and destroy the possibilities of many others.
These details are important even if seem small and insignificant at the time, but I am sure that they were the early symptoms of a degrading culture. That is where the devil will be found.
This blog is now attracting the likes of Beeston Regis and Martin.
Mr Murray,
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Not to criticise you but it seems that you turned into very hard-line Scottish nationalist. Which is purely understandable. But do you think that Independent Scotland will be able to maintain the same level of social guarantees as they currently have without even more vigorous borrowing, or will it turn into something like Republic of Ireland?
Deepgreenpuddock,
Strathclyde is the most terrible cesspit of corruption and sectarianism. But the graudual but very real erosion of the dead grip of the Labour Party there gives some cause for hope.
If anyone needs an emetic this morning watch what is coming out of the mouths within the tanned faces, all agreeing with each other, on Freeview Ch 80 or 82. For instance Cameron has just applauded that ghastly miniature fraudster Hazel Blears.
MJ, you do realise that England has at least 7 oilfields? But who cares? You are welcome to equal shares so long as the UK exists. Either we are all equal, or we are not. While you go on about wanting more and more, people in England just want to be treated equally and pay the same taxes for the same funding as the fringes.
It would be very strange indeed if Scots felt peeved over top up fees, immigration, prescription charges, hospital parking fees, road tolls, bridge tolls, fishing licences, a number of cancer drugs being denied to them alone in the UK, their daughters being denied cancer smears until they older than the Scottish girls who get them, bowel cancer tests being denied until they are older then the youngest scots allowed them, cystic fibrosis tests on their babies which Brown got for free in Scotland, and the list goes on and on……..
When Scotland is treated the same way as the list above, then come back and brag the Scots haven’t got anyone rioting.
These were thugs, plain and simple, but we certainly enough to go on the rampage about if we weren’t so damned amiable !
Glasgow has a riot at least four times every season, Craig, when Celtic and Rangers play each other. The two tribes are a convenient outlet for any pressure that might explode and become directed against the wrong targets i.e the ruling elites, Scotland’s vassal status (now passing) or the obvious financial/consumerist symbols.
I also read yesterday that heroin addiction is higher in the Central Belt of Scotland than anywhere else in Western Europe. Potential rioters must be too stoned to pick up a paving slab.
The working class in Scotland is too apathetic to do anything about anything except the scoreline at 4.45pm on a Saturday.
“England is a liability best jettisoned”
Craig. On behalf of all the English who support Scotland’s right to independence and who are currently trying to rebuild their shattered communities. And indeed, who agree with and support most of your convictions.
This kind of statement makes you a c**t.
Ms Nadine Dorries is boosting the efficacy of water cannons and plastic bullets which in her opinion should have been used. I cannot watch any more of it. They are all absolutely revolting and represent the cause of all that is wrong in Cameron’s sick society.
UzbekintheUK,
It is a complete fallacy that England subsidises Scotland. That is based on a formula in which hydrocarbon revenues are “British”, whereas in fact they are 90% Scottish (perhaps more, once they let me loose on the maritime boundary negotiation).
In addition to which there are highly detrimental economic effects of having the national capital in London – the economic “snowball effect” of the capital is a well known phenomenon, and Scotland has been deprived of it.
Scotland will be like any other small nordic country – Denmark, or Sweden. Why not?
I agree with Max. You wouldn’t believe the number of Scots in England who don’t want Scottish Independence. They’re idiots, of course. Everyone should want Scottish independence. Most English do.
However, Craig isn’t one who can boast about his own behaviour, is he? Especially when that particular Scot was being paid to represenet Britain and took to spending his wages on prostitutes in a foreign nation. If he really felt sorry for them, he could have given them money, rather than demand being beaten about the backside with a kilt on.
Testosterone is both the sex-drive hormone (in both males and females) and the aggressiveness/assertiveness hormone. Like all hormones, it is part of the mechanics of our emotions, and thus it is in dynamic equilibrium with our emotional state. We can learn to willfully modify our emotional state, and this results in measurable changes in hormone levels.
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I mention this because measurement of hormones is often taken to infer a one-way causal process; people “with” a high level of some hormone are thought to be caused to behave in some way by its presence. Such thinking can lead on to acceptance of unpleasant, regressive ideologies such as racial stereotyping and eugenics.
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Evolution, in its wisdom, produces much diversity in a population. A healthy society requires that as much of that diversity as possible is put to good use. Unused potential may find outlets that prove destructive.
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Sport is one good channel for testosterone-motived behaviour. Success in sport raises testosterone levels. Our society seems to value testosterone in finance far too highly, in my opinion, and there need to be some sustained losses in that field to reign things in a bit.
Helen,
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You cannot be more WRONG about Mr Murray’s Ambassadorial years in Uzbekistan. If only another Scot, Welsh, English or Irish or even British African-Caribbean or British Asian with the same sense of RIGHT and WRONG could be sent as Ambassador to Uzbekistan I am pretty sure that 27 millions of Uzbeks would be very happy. Currently there is an Oxbridge graduate (probably English) representing Britain in Uzbekistan and all he does is to establishing bridges with Uzbek regime by supporting (or rather ignoring) repressions and child slave labour.
Maybe Helen should consider the fact that Scotland has a more democratic voting system. Maybe things would be better in England if the English had more control over their politicians.
For Asians read people of Pakistani origin.
Has anyone not noticed it is Ramamdan.
Why would anyone care what happens in Cardiff?
People who live there?
Assume you will be staying North of the Border from now on Craig!