A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Gang cultures, greedy cultures - snouts make way for fists!

Greed on the run - moral compass sends them in wrong direction
I'm glad David Cameron gave a measured response to the riots in England when he addressed the House of Commons. It was a fair and balanced report on what the government tends to do. However, I feel he is shying away from the real cancer in our society. It is that of greed and selfishness. Ed Miliband touched on it when he almost admitted that governments had turned a blind eye to society's ills. He was right to say we need the people affected to have their say at an inquiry. No good getting quango queens to spout out their rhetoric. They've had their chance. And if we are getting to hear from those affected by the riots let's hear from the rioters. Gang leaders will surely have something to say. Let's leave no stone unturned.

All kinds of stones. Corporate tax dodgers. Cheating bankers. Right down to the benefit fraudsters and the illegal people traffickers. Scammers and schemers all to be included. Max Hastings puts it well in his Daily Mail article -

"If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame. Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries. They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong. They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others."

Some life, eh? And it's mainly down to wishy-washy liberal thinking. Of course, there's nothing so illiberal as a liberal. If one has no moral backbone one is just a moral weakling. It's not as though we didn't know these youngsters existed. We have far too many coarse and vulgar people who find it extremely easy to abuse those perceived to have just a modicum of authority. The buses all say they will not tolerate abuse, so with the trains, planes, government institutions, schools and hospitals. So it must follow that abuse is generally expected by all in authority. We have barely clothed young women drinking alcohol to excess. Young men urinate in the streets as "decent" people walk by on the other side. No, we knew it was likely to happen. We just turn our heads and look away.

Human nature tends to the corrupt rather than the good. That's because temptation is a very strong influence on us all. I get tempted. If I had a shop that was being raided I might be tempted to cause the attackers harm. I get tempted by far less trivial things, like taking an extra cake from the tin. But the reasoning in my head tells me both would probably not make me any happier.

This year has seen the culmination of the MPs expenses scandal, the ongoing phone-hacking scandal, the bankers' bonus scandal and many others. The Arabs have a marvellous saying, that a fish rots from the head down. It won't be the gang leaders putting the country to rights. It must be the MPs, corporate excutives and leaders in general. Shape up, set an example and get things moving with ingetrity, honesty and a transparent lack of greed.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html#ixzz1Uj5txZBN

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