Col Rouge,

The UK Guardian newspaper disagrees with your take
on things (as does history). However your attitude
is understandable.

This view is fervently held, even by many who do not
know poor people,
have never tried to raise a family
on welfare payments, and have not the vaguest
idea what poverty is
really like. Opinion polls repeatedly show large sections of
the population favoring cuts in welfare spending or
favoring plans to "make welfare recipients go to work."

These attitudes bear little relationship to reality.
Many of the welfare recipients are children,
aged people, or disabled; many are mothers with
young children, and only a small amount are able-bodied men,
most of them unskilled workers in areas of high unemployment.

Other myths abound - that welfare is a terrible burden on
the taxpayer (welfare represents something like 2 percent
of the federal budget).

These myths are part of the ideology
that legitimates stratification.
It holds that everyone has the same chance to get ahead,
and that inequality provides rewards for personal effort.
If those who get ahead can claim credit for their success,
then those who fall behind must, logically, be blamed
for their failures. The poor are therefore supposed
to need incentives to work, rather than help at the
expense of the taxpayer.

There are few complaints, however, about how the government
pays out far more in "handouts" to the nonpoor than to the
poor. This fact generally escapes attention because
these benefits take the indirect form of hidden
subsidies or tax deductions rather than the direct form of
cash payments.

We should be wary of explanations of poverty that try to
"blame the victim."
Explanations that focus on the supposed faults of the
poor rather than on social forces that create poverty.
This doesn't mean of course, that poverty is "all society's
fault."

Some people undoubtedly contribute to their
deprived circumstances. But poverty, like wealth or indeed
any other social characteristic, is the outcome of a
complex inter-action between individual human beings
and the social invironment in which they find themselves.

Happen here?

Not a chance.

Our youth is collectively one of the most positively advantaged, cossetted, protected, educated, privileged and affluent social grouping, anywhere.

Riot? They'd rather go surfing.

What's more, they can.

if life has taught me one thing
its never say never

so of course it could happen here
just make the kids voiceless

just keep calling them names
they will become what we fear them to become

the overeaction of govt..will ensure they get angry sometime
we hear that many pleading 'guilty'...didnt even do anything
but there they are..their photo in the news paper

tell me
did those young guns gambling away our super
AND loosing a big chunk of it
[did they get the same 'treatment']

of course not
we look at the spoiled brats[in our sports]..
and say arnt they too clever..so other kids think thats how life is

we put riots on the simpsons
and that standard is what they follow

the wealthy prats get away with murder
the poor..ned to plead guilt where no guilt is
cause they got a duty soliciter telling them i will get you out of this[then dont]..

there is plenty of reasons for kids to get angry
life can be a riot..;but in reality its become a joke

Lexi "The UK Guardian newspaper disagrees with your take
on things (as does history). However your attitude
is understandable."

I stopped reading when you referred to the Grauniad

anyone who relies on the newspaper of choice for pompous, leftard academics is obviously drinking from a poison well..

anyway, I thought you were ignoring me,.. according to another post you wrote....

or is your short term memory slipping?

and as for my attitude.... that attitude of self reliance is what is needed, not the fluff and flatulence of pandering socialism

Col Rouge,

Flatulence is one subject you'd be more
familiar with - I grant you that.

And no, there's nothing wrong with my
memory. It's my professional ethos.
Part of my training actually - to correct
any misinformation that's being bandied
about

Lexi Friend, the gentle man is no gentle man,
Better not to respond.
You know those views/barbs are of no use.
50 years ago I lived in Sydney away from my family a country kid.
I could not believe the street wars between Australian Aboriginals and young migrants, from a European back ground, southern Italy.
I saw blood on the pavement and a lot of deliberately planned fights.
I think because of the need to be different and proud of it.
No single answers and no single problem.
But we should understand we face the same if we do not think out side the box.