I think other methods of communication would have been slower and less effective. Because of social networking these people targeted large groups of people that worked at speed. They have destroyed peoples lives, businesses, community and the reputation of England. I don’t think shutting down these networks for a night or blocking people from these networks while the destruction was taking place would have been anything like what we see in China. It would be an effective way of dealing with the issue at hand just like increasing the police presence.

I blame literacy and print media. Ever since the serfs learnt to read and write things have gone to help…

But Una why stop there, why not shut down the networks for good after all I’m sure there are numerous drug deals and robbery arranged over social networking sites all the time. Think of the crime we could stop and the people’s lives we could save it would be amazing!

Lets also not forget the general threat to the government that future riots could be arranged.

Your comments are clearly one of the many knee jerk reactions we are seeing in the media with no thoughts of the long term implications of censoring communication mediums available to the general public.

Don’t be such an idiot Barry. shutting down networks in certain places or blocking people using networks during the riots would have been a measure just like using water canons or police force. A tough measure i agree but one that would have saved lives, reduced crime and destruction, saved businesses and dealt with the matter at hand by nipping it in the bud. I agree it is a tough measure and that it takes away people liberaties and rights etc, however sometimes these things need to be done to help society and i am sure those people and business who have suffered directly would agree. It is not a measure I believe that should be used all the time, but in certain cases it should be a measure considered.

Una, you are embarrassing yourself. How do you propose that they shut down social networks in certain places? This is simply not possible. As someone who works in the IT industry I know this. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about, so please just stop.

@Una – Blocking Social Networks is NOT the same as using Police Force and Water Canons. Firstly – Water Canons and Police Force would have only affected those scum bags out rioting. Secondly – Social Networking here is not the problem, has not the been the cause of the problem, and this just a knee jerk reaction to this bad situation will not resolve the problem or any future problems. If its not BBM, FB,Twiter, MySpace, Google+, Google Chat and on and on and on it will be Text Messaging, Phone Calls etc..

Also the very same Social Networks used to coordinate the rioting was also used to clean up the mess after the riots.

I can see why governments who have allowed banks and marketeers and over the counter traders run riot without let or hindrance, gambling away pension fund investments and reducing the value of shareholding to nil and then wiping their bibs when they make a mess might be worried about what a disgruntled electorate would do to them if their ire ever found a target.

A more intelligent leader would be using the Echelon and Carnivore surveilance systems to pick up keywords and track where the rioters are located in real time and use the police force more effectively.

Of course maybe Cameron didn’t get the briefing about Carnivore and Echelon.

Carnivore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_%28software%29

Echelon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_%28signals_intelligence%29

Una, clearly there’s no reasoning with you because you need to result to name calling. such a shame.

Its sad that you see the removal of ‘s liberaties and rights just to resolve a issue with only a few people as acceptable, of course we’ve seen so many times throughout history that when this happens it is only a stepping stone

There’s no such thing as Free Speech. Never has been and never will be.

Totally agree! Even if it COULD work, which it wouldn’t, this is a grotesque idea

Don’t often agree with you JimBob but here we are now.

Haha, cheers :-)

@ Brian. U are not seriously comparing what happened ( is still happening) in Arab countries to what happened in the UK over the last week !!?? People in the Arab world were fighting to rid themselves of repressive regimes. People in the UK were fighting to get their hands on a 42” plasma.

John doesn’t seem to grasp tha the Tory / Lib alliance is a repressive regime which is bringing in savage cuts that will further divide the British people ( the haves and have-nots ) while restricting the young poor further with the rise in university fees thus compounding the feeling of hopelessness in the the coming generations. I f people thought what we have witnessed was bad ,wait a few years, it will be a damned sight worse !!!!!!

I agree with John here – this was not an ideological or political struggle, to free the masses from oppression. This was a mob out to help themselves to free stuff at the expense of the rest of the country. Foot Locker for the Nike Air Max, Curry’s etc for the tellies, Carphone Warehouse for a new phone – this isn’t Tianenmen Square or the Berlin Wall we’re talking about!

However, good policing should not require restriction of communications, just ton-of-bricks enforcement.

@Polar Smith. Absolutely laughable and simultaneously contemptible, ur assertion that there is some equivocation between the UK govt & the regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Syria etc. Don’t get me wrong I am no lover of the Tory party by any means and tough economic times ahead, but the British ppl can pass judgement on that in 2014 and kick them out for another 15 yrs if they wish, an option not open to Arab countries. PS – I don’t need someone like u telling me what I do and don’t grasp.

@John Manahan Do you estly believe that the working and unwaged are not oppressed in Britain, ad always have been( no matter which political party happened to be in power ). I lived in Manchester before and during the riots of 1981 which occurred as a direct result of Tory government cuts and heavy-handed policing . Then , as now , we saw the disaffected youth take to the streets and , unfortunately , burn their own community. The lessons were not learned .The oppressive laws were not changed ( just renamed : sus became stop and search ) which are used to insulate the rich from the poor. Don’t show relentless adverts on the trappings of wealth and then exclude vast numbers of your population from the accquisition of said trappings. and don’t take away their means of attaining them by reducing their chances of the education required by freezing them out financially whilst at the same time cutting funding to youth centres and social services .History is repeating itself!!!!

John perhaps you misunderstand me. I am not comparing the uprisings in the Arab world and the reasons behind it with the riots in the UK and the reasons behind them. Both happened for very different reasons and motivations. what I was trying to get across is that the UK in this instance applauds the freedom of information that the Internet brings when people want to organize themselves in Egypt or Syria for instance and actively encourages it. They rightly condemn Governments for trying to limit that freedom of speech and covertly provide communications equipment to the opposition to allow them to get their message to the world.

When it happens in their own backyard though it’s a different matter and they immediately start on about shutting down networks and restricting information the very same as the Egyptian, Syrian and Bahraini regimes are doing. They in effect adopt the same stance as the very oppressive regimes that they are denouncing! How can the UK PM denounce an oppressive regime if he is proposing the came thing in his own country? A case of the pot calling the kettle black. Any moral high ground that the UK would have would disappear in the instant that they decided to limit the freedom of speech to their own people. What the rioters did was wrong we all agree on that but we have to accept that with the personal freedoms that we enjoy there comes responsibility and there will always be some idiot who is going to abuse them. So do we punish everyone for the sins of the few or do we have to accept that part of living in a free democracy is there will always be some gobshite who will abuse those freedoms and go out and nick a 42″ plasma TV. In that case you take away those freedoms from the few and not the many. Hmmm, I’m sounding a bit like Dr Spock there :-)

A failure in how they were allowed to respond. They could not use adequate force.

Agreed Chris..and I would go further and say that it is not only a failure in the police’s response to the situation, but a failure of governments to protect the underprivileged and so called middle to lower classes of society. More and more governments seem only to care for the rich and the truly corrupt banks/big corporations at the expense of society , and as long as that pattern continues situations and images like the ones that prevailed in England will become more prevalent.

And here I was thinking it was just the muddled thinking of an unintelligent English Schoolboy threatening people with taking their toys away. I agree with your basic point, but I wouldn’t glorify mindless acts of violence to get “teenage kicks” by referring to them in terms of philosophical principles. And if you do intend to use big words you should ensure they’re appropriate. Hegel is not Marx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic

Yes lack of parental care\guidance is a lot of the problem particularly bearing in mind that the parents of a lot of the rioters probcly lacked parental care etc themselves. And so it will go on . There have been no go areas in the uk’s cities for 30yrs or more. You can only ignore this problem for so long.

I agree to a point, but only within the current legislation. I.E. If due process has been applied to the user/owner a specific account that has incited violence/hatred/racism.
But not to knock out the system, let the police investigate the claims and contact the perpetrator.

Then you are a fool.

And if you asked the relatives of murder victims if the death penalty should be brought back you’d get a pretty positive response too. Big changes should be made with level heads, not grief-stricken ones.

@ Kenneth. There is growing support in UK for the return of death penalty, it clearly encompasses much more than murder victim’s families, those who have an eye for an eye mentality etc. As for big decisions being made with level heads I agree. Tariqn Jahan has shown remarkable level headedness over the last 48 hours, and has been universally praised. This despite his din being savagely murdered in Birmingham on Tuesday.

Apologies – ‘din’ should read ‘son’

Do you honestly thing this wouldn’t have happened without Twitter? There’ve been plenty of riots without social networking and the internet. No reason at all to ban new communication media just because some people use them for bad things.

Una, sure while we’re at it we should have a total media black out about the riots on the news.

You have to remember that you could also claim that Sky News and BBC news played a part by showing people where to go, they are part of the problem so we must censor them also.

If the general public don’t know its happening then it didn’t happen after all and we can just go about our normal business.

Remember “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”

I completely agree Barry the news did help these people out. I don’t think the news should have been able to report as much as they did live on TV it just fed these people the information. Sure one journalist said that the rioters were asking them where to go next! I belive a shut down of these sites in certain areas would have resulted in less destruction. A tough hard response YES but just like water cannons would have been or force, but a messure that was needed none the less

I’m astonished that anyone could even consider shutting down what little news service we have.
I think shutting down the news is one step towards a police state.

Its clear that its also incorrect reasoning to suggest it helped the kids in any way.
The kids were using alternatives to the news and radio to get and send information about this.
Such practices go back to the rave parties in field in the ’80′s and ’90′s when they used phones for goodness sake!

Una, while we’re on the subject of news sources may I suggest that you should also look for newspapers to be blacked out as well as they allowed the riots to continue by reporting that the police appeared to be unprepared

Whole censorship and blackouts seems to be the only way to safeguard people I guess eh?