Conservatives Forge Ahead With "Social Cleansing"

[Zaune]

Armed insurrection, indeed.

Armed with what?

Not much to stop someone in the right frame of mind walking into their local MP's constituency surgery and showing him some cuts they think the working classes can get behind with the aid of a £5.99 hand-axe from the local hardware store. It's far from completely impossible to get hold of a gun over here either, though even if you have the right contacts it's not cheap; two hundred quid for a handgun and four thousand for an AK, according to an ex-con I got to be friends with down in Dorset.

[SCRawl]

Let's not give anyone ideas, mkay? This is not the place -- if such a place exists -- to start planning rebellions.

[Zaune]

Let's not give anyone ideas, mkay? This is not the place -- if such a place exists -- to start planning rebellions.

Hmmm, point. I could start a RAR thread for it if you need plausible deniability. (We don't have an emoticon for a thin veneer of black humour over a yawning pit of despair and impotent rage, so you'll just have to imagine one.)

Seriously, though, I should probably emphasise the fact that I don't wish to encourage anyone to go out and brutally murder their MP pour encourager les autres. My post was intended to illustrate the fact that the means and the opportunity are available to just about anyone, and as for a motive... Well, at least 10% of the country's population probably have a motive by now.

[Hillary]

Essentially a lot of the problems were caused by the sale of council homes in the 1980s. Pretty much all the decent ones in decent areas were sold off (at ridiculously cheap rates), leaving the councils with not enough stock and, what it did have left, being in poor condition. It also helped fuel the massive price increase in domestic property in those areas.

One question I have yet to see answered is how much money the government is going to actually save here in total per annum. It strikes me as yet another 'sledgehammer to crack a nut' piece of legislation which will make little difference to the country's finances but will create some good populist media coverage to focus the public's ire on the poor again.

My post was intended to illustrate the fact that the means and the opportunity are available to just about anyone, and as for a motive... Well, at least 10% of the country's population probably have a motive by now.

A motive for sticking a axe into someone's head? Your hyperbole really doesn't help your argument you know.

Aww Hell no. The primary attraction of the north is that we don't have all those damn southerners up here cluttering the place up. And we like it that way.

Usually the reason given for the wondrous nature of the north of England is the friendliness of the people. I guess that really means "the friendliness of the people towards other northerners".

[Zaune]

A motive for sticking a axe into someone's head? Your hyperbole really doesn't help your argument you know.

I only wish it was hyperbole. Research in New Zealand (BBC News article) and the United States (PDF) from the Suicide Prevention Resource Centre[/url) has shown a pretty clear link between unemployment and increased suicide risk, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research has some less definitive but still compelling evidence of a link between unemployment and violent crime.

And if it can happen to a Labour MP because he voted in favour of war with Iraq...

[Darth Wong]

I can't believe no one has yet mentioned the social danger of geographically isolating classes from each other: namely, that the upper classes will lose any and all grasp of what life is like for the poor, and they will therefore be able to manufacture, perpetuate, and sincerely believe in absolutely ridiculous caricatures of poor people.

You can see the effect of this by watching Republican debates and speeches in the United States, where this has been informally happening for decades.

[madd0ct0r]

Do you honestly think the conservative front bench haven't already lost touch?

last years riots were just confirmation of the worldview.

[Darth Wong]

People always think it can't get any worse.

It can.

[Zaune]

I can't believe no one has yet mentioned the social danger of geographically isolating classes from each other: namely, that the upper classes will lose any and all grasp of what life is like for the poor, and they will therefore be able to manufacture, perpetuate, and sincerely believe in absolutely ridiculous caricatures of poor people.

I reckon the damage is already done there; so-called white flight has been going on for decades, and the introduction of market forces and competition into the school system back in the 80s only made matters worse; schools get funded per pupil now, and the ones with a good reputation get packed to the rafters while the bad ones are left to rot. And of course, property in the catchment area of a good school is where everyone who can afford the inevitably higher rent clears off for. Kids whose parents have to take the cheapest flat they can find are lucky if they come out of high school functionally literate, never mind having enough learning to get a decently-paid job. About the only way up and out if you're not a good footballer or musician is to join the Army.
I went to a school a bit like that. It wasn't the worst in the county, not by a long chalk, but we had about one student in six make it past their GCSEs. Of the forty-odd old school buddies I keep in touch with on Facebook, less than half have a job at all and no more than eight even made it out of the postcode where they grew up, in the shitty end of Northamptonshire that made Windsor fucking Ontario look good by comparison. The only time one of the upper classes ever meets someone from round where I grew up is when they interview for a new maid.

No, we're not looking at something that's going to cause the upper classes to lose any and all grasp of what life is like for the poor. We're looking at the consequences of them having lost it years ago!

[Flagg]

People always think it can't get any worse.

It can.

I remember reading something awhile ago about how the human mind cannot comprehend the scale of potential natural disasters, especially floods, until they actually occur.

[Hillary]

A motive for sticking a axe into someone's head? Your hyperbole really doesn't help your argument you know.

I only wish it was hyperbole. Research in New Zealand (BBC News article) and the United States (PDF) from the Suicide Prevention Resource Centre[/url) has shown a pretty clear link between unemployment and increased suicide risk, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research has some less definitive but still compelling evidence of a link between unemployment and violent crime.

And if it can happen to a Labour MP because he voted in favour of war with Iraq...

It was the "at least 10% of the country's population probably have a motive" that I was referring to.

[madd0ct0r]

including some of the other MPs

Labour MP Eric Joyce has been charged with assault following a late-night fracas at a House of Commons bar in which a Tory rival was allegedly head-butted.

The former soldier, 51, was arrested on Wednesday amid claims Conservative Stuart Andrew had been attacked shortly before closing in the Strangers Bar, Parliament's pub for MPs.

Joyce, who has been suspended from the Labour Party in the wake of the incident, was released on police bail on Thursday night after spending around 24 hours in custody.

Scotland Yard later confirmed the politician had been charged with three counts of common assault and will appear on bail at West London Magistrates' Court next month.

Joyce, the MP for Falkirk, was seen being driven away from the rear of Belgravia police station in central London in the back of a dark hatchback car at around 11.20pm following his release. He was wearing a white shirt and dark suit and appeared pale and unshaven.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Eric Joyce, aged 51, an MP of Union Street, Bo'ness, West Lothian, has been charged with three counts of common assault following an incident within the House of Commons on Wednesday, 22 February. He will appear on bail at West London Magistrates' Court on 7 March."

Police said they were called to a disturbance at the Palace of Westminster at around 10.50pm on Wednesday before making the arrest.

Mr Andrew, MP for Pudsey, had no visible cuts or bruises and responded to concerns about his welfare on Twitter by writing: "I'm ok."

Labour suspended Joyce from the party pending the results of the police investigation, branding the incident "extremely serious", though he remains an MP.

Joyce, MP for Falkirk since December 2000, served in the Army Education Corps before pursuing a career in politics.

[Skgoa]

Sometimes I really wonder whether "conservatives" aren't actually undercover communists who are doing their best to bring the revolution on. Reading this story was one of those moments.

[SirNitram]

I can't believe no one has yet mentioned the social danger of geographically isolating classes from each other: namely, that the upper classes will lose any and all grasp of what life is like for the poor, and they will therefore be able to manufacture, perpetuate, and sincerely believe in absolutely ridiculous caricatures of poor people.

You can see the effect of this by watching Republican debates and speeches in the United States, where this has been informally happening for decades.

Gated Community. Charter School. Exclusivity. Social cleansing of the isolation type is not merely happening; it's become the new view of succeeding.

[Alkaloid]

Sometimes I really wonder whether "conservatives" aren't actually undercover communists who are doing their best to bring the revolution on. Reading this story was one of those moments.

I refer you to the David Mitchell theory of political ineptness. Match fixing. They are being bribed to be terrible at politics.



It starts at about 40s, I can't work out time and embedding.

[Starglider]

Gated Community. Charter School. Exclusivity. Social cleansing of the isolation type is not merely happening; it's become the new view of succeeding.

Well of course. Why would anyone want to live in a dirty, ugly, crime-ridden grafitti-covered areas filled with criminals and people like Zaune who hate you just for existing, when you could live in a clean, (relatively) safe and generally pleasant area filled with people you can strike up a conversation with without worrying that they will stab you. The equation of voluntary migration of better off people with forced undesireables out of their homes is disgusting - one is exercise of personal freedom to seek a better life, the other is jackbooted state tyranny - but of course statists are all for tryanny as long as its seems to be enforcing their own agendas.

[Zaune]

Okay, this has gone far enough. Be snide and sarcastic about anyone whose politics you disagree with if you really must but you can stop putting words in my mouth right now. I don't have some massive chip on my shoulder against the middle or upper classes, alright? I don't actually care that people are so rich that it's just a way of keeping score through some accident of birth, or through getting lucky on some glorified high-stakes roulette table. If the ability to buy vast amounts of shit they don't need makes them happy, more power to them.

All I've ever wanted was a level playing field, you know? Everyone should be entitled the same basic tools for making something of their lives no matter how shitty their circumstances were; decently-equipped schools that teach you things you need to know as an adult, healthcare when you need it at a price you can afford, a minimum wage that's in shouting distance of what it costs to raise a family, a bit of guaranteed help when stuff goes wrong that is not your fault. And above all, nobody bullying you. You think I like Labour's nanny-state tendencies any more than I do Cameron's less-eligibility shtick? I'd had my bellyful of being patronised, intimidated and nagged for "[my] own good" by the time I was fifteen, why would I tolerate it from someone I have the power to vote against?

Oh, and congratulations. You're the first person I've met who's even more embarrassingly ignorant about working class people than I was before my middle-class university educated life went spectacularly tits-up (which I freely acknowledge was at least half my fault, though plain shitty luck came into it as well) and wound up stuck in emergency accommodation with a lot of stoners, petty crooks and "benefit cheats". I honestly didn't think that was possible.

[SirNitram]

Gated Community. Charter School. Exclusivity. Social cleansing of the isolation type is not merely happening; it's become the new view of succeeding.

Well of course. Why would anyone want to live in a dirty, ugly, crime-ridden grafitti-covered areas filled with criminals and people like Zaune who hate you just for existing, when you could live in a clean, (relatively) safe and generally pleasant area filled with people you can strike up a conversation with without worrying that they will stab you. The equation of voluntary migration of better off people with forced undesireables out of their homes is disgusting - one is exercise of personal freedom to seek a better life, the other is jackbooted state tyranny - but of course statists are all for tryanny as long as its seems to be enforcing their own agendas.

I'm trying very hard to determine if this is sarcasm. It sounds like it, given the idea that places without gated communities are some kind of fictional dystopia, and the idea that just because isolation of societal classes is voluntary it's OK despite the detrmental side effects.

[bobalot]

Gated Community. Charter School. Exclusivity. Social cleansing of the isolation type is not merely happening; it's become the new view of succeeding.

Well of course. Why would anyone want to live in a dirty, ugly, crime-ridden grafitti-covered areas filled with criminals and people like Zaune who hate you just for existing, when you could live in a clean, (relatively) safe and generally pleasant area filled with people you can strike up a conversation with without worrying that they will stab you. The equation of voluntary migration of better off people with forced undesireables out of their homes is disgusting - one is exercise of personal freedom to seek a better life, the other is jackbooted state tyranny - but of course statists are all for tryanny as long as its seems to be enforcing their own agendas.

I'm trying very hard to determine if this is sarcasm. It sounds like it, given the idea that places without gated communities are some kind of fictional dystopia, and the idea that just because isolation of societal classes is voluntary it's OK despite the detrmental side effects.

I like how working class neighbourhood = "dirty, ugly, crime-ridden grafitti-covered areas filled with criminals" where the chance of being stabbed is quite high when you simply talk to someone. I wasn't aware that parts of the UK had turned into down town Mogadishu.

It must be sarcasm because the alternative is massive retardation.

[madd0ct0r]

Starglider used to live in Croydon. he gets a pass on this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots

[Starglider]

Why would any one want to live in a dirty, ugly, crime-ridden grafitti-covered areas, when you could live in a clean, (relatively) safe and generally pleasant area filled with people you can strike up a conversation with without worrying that they will stab you.

I'm trying very hard to determine if this is sarcasm. It sounds like it, given the idea that places without gated communities are some kind of fictional dystopia, and the idea that just because isolation of societal classes is voluntary it's OK despite the detrmental side effects.

I am not talking about the abstract social planning scenarios being discussed in some humanities faculty coffee room. I am talking about the actual rationale that real people use when getting the hell out of slums and into nice areas (gated communities in the US, nice estates in the catchment of good schools in the UK). I have heard a lot of this from colleagues recently, because finance is constantly recruiting new IT people from overseas and the north of the UK. When they arrive in London, new staff usually have to live in horrible estates (e.g. the east end areas just outside Canary Wharf are run down concrete warrens) because that's all they can afford. Grafitti and rubbish really is everywhere, mugging is a problem and you pay a lot for a tiny flat with thin walls so you can be kept up by the obnoxious neighbours and come into work shattered every day. Then after six months to twelve months they've pulled in $100K and can upgrade to a nice flat in a new build apartment block, and suddenly life is much more pleasant, although the crime ridden slum is still right around the corner. After a few years they have enough for a deposit on a reasonable $1M house and might be thinking about having kids (excluding the foreign nationals who chose to go back home), and invariably they want to be in a much nicer area where the neighbours are pleasant and they don't have to worry about crime and decay.

Statist's ham-handed attempts to improve what they think of as societal good usually try trample roughshod over individual rights, but are fortunately doomed to failure in the long run. Libertarians would go so far as to say that striving to optimise wellbeing at the society level is fundamentally misguided (even immoral), and that states should only exist to empower individual decision-making. Personally I would say that it's fine to try and improve the general good, but in the case of law-abiding citizens you may use carrots only; the stick is unviable anyway when the well off can just move to other states or countries. If you are genuinely concerned about people fleeing your community - and I'm not clear why you are if you hate wealthy people anyway - then you must ask what policies made the area unattractive and vote for ones that actually entice people back, instead of bitterly complaining that they've chosen not to have you as a neighbour.

Starglider used to live in Croydon. he gets a pass on this one.

I live in (one of the less pleasant bits of) Croydon right now, but that's partly because funding general AI research is more important than improving my personal living conditions (not sure how much longer the wife will accept this argument) and partly because I don't have time to deal with the whole moving hassle. Formerly I lived in one of the worst bits of Sheffield for the same reason; servers and lots of AI books were more important than a nice flat. Obviously most people aren't so dedicated to an abstract money sink.

[SirNitram]

Why would any one want to live in a dirty, ugly, crime-ridden grafitti-covered areas, when you could live in a clean, (relatively) safe and generally pleasant area filled with people you can strike up a conversation with without worrying that they will stab you.

I'm trying very hard to determine if this is sarcasm. It sounds like it, given the idea that places without gated communities are some kind of fictional dystopia, and the idea that just because isolation of societal classes is voluntary it's OK despite the detrmental side effects.

I am not talking about the abstract social planning scenarios being discussed in some humanities faculty coffee room. I am talking about the actual rationale that real people use when getting the hell out of slums and into nice areas (gated communities in the US, nice estates in the catchment of good schools in the UK). I have heard a lot of this from colleagues recently, because finance is constantly recruiting new IT people from overseas and the north of the UK. When they arrive in London, new staff usually have to live in horrible estates (e.g. the east end areas just outside Canary Wharf are run down concrete warrens) because that's all they can afford. Grafitti and rubbish really is everywhere, mugging is a problem and you pay a lot for a tiny flat with thin walls so you can be kept up by the obnoxious neighbours and come into work shattered every day. Then after six months to twelve months they've pulled in $100K and can upgrade to a nice flat in a new build apartment block, and suddenly life is much more pleasant, although the crime ridden slum is still right around the corner. After a few years they have enough for a deposit on a reasonable $1M house and might be thinking about having kids (excluding the foreign nationals who chose to go back home), and invariably they want to be in a much nicer area where the neighbours are pleasant and they don't have to worry about crime and decay.

Ah, I see what's wrong. You're so underpants-on-head retarded that you literally can't comprehend the idea of any middle ground between 'Gated community' and 'Dangerous Slums'.

Statist's ham-handed attempts to improve what they think of as societal good usually try trample roughshod over individual rights, but are fortunately doomed to failure in the long run.

Because fuck all of society if one person gets butthurt over his idea of his 'individual rights' not being treated as gentle as a newborn babe.

Libertarians would go so far as to say that striving to optimise wellbeing at the society level is fundamentally misguided (even immoral), and that states should only exist to empower individual decision-making. Personally I would say that it's fine to try and improve the general good, but in the case of law-abiding citizens you may use carrots only; the stick is unviable anyway when the well off can just move to other states or countries. If you are genuinely concerned about people fleeing your community - and I'm not clear why you are if you hate wealthy people anyway - then you must ask what policies made the area unattractive and vote for ones that actually entice people back, instead of bitterly complaining that they've chosen not to have you as a neighbour.

I'll assume the 'You hate wealthy people' bit is your inability to think or react rationally and you think I'm Zaune so it's OK to repeat the strawman. I'll similarly not bother with your laughable 'carrot only. CARROT ONLY' insistance because history shows that it just don't work like that(You might notice the wealthy, your apparent measuring stick for all things, did not exeunt en mass after the tax rate goes up for them).

As for the policies, you are woefully idiotic of what's being discussed. Gated communities and the like magnify, by their nature, magnify 'Us v. Them' mentalities, enhance the paranoia that anywhere but the fortress-enclave you have is a ruinous slum where crime and death is rampant, and of course, Mike's well-stated point on the disconnect between societal classes. However, to maintain consistency, I'm sure you'll fling the word Statist at me in any replies you make.

[bobalot]

Starglider used to live in Croydon. he gets a pass on this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots

So fucking what? I lived near Cabramatta during the 1990's when it was known as the drug capital of NSW. Drug fuelled gang violence, heroin overdoses, unemployment and poverty were common. It was where a generation of Vietnamese boat people settled. Many had no skills, little education, didn't speak English and had no jobs (You can imagine the end result).

[madd0ct0r]

it was a little like the poorer parts of Saigon? I actually live in Vietnam, so that's not really that intimidating an issue for me, although I can see how it would have unbalanced the local community. (I also seem to recall the Vietnamese Dispora comes in two flavours - the type that learned the language, worked fucking hard and have their kids at university or as professionals now, and the type who are still sitting in cafes fighting old political battles)

Starglider - the new build blocks or even the west London suburbs you're describing come no where near the separation of a US gated community.

[bobalot]

it was a little like the poorer parts of Saigon? I actually live in Vietnam, so that's not really that intimidating an issue for me, although I can see how it would have unbalanced the local community. (I also seem to recall the Vietnamese Dispora comes in two flavours - the type that learned the language, worked fucking hard and have their kids at university or as professionals now, and the type who are still sitting in cafes fighting old political battles)

Or they formed Vietnamese gangs that operated out of Cabramatta and made it a notorious centre for the heroin trade. I hindsight, the problems were obvious. Australia hadn't had any significant non-white mass migration (The White Australia policy literally only legally ended in 1973). Boat people were thrown into a suburb where they didn't speak the language, didn't understand the culture, were resented by many locals and was already plagued by high unemployment. There was no government strategy to integrate these new arrivals into Australian society. The rise of the Vietnamese gangs was inevitable.