metalangel wrote:
GovernmentYard wrote:
If they're coming by every night at similar times, the police absolutely can do something about them. It's pattern-free ASB they struggle with.
If the whole street doesn't like them, get the lot of you out there, ready and waiting, with as many friends shipped in as possible. Strength in numbers, just standing there, arms folded, looking unimpressed, will be sufficient to have them pick a different street to hassle.
These people are cowards.
One could try to argue it's the fact that people don't tend to associate with the neighbours much nowadays that's allowing this to happen.
I think that is but one (IMO small) factor amongst a whole host a factors.
Fuck me, when does one begin here..? As I see it, and to be objective about it, I've fairly recently come to regard the Thatcher era as corrosive in this respect; the whole 'there is no Society' mantra; the sheer selfishness and self-promotion, work ethos but at the expense of morality... the very converse of community spirit and 'we're all in this together'? But there again, this was all of itself a part-necessary, urgent reaction to the converse 'anti-work, anti-business' trade unionism that proceeded even that; an entire, bankrupt country in the hands of the IMF, in a state of paralysis.
But of course, the political dimension is really only but one facet. I believe that the undeniable, incontrovertible slide in mean educational standards since the tri-partite days of the 50s and 60s is a HUGE factor (despite the fact that 'we' spend vastly more on education now than we ever did back then, but the absence of discipline in the classroom - and home - cannot be compensated for by throwing tax pound notes at it), as I have been banging on about for years. Would we really have this problem if the vast majority of young people today were
genuinely well educated, well read, and thus effortlessly numerate and literate as a result, with a built-in work ethos and self-discipline received from an early age, as they generally were 30+ years ago? In political terms, it was Labour who did away with our excellent Grammar
and Secondary Modern schools, for perfectly well-intentioned and seemingly laudable reasons - but it was the political gaffe of our age IMO and the evidence of this is abundantly clear however much the exam pass-rates are massaged and grade inflation applied.
The two biggest factors are the total lack of work ethos (arising from families with three generations of no-one in work
), and the seemingly now near-default (also workless) single parent family, often with a total inability to, and/or will to control teenage children. IDS has spent an inordinate amount of time studying these things first hand and, almost uniquely within the political class these days, is prepared to really talk turkey in this matter, from a position of genuine, garnered knowledge and wisdom - and is also in a position to do something about it.
People need work. It used to be socially unacceptable (and in practice impossible) to simply stay at home, year after year, watching daytime TV/playing games etc. at the expense of the rest of us. It may well be true that there are not enough jobs to go round (especially since the average Brit simply has the option to refuse many of the low-end ones, at we therefore have to import those who *are* willing to work from elsewhere, swelling our already crowded ranks even further, creating yet more social problems, racial tensions), but in that case we need people *earning* their benefits? I can hear the wails of 'slave armies!' from certain quarters
, but I'm sorry - if you're reasonably fit and able bodied, why can't you set a good example and help all of us by cleaning the streets and parks, doing up the thousands of derelict//boarded up housing that's here for all to see in the Northwest and elsewhere, help out at libraries, hospitals and schools, cleaning up our grafitti'd buildings... setting a good example to our kids, hold your heads up high at last?
Bad parenting is also very much at the heart of all this; total apathy (an unwillingness and/or inability to control or take responsibility for one's own children, all as per previous) combined with laziness (decades of total non-productivity); setting an appalling example to our young people in this and other respects. 'Workfare' and the like would start to address this deficiency, together with culpability of parent(s) if and when the kids who are supposed to be in their charge repeatedly fail to attend school, make people's lives (like WTB) intolerable, damage others' property or whatever. I'd wager that being hit hard in the pocket may well bring about success in forcing interest and accountability on the part of useless, ineffectual, disinterested parents who seem to regard the whereabouts and behavior of their own kids as somehow not their problem or responsibility?
Let's bring back discipline in the classroom and home as well; the threat of the cane at school; a smacked backside for really bad behavior without fear of being sued by your own pupils/kids for an infringement of their 'human rights'