I am delighted to see that some people are ‘taking the law into their own hands’ and not just abandoning their communities to the barbarian thugs…
When the trouble came, hairdressers, sales assistants and butchers were among the scores of Turkish and Kurdish workers who stood outside their businesses in Green Lanes, Haringey, from 8pm having been warned by police to expect trouble.
The Guardian filmed others – some armed with baseball bats – on guard outside shops and restaurants in Kingsland Road, only a mile away from Hackney’s burning high street. Three workers from Re-Style Hairdressers were among those out in Green Lanes, after word spread that an attack was imminent at about 4pm
[…]“We were outside ready and expecting them,” said the manager of Turkish Food Market, who asked not to be named. “But I felt very panicky because we are not safe from either the rioters or police. We put all of our efforts into this shop. It took 20 years to get it like this. But we do not know about our rights. I’m scared that the police and the government will attack us if we defend our businesses. We are being squeezed between the two.”
Firstly, to those blaming ‘immigration’ rather than the welfare state, and the utterly grotesque way the state demands you do not protect what is yours, well people would do well to emulate the Turkish and Kurdish community in Britain. Indeed the looters we see on television and streamed over the internet are so multi-racial it must gladden the hearts of the Welfare Statists who created them.
So when the police decry ‘vigilantes‘, I would point out that communities can often do a better job at protecting themselves than the police can and the folks who got out on the streets, not to loot but to defend their neighbourhoods, well they are the real heroes here.
The safety of you and your property is only tangentially of interest to the state (certainly they want to tax what you own, so to that extent they do indeed care about your life and property), but as demonstrated starkly over the last few days, the state also created the conditions that led to these riots and is therefore rather uneasy about punishing people who, after all, only do what the state does every day only without having to smash any windows.
A community of few people with rifles and something worth protecting are not such a soft target to thugs, even armed thugs, compared to a disarmed general population looking vainly for the Plod to save them. But for all sorts of reasons, the British state has so effectively propagandised this country that to even suggest armed self-defence puts you on the lunatic fringe… so crowbars and cricket bats it is then.
If these last few days shows anything it is that when push comes to shove, only you and your neighbours can defend against what can only be called barbarian scum. Contrary to what the state would have you believe, you have the right to defend yourself and your property that morally supersede any law that would deny that right. The rioters ‘took the law into their own hands’ so I applaud those Turks and Kurds (and many others whom the Guardian would not be so keen to report on) who did the same… they took the law back from the barbarians with and put it where it belongs: in their own hands.
The state is not your friend, so do what you have to do and if you drive off some thugs, do not call the police after it is all over as nothing good will come of that.
I’m wholly in favour of what these guys are doing. But I am also interested to know if they are actually breaking any laws. Or are they just pissing off the Police, in a way that the Police can only moan about but not actually forbid?
The Police moan seems to be that if mere people are defending themselves, they can’t tell who to arrest. When they finally get there, I mean. It makes things difficult for them.
How much easier it would be if there were about as many Police as there are regular citizens, and they could treat all citizens as the enemy, like they were an occupying army. Maybe it will come to that.
Immigration is relevant.
I hate the intellectual cartwheels the mention of this word creates.
For order within a “small state” country you need a culture with shared values.
It is not immigration itself that is the problem it is the speed of immigration. There has to be time left to assimilate to a shared culture. Not a multicultural society but a multiracial society with shared values.
Unchecked immigration was used to destroy our conservative Christian moral code that would never countenance pure socialism. Moral relativism was used to justify all familiy structures and all cultures as equally good. This is all part of the socially liberal delusion that has brought us to this place.
Seems those Turks and Kurds in London, who are most likely muslims, were acting very morally, not to mention very rationally.
They came to seek a better life for themselves and were damned if they were going to stand by whilst some barbarian yoof vermin were going to take it away ‘for a lark’. I would be quite happy to take more of those kinds of people who fight for what they worked for, thank you very much.
It is welfare, born of a political looter class, not immigration, that created the social looter class on Britain’s streets.
For the record I support a wholly open gate for immigration as I believe that without the welfare state we wouldn’t have the volume of human traffic and we would also attract the right kind of immigrant (one that wants to work). I didn’t suggest that the Turks were not moral. Nice Straw Man.
In fact many of the very moral muslims who came here did so because the idea of what Britain was has somehow survived in many old colonial countries despite the reality at home. You can imagine their disappoointment when they come here.
I was very impressed by the actions of the Turks, in fact. It is one of those stories that fails to fully fit the sort of narratives both beloved of the Guardian or, for that matter, of the far right.
I certainly agree with that.
Not a straw man but rather what you implied. If you thought otherwise, you should have expressed it more clearly.
I take issue with calling these Turks and Kurds “vigilantes”. A vigilante is someone who actively seeks out those whom he believes are criminals, and imposes his own extra-legal punishment. It is an aggressive act. On the other hand, simply defending one’s own person and property from assault by looters is not vigilanteism, but merely self-defense. This is one more illustration of the perversion of a word for political purposes.
I very much agree with the last sentence, especially the “do not call the police” part. And I would add that if any of your neighbors whom you see similarly protecting their property should be subsequently arrested and charged with any crime, be sure to support them by refusing to testify against them and, even, affirmatively lying about what you saw.
It’s sad that the only people wiling to fight for what is theirs appears to be immigrants. The native British seem to be only capable of cowering from the looters and waiting for the government to save them.
Such a dependency on the state is the mindset of serfs instead of free men. No wonder then that the government wont give the people a say in whether or not to remain in the E.U. for such a people aren’t fit for freedom.
Yet, people are sitting in prison right now in the US, Britain, and every other English speaking nation for defending themselves and their property. All it takes is a bad law with good intentions, a prosecutor looking to pad his statistics, or one who has an agenda, a justice system that no longer protects the rights of the accused, and the power of the state to back up said prosecutor.
Rights? That kind of thinking is passe’ my friend.
The state does not wish for people to defend themselves against criminals and thus prosecutes them when they do. After all, if a citizen learns to defend himself against criminals, he might contemplate defending himself against the state.
It wasn’t what I implied it was what you asumed.
My point was clear.
The same solution here could’ve helped those poor kids in Norway. In London, as with everywhere else, there are real repercutions for encouraging a society to give up individual responsibility; self defense and defense of others, care for ones community, respect for the property of others.
Most of all, we need more good people with guns who are able to use them.
Less well reported were the Millwall and Charlton Athletic Supporters who – having had their games called off – patrolled Eltham High Street signing “you won’t be looting here”
Oh and Palace fans too
http://yfrog.com/h8xjzmzj
I moved to from north east London to rural Alabama (my wife’s family owns land in these parts). We have a gun; mostly it’s used to kill snakes. It can also be used to shoot burglars and such. Funny that I had to move to rural Alabama to discover civilised laws concerning an individual’s right to defend oneself and one’s property.
Half of these looters would have already been behind bars in a civilised society, and so they would have been unable to go on their rampage in the first place.
Good post Perry.
Brian asks a question – “are they [people who seek to defend their own property – and the property of others] breaking any laws?”
Of course they are Brain – for example they are standing in a public place (a street) with “offensive weapons”.
Doubtless they are breaking all sorts of other laws (by preparing for a fight and so on).
This is modern Britain, the legal situation here is one of the worst in the Western world (if not the worst in the Western world).
Excellent! I am delighted to see this.
Paul:
The Turkish shopkeepers could be thought to be breaking the law by standing in the street with “offensive weapons”. However, the police are citizens just like us, and they carry batons in public without breaking the law. Why? Because they are carrying batons to preserve the Queen’s peace. And that is exactly the reason (though I doubt they would phrase it that way) that the Turks are carrying weapons. They are far from breaking the law, they are doing exactly the same job as the police, and are armed for precisely the same reason.
John K – I hope what you say is true, I just suspect that it used to be true and is no longer so.
I’m sure there are loads of laws which specifically apply to non-police civillians and others which only apply to police.
The rioters have decided that do-it-yourself looting has better returns than outsourcing it to the government. Now the law abiding are figuring that DIY security is the only type they’ll get.
I note that Home Secretary Theresa May is an Oxford graduate. May I suggest that a good way to begin the reformation of Britain would be to loot and burn Oxford? The world would thank you for removing that intellectual cancer and the prognosis for British recovery would be much improved.
If you must defend yourself, wear a mask, and take any valuables off the dead looter.
If you do get caught, claim you were robbing him. Do not admit committing the crime of self-defense.
Self-defense = long prison term
killing during a robbery = an ASBO
It seems that resolutely individualist view of the gubmint has been tempered: a rally of citizens wishing to clean up the streets was quashed by the coppers – on the grounds of ‘elfnsafety’. Why, there was broken glass on the ground! Better to leave to the council workers to do the cleanup.
Oh frabjous day!!!
On the other hand, I expect not too long a wait until the coppers *do* attempt to arrest someone protecting themselves, and get the crap kicked out of them by the once peaceful law abiding citizens.
The cops will make themselves fair game. Since if they are not on the side of peace, order and good government, they are the enemy.
Like the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Butch tells Sundance: ‘When its done, if I’m dead, kill him.” (and Sundance says, ‘Love to.’), there will come a day, when one shopkeeper says to another, ‘if he arrests me, make sure he doesn’t testify.’
Huh? What is in any why whatsoever ‘individualist’ about this government? They preside over a vast redistributive regulatory state and intend to make it bigger yet. Perhaps I misunderstand you.
A significant portion of British libertarians and classical liberals, not to mention contributors to this blog, also went to Oxford (well, ‘Oxbridge’ would be a better term).
James:
The prenicious nonsense regarding “offensive weapons” was introduced in the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 (even its name is risible), following a moral panic about Teddy Boys carrying bicycle chains. It outlawed the carrying of “offensive weapons” without “lawful authority or reasonable excuse.” It is the “lawful authority” of maintaining the Queen’s peace by which the police carry batons in public. They do not have any special dispensation given to them by the Chief Constable, maintaining the Queen’s peace is an obligation we all share, the police are merely citizens who are paid to do it. The 1953 Act does not spell this out, because otherwise it would give the game away. The Act was designed to enable the police to lock up hoodlums with coshes and chains, but has evolved into a monster which has convinced people that they may not carry an “offensive weapon” with which to defend both their person and the Queen’s peace. I rather doubt that many plod are aware of this either, no doubt they think that they can carry weapons because they are the police, and we can’t because we are the little people. That’s what they want you to think!
“Article II
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This amendment to the US Constitution was adopted in 1789, but it was inspired in the early morning hours of April 19th, 1775, when “our” British military marched from Boston to Lexington and North Concord to disarm us.
Firearms were vital to settlers as they defended against indians and raiders. When their own government attempted to disarm them, the American colonists understood the real threat.
Is it time for our British friends to demand the right to keep and bear arms? The police cannot maintain order or protect their citizens. Give the people the means to defend themselves.
A significant portion of British libertarians and classical liberals…
And that’s why modern Britain is a libertarian and free market wonderland? What fraction of folks coming out of Oxbridge are libertarians and classical liberals?
Somewhat amusing. You do know about the turf wars involving Turks/Kurds in Green Lanes I presume?
Any Neighbourhood Watch scheme that can escalate all the way up to automatic weapons is a remarkable deterrent.
The same could be said of Harvard or Yale or most higher education establishments. Frankly it is little more than reverse snobbery to blame Oxford for the rise of statism in Britain given things are not all that different over most of the First World, including the USA.
You know, it would it be possible for quite a number of Britons of the classical liberal/libertarian persuasion to move to one of the portions of the UK that has a local legislature and push for traditional legal rights?
The same could be said of Harvard or Yale…
Oh, I certainly agree. Judging by the political product, a Harvard degree is something like a prison tattoo. It’s not that there aren’t many institutions worthy of pillage, but that Oxbridge is the big fish in its local pool. Personally, I envisage a replay of Henry VIII and the monastaries.
The only legitimate power of the state is to protect its citizens’ life and property from those who would do them harm. When the state fails to do so, it abdicates its responsibility, and it is the absolute right of the people to replace it with whatever measures can fulfill their need for security. If the state attempts to punish anyone for defending his own life and property, then the state becomes the enemy of the people, and it should be abolished and replaced.
-jcr
@M. Thompson: You know, the portions of the UK that have local legislatures are by no means sovereign states on a par with, say, Texas; their legislatures are more like the city councils of New York or Los Angeles: subject to an overriding authority that can veto their every act or even void their charter if it wants?
Alas, the Free State Movement will not move very far in a unitary state – such as the UK.
There seems to be some confusion here. Law and order is the responsibility of good citizens of a community. As populations grew, it was beneficial to hire police to round up the criminals as posse duty was taking to much time away from productive work by citizens. This was advantageous in the most part as the police were suppose to act as independent, unemotional response thus avoiding lynch mobs and such.
However, the right to police the community is just a delegation, the responsibility remains with the citizens. As such, when their hired help are unable or unwilling to meet their duty, the defense of the community falls onto the law abiding citizens.
Perhaps the British, having never been free, their police belonging to the Queen do not have this naturally as we in America. But it is time they take this view as HM government is failing
When the chips are down and the world’s burning, there’s only two people you can truly and honestly trust to help you in your darkest hour: Yourself and God (or whatever deity you pray to).
The sooner everyone learns this the better.
It seems the British government and police have completely forgotten Robert Peel and his 9 Principles; in particular, number 7:
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
If defending your home, your family, your business, your effing LIFE isn’t one of those duties, what is?
So, begin the “Hue and Cry” and call every able-bodied man forth to find the criminals.
It’s amazing that Britain has moved so far away from this very effective method of policing communities. From: every able-bodied man has a duty to help enforce community order, to: *no* able-bodied man should do anything of the sort unless he’s an officer of the Met.
The new way isn’t really working out so well, is it.
So, begin the “Hue and Cry” and call every able-bodied man forth to find the criminals.
It’s amazing that Britain has moved so far away from this very effective method of policing communities. From: every able-bodied man has a duty to help enforce community order, to: *no* able-bodied man should do anything of the sort unless he’s an officer of the Met.
The new way isn’t really working out so well, is it.
Sorry, but I have to trot out that old saw re, “You get the government you deserve.”
No one marched up to Parliament in the last 60 years and took a seat without being elected first. Ditto for our Congress. The people put them in power.
As Big Bob’s dear ol’ Granma’ Kelley used to say, “You made your bed, now lie in it.” So, sorry, but no sympathy from BB.
Big Bob’s motto? A gun in the hand is worth a sh**load of cops responding.
Greetings from California. Both the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the 2nd Amendment to the American Constitution spell out the rights of the citizenry to have arms for their defense. Both documents limit the ability of the government to encroach on our liberties. I am not saying that we should have the right to purchase a bazooka or an RPG, but we should be able to protect ourselves. I believe that it was John Adams (he defended the British troops that fired on the colonials in Massachusetts) who said that the Constitution only works for a moral and Godly people. So pass all of the gun laws that you want, but the bad guys will still get the guns.
So arise and take your stand for freedom as in the olden time. Responsible citizens should have the right to firearms ownership.
Don’t y’all have a bunch of maces, swords, and crossbows sitting unused in museums?
the social looter class is the ruling class. you folks should deal with it in all of it’s manifestations.
Somewhere among the decades of airy-fairy fog banks of sociological yammer Britain has lost touch with the brass tacks of life. It is right, good, and necessary for thugs to strongly suspect that, if they break into the wrong house, they will leave with a new hole in their noses.
How can we expect immigrants to assimilate if our culture is so asinine as to forbid defence of self and property?
Ralph,
The Founders however, disagree
My ex wife is British, and I spent a little time over in the UK myself a few years back.
I’m not surprised by this at all. The chav culture of wretchedness and dependence upon the dole, coupled with the pervasive indoctrination that people don’t have rights, has directly created this outcome.
The UK is doomed. It is dying. It is circling the bowl and these riots are merely the most obvious proof of this fact.
Anyone who really wants to understand what is happening over there should read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Bottom-Worldview-Makes-Underclass/dp/1566635055
There is nothing that I can say here that Theodore Dalrymple has not already said in this book a million times more eloquently than I can.
“There has to be time left to assimilate to a shared culture.”
– True, but not dispositive. Too short a period will guarantee a failure to assimilate, but there are some cultures which, for their own reasons, place a very high value on affirmatively resisting assimilation., and enforce this value amongst its members with zeal.
“The state does not wish for people to defend themselves against criminals and thus prosecutes them when they do. After all, if a citizen learns to defend himself against criminals, he might contemplate defending himself against the state.”
– We arm ourselves, not with any realistic expectation of having to defend ourselves against the state directly, but so that we can defend ourselves against the state’s unofficial agents.
Aside from the Iraqs and the Irans and the Libyas of the world, most of us will never realistically consider defending ourselves from a threat of violence from our State directly. First, most of our States lose legitimacy when they take up arms against their own people, and so it actually seldom happens. Second, if it does happen, with our pitiful home firearms, we won’t even be within range of firing before we’ll be dead.
No, the true danger isn’t from the State – it’s from private groups that our State might want to somehow aim at us, in order to coerce our acquiescence to the philosophies and actions of the ruling faction.
So, as an example, a government currently held in thrall by a fanatically liberal political Party might wish to set its contrarian and disruptive conservative Opposition back on its heels such that the ruling Party could enact all of its favored legislation without undo fuss or delay.
That Ruling Party could announce, regretfully, that it could no longer afford to make welfare payments to immigrants from Baal (a large group, known for their militant hostility to all) due to the intransigence of the cheap and hateful conservative voting bloc.
And then the conservatives face rioting aimed at them from the Baal community, while the police and politicians stand back sadly shaking their heads and denouncing the violence whilst also mentioning that the rioters . . . er . . . activists . . . yeah, that’s it . . . the activists are without hope and opportunity, and perhaps higher welfare support is needed to make them feel wanted . . .
THAT’s who our arms protect us from.
“Less well reported were the Millwall and Charlton Athletic Supporters who – having had their games called off – patrolled Eltham High Street signing “you won’t be looting here”
– Hear! Throughout my fairly active youth, I encountered many a situation which left me thankful for the protection of Athletic Supporters.
When the chips are down and the world’s burning, there’s only two people you can truly and honestly trust to help you in your darkest hour: Yourself and God…
Hah. I thought you were going to say “Smith & Wesson”.
Note the “ante” in “vigilante.”
Or, “My redeemer liveth, and his name is John Moses Browning.”
Not really. Police do not ‘belong to the Queen’: the Home Secretary controls the police. In reality the Queen has the same role in the UK as the Flag does in the USA… a purely symbolic one. When an American ‘pledges allegiance to the flag’ it is no different to doing something similar to the Queen.
I really do not see much difference between the US and Britain as a practicle matter when it comes to most civil liberties or policing. Given the huge gap between the theory and practice of constitutional protections in both places it really comes down to how are things actually done. The First and Second Amendments still have some genuine value for the defence of liberty in the USA, the rest of the Constitution, not so much.
Certainly I would not care to see the UK go down the very paramilitary path policing has gone in the US where even small municipalities now have SWAT teams routinely kicking people’s doors down.
Likewise my understanding is that recently the US Supreme Court have ruled it is not legitimate to forcibly resist even an unlawful entry by police, so clearly the notion of citizen-police who have to follow the same laws as everyone else has been abandoned in the USA, which at least in theory is not the case in the UK (in practice there is very little difference).
Indeed in some ways the state of civil liberties in the USA is even worse than the UK (the ever broader application of RICO, asset forfeiture without trial (let alone conviction) and the nakedly corrupt ways eminent domain seizures are used comes prominently to mind)… and the fact prosecutions are brought by politically motivated people (thugs like Eliot Spitzer for example) as DA are elected rather than appointed in the USA, which is a truly terrible idea.
To my mind the only really big advantage (and it *is* a very big advantage) to the way things are in the USA is that of firearms ownership. And of course that very much depends on where you live in the USA… it is hard to see how the state of civil liberties in New York is much different to that in London.
All over Texas, people are watching in amazement and horror at the crap you good people are tolerating. Doesn’t anyone over there have some old hunting rifles? Muskets? Great-grandfather’s bayonet? Anything?
Good lord in heaven.
“Alas, the Free State Movement will not move very far in a unitary state – such as the UK.”
Isle of Man, anyone?
Also: “Likewise my understanding is that recently the US Supreme Court have ruled it is not legitimate to forcibly resist even an unlawful entry by police….”
AFAIK — and I stand ready to be corrected — this was a ruling by the Supreme Court of one (1) of the 50 states, my own Indiana. The Chief Justice who led the way for this travesty has a sort of vote-of-confidence upcoming and I am hoping to see him voted out. It was a crummy case with a tremendously unsympathetic defendant; perhaps a better one can thread its way up the Federal court system and fix this mess. (And perhaps I’ll excrete magic unicorns, too — well, one can hope. Or hope not; that horn looks nasty sharp.)
No, they have hunting rifles and shotguns, but it appears that everyone has been carefully taught that it is better to cower in your house than to take to the streets to defend yourself.
You would think that after a week of looting and lawlessness, a special dispensation would be given to allow law-abiding citizens to use their weapons to protect themselves, but they can never allow that veil to slip, lest anyone get the idea that weapons have a purpose other than hunting (and even that is bad and strictly regulated).
If enough of you would do it, there wouldn’t be enough jail cells to hold you, but I guess there aren’t enough Bull Dogs left.
It’s time for you British to rethink your foolish gun laws and start re-arming yourselves. Ignore the nannies who screech that you will turn into the Wild West if you do. Even the gun-totin’ Wild West was largely a myth. Gun owners who learn how to use their guns responsibly do not go around shooting people indiscriminately. If you’ll notice, it’s only the lunatic fringe and the criminal element who do, and gun laws have never stopped them from using guns.
Would you rather hide under the bed, hoping the police will come in time, or would you rather that criminal outside your door think twice about breaking it down because you might have a gun and shoot him?
I guess, what I’m asking the average British citizen is, is the criminal’s life worth more than yours?
Immigration has increased the size of the British underclass significantly. In this particular social disturbance, they even had the honor of setting the whole thing off. Yay!
And yes, kurds, turks, etc. do have the virtue of being less pussified than the average UK eloi. That fact does not mean that they “share british values”, or that their values are good for the majority population.
An Islamic fundamentalist, say, is far more likely to defend his home from looters than a guardian-reading middle school teacher. That does not render his “values” harmless or desirable from my perspective.
Vigilantism has nothing at all to do with self-defense. There is a fundamental difference between standing and defending yourself and your family and neighbors when faced with an imminent threat of bodily harm, and going out and actively pursuing criminals or trying to administer justice. Anyone who can’t recognize and understand this difference has no moral compass. Primary responsibility for self defense lies with the individual because the state can’t possibly be the personal bodyguard for its citizens, even if it has the inclination to do so. It is the state’s responsibility to pass just laws, investigate crime, pursue criminals and administer justice. The inability of so many in Euripe to understand this distinction is a sad commentary on the state of European society
“In reality the Queen has the same role in the UK as the Flag does in the USA… a purely symbolic one. When an American ‘pledges allegiance to the flag’ it is no different to doing something similar to the Queen.”
I’ve never seen the Queen’s place in society described this way. Having now read your post, I just wanted to thank you for stating this so clearly. In hindsight, this makes perfect sense.
Re: Court ruling in USA regarding police entry into homes:
The ruling mentioned was an outlier – from one of the 50 states’ State Supreme Court – which has no authoritative value for the rest of the country. In fact, I would predict that even that state court overrules the case eventually. It was an absurd result.
Vigilantism has nothing at all to do with self-defense.”
Well, yes and no.
Vigilantism also includes the concept of exacting a disproportionate penalty upon someone in the act of defending you and yours from that someone’s criminal actions.
You need to know what penalty the State imposes on someone who is convicted of criminal damage to property. If you, as a homeowner or business owner, attempt to exact a more onerous penalty than the state’s, you will still be considered a vigilante (which is not the legal term, obviously, but provides the social basis for charging you with a crime if you beat down someone trying to bash in your window.)
In England, IIRC, a first-time offender convicted of criminal damage to property (which would include the burning and trashing associated with rioting) would not likely even spend time in prison. A fine, counseling, probationary supervision (such as it may be)- these are the typical consequences associated with such a charge.
Thus, if you break your baseball bat over a rioter’s head as he overturns your car or smashes your shop window (assuming that this injures the rioter as well as your bat), you will have disproportionately punished him, and you will likely be convicted of some type of assault charge.
In most places, you have a heightened right to self-defense inside of your own home. So, if you do happen to kill or injure a rioter, make sure you drag him inside your door before calling the cops. In a business setting, don’t smack their heads as they are flipping your vehicle. Instead, goad them into coming after you, and then whack them. Fear of personal death or injury is a more legally compelling motivation than fear that your window might be damaged.
I totally agree with anybodys right to defending your property. But as a web blog site its insulting. Cut to the chase if you dont pay the correct taxes here which most don’t…talk about honesty? cash in hand …look at yourself in the mirror?
what do you contribute to Britain with fiddled taxes? If you hate so much so long and thanks for all the fish!
What are you babbling about Andy? The state needs to spend hugely less than it spends at the moment. The problem is not that there is not enough tax money being paid, it is that the state is spending *vastly* too much tax money in the first place.
The way to contribute to Britain is not by paying taxes to the political parasite class so they can pass it on to the social parasite class, it is by starting a business or working at one… THAT is a real “contribution to Britain”.
Or just does not share your semantics, mate.
A suggestion on stopping riots: Take a car, put a beehive in the trunk, and put it in the path of the rioters.
Okay, let me say this one more time.
The “vigilante” nonsense being spouted by Teh Cops means just one thing: “Don’t take the law into your own hands.”
It’s bullshit.
The law never left your hands. The law belongs to the people, not to the government. You may have deputized the law’s enforcement to agents of the State, but with the implicit understanding that if they were unable to carry out that function, then you, the people, had not only a right but a duty to enforce it for yourselves.
And if the police attempt to stop you from enforcing YOUR law when they are plainly unable to, then they are little better than the thugs who threaten you with violence if you dare to raise a hand against them in their thievery and anarchy.
Say it now; say it again, and again, and again, and again, until the goddamn fucking government and their agents get the idea.
“IT IS OUR LAW, AND IT NEVER LEFT OUR HANDS.”
Kim:
Quite. The police, a fairly recent phenomenom, are a public sector body like any other. They want to protect their jobs and pensions, and don’t want “civilians” queering their pitch. It essentially boils down to a demarcation dispute, organised by uniformed Fred Kites.
We do indeed have a natural right to armed self defense without being arrested for it. To those who say we no longer have those rights, because the gov took them away, I would reply that you still have your rights in theory, but to possess any right in actual practice you must be willing to seek the Jeffersonisn solution:
“If any government tries to take away these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government”
Thus in the end, the only rights you really possess are the ones you are willing to first democratically, and ultimately forcibly, defend against any encroachment. And also, if you really beleive in these rights, you should also help defend other honest citizens if their rights are denied.
“Isle of Man anyone?”.
Been there and I like the place.
I would move tomorrow if there was a job going and somewhere to hang my hat.
Nothing special – remember I was a security guard (nightwatchman type) for decades, and I have no family – so a small place would do.
I agree wholeheartedly. There’s was an old a show over here in the 80s in the U.S. called “The People’s Court” that used the popular saying, don’t take the law into your own hands.” This was probably calculated propaganda to domesticate people, because it’s been followed with nothing but propaganda ever since to convince people to be uninvolved and rely on the almighty state for everything.