Turning away from the root cause

Editor, The Times:

We should not be shocked nor surprised at the current ongoing rampage of London riots [“Violence plagues London as unrest spreads,” page one, Aug. 9].

However, we continue to look away from the obvious root cause that has assaulted our young men and women and taken away their future.

The current economic downturn has only stimulated the ever-growing division between the haves and the have-nots. Europe’s financial backslide in their union has begun to spread throughout the globe and the instances of violent dissension in London are simply the first wave of the insidious cataclysm that has reached the shore of Great Britain.

One need only look to the prospects of any of our young graduates here in Canada who enter an already sizable downturn in the job markets they hoped to specialize in. The fact is that the youth of today have fewer prospects in realizing the dream of social and economic stability. Any government that simply reacts to economic shortfalls by cutting the basic needs of the people they represent, fails to see the long-range, dire consequences of such actions.

We can look away from the London riots and convince ourselves that this is not our own reality. However, in the coming years the price of government ignorance will surely be played out on our own newscasts with the same violent acts on our own streets.

— Daniel Kowbell, Toronto

A vocal society

Over the last year, we’ve seen riots and demonstrations in Greece, Italy and France, and just this week, riots in England.

Why? Because people who have become dependent on public support were losing that support because it was totally unsustainable. Not because some evil party wanted to kill granny, starve children, poison the environment and jeopardize food safety (thank you Nancy Pelosi), but because there just wasn’t any way to continue to provide that level of welfare.

We aren’t there yet, but we’re getting there.

The letters, cartoons and editorials expressing angst at the “draconian cuts” in the latest budget deal show that there is a very vocal element in our society for whom any reduction in federal spending is unacceptable — even if it ultimately leads to the collapse of the economy.

— Mark Ursino, Sammamish