Teenage thug-ridden Britain is scarier than mafia-ridden Bulgaria

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financeguy

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'Britain is scarier than Bulgaria' - Times Online

'Britain is scarier than Bulgaria'
Officially Bulgaria may be the EU's most corrupt country, says Kapka Kassabova of her former home, but Britain is scarierKapka Kassabova
Let’s go sightseeing. I live in a central Edinburgh neighbourhood called Broughton. It’s the kind of neighbourhood where the deli, health-food shop and independent wine merchant are housed in Georgian buildings and rub smug shoulders in the daytime.

The night-time is another matter, especially come Friday, when the belligerent drunk hordes from downtown trickle down Broughton Street.

If you were unfamiliar with native ways, you’d think you were walking through the aftermath of a small but vicious war. Rivulets of urine crisscross the pavements as you slalom between puddles of fresh vomit, discarded takeaway cartons smeared with ketchup, and the occasional survivor swooning in an alcoholic daze in some corner, watering the nearest pot plant. In the morning, everything is swept again.

They might have the country, but they don’t have the streets. Homeless dogs, putrefying rubbish and potholes aside, I’m never afraid to walk home in the dark from the tram stop. I’m never scared of finding some drunk pissing in a doorway, or having someone stick a knife in me for looking at them funny. The glass doorway to our building has never been smashed. Angry teenagers don’t carry knives. They grow up and become mutri and then they carry guns. Poor, corrupt, post-totalitarian Bulgaria is much safer for the ordinary person on the street than wealthy, civic, post-empire Britain.

Britain boasts a centuries-long binge-drinking tradition. You drink on an empty stomach. You drink not to enjoy, but to forget who you are. Drunk sociopathy is the norm. Why, it’s almost charming. It absolves you of all crimes, because by the time you’ve sobered up, you’ve forgotten everything, which is the whole point of the exercise.

Who now can say that Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple was wrong:

In his commentary, Daniels frequently argues that the so-called "progressive" views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimize the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within rich countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse.

He contends that the middle class abandonment of traditional cultural and behavioural aspirations has, by example, fostered routine incivility and ignorance among members of the working class. Occasionally accused of being a pessimist and misanthrope, his defenders praise his persistently conservative philosophy, which they describe as being anti-ideological, sceptical, rational and empiricist.

Anthony Daniels (psychiatrist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


Theodore DalrympleProtect the Burglars of Bromsgrove!
A British town puts thieves’ safety first.
20 October 2008
In Britain, there is a long and honorable tradition of local councils’ leasing small plots of land, called allotments, to people without gardens of their own who may grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers upon them. The tenants also receive small sheds on their plots for storing tools, fertilizers, garden furniture, and so forth. Unfortunately, another, less honorable, tradition has recently developed: stealing from allotments. Seventeen of the 50 allotments in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire have been robbed recently, for example, and the shed of one tenant, Bill Malcolm, has been broken into three times.

So Malcolm put a barbed-wire fence around his patch of land to discourage further depredations. The fence, however, did not meet with the approval of the local council, which worried about the risk of injury—to future burglars. Injured burglars might then sue the council. Another council, in Bristol, told allotment holders not to lock their sheds, in case burglars damaged them while breaking into them.

Needless to say, I am replacing the glass in the windows of my house with tissue paper, so that burglars—poor lambs—will not cut themselves while breaking and entering.

Protect the Burglars of Bromsgrove! by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal 20 October 2008


Theodore Dalrymple
No Contrition, No Penalty
Britain barely punishes even the most psychopathic behavior.
8 April 2008
Hard cases make bad law, no doubt, but bad law also makes hard cases. Certainly the thugs of Great Britain, of whom there are now terrifyingly many, may take comfort from the sentences passed recently on two young men, Dejon Thompson and Patrick Rowe, for the killing of a young Turkish man named Evren Anil. The case shows how little thugs have to fear from the law.

..............................................

Yet the judge thought, or pretended to think, that the young men posed little further danger to society and that the killing was a kind of accident. And this despite Anil’s family’s complaint that Rowe made gun gestures with his hand toward them during the trial. Was this, in the opinion of the judge, a sign of deep contrition?

If I were a Marxist, I would conclude that the British criminal-justice system is now a conspiracy to keep an ever-expanding class of criminal lawyers in permanent employment.


No Contrition, No Penalty by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal 8 April 2008
 
In his commentary, Daniels frequently argues that the so-called "progressive" views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimize the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within rich countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse.

He contends that the middle class abandonment of traditional cultural and behavioural aspirations has, by example, fostered routine incivility and ignorance among members of the working class. Occasionally accused of being a pessimist and misanthrope, his defenders praise his persistently conservative philosophy, which they describe as being anti-ideological, sceptical, rational and empiricist.

What? Sounds like a romantic fantasy, if I ever read one. Aside from "welfare dependency," where the poor would likely have been killed or shoved into debtor's prison (Charles Dickens, anyone?), endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, and drug abuse all existed long before the modern era. Be a misanthrope for all I care, but at least be factual!
 
Yeah I was just thinking... I don't really have any particular dog in this fight, but I've read enough history to lead me to think Britain (London in particular) in say, 1800, would have made modern Bulgaria and modern just about anywhere, seem like a teddy bears picnic.

Possibly only with the proviso that the weapons of the time could cause less mass damage. Maybe.
 
Be a misanthrope for all I care, but at least be factual!

Some factual information about the underclass here:-

Tim Adams examines the uncomfortable questions raised by the Shannon Matthews kidnap trial | UK news | The Observer

She 'loved Shannon to bits'. But she had her kidnapped. Inside the dark, dangerous world of Karen MatthewsThe plan to have her daughter abducted was extraordinary and bizarre. Here, in a compelling dispatch, Tim Adams, who sat through Karen Matthews's trial at Leeds Crown Court, reveals how it also raises difficult and uncomfortable truths about class, poverty, parenting and welfare dependency in Britain in 2008
 
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