George Floyd copper

No he's not.
Look, throughout the covid 19 @Faithful Bantam just takes a blind eye to things, so I am not shocked he has liked your post.

I think what he is just trying to say is just be aware of what really is around you. Be aware why no BAME work with you or why they're on frontline of the NHS then we are shocked that there is a higher death rate for them from the covid in the UK and USA.

Time to speak out! Time to understand.

 

There is a delicious irony to you quoting anyone else and the corna virus.

 

You dont half talk some rubbish. You really do. You have no self awareness. No sense of irony whatsoever. I doubt you have an understanding of what's around you in your own front room, let alone a topic of this complexity. Better to leave it to the grown ups.

 

After espousing the leadership virtues of Donald Trump throughout the pandemic, I'd be interested in his views in relation to how Trump has responded to this incident.

Actually I wouldnt. It'd be more senseless guff.

 

Trump is a disgrace, Boris Johnson is let down!

No shock both countries are on it's knees.

 

I like Fordy but i bypassed his corona stuff many moons ago.

 

Most of the time I like him too. Even his ramblings are mostly harmless and he occasionally lands on a nugget. But I wont be misrepresented on this topic by anyone. It's too important.

For me, these images are much more powerful than the social media and celebrity virtue signalling I've seen.

 

He's flip flopped again!!

 

The virtue signalling from 'stars' has pissed me off. Nowhere to be seen untill the shit hits the fan then an uncontrollable urge overpowers them to go social media mad. I don't need James fecking Corden to know the US has problems in society. I don't need to know Jordan Henderson for some reason deems it important to take a knee on the turf, where was he when Colin Kapernick was risking his career to do exactly this? Where were all the others? `I guess the photo opportunities just weren't there.

 

I don't recall the Liverpool players taking this stand a couple of years ago when one of their players was found guilty of racially abusing a fellow professional. In fact, didn't they wear t shirts of support? Wasnt Evra even booed by their fans? Where were the liverpool fans on social media when their club jumped to take taxpayer money to fund the furloughing of non playing staff.....

 

Those that climb the moral high horse always find a way to fall off. And its amusing when they do.

 

It was first started by the San Fransisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in response to police brutality of black people. It was a bold and selfless move by a guy who hasn't had a job offer since he has done it despite being good enough to be cover for a lot of teams needing a back up quarterback. Have a google of it, its a really interesting story of a guy who has effectively thrown away his career over something he feels is more important than American football. Very brave guy, far braver than the celebs now desperately searching for likes and retweets off the back of needless death of a black man.

 

In the midst of the shocking, disgusting and highly emotive killing of George Lloyd, a few facts that I think are relevant to share for context.

According to the FBIs database, in 2019:
2491 black people were murdered in the USA. Of these, 2245 (90.1%) were murdered by another black person. 189 (7.5%) were killed by a white person.
3005 white people were murdered, of which 2509 (83.4%) were killed by another white person and 409 (13.6%) were killed by a black person.

48 police officers were feloniously killed, of which 40 were white and 7 were black.

In 2019, the number of people shot to death by police, by race was:
370 white
235 black
158 Hispanic

Specifically in relation to deaths occurring during arrest or custody, the only data I can find relates to a study by the Baltimore Journal, which states that for the years 2003 to 2009, such deaths comprise of:

42% white
32% black
20% Hispanic

According to the UK government's website the data for 2017 (the most recent I can find) shows the conviction rates amongst the following racial categories to be:

Asian 80.3%
Black 78.7%
Mixed 79%
White 85.3%

 

Interesting that 45% of murder victims are black, which is totally disproportionate to to the population make up of the country.

 

Shows that people at the lower end of the poverty scale are more likely to be involved with crime. Nothing new here. Poverty breeds, crime, drugs, violence and the bi-products are broken homes, lack of father figures, low morale, no sense of community... the list goes on and so the cycle continues.

 

My initial thoughts on all this are that you cannot even begin to compare the UK and the USA.

My job role without going into much detail is helping kids get into college (university). Kids from 'minority areas' 'poorer areas' have a much much more difficult time throughout their first 18 years. Now some of you will say its the same in the UK, and you would be correct. But I really don't think the scales can be fathomed by someone that hasn't lived here. Especially the geographical closeness of these rich/poor divides. It's scary. No amount of 'work hard' is going to truly help these kids because they simply don't have the guidance.

With this specific case, it truly feels like the straw that broke the camels back. People are truly upset by what they see - rightly so. Police here have taken liabilities for far too long especially on African American citizens. Comparing this to how the miners were treated in South Yorkshire doesn't really sit well with me. What will actually end up changing? I have no idea.

I think the country has lacked leadership throughout the whole incident. I was neither a lover nor hater of Trump before this incident. My plan has always been to move back to the UK. However, I was shocked at how badly he has handled both corona and this incident. His speech last night only incident more incidents. Speaking of Corona I can't imagine having 1000s of people in such close proximity can be doing us any good.

I don't believe in looting; and I feel seriously sorry for peaceful protestors and the 99% of police officers that are there to serve. It was sad for me to watch people smashing Boston up last night - a city that I love. Fingers crossed it doesn't get out of hand tonight - although judging by twitter it's already going off.

 

Here's the gists of a pair of posts I've copied from another forum I read, as they do a nice job of providing some relevant context and general commentary on America, the current problems, and the comments others tend to make about America(ns). I think the poster might be an expat, as he's in his 70s but mentions only 40 years of living in the US.

In the first, he began with a reminder that the US is, as the name implies, a collection of 50 states, united. This means that the individual states have rights they can insist upon. Matters that seem common to all states are left for the Federal government to handle.

Then: "Now, as I have pointed out before, my own State, Oregon, is 6,000 square miles bigger than England, Scotland and Wales combined (incidentally, it is only the 9th State in its area). The population of the UK (minus Ireland) is about 64,000,000 people, that of Oregon is 4,000,000. Now, before you start laying into Americans as dumb, uneducated in their own political and World affairs ask yourself why most of them should give a damn. The US has a much smaller population density than the UK with much of it consisting of areas of very low population where the main interest of folks is in their produce (often agriculture), the problems of producing same and how much they can get when it goes to market. These people also work bloody hard. Their main interest is how they will make a living with very little concern about what the leaders in Washington are saying and even less in the opinions of the leaders in China. ... Yes, urban Americans, the Twitterati, the pseudo intelectuals can be a pain in the butt, however most rural Americans think of them in the same way I do --- and you do. I am quite prepared to smack someone in the face for uneducated criticism of true Americans as I would be to smack a UK city dweller in the face for demeaning Farmer Bloggs as stupid."
- - -
I would add that States' rights are not always a good thing, for instance, if you want to insist that you have the right to, say, segregate your society, and also that I would disagree strongly with that poster's apparent viewpoint that broad national and international knowledge is not all that important.

RCB

 

So that was some general commentary.

Regarding the current protests, he began with the correct observation that you have three groups involved: genuine protestors, provocateurs who want to engineer more mayhem for their own ends, and looters taking advantage of the chaos (and thus, as distractions, being useful to the provocateurs.) All this really makes life difficult for local governments and politicians -- shut down the protests and perhaps be seen as condoning police brutality, not shut them down and be seen as powerless to keep order. And this all leads us to Trump and what he might get out of all this:

"Unfortunately for the anti-Trumpers I see this situation as a great gift to him. The riots distract from the Covid problems, because of the short attention span of the media the criticism of Trump has swung away from his handling of Covid to his handling of the riots. He is bouncing the responsibilty for handling the riots to the States where it actually belongs but he is threatening Federal action if the States fail. Since most of the riots are in Democratically controlled communities he can criticise the Democrats for lack of effective response and then claim to be a hero for helping out. If he gets this response correct he goes into the elections with a tremendous boost. The great thing for him at the moment is that he does not need to do anything to succeed, he only has to wait for the States to ask for help thus demonstrating their own failure. Of course, his threat to use the US military in the rioting areas is totally BS, he would be shot down immediately in the Supreme Courst since this action would be clearly un-Constitutional. ..."

RCB