For our friends in London.....

[johnhp]

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The Pogues and Joe Strummer - London Calling	Small | Large

[Mornac]

Savage drive to tame EU debt ramps up rage factor

10 August 2011

BRUSSELS: Savage austerity drives in debt-laden European states, increasingly under pressure to balance the public finances, risk sparking fresh discontent as pensions, jobs and welfare come under attack.

As riots in Britain highlight the dangers of a disillusioned jobless youth, governments find themselves under orders from the European Central Bank to reform -- or remain at the mercy of markets.

"We expect governments to do what we consider to be their work, their duty," ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet said Tuesday as the ECB intervened in the money markets to pull Italy and Spain back from the brink.

"We have been extremely clear with the Italian government over recent days in asking for a number of decisions to be taken, which have been taken," he said.

"We have asked the same thing of the Spanish government."

The conditions set by the ECB, in what anaylsts said is unprecedented meddling in national policy-making, call for quick privatisation of municipal services, changes to labour laws and for reforms to be adopted much faster, by government decree rather than going to parliament for approval.

"It's social massacre," said Italian centre-left leader Pierluigi Bersani as rightwinger Umberto Bossi warned "there can be no question of touching pensions and bringing the middle classes to their knees."

Rage over tax hikes as well as cuts in health and welfare benefits and labour reforms saw angry Greeks pour onto the streets for days in June while in Madrid police have clashed with protesters from Spain's movement of young "indignants."

Across the European Union, youth unemployment data is alarming, at 30.9 per cent in Greece -- where 10 per cent of masters and doctorate degree holders are jobless against 5.4 per cent in 2008 -- and 45.7 per cent in Spain.

On average, one in five young people are jobless in the 27-nation bloc.

Europe's capital, Brussels, too could erupt any day, a Belgian MP warned on Wednesday. "The situation is potentially explosive, in some districts one out of two youths are out of work. Young people feel disenfranchised," said centre-right parliamentarian Alain Destexhe.

While Belgium's caretaker premier Yves Leterme has pledged more austerity to bring down debt and the deficit, he pledged this week to protect the social welfare benefits which are part and parcel of the European way of life.

Officials working on plans to save the single currency admit some social benefits will have to go.

"It's a fact we'll have to give up some (of what has been gained) and lose some of our welfare advantages," said an EU official who asked not to be named.

"Governments have waited too long to carry out necessary structural reforms ... Today there's no margin available from growth to help reforms, so it will be tough," the official added.

Some argue, however, that such austerity is a double-edged sword, causing as many problems as it is supposed to fix.

"Deficit reduction needs to go more slowly, even as structural reforms are carried out, so that growth, not devaluation of wages and impoverishment of the population, serves to resolve the debt and deficit," said longtime Europe-watcher and academic, Vivien Schmidt of Boston University.

Reforms were bound to backfire, she said, "if they are seen to weigh most heavily on those who had the least responsibility for the crisis."

Warning that European governments were headed for great political uncertainty, she said they also needed "to be able to convince their citizens that they are reforming in ways that are equitable and just.

"Instead most of the reforms are increasingly seen as coming from outside, from the EU, to make the ordinary people pay for the sins of the bankers."

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/1146275/1/.html

[ivanm]

I think the last sentence pretty well sums it up, the little people pay for the idiocy and greed of the bankers nd others in charge of the money and national finances.

IMO the article is articulating very well the mess the US is also in, and we are between a rock and a hard place. 

Why don't the haves riot and raise hell like the have nots do?  Maybe the haves have more class?

[ivanm]

I read article on the home page this morning about what S&P thinks is necessary for us to restore our AAA credit rating, and a tax increase was  a key point.

Off hand I would support the idea as long as it was equitable and everyone shares the pain proportionately.  Socialists brag about how this is a consumer led economy and how important it is for the consumer to have more money to spend.  It seems to me that raising the taxes will in effect redistribute more money into the hands of those who spend practically all of their income each pay period.   I can understand their plight as I was once in that predicament, and for many years, until I finally climbed out of the rut.

At least the additional 2 percent withholding tax for soc. sec. and Medicare should be restored in order to help prolong the solvency of the systems. The people that will need both systems' benefits in later years need to understand that the taxes they pay in today will, or should at least, bring them retirement and health care bennies when they get older.

Politicallhy speaking it may be more advantageous to reduce the various exemptions and write off than it would be to increase the tax rates.
There is lots of loopholes out there, which gives the pols much flexibility in crafting a new plan for more tax revenues.  This may seem to be chickenshit, but if they tax the workers, they aren't going to flee to foreign countries, but if they tax the employers then those people may move offshore or simply shut down.  I know this is a tough dilemma, but the working class needs to see that if they want to stay employed then it is their place to pay more taxes too.

[notoc]

The Pogues and Joe Strummer - London Calling

Junior Murvin - Police & Thieves	Small | Large

Doubts emerge over Duggan shooting as London burns

Initial ballistics tests suggest bullet lodged in officer's radio during incident in Tottenham was police issue

Doubts have emerged over whether Mark Duggan, whose death at the hands of police sparked the weekend's Tottenham riots, was killed during an exchange of fire .

The Guardian understands that initial ballistics tests on a bullet, found lodged in a police radio worn by an officer during Thursday's incident, suggested it was police issue – and therefore had not been fired by Duggan.

Initial reports from the IPCC were that during an apparent exchange of fire police officers from C019 fired two shots and Duggan died at the scene. The suggestion was that officers could have come under fire from a minicab carrying Duggan. Much of this assumption came from the fact that a bullet had lodged in a police radio worn by an officer at the scene – raising speculation he might have been fired at from the vehicle. A non-police issue handgun was also recovered at the scene where Duggan was shot dead in Ferry Road.

The latest developments come as one community organiser suggested the handgun recovered was found in a sock and therefore not ready for use. It is likely to fuel anger on the streets of Tottenham and elsewhere in London if it provides evidence that officers were not under attack at the time they opened fire on Duggan.

The IPCC said on Sunday: "We await further forensic analysis to enable us to have a fuller and more comprehensive account of what shots were discharged, the sequence of events and what exactly happened. In the meantime we would request people are patient while we seek to find answers to the questions raised by this incident."

Gutted buildings were still smouldering in Tottenham on Sunday evening. Firefighters dealt with 49 primary fires receiving 264 999 calls between 9.30pm on Saturday and 4.30am on Sunday.

Two police cars and a double-decker bus were set alight. Three people required hospital treatment.

In the chaos, brazen looting took place. Shop fronts were smashed in Tottenham Hale retail park as looters loaded car boots and trolleys with electrical goods, mobile phones, shoes and clo thing. Looting spread to Wood Green, where it continued until at least 5.30am.

Community leaders said they warned Tottenham police immediately before Saturday's rioting that a peaceful protest over the fatal shooting could get out of control. More than 100 people who demanded to see a senior officer at Tottenham police station feared that if they were still there by nightfall it could cause problems in an area with tensions running high.

Stafford Scott, a community organiser who accompanied the family of the shot man, said: "If a senior police officer had come to speak to us, we would have left. We arrived at 5pm, we had planned a one-hour silent protest. We were there until 9pm. Police were absolutely culpable. Had they been more responsive when we arrived at the police station, asking for a senior officer to talk with the family, we would have left the vicinity before the unrest started.

"It is unforgivable police refused dialogue. We know the history here – how can Tottenham have a guy killed by police on Thursday, and resist requests for dialogue from the community 48 hours later?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/07/police-attack-london-burns

[Mornac]

Liberal chickens come home to roost



Crime Is Easy

From the desk of Jos de Man
2011-08-10
 
Maybe there is a simple explanation for the riots. In Great-Britain crime is easy and almost risk-free.
 
In his startling book ‘A Land fit for Criminals’ insider David Fraser demonstrates it with figures and facts.
 
Detection rate of crimes is 5 per cent. Of these cases only 2 per cent are processed in court. Only a mere 0.3 per cent of all crimes result in prison sentence. Offenders deem themselves untouchable. Fines are seldom paid. In 2002 it was reported that tens of millions of pounds in unpaid fines were written off.
 
Even persistent offenders with a long record of previous convictions and a complete lack of motivation to reform are granted probation and put back in the community.
 
The evidence shows that for them this means business as usual. The reconviction rate for all male offenders in 61 per cent; for offenders given community service 67 per cent.

 ‘Offenders are not corrupted by prison but by the unchallenged success of their criminality’, concludes Fraser, who served in the National Probation Service for twenty-six years, and was an analyst with the National Criminal Intelligence Service.
 
He blames the criminal justice system for putting consideration for the criminal first and the safety of the public second: ‘The bizarre fact is that all governments since the sixties have gone out of their way to introduce policies that have encouraged criminals to become more criminal. Numerous obstacles have been placed in the way of finding, arresting and convincing them.’
 
Young offenders enjoy special protection. The use of imprisonment against them is severely limited. In 2000, males under 18 committed 80,600 offences. Eleven years later, one suspects that they have improved on this statistics.
 
Police doing their job are frequently faced with accusations of racism by their superiors. Prosecutors are motivated by budgetary considerations to discontinue more and more cases. Judges grant bail even when the accused has re-offended while on bail.
 
Was the government ever disturbed by such dire situations? Not in the least. The government simply lied. In 2004 the Home Secretary stated that crime had fallen from 18 million in 1997 to 12 million. A report produced by his own department in 2002 showed that the figure of 60 million was more accurate.
 
The empathy with the criminal, the contempt for the victim, the neglect of public security, the lies and  manipulations are not typical British phenomena. They are but symptoms of the plague of multiculturalism that slowly eradicates all forms of decency in the Western post-democracies.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/

[ivanm]

I think it has become so costly to house criminals that the system just leaves them on the streets to continue their plunder.

[notoc]

They are but symptoms of the plague of multiculturalism that slowly eradicates all forms of decency in the Western post-democracies.

Wasn't this part of Breivik's 'manifesto'?
 

[notoc]

I think it has become so costly to house criminals that the system just leaves them on the streets to continue their plunder.

Courts sit round the clock to administer fast-track justice

A schoolworker, a hairdresser and an Exeter university student were among the first alleged rioters to be unmasked

By Matt Blake, Crime Correspondent
Thursday, 11 August 2011

Many were unrecognisable as they ran riot, their faces hidden behind masks and hoods. But some of those responsible during the nights of rioting endured uncomfortable scrutiny yesterday as scores of suspects were swept through London's stretched court system.

Scotland Yard said last night that it had arrested 805 people and charged more than 250 over the disturbances in the capital. In an unprecedented move, Highbury Corner magistrates' court in north London stayed open throughout Tuesday night as court officials dealt with the influx and swiftly cleared the way for new cases.

Those who appeared yesterday included a 11-year-old suspect accompanied by his mother; students with bright futures; and adults with children and jobs. Some said they were ashamed – others were defiant as they left court.

Among those in court was Laura Johnson, 19, an undergraduate at the University of Exeter and daughter of a company director. Her family home in Orpington, Kent, has extensive grounds and includes a tennis court. She went to school at St Olave's Grammar and Newstead Wood, which both number among the country's best schools. She was released on bail, with a strict curfew condition.

One of the first to appear was a primary school worker – Alexis Bailey, 31, from Battersea, south London – who admitted burglary with intent to steal after his arrest in the electrical goods store Richer Sounds during the riots in Croydon. Appearing in a police-issue white tracksuit, Bailey, who, the court heard, works full-time in a primary school in Stockwell and lives with his parents, was given bail but must adhere to a curfew while wearing an electronic tag.

His case, along with many others, was committed to Wood Green Crown Court for sentencing. Magistrates are limited to imposing sentences of six months; crown court judges, however, have heavier sentencing powers. Magistrate Melvyn Marks told the court many of the cases had aggravating features, occurring "in the middle of a very violent riot".


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/courts-sit-round-the-clock-to-administer-fasttrack-justice-2335675.html

[ivanm]

Notoc you folks certainly have my sympathy.   I think we can expect to see more of this lawless barbarism as time goes on.
I know of a very efective crowd control device.  Flame throwers.   

[notoc]

Notoc you folks certainly have my sympathy.   I think we can expect to see more of this lawless barbarism as time goes on.
I know of a very efective crowd control device.  Flame throwers.  

We keep a flat in North London. I can understand the desperation felt by those who feel themselves to be disenfranchised. I can't understand the logic behind stealing from one's neighbours and destroying one's neighbourhood ... but then I have never felt disenfranchised.

However I can understand the anger felt by a community when it is lied to by the very people charged with their protection.

The police team that shot and killed Mark Duggan in North London lied and the Media repeated those lies as if they were fact. Mark Duggan didn't fire on the police as was originally suggested in a story involving a tale of an officer being saved from a bullet by his radio ... the police leaked this concocted story to the press failing to mention that all three bullets fired had come from police weapons, so there was no conclusion to be drawn other than one officer had managed to shoot one of his colleagues.

When this lie was exposed the community asked the police for an explanation and held a reportedly 100% peaceful demonstration outside their local police station in protest that no explanation was offered ... the police instead choosing to hide behind the 'procedure' wherein no comment can be made once the matter is handed over for investigation to the Police Complaints Commission.

The Media failed to point-out what the demonstrators already knew ... that the matter had already been handed over to the Police Complaints Commission when the police leaked the lie about the number of bullets the team had fired.

[Mornac]

We keep a flat in North London. I can understand the desperation felt by those who feel themselves to be disenfranchised. I can't understand the logic behind stealing from one's neighbours and destroying one's neighbourhood ... but then I have never felt disenfranchised.

It's called Reaping the Harvest of Liberalism:


Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters

By Max Hastings

10th August 2011

A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black  reporter named Joe Strickland.

He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’

I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.

It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed ‘the rich’ and the police that ‘we can do what we like’.

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.

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.

Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies.

Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.

They have their being only in video games and street-fights, casual drug use and crime, sometimes petty, sometimes serious.
The notions of doing a nine-to-five job, marrying and sticking with a wife and kids, taking up DIY or learning to read properly, are beyond their imaginations.

Last week, I met a charity worker who is trying to help a teenage girl in East London to get a life for herself. There is a difficulty, however: ‘Her mother wants her to go on the game.’ My friend explained: ‘It’s the money, you know.’

An underclass has existed throughout history, which once endured appalling privation. Its spasmodic outbreaks of violence, especially in the early 19th century, frightened the ruling classes.

Its frustrations and passions were kept at bay by force and draconian legal sanctions, foremost among them capital punishment and transportation to the colonies.

Today, those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want.
When social surveys speak of ‘deprivation’ and ‘poverty’, this is entirely relative. Meanwhile, sanctions for wrongdoing have largely vanished.
When Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently urged employers to take on more British workers and fewer migrants, he was greeted with a hoarse laugh.

Every firm in the land knows that an East European — for instance — will, first, bother to turn up; second, work harder; and third, be better-educated than his or her British counterpart.Who do we blame for this state of affairs?

Ken Livingstone, contemptible as ever, declares the riots to be a result of the Government’s spending cuts. This recalls the remarks of the then leader of Lambeth Council, ‘Red Ted’ Knight, who said after the 1981 Brixton riots that the police in his borough ‘amounted to an army of occupation’.

But it will not do for a moment to claim the rioters’ behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution.

Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.

This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.

It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion  which modern society finds  unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything  different or better.

A key factor in delinquency is lack of effective sanctions to deter it. From an early stage, feral children discover that they can bully fellow pupils at school, shout abuse at people in the streets, urinate outside pubs, hurl litter from car windows, play car radios at deafening volumes, and, indeed, commit casual assaults with only a negligible prospect of facing rebuke, far less retribution.

John Stuart Mill wrote in his great 1859 essay On Liberty: ‘The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.’

Yet every day up and down the land, this vital principle of civilised societies is breached with impunity.

Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.

So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.

The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.

And what of the schools? I  do not think they can be blamed for the creation of a grotesquely self-indulgent, non-judgmental culture.

This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.

The judiciary colludes with social services and infinitely ingenious lawyers to assert the primacy of the rights of the criminal and aggressor over those of law-abiding citizens, especially if a young offender is involved.

The police, in recent years, have developed a reputation for ignoring yobbery and bullying, or even for taking the yobs’ side against complainants.
‘The problem,’ said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester’s Nuisance Strategy Unit, ‘is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.’

Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ‘disproportionate’ action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ‘the feds’.

Figures published earlier this month show that a majority of ‘lesser’ crimes — which include burglary and car theft, and which cause acute distress to their victims — are never investigated, because forces think it so unlikely they will catch the perpetrators.
 
How do you inculcate values in a child whose only role model is footballer Wayne Rooney — a man who is bereft of the most meagre human graces?

How do you persuade children to renounce bad language when they hear little else from stars on the BBC?

A teacher, Francis Gilbert, wrote five years ago in his book Yob Nation: ‘The public feels it no longer has the right to interfere.’

Discussing the difficulties of imposing sanctions for misbehaviour or idleness at school, he described the case of a girl pupil he scolded for missing all her homework deadlines.

The youngster’s mother, a social worker, telephoned him and said: ‘Threatening to throw my daughter off the A-level course because she hasn’t done some work is tantamount to psychological abuse, and there is legislation which prevents these sorts of threats.

‘I believe you are trying to harm my child’s mental well-being, and may well take steps . . . if you are not careful.’

That story rings horribly true. It reflects a society in which teachers have been deprived of their traditional right to arbitrate pupils’ behaviour. Denied power, most find it hard to sustain respect, never mind control.

I never enjoyed school, but, like most children until very recent times, did the work because I knew I would be punished if I did not. It would never have occurred to my parents not to uphold my  teachers’ authority. This might have been unfair to some pupils, but it was the way schools functioned for centuries, until the advent of crazy ‘pupil rights’.

I recently received a letter from a teacher who worked in a county’s pupil referral unit, describing appalling difficulties in enforcing discipline. Her only weapon, she said, was the right to mark a disciplinary cross against a child’s name for misbehaviour.

Having repeatedly and vainly asked a 15-year-old to stop using obscene language, she said: ‘Fred, if you use language like that again, I’ll give you a cross.’

He replied: ‘Give me an effing cross, then!’ Eventually, she said: ‘Fred, you have three crosses now. You must miss your next break.’

He answered: ‘I’m not missing my break, I’m going for an effing fag!’ When she appealed to her manager, he said: ‘Well, the boy’s got a lot going on at home at  the moment. Don’t be too hard  on him.’

This is a story repeated daily in schools up and down the land.

A century ago, no child would have dared to use obscene language in class. Today, some use little else. It symbolises their contempt for manners and decency, and is often a foretaste of delinquency.

If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.

So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.

They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.
 
They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.

They are an absolute deadweight upon society, because they contribute nothing yet cost the taxpayer billions. Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential.

Most of us would say this is nonsense. Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline — tough love — which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.

Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people.

They are products of a culture which gives them so much unconditionally that they are let off learning how to become human beings. My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham.

Unless or until those who run Britain introduce incentives for decency and impose penalties for bestiality which are today entirely lacking, there will never be a shortage of young rioters and looters such as those of the past four nights, for whom their monstrous excesses were ‘a great fire, man’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html#ixzz1UiuxxTp1

[johnhp]

I think the last sentence pretty well sums it up, the little people pay for the idiocy and greed of the bankers nd others in charge of the money and national finances.

IMO the article is articulating very well the mess the US is also in, and we are between a rock and a hard place. 

Why don't the haves riot and raise hell like the have nots do?  Maybe the haves have more class?

i want to thank you for this.  It clearly demonstrates the problem with your thinking and that of the rest of the right.  in the first sentence you stand up for the little guy, the have nots, against the banker, the haves.  in the last sentence you stand up for the "class" of the haves.

[johnhp]

I read article on the home page this morning about what S&P thinks is necessary for us to restore our AAA credit rating, and a tax increase was  a key point.

Off hand I would support the idea as long as it was equitable and everyone shares the pain proportionately.  Socialists brag about how this is a consumer led economy and how important it is for the consumer to have more money to spend.  It seems to me that raising the taxes will in effect redistribute more money into the hands of those who spend practically all of their income each pay period.   I can understand their plight as I was once in that predicament, and for many years, until I finally climbed out of the rut.

At least the additional 2 percent withholding tax for soc. sec. and Medicare should be restored in order to help prolong the solvency of the systems. The people that will need both systems' benefits in later years need to understand that the taxes they pay in today will, or should at least, bring them retirement and health care bennies when they get older.

Politicallhy speaking it may be more advantageous to reduce the various exemptions and write off than it would be to increase the tax rates.
There is lots of loopholes out there, which gives the pols much flexibility in crafting a new plan for more tax revenues.  This may seem to be chickenshit, but if they tax the workers, they aren't going to flee to foreign countries, but if they tax the employers then those people may move offshore or simply shut down.  I know this is a tough dilemma, but the working class needs to see that if they want to stay employed then it is their place to pay more taxes too.

You do understand that everyone pays taxes related to their benefit from our larger society, except for the wealthy?

[johnhp]

We keep a flat in North London. I can understand the desperation felt by those who feel themselves to be disenfranchised. I can't understand the logic behind stealing from one's neighbours and destroying one's neighbourhood ... but then I have never felt disenfranchised.

However I can understand the anger felt by a community when it is lied to by the very people charged with their protection.

There is no logic to a riot.