neonleon
Player Valuation: £35m
They are the children of our own ideology.
Violence, rioting and looting cannot be excused but must be condemned, so goes the tired rhetoric on television, as if the people pointing to mitigating factors are doing anything other than providing a contextual framework for how these things come about. Other glib sound bites we hear in response to the inequalities that precipitated these riots are, “well how come if they are so poor, they all have phones and plasma screens?”
Perhaps because mobile phones are now so ubiquitous that they are practically given away free - even the blackberry (the weapon of choice for the urban terrorist) is not beyond the financial reach of a motivated teenager. Perhaps because goods made in china are artificially cheap in comparison with yesteryear. But this is beside the point and the point is the have’s and the have nots.
When we talk of a poverty divide, a plasma screen and a mobile phone is neither here nor there when you can’t afford a flat of your own, or a car or even to take a girl on a date.
Nobody suggests these things should come to them without hard work, but the lack of opportunities for an emerging generation is staggering. Where are the industries, the foundations, the apprenticeships? Where are the jobs? In hackney there are 24 unemployed people to every available job.
And what kind of jobs are we talking about? Minimum wage, low satisfaction, increasingly part time work, with no maternity leave or holiday pay. Jobs with little possibility of promotion or raises and a take home wage packet that barely surfaces above the equivalent money in benefits.
So is it the welfare system to blame? Nobody doubts that generations of unemployment lead to criminality, low self esteem and the worst of the ills that blight the nation. Yet a functioning welfare system also protects the needy, vulnerable and ensures social cohesion. Despite the right wing demonization of the unemployed as evidenced by the ludicrous benefit stories we see in the daily mail, job seekers allowance is a mere £35 a week for an eighteen year old. To put that into context, in London a cinema ticket costs about £15. This is presuming a teenager is still living at home, which is fairly likely considering a one bedroom flat in Hackney costs between 200k and 400k. Rents are £200 a week plus. The minimum wage for 18 - 20 year olds is £4.92. It’s £2.50 on an apprenticeship. Of course housing benefit would provide some help but on these rates teenagers would find it hard to find a deposit and 8 weeks rent in advance. Living at home is the only option.
Increasingly these benefits are being cut (especially housing benefits) or becoming difficult to claim as the government exerts pressure on the job centres of England to reduce the amount of benefit claimants.
Education offers little financial respite with students now facing debts of £30000 after they graduate and little in the way of job security in return for their investment.
These are teenagers with no career paths, no regular income, no parental guidance and nothing to do but watch a television that indoctrinates them into materialism and instant gratification. Combine this with the technological opportunities of social networking, dissatisfaction, anger with the police and opportunism and there is your riot.
Blame them for the lootings, muggings and associated violence but the environmental conditions that brought them about are the faults of an older generation. They are not responsible for the economic climate we find ourselves in. Those are the sins of their mothers and fathers.
So when we hypocritically shout for personal responsibility from them perhaps we should look towards the liable generation that provided them with this surfeit of opportunities.
It was another generation that filled their ears and eyes with greed, that pushed a marketed world of material goods and then saturated their environment with adverts.
It was another generation’s media that fashioned the mythologies of television; of luxury, stardom, fame and talent awaiting every aspiration boy and girl.
It was another generation that saw the political spectrum narrow to almost exclusively the right wing under the nefarious influences of lobbyists, corporate powers, plutocrats and media barons - so that the young, the poor and the socially occluded have practically zero representation.
It was another generation of MP’s that proved themselves to be fiddling their expenses, committing fraud at the taxpayers expense. Enganged in criminality in the argot of Cameron and his ilk.
It was another generation that failed to bring them up correctly, that didn’t teach them moral lessons of right and wrong.
It was another generation that stole so much from one strata of society and left the others with little to nothing.
It was another generation that allowed corporations to take over the landscape of England, consigning small business that kept their money within the local community to the scrap heap whilst they dodged paying their own taxes.
It was another generation that let someone like Rupert Murdoch wield immense political power and operate immorally all the while keeping the prime ministers ear and consigning those below the poverty line to further misery.
It was another generation that got into credit and precipitated the financial reckless and plutocratic landgrab that caused the banking bailout and an almost inevitable double dip recession and world wide depression.
The youth involved in the riots should take responsibility for their actions by all means. But first, to set a good example, perhaps we should take responsibility for ours.
When we hold this generation to a moral compass that has been publicly absent from industry, corporate behaviour, the media, our political system and MP’s and our own generation then we are merely exaggerating the hypocrisy of our words and actions. Within the toxic environment of absent parents, gratuitous inequality and mediated realities that teach luxury, fame and materialism as birthrights - violent confrontation isn’t deplorable, it’s inevitable.
Violence, rioting and looting cannot be excused but must be condemned, so goes the tired rhetoric on television, as if the people pointing to mitigating factors are doing anything other than providing a contextual framework for how these things come about. Other glib sound bites we hear in response to the inequalities that precipitated these riots are, “well how come if they are so poor, they all have phones and plasma screens?”
Perhaps because mobile phones are now so ubiquitous that they are practically given away free - even the blackberry (the weapon of choice for the urban terrorist) is not beyond the financial reach of a motivated teenager. Perhaps because goods made in china are artificially cheap in comparison with yesteryear. But this is beside the point and the point is the have’s and the have nots.
When we talk of a poverty divide, a plasma screen and a mobile phone is neither here nor there when you can’t afford a flat of your own, or a car or even to take a girl on a date.
Nobody suggests these things should come to them without hard work, but the lack of opportunities for an emerging generation is staggering. Where are the industries, the foundations, the apprenticeships? Where are the jobs? In hackney there are 24 unemployed people to every available job.
And what kind of jobs are we talking about? Minimum wage, low satisfaction, increasingly part time work, with no maternity leave or holiday pay. Jobs with little possibility of promotion or raises and a take home wage packet that barely surfaces above the equivalent money in benefits.
So is it the welfare system to blame? Nobody doubts that generations of unemployment lead to criminality, low self esteem and the worst of the ills that blight the nation. Yet a functioning welfare system also protects the needy, vulnerable and ensures social cohesion. Despite the right wing demonization of the unemployed as evidenced by the ludicrous benefit stories we see in the daily mail, job seekers allowance is a mere £35 a week for an eighteen year old. To put that into context, in London a cinema ticket costs about £15. This is presuming a teenager is still living at home, which is fairly likely considering a one bedroom flat in Hackney costs between 200k and 400k. Rents are £200 a week plus. The minimum wage for 18 - 20 year olds is £4.92. It’s £2.50 on an apprenticeship. Of course housing benefit would provide some help but on these rates teenagers would find it hard to find a deposit and 8 weeks rent in advance. Living at home is the only option.
Increasingly these benefits are being cut (especially housing benefits) or becoming difficult to claim as the government exerts pressure on the job centres of England to reduce the amount of benefit claimants.
Education offers little financial respite with students now facing debts of £30000 after they graduate and little in the way of job security in return for their investment.
These are teenagers with no career paths, no regular income, no parental guidance and nothing to do but watch a television that indoctrinates them into materialism and instant gratification. Combine this with the technological opportunities of social networking, dissatisfaction, anger with the police and opportunism and there is your riot.
Blame them for the lootings, muggings and associated violence but the environmental conditions that brought them about are the faults of an older generation. They are not responsible for the economic climate we find ourselves in. Those are the sins of their mothers and fathers.
So when we hypocritically shout for personal responsibility from them perhaps we should look towards the liable generation that provided them with this surfeit of opportunities.
It was another generation that filled their ears and eyes with greed, that pushed a marketed world of material goods and then saturated their environment with adverts.
It was another generation’s media that fashioned the mythologies of television; of luxury, stardom, fame and talent awaiting every aspiration boy and girl.
It was another generation that saw the political spectrum narrow to almost exclusively the right wing under the nefarious influences of lobbyists, corporate powers, plutocrats and media barons - so that the young, the poor and the socially occluded have practically zero representation.
It was another generation of MP’s that proved themselves to be fiddling their expenses, committing fraud at the taxpayers expense. Enganged in criminality in the argot of Cameron and his ilk.
It was another generation that failed to bring them up correctly, that didn’t teach them moral lessons of right and wrong.
It was another generation that stole so much from one strata of society and left the others with little to nothing.
It was another generation that allowed corporations to take over the landscape of England, consigning small business that kept their money within the local community to the scrap heap whilst they dodged paying their own taxes.
It was another generation that let someone like Rupert Murdoch wield immense political power and operate immorally all the while keeping the prime ministers ear and consigning those below the poverty line to further misery.
It was another generation that got into credit and precipitated the financial reckless and plutocratic landgrab that caused the banking bailout and an almost inevitable double dip recession and world wide depression.
The youth involved in the riots should take responsibility for their actions by all means. But first, to set a good example, perhaps we should take responsibility for ours.
When we hold this generation to a moral compass that has been publicly absent from industry, corporate behaviour, the media, our political system and MP’s and our own generation then we are merely exaggerating the hypocrisy of our words and actions. Within the toxic environment of absent parents, gratuitous inequality and mediated realities that teach luxury, fame and materialism as birthrights - violent confrontation isn’t deplorable, it’s inevitable.
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