Thorn

Who says outdated? The US military has been swimming in cash the last couple of decades. I bet the average age of their frigates and destroyers is a hell of a lot closer to 'new' than old.

Well, the left has had twenty or more years to work things into the ground. I rather doubt more public assistance, more understanding, more helpful smiles and tepid lectures is going to produce a whole lot of value. Strict discipline is one method for instilling acceptable behaviour in young men, and it does have a historical pattern of preserving public order. I think that young men have to be found work, no matter what it is, and if necessary they need to be compelled to work. I don't care if it's cutting weeds or building highways. Something has to be found for them to do short of a national military draft, which we no longer want or need. We can't have gangs of rootless young men roaming about smashing things and attacking people. We seem perpetually short of construction type workers. Why is that? Much of that work would seem ideal for the low brow set. If they can't be enticed into getting off their sofas and going to work then they must be made to do so.

The government is about to embark on a huge ship building exercise to re-equip the Royal Canadian Navy. There is no question the navy needs new ships, but current events indicate that building new ones is uneeded and far more expensive than purchasing existing warships from other nations. The British navy is in the process of downsizing, and while I'll be the first to admit we screwed up in buying the submarines from the brits they have some very nice surface ships. More importantly, the United States Navy is very likely to soon undergo a massive and immediate downsizing. Entire aircraft carrier battlegroups will need to be mothballed and all their crews furloughed, or laid off. The requirement under the recently passed debt ceiling raise is that a super committee of six democrats and six republicans agree on how to find trillions in deficit reduction by thanksgiving. Since all six Republican members have vowed to oppose even one cent of new taxes it's unlikely a deal will be reached and passed by congress. When the committee fails, half a trillion in military spending will have to be cut. That means lots of ships, planes and military vehicles will be on the market at cut rate prices. Now the inclination will be for the Americans to mothball their older units first, but if there is the possibility of selling some that could be reconsidered. And really, so many ships will have to be scrapped that there are bound to be a lot of excellent quality, fairly new ships we can buy for the RCN. We could pick up a lot of army gear while we're at it, including trucks and personnel carriers, for far less than buying them new.

In her column today in the Globe, Margaret Wente identifies the problem as a mix of social and economic. As she says, there is no path to manhood for many of the young today. They are ambivalent towards most work, aren't settled down by families or the responsibility for looking after them, and the kinds of largely physical and mindless jobs they used to be able to do are largely gone with the factories which provided them. So what do we do with all these young men who are shiftless and rootless? This is nothing new in the history of the world – only in the history of our world. A surplus of unemployable, disruptive young males has often been the norm. Karl Marx described such people as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars.” (He was referring to 19th-century France.) Society had different ways of dealing with the problem. Many of these men would go to war as cannon fodder. Some would go to sea, or be transported to Australia. The more ambitious ones would strike out for the new world. Today we need another way. But no one has a clue what it might be. Unskilled, Unmarried, Unwanted

Tunisia happened very fast. And I didn't hear a word from Egypt until a few days after it ended. I think Tunisia was spontaneous while Egypt was partly spontaneous and partly organized by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. I don't pretend to know what, if any foreign involvement existed there or elsewhere. I've seen nothing that points to anyone. God knows there were enough locals angry at the governments there.

As I remember it, it was the success of the uprising in Tunisia which inspired the one in Egypt. And the success of that one which inspired uprisings elsewhere.

But how do you change that? Even if you have the power to do whatever you want? We can't control whether women have children out of wedlock, and efforts at ensuring men help pay for the resulting offspring haven't helped much. It would be nice if the schools enforced discipline, but the rules are such now that teachers are afraid to even touch children, and slackers get automatically passed up the line to the next grade, whether they know the work or not. The ultimate punishment for children who won't do the work or show up, or behave is expulsion, but that doesn't exactly help the child. Maybe we could bring back the days of nuns smacking kids in the head with rulers when they acted up. Re-introduce the strap and other forms of corporal punishment. Or maybe we could just make kids who don't comply run around the gym until they throw up. Don't know. But coddling has been tried and doesn't seem to work, overall.

Are you a politician, by chance? That's the way politicians 'answer' a question they don't want to answer, by talking around it without ever actually addressing it. I'm rarely impressed by such evasion, even when it's done twice. And in what way, then, did the UK fail to treat them like human beings?

The finding - by the World Justice Institute - underlines the fact that justice is increasingly available only to the wealthy or small minority who are so poor that they qualify for legal aid programs, she said. “This is not terrible, but it shows that we are not doing as well as we should,” Chief Justice McLachlin said. Globe and Mail I bet a lot of people would say it WAS terrible, and that the chief justice of the supreme court ought to be somewhat more concerned about it. The CJ offered up a number of suggestions, including the expansion of legal insurance, and sub-dividing bigger cases to make them cheaper, but of course, being a lawyer, the real problem never even popped into her head. Maybe, just maybe, the fees lawyers charge have gotten out of hand. Not to mention, of course, that the way lawyers charge, billable hours, is an encouragement to run up the bill by taking their time, by delaying cases, by filing all sorts of complex, but largely time-wasting applications. How many professionals in this day and age charge by the hour? Mostly that's something done by contractors, which is another group known for being corrupt and incompetent. When employees are paid by the hour their employer gets to supervise them and make sure they're working hard at the work he designs for them. Even when you hire a contractor you can keep an eye on how fast he's working and how long he's on the site. You can't do a single thing to supervise what time a lawyer actually puts into your case, or whether he's doing things too slowly or whether he's dragging things out deliberately. And the average fee lawyers charge in Toronto is $338 per hour. That's only the average. Oh you can appeal, of course, to the lawyers themselves, but only in the most egregious cases will they do anything about it. So lawyers are encouraged to take their time, research every possible thing, engage in long trials. Lawyers who cut quick deals don't make much money. Lawyers who drag things out do. And what does the CJ have to say about that? Not a blessed thing. Instead she whines about lawyers and judges not being respected properly. I wonder why.

I don't need to back it up. It's established fact. And I'm not going to allow the conversation to be diverted. Fine then. But then it just illustrates my original point. Had the original riots in Tunis been crushed there would have been no spread through the Arab world. Had the authorities come out shooting and killed thousands of people, and held itself in power, the mobs in other Arab countries would not have been inspired to have a go too. And still, you didn't answer my question. In what way were the yobs who turned out to riot not treated like human beings?

Labour has been in power there for quite some time, and the route to promotion through the Met was to echo the sentiments expressed by labour with regard to crime originating through social problems which need to be addressed. Hard line coppers who wanted to crack down on criminals got no promotions. The men promoted were those who felt, like Labour, that police were a regretful, but necessary organization which needed to mind its manners at all times and be ultra respectful of everyone's rights, particularly anyone who was a racial minority. You actually see something similar in Canada because most big cities are controlled by the NDP or an NDP mindset and so they promote senior police officers on the basis of how much they agree with their sentiments. Toronto's incompetent police chief is a case in point.

The borders of all states are decided by force of arms and always have been.

In post 104 you call me a bigot, and in post 105 you whine that people attack other posters rather than their arguments.

If you want to open a new topic of discussion with regard to single parent families you can do so elsewhere. I'm stating it as a known and accepted fact. The Arabs (Yemen and Syria are not in Africa, btw) are not rioting because the government isn't giving them big screen TVs and fashionable footwear. And to repeat my earlier question. Why should anyone pay attention to people who, for the most part, lack drive or motivation or ambition, and who spend their time on welfare drinking, fornicating and fighting while complaining about the sorry state of their lives? In a country like the UK ones lifestyle tends to be somewhat closely related to the choices one makes. Choose to get drunk and drop out of school and have a kid without a job or a mate to support them and guess what, it's not society's fault you're poor. What exactly do you want the government to do for these individuals? They're already doing everything but holding their peckers when they take a leak. Do you want them to do that too?

Which, of course, you never do.... Bjer and Bandelot, ideological and intellectual soul mates...

I think it's been pretty well proven that single parent families are more likely to result in children who don't get the requisite care and discipline as others. And as I said above, these people are not starving, not poor like the poor of Africa, who, you might note, are not rioting despite their thieving, corrupt governments. There are opportunities in England which draw people from around the world. Why can't these people find jobs if they're really looking? If they have no skill or education why not? Where does individual responsibility enter into it? Yes, but it spread around the country, and not to people desperately angry over the state of society, but to people who thought "Hey, we can smash and steal things with impunity! Yaaay!" There has always been that strain of young man who exults in smashing things. Always. Probably the first time ancient man piled stones together into a rudimentary shelter some drooling idiot kicked it down for his own amusement. Lacking sufficient enforcement of order, that breed of person will come oozing out from the cracks and start smashing and burning, and will keep doing it as long as he can get away with it. The welfare state has clearly done nothing to remove that strain. On the contrary, it appears to have enhanced it.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by the economic landscape. But I think a point made, there and elsewhere, about poverty not being the real reason for violence is worth noting. The "poor" in Great Britain live in a generous welfare state which has made every effort over the past generation to respond to their needs and requirements. They get free food, free housing, free clothing, and can get free education and skills training. But lacking motivation, many don't bother. People come from all over the world to work there. They find jobs. Why can't these people? Further, not all those arrested are poor or unemployed. University students and star athletes have been arrested, along with people who have decent jobs. Hell, a social worker has been arrested with 4 big screen TVs in her flat. Maybe she was collecting them to give out to the poor and downtrodden?

And he lived in a palace with hundreds of servants and guards, and was driven around in a chauffeur driven limousine, and all his expenses, including his many mistresses, were paid for by the money he stole from the state.

As I previously stated, it's become clear the intelligence of any post is easily seen by the number of emoticons employed by those whose literary skills and intelligence are too feeble to respond in any coherent fashion. I've also noticed you employ them in virtually every post you make. It's become patently obvious that you are by far the most insulting poster on this site, and the one with the least of value to contribute on any subject you grace with your smirking, incoherent ignorance. Having discovered the "ignore" feature, I will henceforth consign you to it.

Because it usually hasn't been necessary. On occasion, it has. Anyone with more than half a brain. People don't kick in windows and burn down buildings after you shoot them in the head. They tend to be very peaceful thereafter.

I didn't make any claim with regard to history. I'm saying that is the way it is now, today, in Canada, in the US, in Britain, in Sweden, in Switzerland, wherever...

Yes, I can prove it. I use the exact proper number of commas in my sentences. You might examine the grammatical rules surrounding 'to' and 'too' when you get a moment.

An excellent exchange of opinions in the Post regarding the motivations for the wastrels and scruff who were rioting last week. I do not believe the rioters were either “alienated” or “ignored.” To be alienated, one must have an actual grievance. This generation of Brits has the opposite of a grievance. They feel entitled because they have not been ignored enough. The extensive social safety net is the problem. They have no responsibilities and no purpose. As those quoted in news reports made clear, there was no grand social or economic issue here. People saw a chance to get free TVs and they took it. The spirit was one of a fun happening, not any ideological or political crisis. Some of them blamed “the system” but it was clear that was just a mantra, a meaningless catch-all to cover the fact there was no reason at all for the rioting and vandalism. Full Comment

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. George Bernard Shaw

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. George Bernard Shaw