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UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "In addition to the 12 arrests from last week, a judge has sentenced 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw and 22-year-old Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan to four years in prison for their failed attempts to use Facebook to incite riots in the UK. The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent. The two men were convicted for using Facebook to encourage violent disorder in their hometowns in northwest England."
No, it was a judge sitting in Chester crown court. Magistrates have a maximum sentencing power of 6 months. IANAL, just heard that expression repeated a lot recently; many looters who plead guilty are being remanded for sentencing at a later date.
Prime Minister David Cameron said:
Mr Cameron is no stranger to appalling behaviour, being a former member of the Bullingdon Club, "notorious for its members' wealth and destructive binges". The club song apparently goes: "Buller, Buller, Buller! Buller, Buller, Buller! We are the famous Bullingdon Club, and we don't give a fuck!"
Cameron's 'Buller' escapades include running from the police through the streets of Oxford after a heavy flowerpot was thrown through a restaurant window.
They pleaded guilty. That tends to short-cut proceedings a little (no fancy speeches to a jury, questioning of evidence etc)
"civil unrest against a perceived corrupt political system"
Nobody involved cared about that. Seriously - you had to be there, it really was people of various walks of life just grabbing everything out of shops then setting fire to them (then attacking firemen when they tried to rescue the families in the flats above), kicking people half to death, etc. - just going nutz to get stuff and get money and get away with settling scores against specific people or whatever community they disliked.
People being violently and/or sexually assaulted, robbed or even killed in the street. Not bankers, not politicians. Their own.
Not one bank or political institution was touched, only places with Cool Stuff in, and the cars/houses/persons of the working and/or poor people in their own communities.
"a chaotic mess of angry people lashing out"
A chaotic mess of rapturously smiling laughing people taking what they wanted and doing violence to people. Families having their homes torched and their lives endangered, swathes of jobs being ended by businesses being torched when nobody can afford insurance these days.
Killings of people who tried to help the victims, attacks against ambulances trying to treat the victims, attacks against firemen trying to put out fires.
Seriously, I don't know how to explain this convincingly enough without sounding emotive - this is in the place I've grown up in. Don't let people get away with saying it was a political demonstration - I mean you had to be there but seriously it REALLY. WASN'T., I would say what we all saw and endured had no protest component to it whatsoever past about 9pm on the first night - it was just open season for the cannibalistic predators of London to hurt/take from their own.
OK pal, you must be snorting the cheap home made acid a bit too much, or you're simply speaking from the comfort of your mom's basement outsie of the UK. I can tell you that I am. Let me definitively tell you that these guys aren't political protestors. They are cheap hooligan thugs who enjoy a bit of the old smashy smashy and in and out.
Monday week ago I was caught between the looters and teh police in Lewisham while returning a car. I had rocks and bricks sailing past my head. Then on Tuesday, one of our neighbours decided to make a stand and stop these little pricks from taking his wheelie bin to transport their ill gotten goods by asking them politely not to do it. Their response? They stabbed him. He's in intensive care and may not live.
Last night, we had 3 thugs breaking in to the place next door to us. We called the police and they responded very quickly and arrested the 3 of them. This is the same kind of "protestor" that everyone is talking about. So you know what? NO. These ARE NOT protestors, they're opportunists. The BBC has given them ample opportunity to present a case, and none have been able to do so. The internet is not rife with reason, but rather rampant stupidity on the topic.
This is not society's fault, nor the fault of the police, or the government, but the fault of a generation of bottom feeding scum sucking opportunists that need a harsh lesson in reality dealt to them.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I'm sorry to say that but for an outside European observer the UK is becoming more and more like a totalitarian country. There are cameras everywhere
Let me guess, an outside European perspective gained from reading The Daily Mail? The number of cameras in Britain is massively over exaggerated. The number that's usually thrown around was generated by taking a mile of one of the busiest streets in central London, counting the number of cameras (including speeding cameras and privately owned CCTV cameras inside shops on both sides) and then multiplying that number by the number of miles of roads in Britain.
The more realistic number includes motorway monitoring cameras, which are not recorded, have one person monitoring about 100 of them, and are used to notify radio stations and so on of large traffic jams and dispatch emergency services to accidents. The next highest number is automated speed / red light cameras. The government controlled ones in city centres are operated by the local councils and are mostly being shut down because they provide little benefit and the councils can't afford to operate them.
and face-recognition software is used to identify people on it
Not sure why this is a sign of totalitarianism. Is it less totalitarian if you have a human matching the faces to photographs? The face recognition that's been talked about in the media recently has been matching the faces of people from Facebook who said things like 'I got a new 42" TV in the riots!' to images from shops' CCTV. How evil...
internet and phone serveillance everywhere,
Unless you think The News of the World and Phorm are government agencies, I'm not sure where this comes from.
and all big parties are decidedly right-wing
Bullshit. One of the two parties in our coalition government is still slightly left of centre, and my MEP is from a decidedly left-wing party.
it is still legal in the UK to beat up your children
any UK news source, then you'd see examples of parents being imprisoned and having their children taken into care for this.
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