Smoking rage?

[Loosehead]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6919 403.stm

'm shocked at how anyone would shoot a man for challenging them for smoking, it just beggars belief. Is this the first of many "smoker rage" incidents?

[China Doll]

I know I can get quite cranky if I haven't had a dose of tar, nicotine and ash before 11am but it's never occured to me shoot anyone. (Well that's not entirely true but I don't actually really mean it).

I do wonder if the men in question were not perhaps on something else at the time. Not giving them an excuse obviously but just can't understand how someone who is stone cold sober would put a gun to someones head for asking them not to smoke. It just doesn't compute.

[Gromit]

And, a Police Officer has been charged with murdering a customer in another London Bar.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml =/news/2007/07/27/npolice127.xml

[kempie]

I suspect that the 'smoking' aspect is a red-herring and that this incident would also have occurred if the challenge had been made for any other type of unacceptable behaviour

[joko]

i agree that it has been made to sound like the man just said politely ''please stop smoking'' and they just fired.

Firstly, why was he telling people not to smoke in an outdoor area?
it is only illegal indoors.

secondly he is a big fella, a boxer, so perhaps became agressive and demanding, when they refused to do as they were told.

I am not by any means defending them, they are scum, but I suspect there was some sort of altercation, and he is not as innocent as the papers are trying to imply, and thereby implying irrational 'smoke rage', and stir up controversy.

i also think they were likely on something to do this, so the smoking issue is irrelevant - more that they felt affronted at being challenged.

[Shadow Man]

I was so suprised to read the police are looking for black suspects at the end of the report. I never would have guessed that.

[vehelpfulguy]

Yes Shadow Man, the news the police were looking for black men surprised me as well.

Hearing about a black person having a gun on them, and shooting someone for almost no reason at all is just so out of character.

Well I am afraid we have stood back and allowed rampant immigration for years now so just have to live with the consequences.

Just makes this a sh1tty country to live in now.

[ruby27]

Professor Beatrix Campbell, in the Guardian provides an interesting analysis on male violence and how people including Tony Blair have attempted to deflect from the issue of male violence in society (not a comfy subject for TB given TB's track record on promoting violence acts in Iraq), onto pathologising communities especially black communities without setting violence into a context. Such that violence is condone, approved and sanctioned in some contexts but abhorred and condemned in others.
However I do need to warn some ABers, this analysis is written by a highly intelligent woman and therefore maybe too intellectually challenging for some. Solutions are not just more violence, they involve a de construction of violence, gender, success, race, class, power, respect etc etc

[ruby27]

I also meant to add, no being told/asked not to smoke is not why these men killed another man, it was just an excuse to prove that they were more powerful ie had a gun rather than an impressive physical presence.
Following on from my earlier post, men<b/> question the value of chatting about shopping, and babies - when has such interests resulted in genocide, war, psyco and socio pathy, gang warfare, gun/knife culture?

[ruby27]

sorry for all that bold text, my intention was only to in effect highlight - men -

[LeMarchand]

I agree that it was probably more an excuse to shoot someone than the reason (and like joko wonder why he was objecting to smoking in a what sounds like a smoking area, not that it excuses what happened to him).

ruby, your question about chatting was a bit like saying that women complain about guys buying gadgets!

[ruby27]

LeMarchand
No it isn't.
women generally, statistically do not kill on the wholesale measures that men do. So our chat is quite innocuous, men talk may be innocuous but on the whole it is the most powerful discourse/paradigms that shape, control and generally impose on all of us.

[dfward]

i bet is was coloured guys that did the shooting cos they have no respect for normal law abiding people

[kempie]

The report describes the outside area as a "covered courtyard". If this area was 'substantially enclosed', i.e. had a roof and walls or equivalent for over half of its perimeter, then this would also be classed by the relevant legislation as a no-smoking area.

[ludwig]

It's got nothing to do with smoking. A murderous tw@t shot someone because he 'dissed' him.
Hopefully that person will go to prison for ..ooh at least 3 years if we're lucky, and if the prisons aren't too full of course.

[anotheoldgit]

May be soon there will be a little more room in the ordinary prisons ludwig.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles /news/news.html?in_article_id=471363&in_page_i d=1770

[sp1814]

dfward

Did you realise what you posted wads idiotic claptrap as you were typing it....or did it hit you later?

[bimbo123456]

Have to say something to dfward too. What planet are you on!!!!!!? there are plenty of white ****heads shooting up the place. I say the rot set in when men stopped being polite to women back in the sixties. Call me old fashioned, and i'm sure you will, but the onset of swearing, drinking and generally acting like a fool is a recent thing. In the fifies a gentleman would not have dreamed of swearing in front of a lady. And also.....the lady wouldn't have sworn either. So there!! PS I think a lot of the problem is caused by the acceptance of the drinking culture (see Eastenders, Coro etc) where children grow up thinking it's normal to spend all your time in a pub. What do you think everyone?

[LeMarchand]

So our chat is quite innocuous, men talk may be innocuous but on the whole it is the most powerful discourse/paradigms that shape, control and generally impose on all of us

...or just as loaded with subtext as men's.

Look at my new Prada bag... (That you couldn't afford/don't have the taste to buy)

Of course, when I had Cynthia... (You can't even find a man, can you dear?)

Robert's just been promoted to Head of Acquisitions... (Your Paul hasn't been promoted in years)

[ruby27]

bimbo123456
responding to your invite whilst not hijacking this post too much, hopefully!
Violence especially the killing of others is not confined to post 1960. A couple of WW's, and if you want to consider violence in society in England the Victorian and Georgian period will provide you will plenty of examples of how brutal those times were.
Contemporaries of mine all agree we spent time in the car with a packet of crisps and a bottle of warm coke whilst our parents had a drink in the pub. Such selfish behaviour did not drive us to become violent, nor did it drive our parents to be violent. Alcohol is not the cause, see European cousins, it is just an excuse in Britain

[ruby27]

LeMarchand
women's discourse is every bit as loaded as men's, its just that violence just isn't one of the primary discussions. It is not the subtext or main text on the whole. Women could, but should not take the moral high ground. Rather than squabbling about who is the most violent, all classes, genders, races, etc should be striving to present a discourse, narrative where the complexities of life are managed without recourse to aggression. Not an easy subject, not an easy solution for some. but, why?