Can anyone in England tell me WTF is up with this?

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Over the hump I've heard of yeh. Regarding the stats issue, I don't think I made my point very clearly, so I'll expand on it a bit - I'm tired so apologies for rambling...
The stats may represent on the face of it raw figures for the numbers and types of crimes committed by each group. What they don't include are such things as levels of enforcement (profiling etc), and the willingness of victims to press charges. There are a lot of grey areas. By way of illustration, a useful statistic may be the murder rates, correlated with geographical data to avoid skewed results - minorities are overrepresented in high crime neighbourhoods, so you would expect there to be a similar per head of population crime rate for whites in deprived areas wouldn't you? What I'm really trying to say here is that raw statistics can be misleading.



There are, depending on where you are. A city of regional importance which has successfully attracted investment may have a range of opportunities for the better qualified or skilled. However in places like Hull, Keighley or Burnley there is jack s**t. The manufacturing base is gone, which leaves only poorly paid, dead end service sector jobs to look forward to.



Thats pretty much what I was trying to say - if not working is considered normal, where's your motivation to go work at Netto for minimum wage?

The false notion that society can operate strictly within the bounds of legislation.

Interesting. Can you expand on this? Who perpetrated this, and when? And does this override the economic and social factors?

I think I've lost track of which country we aree referring to. Foreigners and indigenous people. economic migrants. You are so right ascan. Things really started to go downhill in this country when the Anglo-Saxon migration came in and then the Norman gangs had their bit of rape and pillage. The "indigenous people" never really stood much of a chance. I blame the teachers, the sanitised view of history, the us against them mentailty that leads to the little Engalnd mentality is poisonous. Circumstances change, human nature seems not to, the faults you find within a "nanny state" will be found elsewhere also. Why you should be so anti the defences of ordinary people I have no idea, outside of romantic stories I can find no reference to an ideal time in this country. Workers rights ( for that matter consumer rights) in this country are there, but not enforced on anything like the scale of employers rights or manufacturers rights, try getting the HSE to look at dangerous work practices and you will find there is no manpower to do so. If you want to find scapegoats for declining standards you might try looking in the boardrooms of the country, where they are quite willing to transfer work overseas for cheap labour, child labour, practices that would be unacceptable here in terms of standards or health and safety.

The legislation doesn't defend ordinary people. It's enacted to provide the appearance that that is the case. New laws get the headlines in the news, then most people forget, unless they're directly affected. Take, as an example, though not directly connected, various Government pledges (not the UK one) to provide aid for disasters. If a country says it's going to provide £5m, that gets a lot of media interest. When that £5m fails to arrive, or partly arrives in dribs and drabs, you don't hear so much about it. Appearance is all, and New Labour are the masters of that, so would you not expect them to use the ploy if they can get away with it? (Though with the aid thing I'm not talking about the UK government, it just demonstrates the mechanism of deception.)

Directly applying that to the way new Laws are used in this country sees the Law in question grabbing the headlines, then the failure of delivery analogue is the failure to actually police that Law fairly, consistently and proportionally because of the existing plethora of bureaucratic crap that's already in place, and which the police, let alone an ordinary citizen, do not know in full, and in intimate detail. Also, you have the unintended consequences of badly thought-out legislation being applied in situations where it wasn't intended.

You cite health and safety as an example of non-enforcement, and that is a very good one. It also, in my opinion, demonstrates what can happen when the you over legislate, and lose sight of your objectives: the priorities in Health and Safety become the paperwork that maintains the illusion that all is fine and dandy. Actually, those trite safety signs employers stick up everywhere are kind of symbolic: people know they have to go up, their presence provides the illusion that someone,s doing something, but nobody ever reads them. I've gone to plenty of "safety inductions" in a work context, where they go over the same old crap they did the day before, and the day before that, but if you ask a pertinent technical question, they look at you dumfounded: not on the script, old chap!

Which again, demonstrates a problem of overlegislation: where it is applied, people can lose the ability to think for themselves.

I suppose the above may seem to contain some ambiguity, but I'll reiterate that the problem once you have that surplus of Law is how you're going to police it; that can vary between it being ignored at one extreme, to being applied with an overzealous tyranny at the other. The policing becomes a political matter. The same thing can be applied at the company or personal level with rules and regulations, though priorities are slightly different.

If you read my last post as a part answer to this one, I'd guess that this phenomenon is a natural result of democratic government. Society needs laws, but government needs them more. I don't know where that will all end up. Perhaps some student of history could tell us?

Does that make sense?

My definition of a foreigner in this context: one who owes allegiance to their (non-British) nation of birth, and (or) religion, over that of Britain. That may of course include "British Citizens".

Your answer doesn't really address the social and economic factors I mentioned, or why the misapplication of certain legislation has led to society at large abandoning their responsibilty to themselves and their collective responsibility to each other. I'm genuinely interested in why you have a perception so much at variance with my own, so I'd like to hear your explanation ascan. Go on, humour me.

No, I suppose it doesn't. They have to play some role. Certainly, the provision of benefits to the unemployed, does contribute to the phenomenon (looking to the state for answers), and that's linked to the economic and social side of it; but that's not to say we shouldn't do that, it's just a natural consequence of doing it! So, in that respect, I suppose you could say that it's the provision of the benefits, not the economic and social conditions, that are responsible. Without the benefits, people would just starve. That's unacceptable, naturally.

Hmmm... so, perhaps, in fact, they don't: it's just a perception created by living in an "enlightened liberal society". What do you say?

I accept, though, it's complex. I've just explained how I see one portion of it.


Because, briefly, people are led to believe that problems can be solved through law and state intervention. People are discouraged from resolving problems between themselves, or for themselves. If you get burgled, you're advised not to tackle him; if you're involved in a minor road accident, you're advised not to admit liability; if a bunch of kids decides to harass you, you're advised to just ignore them. That advice is good within the context of how law is applied by the state. But, it's not conducive to providing a pleasant living environment, and causes people to abandon their individual and collective reponsibilities.

Of course, as I've previously said, in other areas we are completely helpless as far as the Law and state are concerned, because of mis-allocation of resources. But the cycle is self-perpetuating in that now people see the only recourse being to enact new law.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

You won't find me defending New Labour. Graduates of the Enron school of management. I don't think "democracy" as it is practiced in most Western states is democratic, plutocratic, but not democratic. I seem to have misunderstood some of what you were saying, judging by your reply, so here we go again. Allegiance has caused no end of confrontation down the years, whether it was Catholics owing allegiance to Rome, Presbyterians with their Geneva bands and foreign ideas, Jews with an allegiance to their own people before their fellow countrymen, etc. There never was a time (outside of war) when everyone was striving for the same thing.
The way laws are generated does cause no end of problem, we have Parliament passing new law and no-one clearing away, updating or integrating old law. Thats the way the lawyersa like it. I think it would be ideal if there were a minimum of law, sadly this has never really been shown to be possible. Once you have basic laws in place they need supplementary laws to cover the new situation generated, Parliament doesn't have enough time to craft perfect laws covering every eventuallity, and if it had time it lacks the personel and foresight to do so anyway.
I agree that most of our law is people management and appearance. At present though, it seems to me that the major companies are taking away far more of my rights and freedoms than terrorists, "foreign" neighbours, etc. I can now buy CDs that wont play on my computer, I can download music that has cost me and use a couple of times and so on. I can buy digital textbooks that can be used on a single computer for 10/12 weeks and then self-erase. I can forget the idea of programming as there is no way I can afford a battery of patent lawyers, I can forget any notion of controlling the information held on me by large companies. I can look forward to seeing neighbours kick the bucket because Roche will not allow anyone else to manufacture their drug. Newton once said he achieved as much as he did by standing on the shoulders of giants, today the multinationals stand on everyones shoulders and the notion of democratic control at national level is gone forever.

*applauds jb814's post*

I couldn't agree more. What chance at true democracy do we have anyway? The corporations control the media, the politicians and so on. Sure, we have voices of dissent shouting from the wings, but most of us are too beaten down, brainwashed or apathetic to fight back. So the charade goes on, while the politicians find enemies for us to hate, and make ill thought out laws to further control us.

And thanks ascan, thats much clearer. I see what you mean; I think the main difference in opinion is in where the buggers are going wrong.