how understaffed are the british police, i saw an analysis that stated they had reduced the amount of cops and other services due to the 2008 recession
Very. In terms of actual numbers they’re understaffed. In terms of genuine coppers who are hard as nails? Even more so. The old school ones still exist, but they’re a dying breed, increasingly leaving due to disillusionment, etc.
e: why are the rioters so poorly equipped?
Because you aren’t seeing a planned action, you’re seeing pure, grassroots rage. That’s what makes this different to BLM etc.
I wonder what will happen next. My worry would be that we go back ten years/15 years to the point we had Muslims setting off bombs all over. That was really a grim time for us, we’d had a few more peaceful years after the troubles stopped and it just felt like that sense of fear again. A reminder to younger yanks - for several decades here there was a background possibility of being blown up when you were on the tube, or in the shopping centre, first by various Irish groups and then by islamists. It was extremely unpleasant
If someone sets something off at a match, that would be a massive provocation.
I also wonder about Ireland. The Good Friday agreement didn’t make everything go away it made people draw up a list of agreed terms and start a more political process. But by that point there were a lot of spin off groups like rIRA who has diversified into drugs and there’s a lot of them still around. Lots involved in the drug trade on the costas too. My point is that the networks for guns and weapons and the ability to be Very Bad People didn’t disappear it just changed focus somewhat.
If anything, there’s more guns now washing around from Eastern Europe and freely available in places like Molenbeek in Belgium (this is where all those Swedish grenades come from apparently…)
A lot of people have commented that this isn’t organised and I’d agree - this is the pure rage stage of things.
When the government cracks down hard you’re going to have miners strike 2.0. I lived through that, it was awful, and it marked people for life. The men and families who were involved in that have never trusted the government since, and the repercussions of it (punishment by having industry and jobs stripped and immigrants pushed on you) continue to this day. You can draw a direct line between South Yorkshire in the strike to what’s happening now. Same bastards stamping on the working class, who they hate. Destroying their livelihoods and community.
I think the government will stamp down hard on this, and in doing so they may create a more united working class, who realise that they’ve been divided along sectarian and other lines to weaken them. If in that power vacuum there steps people who had experience of the troubles, I think we are all in for a very unpleasant and interesting few years. Stay safe everyone.
