Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh for god's sake they're thinking about banning kids being able to drink at home under parental supervision.

Currently kids can drunk under parental supervision over the age of 5. So, this proposed change will mean that those of us who want to teach our kids responsible drinking at home may no longer be able to do so. Excellent. They can just go off and get drunk in parks and then get criminal records, or not start drinking until they're 18 and not know how fucking much is too much. Good going, Broon. You insufferable Calvinist tosser.

Hmm - surely the point, though, is that that parental supervision is almost nonexistant in most cases? Banning it is clearly ludicrous, but if it's just being used as a bypass for the legal alcohol purchasing age, what's the sensible alternative?

It's not nonexistant in "most cases". Most parents don't have kids who get wasted in the local park and chuck cans at passers by.

And it's not being used as a bypass very much either, clearly, as the whinges from the politicos have been that shops and bars are serving underage kids all the time, not that little Johnny's mummy is giving him gin.

One of the problems here is the ridiculously mixed laws on the matter. I'm not 100% sure what they are (and I'm a lawyer, ffs), but it seems to break down that

(1) You're allowed to drink at home over the age of 5.
(2) You can drink in pub beer gardens and have some booze with dinner in restaurants if you're over, 16, I think?
(3) It's illegal to buy booze if you're under 18 or buy booze for someone who is under 18 if they're not your kid.
(4) It's all but illegal to drink in public if you're under 18.

So, what's the point here? What are they trying to achieve? It seems to me that kids drinking in and of itself isn't inherently wrong, or a problem (until now, of course). We're accepting that by allowing them to do it with their parents, so it's clearly not a health issue.

So if it's a public order issue, well. This thing about giving kids a criminal record for being caught drinking repeatedly - if they're not causing a disturbance what does it matter? And if they are, you can already arrest them for being drunk and disorderly.

On the public disorder side, I think we're sadly missing the local bobby here, to be honest. My wife's aunt's town used to have a local bobby who would bring the kids home and embarrass them in front of their parents. And he knew all the kids so could tell the shopkeepers who not to serve.

So if it's not an issue, why do we have more 14 year olds pissed off their heads 3 nights a week than ever before? I'd like to believe that it's not the case, and that the whole malarky is just scaremongering, but I just don't think that's true.There must be something that is causing it, and I frankly don't believe that it's the shock of suddenly going "ooh - I can drink, therefore I shall live in a constant state of alcoholism", or we'd have all been doing it the minute we turned 18 (16).

I have never seen drunk teenagers, at least since I was one. We're led to believe there are more of the, however.

But children have always been able to drink at home, so that can't of itself be the cause for any rise in teenage alcoholism.

No, but if the parental supervision is dropping in quantity and quality, then drinking at home is possibly less of an excellent way of introducing kids to alcohol that in once was. I don't know - I'm mostly playing devil's advocaat on this one, because I don't really believe it's in any way relevant, either.

One look at the hospital admissions figures for under 15s receiving treatment for alcohol poisoning makes it clear that the problem exists.

I think it's partly down to pubs being less stringent than they used to be - both in terms of not serving kids and not serving drunks. Bars are also designed to be busier (mass volume vertical drinkers, anyone) and so bar staff have less time or inclination to card everyone. Probably a similar picture with offies. You've then got the lack of community policing, the absence of which allows this sort of low level issue to flourish. And

Some people's parents won't help the matter, of course, and I'm not denying that, but then the same's true of kids who stab other kids. So we should ban knives in the house for everyone?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Id say when I started going out drinking at 16, about 5 years ago the pubs were a lot less strict but there was a big kick up the arse around the time i turned 18, luckily, that you actually had to start carrying ID around because they became alot more strict. So I dont think its the pubs at all, supermarkets used to ask me for ID all the time aswell.

Knives aren't an activity, stabbing is. Alcohol isn't an activity, drinking is.

Should we ban stabbing in the home? Absolutely.

I meant you get parents who aren't exactly discouraging their kids from being anti-social, violent little scrotes. Why do you think there has been so much recently about it being parents who can prevent all these teenage stabbings in London?

Really? When I was younger I was never ID'd, not once. Now, any friend under 25 will get ID'd almost everywhere, every time. I can only think of one pub where people won't, and even then that's in the semi-private upstairs bit.

Haven't the penalties for serving underage drinkers been increased massively recently?

Yes, don't and they stab you

Not quite my point, but yes.

It's a stupid idea and unenforceable, although the BBC news thing was funny as fuck as there was a bourgeois family shown eating pasta with there kids with a glass of wine in front of them.



MY CHILDREN CAN HAVE WINE AS WE OWN DIDO COMPACT DISCS, DON'T YOU KNOW

is what I thought of it.

I like the polar bear.

He can have a drink when I become Sinister Overlord.

I WANT A DRINK BUT THE NANNY STATE WON'T LET ME.

Most kids who get drunk don't buy it at pubs or supermarkets. They have an older sibling or friend's older sibling who does it for them, or they raid their parents' cabinet. And even then, how many do you think get drunk udner parental supervision? Really?

A lot of the parents simply don't know or give a shit that the kids are getting drunk. This won't change whether it's legal or not (how many parents do yuou reckon are actually aware that it's legal to drink at home for kids?). There is no benefit to penalising the people who are capable of letting their kid have an occasional drink in a responsible manner. Hell, my whole family is full of drunks, but they never pressured the kids and always looked after us if we wanted a glass of wine at christmas or whatever.

The only solution to the excessive boozing habits of the typical British fuckwit is to work out why so many people can think of nothing better to do than get shitfaced. Hint: it's nothing whatsoever to do with the legality of it.

Maybe, and forgive me for wild speculation here, it's because their lives are shit, pointless excercises in repetition and aimlessness, their parents are useless, the whole of society despises and disrespects them on sight, their education is too scared of offending or upsetting the league tables to actually teach them anything, and there is still actually fuck all for anyone under 18 to do? When I was a kid there was a (crappy) cinema (and that's gone now anyway), which is two hours gone, if that. There was a bowling alley with a small and kind of good (for the late 90s, anyway) arcade, which was bloody expensive and hardly enough to entertain you every night. That was it. What are they supposed to do? Hanging around in your house with your parents looking over your shoulder? No thanks.

There's fuck all to do EXCEPT get drunk and act like a dick. Hell, if I hadn't been content to stay in and read and play video games, I'd probably have done it as well.

Get this: My parents taught me about responsible drinking when I was at an age where people tend to learn more.

Good idea: Undoubtedly. Better than learning in a peer pressured situation.

It was quite noticable that I got much less drunk than the people around me who hadn't been drinking since before they can remember.

I see where you're coming from, but this attitude always slightly annoys me. I hear kids on the news or wherever syaing "there's nothign else to do round here" and I just think - how chronically lacking in imagination do you have to be to only see getting drunk as a viable option as a way of spending your time? There is an entire world of stuff out there to get into, from books to zoology. And yeah, fine, the youth club's been shut, but so what? You don't need the youth club to read, or go bike riding, or join a sports team at your school or whatever. As a 13 or 14 year old I never used any of those local facilities like the youth club or the scouts troop anyway, and I found plenty of other things to get up to without getting wasted in parks.

And you seem to be recognising this yourself - you were too busy reading to be into getting pissed in the park, right? Well, why weren't the other kids?

The decline of hobbies in this country seems to have dovetailed with the increase in underage boozing, oddly enough.

Because of shitty parenting, cowardly education, and a national culture of proud philistinism. And a government that can only think of one reason to give the yoof to stop fucking around - "because we say so".

Iono. I don't think the boozing is the disease, to be perfectly honest. It's a symptom.

Have these things recently increased? Alright, the education has gotten worse, I think, due to government dicking around, but has parenting gotten worse? And if so, why?

And as for the philistinism, I'm not sure how universal that is, but if that really is on the rise, again, why? What's going on behind the scenes here?


How's about - "because you're acting like tossers - grow up you stupid little shits"?


?


I'd agree, but as with the shitty parenting and the rest, what's it actually a symptom of? I'm having trouble deciding. It's probably consumerism.

I had a massive rant the other day to my parents in law about how no matter how far up the career chain you are, we're all just treated as objects - an income stream. We're not people . Admittedly I had got onto that as I was complaining that solicitors are no longer treated with the fear and reverence that was prevalent in the days of Tulkinghorn-esque types, but there was a grain of sanity in there, in that clients and employers alike do not recognise any employees in any industry as being anything other than objects to be used. And that filters on through to the employee and their world view, I think.

It's all money and objects - there's no room for anything else.

That chronic lack of imagination stems from a bad upbringing though. When I was a nipper, my Mum and Dad took me all over the place. I can still remember the sheer sense of awe and wonder I experienced being shown around York minster, aged about 5. Just walking around staring at the gothic ceiling so far above my head. It's stuff like that that fires your imagination and leads you to take an interest in the world around you. If all the stimulation you've ever had has come from hanging around shopping centres and watching Pop Idol then the world must seem like a very constricted, boring place.

I watched a prog last night called 'hoodie crime' or something, detailing the general larceny these kids get up to. I have to say, my thoughts were not of sympathy, I was more thinking about how I'd like the law to be changed so that these deprived areas can be cleansed in napalm. One particular bit spoke of how they tried to regenerate the local area by building some nice new houses, but before anyone could move in the local hoodies vandalised it, broke in, and stole the copper pipes from the heating systems to sell for scrap.

I'm a big believer in free will. We're all sentient. You might have a rough deal of it but I can't see that as any excuse to act like a twat.

Another delightful clip shows a bunch of hood-bound cuntfaces throwing a cat off a 3-storey balcony. They had the clip because they'd filmed it on their stolen mobile phones, of course. The threw the cat off 4 times before it died. I'm sorry, I don't give a fuck what the 'government' is supposed to do for these people, but this kind of mentality can ONLY be rewarded by slow, painfull fucking death, preferably administered by me and a very sharp knife. I'd tear their fucking eyes out. Even the thought is making me furious.

Then they conclude the show by saying how we need to tolerate people like this more, instead of judging them. Ha!

Someone I work with was awoken at around midnight to the sound of someone on the top of her bay window, not-so-quietly removing her (expensive) lead roofing.

Apparently that and the aforementioned copper pipes are all the rage these days.

She just opened the bedroom window and said "Can I help You?!" and the kid scarpered off the roof.

Her neighbours place was done the same night, too.

Funny if he'd said 'Yeah, gives us a hand, these pipes weigh a tonne'.
We had all the lead nicked off the roof outside our flat a few months back as well.

Yeah, and (and I know I'm always banging on about it, but that's because it's fucking important and it's been getting steadily worse for at least a decade) nowhere is this more damaging than in education. It's exactly the same there, from the universities right down to the primary schools. Schools are businesses, teachers are managers and content delivery units, children are boxes to tick. It's boring and useless to the kids who show no interest in education (often those whose parents show no interest or open disdain for it), and it's insulting and soul-destroying for the kids who have an existing will to learn. Time was, kids would be encouraged to ask questions about the world. Now the only thing to ask is "will this be on the test?"

Anything more than that is, for most kids, a waste of effort. Staying sane is difficult enough as it is.

Yes: ban kids.
Next.

Only the rubbish ones.

This. QFT. FTW. I hate motherfuckers like this who have such poison in their hell-bound heart that they destroy beauty and life with such unwitting stupidity. I would happily chuck away any ethics or morals I have in an orgy of torture, unspeakable pain and eventual lingering death. Cunts.

I can't even watch or read the newspaper articles that contain such terrible, horrible acts. I just can't. It makes me sick and the rest of the day disappears in a low grade coruscating rage. Grrr and Bah.

\Hi! and sorry
\\Quite angry
\\\ Love the forum.
\\\\As you were

I hate to sound like someone's Grandma, but 'the devil makes work for idle thumbs'. I'm sure if I didn't have to turn up for work everyday I'd spend a fair amount of time throwing cats off roofs (rooves?). I'm sure I'll get eaten alive for being a mean Tory boy, but if it wasn't so easy for pond life like this to live on handouts, they might end up spending their time more productively.

Let's be friends.

If that's the case, why aren't more pensioners joyriding, grafitti-ing and getting smashed in parks?

I can't wait to not have to work - I have so many things I'd like to do with my time*, and currently, between a job and children, no time in which to do them.


*A short summary off the top of my head: flying radio controlled aircraft, taking up painting again, and playing the guitar, learning a language, building a kit car, reading more non-fiction, WW2 wargaming, making model aeroplanes, grasstrack racing, rock-climbing, pot-holing and on and on and on.

When I were a lad, we went down t' playing fields and kicked a ball around for hours!

I can see how kids might have a problem if they have no 'spaces' that they can use. For instance, in my case we had the school playing fields that were open for kids to use, and we also had a forest nearby in which to lurk and make rope-swings (from which to injure ourselves horribly) and so on. Between those, books and video games I never ran out of things to do as a kid.

Living in a city, if you take away the concept of big gardens, forests and playing fields... there's a lot less left.

It's such a hard problem to fix though, as it would need a sea change in attitudes towards kids and the community, as well as a lot of general altruism, and parents actively geting involved in the education of their children. And most, to be fair, can't be arsed.

I blame the lack of Airfix models, myself.

Airfix models were just a convenient glue delivery system, anything else wasn't fully in the spirit of things.

Just like A-level chemistry was a state-funded drugs-binge scheme for older kids - "Now class, remember that if you want to know what a chemical smells like, gently waft the vapours towards your nose".

Yeah, right. Zoooooooooooom!

One particular lesson was held in a temporary porta-cabin affair, windows closed and heaters on because it was freezing outside, with a dozen chemicals set up for testing the effects of variously-charged plastic and metal rods on the flow of them (so presumably inorganic chemistry). "Gentle wafting" was of course necessary for, er, some reason. I was off my face for the rest of the day. Possibly we were supposed to be identifying the (class of) chemical from behaviour, appearance and odour.

If we're blaming the parents for bad parenting causing these troublesome teenagers, is it their parents fault that their kids can't raise their grandkids properly?

I don;t think it's the parents fault, per se, but often the fact that the troubled kids are from families at the bottom of the pile for various reasons probably not thier own fault, either, and just CAN'T bring up kids whilst trying to survuve as best they can.

To be honest, if anyone here is a secret cat killer, it's Curiosity.

There's plenty to do, but apathy rules ok.

Saying that, though, my friends and I frequently 'broke into' (climbed over the gates) our school to play tennis on their courts, only to be kicked off an hour later when they noticed us hoodlams using them for their actual purpose with no misbehaving at all. Quite a shame.

Most agreeable first post ever. Comical, you get the car, I'll get the knives and we'll go pick up Tom.

*sharpens noose*

Also +10 points for excellent use of 'coruscating'.

I was planning on doing that this evening but it appears to be shanking it down.

Also, I already this Tom fellow. Can we keep him?

I was meant to be playing twice this week, but I have really done my ankle in, and am going to have to see a doctor.

I should mention none of us own boots and until this week I've been playing in jeans... it's not exactly professional.

I used to play a lot of footy on the school playing fields at the bottom of the street as a kid. Several football pitches, a running track, a couple of long jump pits etc.. loads of room to run around and the school that owned them never seemed to mind. However, a few years back, a whopping great fence was put around the whole lot scuppering a lot of kids' football sessions. Worse still, it's going all become a Sainsburys in the near future.

Only if you promise to play nice with him.


Mr Chris you really got my hope up that kids had been banned, mine have just had a right royal roasting.

*sits back and listens to kids silently cleaning and tidying in shame*

Oooh - what did they do? [/nosey parker]