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Rioting is fun

An Englishman’s Castle:

As far as I can see no one seems to be pointing out the essential cause of all these riots. Rioting is fun, exciting and you get to pick a prize at the end. Even young bloods at Oxford have been known to smash stuff up for the hell of it. It relieves the tedium of it all.

Talking about “the” essential cause is silly. I can think of about a dozen “essential causes” of these riots, as could you, each as “essential” as each other (this being one reason why there have been so many recent postings here on the subject (this being the ninth consecutive one)). Causes do not work alone; they combine, in clusters. For “the” read “an”. “The” Englishman, as he signs himself at the bottom of each posting (is there only one of those?), himself immediately proceeds to add some more “essential causes” of the rioting, like the fact that the penalties for rioting are now too small, along with the fun of it being fun.

Another essential cause of the rioting is that the rioters don’t think that rioting is wrong. They are, in short, scum. Why are they scum? Partly because so many of them have no live-in dads, which is another essential cause of all this.

Another essential cause of the rioting is, as was much discussed by me and the commenters here, that we, the non-rioting classes, are severely discouraged by our rulers from defending ourselves and counter-attacking against the rioters, which is one of many reasons why rioters now face too few penalties for their rioting. (Such defending and counter-attacking might also be fun. Different posting.)

Another cause of the rioting is that the rioters are stuck in a welfare trap. They are paid and consequently trained to do nothing, and have become incapable of doing anything more honestly lucrative. The Englishman alludes to all this by quoting at some length from a piece in the Guardian by Zoe Williams. Her description of what it’s like being stuck in a welfare trap is quite a good one, and should not be dismissed as mere “guff”, as the Englishman dismisses it, merely because Zoe Williams’s opinion about welfare is (I presume) that there should be more of it, and hence that more should be sucked into welfare traps. She describes the problem well.

Nevertheless, the Englishman has a good, big point here. Rioting is fun. This is not the only or “the essential” cause of the rioting, but it is definitely one of the causes of it.

10 comments to Rioting is fun

  • Spectre

    Riots don’t fit well into your radical individualist ideology that you espouse and our government is putting into practise. You would do well to listen to the voice of those kicking off.

    If the only rule is the rule of property don’t be surprised when those without kick at those who do.

  • Riots don’t fit well into your radical individualist ideology that you espouse and our government is putting into practise.

    You could not be more wrong on both counts, these riots are the very epitome of why our way of seeing things is manifestly correct.

    Our ideology would have functioning communities of shopkeepers with rifles, mate, not welfare and ram raiding dole bludgers. The government takes money from the productive and actively works to prevent, indeed outlaw, the sort of social dynamics that make riots like these a great deal less likely.

  • “An” would have been a better choice then “the”, I agree.

    Best Regards

    An Englishman

  • Rob H

    Imagine a country where if you had no job they would pay for a house and fill it with furniture. They would pay your bills and even give you some spending money. You would be free to do whatever you wanted with this time except for and hour a week where you had to go and talk to the people who paid for your new lifestyle.

    Imagine what you could do with this time. Imagine what you could learn, what you could achieve and who you could help. Without the need to support yourself you are free to spend all your time to do good for yourself and for others.

    IMAGINE there were people who, despite the offer of this freedom, chose to work to support themselves and to pay for others to live with this freedom from economic responsibility.

    Imagine with all this that the free people who didn’t have to work one day CHOSE to attack those that paid for their own economic freedom. That they attacked them so violently that people were killed and livelihoods destroyed.

    I wonder what would happen then…………

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Perry beat me to it in response to this “Spectre” comment. A society of individualists who, by definition, have to take responsibility for their actions and earn a living with the consent of others, not through predation, is the very opposite of what we saw over the past four days.

    Of course, sometimes the left, and parts of the tweedy right, like to claim that our “materialistic” quasi capitalist country fosters a sort of “I want it know” culture, and maybe that is a part of what is behind the mayhem. But this leaves out the moral hazard engine of the welfare state. Absent that, if people want to achieve material affluence, they have to work hard to achieve it.

    We are seeing the results of what happens when people grow up thinking, quite logically, that in Britain, you can act without serious consequences. What has happened is hardly cause for total surprise.

    I am sorry, “Spectre”, but your remarks are 180 Degrees the wrong way round.

  • H man

    It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it.

    Gen. Robert E. Lee

  • It doesn’t make one feel good about themselves to live at the expense of others. Some welfare recipients, unwilling or unable to admit the source of this rotten feeling, choose instead to project their self hatred and frustration onto anything and everything within reach. Consumerism, capitalism, wealth, and just about any other fruit of hard work tend to be a primary target.

    Welfare may not have created the poor, but it both sustains them and makes them monsters.

  • Laird

    “Welfare may not have created the poor, but it both sustains them and makes them monsters.”

    Excellent point, and one extensively explored in this Daily Mail article today.

  • Unfortunately, Laird, the article (good as it is) puts very little stress (if any) on welfare as the real root of this evil.

  • A lifeguard, a teaching assistant, by no means all benefit people.