How would folk on the Glasgow Underground take to watching a video like this every time they went on it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZuwyiaksAk

And The Digger. I don't think it existed when I lived there, but looking at this youtube brings back some memories. The accents.The mars bar (scar) on that guy at 35 seconds in is something you don't see that much outside Scotland.
Not typical of the country of course, but living there you saw those people often.

Sounds more like an Avenge-and-Revenge system then the punitive system of a civilised society …

Drastic eye-for-an-eye – or two eyes for an eye – punishments work just fine if they are imposed with total impartiality [i.e. NO blood-money getouts for the well-off or those with rich chums] PLUS a high rate of successful detection and watertight conviction – which is where totally discreet payment for information-leading-to-apprehension comes in!

be honest – not only when it comes to law and order for everyone – but when it comes to yourself, your family and your safety…

actually It's high time ti acknoledge that tolerancy to everyone except whites and christians, muslim hate-marches in the centre of London, imams, hate-preaching freely, calling for attacks on infidels and such cases – these are things ща the same nature, things of one and the same origin – it's political correctness. nothing more

There's a reason the judge was so harsh, Genius.

We have methods of dealing with people like that. It is called lengthy sentencing.

You really do have a nasty streak in you, don't you?

You should subscribe to an issue of the Digger or summat. I do not really recognise the city you describe. I have been physically attacked twice, both of which I ought to have avoided. And, if I had any sense, I would have avoided both situations. But I am not that clever.

Once I sort of won, more recently I lost big time.

Anyway, whilst the gangs do probably exist in Glasgow, we do not 'big' them up, in the way that political groupiscules seems to have taken over the media.

I am sorry that a couple of idiots have buggered up your common sense.

You live in a usually very safe city, probably a tad safer than my own. Look at the statistics….

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/de…

A bad choice of a day to read such stuff, now I think of it, but you could leave it until tomorrow.

I approve of draconian punishments for premeditated crimes of violence. For throwing acid to disfigure, death by slow exposure / starvation / thirst would be appropriate, I'd say.

I said I thought it was more than the penal system that kept people in check.
They also have Indian labourers brought over to do all the construction and dirty work.
These guys are ''guest workers'' on specifc visas. Mostly without families and children. It's different to how Britain did it by taking in overseas workers to fill labour shortages and then in a generation or two those communities having families and becoming majorities in some inner city neighbourhoods.

Add racism (and more lately, islamophobia) and perhaps this was a cocktail which might sit gently brewing for many years.

I am certainly not a ''hang 'em and flog 'em'' kind of person.
but western liberals just love to caricature and mock and look down on the reactionary right in Britain. (You know, the Richard Littlejohn's and Jon Gaunt's and their rabid Daily Mail agenda).
But then you walk through a neighbourhood market at one of the suburban housing developments in Singapore, where 'mom and pop' outdoor resturants are going full blaze till midnight often, and you do wonder (for a few moments) which system is better.

I was threatened by some little SOB in Streatham south London recently on a quiet sunday as I was walking along minding my own business.
This little street rapper thug was having a row with his girlfriend as I walked past.
He was being really leery and aggressive and it was quite alarming to see.
I walked on past meekly. I saw he was holding a glass bottle of lucozade or something.
As I walked past, about ten seconds later I heard him shout, and the sound of a bottle smashing on the ground.
I casually looked back over ny shoulder, at which he immediately challenged me and threatened me.
The little shitbag. I walked on but was fuming. What could I do? I felt like going back and confronting him. But then what? He would have definitely got violent (I thought from his demeanor).
The elderly Chinese residents of the Singapore Housing Development Board estates (HDB) would have that little scrote in the stocks for three days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Develo…
And I wouldn't feel too sorry for him If I saw him with his head and hands stuck through the boards as I walked past.
http://www.my-ecoach.com/online/resources/6767/…

It seems so draconian and right wing in Britain. but much of the world is not like us and takes a different view to people who upset the civil society and order of the street. What would be so bad about putting the local anti-social pain in the ass's into public stocks for an afternoon?
The guy who stole my bike in Norbury several years ago definately would deserve that treatment.
He just jumped on it and rode off when I was in a newsagents. I saw him do it and was outside in half a second shouting after him, but he was off like a rocket.

In the UK we call that petty crime, but I was really outraged at the time.

However, the over-thirties are willing to pay the necessary price that living in an almost-crime-free nanny-knows-best society and those of you with access to uncensored internet need only check out alt.com to find plenty of saucy swinging [but discreet] Singaporeans.

damon. Y wanna live in that sort of utopia?

Well, fine.

Just recall what you gave up.

Like your freedom to dissent.

What would they make of you or I?

A couple of folk that don't really agree with the status quo.

I have my own answers to that…

Whereas, in Britain if you attacked someone in your house and hurt them, you would probably become a target of all his friends and family locally, who would stand outside your house issuing threats and showing anti-social behavoir.
Calling the police would be a waste of time, as it's now known locally which one your house is.
Your car sits on the driveway. Your windows are just feet away from the public footpath.

Of course, you could also be a part of a community that can make a few phone calls and have a couple of cars of cricket bat wielding friends and family turn up within five minutes.

If you have that kind of ''cover'' then yes, give that burglar or robber a thrashing.

Just on Singapore for a moment. I think it has to be more than just a fear of the penal system that makes this place seem crime free (from just walking around).

The low level criminality just doesn't seem to be there. In London in the afternoon, newsagents and sweetshops sometimes have signs on their doors wich say ''only two school children allowed in the shop at one time'' and the owners of those shops watch the young people very closely. That culture doesn't seem to exsist here in Singapore.
Children don't nick from shops like they do in Britain. Or just drop to the ground their KFC and chip wrappers at the bus stop when there is a bin about 6 feet away.

Here in Singapore it's a Daily Mail right wing ranters dream.
But just walking through a very local market in the Jalan Pasar neighbourhood an hour ago (it sits underneath a big housing complex and it's the people from the flats above that are its business owners and customers), and it's lively, but completely calm and serene as well.
It's a place for old people to feel content and connected (and safe).
I can imagine the call for harsh punishments if local residents were ever targeted by street criminals and burglars.
I think that they would want the problem to go away, and if that meant draconian sentences for criminals, I think that would (locally) be seen as a price worth paying.
They have senior citizen excersise equipment at the base of these high rise blocks of flats.
http://i.justrealized.com/media/2008/05/bukit-b…
In Britain this stuff would be vandalised and the old people would be scared of sitting out in the evenings in the communal spaces at the ground level like they do here.

Sunny, Can I ask you to declare an interest here-Have you been a victim of burgulary? I just find your argument here- as you are deploring mob vilence on one hand and justifying it inanother instance. You fail to acknowledge that Hussain upon escaping the house, rang up a friend in order to arrange for a mob to beat the burgulars to death.

Careful what you wish for.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5653973/hy…