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Kids Today

Now it's official:

Boy aged 12 did not father baby

Alfie Patten, the boy who was reported to have conceived a child when he was 12 years old, is not the baby's father, DNA tests have shown.

Alfie, now 13, from Eastbourne, in East Sussex, told a national newspaper in February that he believed he had made his 15-year-old girlfriend pregnant.

But the tests have established another boy from Eastbourne, who is 15, as the father of Chantelle Stedman's baby.

The results of the DNA tests have been made public following a judge's ruling.

The judgement also reveals that Alfie was "extremely distressed" about the results of the test.

Pictures of Alfie, holding the baby he believed to be his newborn daughter, caused a furore when they were published in the Sun in February and renewed calls for better sex education in Britain.

Politicians were moved to speak out about the case.

Tory leader David Cameron said he found the sight of "children having children" extremely worrying.

And Children's Secretary Ed Balls said it was an "awful" and "unusual" case.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8056700.stm
 
Toddler buys earthmover on online auction site
A three-year-old girl in New Zealand has made the most of her mother's nap time by buying an earth-moving digger for $20,000 (£7700) on an online auction website.

Pipi Quinland made the winning bid on the Kobelco digger with a few mouse clicks at the auction site TradeMe while her parents slept, the Rodney Times newspaper reported in northern New Zealand.

"The first I knew about it was when I came down and opened up the computer," said Pipi's mother, Sarah Quinlan.

I saw an e-mail from TradeMe saying I had won an auction and another e-mail from the seller saying something like 'I think you'll love this digger,"' she was quoted as saying in the paper.

Mrs Quinlan said she had made auction bids on several toy sets and assumed she had bought a toy digger. :D

"It wasn't until I went back and reread the e-mails that I saw $20,000 — and got the shock of my life." :shock:

She immediately called the auction site and the seller to explain what happened.

TradeMe reimbursed the seller's costs for the auction and the digger was relisted.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... -site.html

More detail here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 339258.ece
 
Police stop and search children as young as two
Thousands of children as young as two are being are being stopped and searched by police every year, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed.
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM BST 15 Aug 2009

Controversial powers allowing officers to stop children aged under 10 and search them for drugs, weapons or stolen goods were used regularly by every one of 16 forces in England and Wales which provided details.

Between them the forces stopped more than 4,000 under-10s a year, some to question and some to search. If the pattern is reflected nationwide, more than 10,000 under-10s will be stopped per year, of whom more than 2,000 will be searched.

Police spokesmen said the figures reflected serious problems with crime and anti-social behaviour among young children, as well as a trend for adult or teenage criminals to conceal illegal items on young children in a bid to avoid detection.

The Tories claimed that the findings pointed to "social breakdown".

Several forces admitted to using their powers to search children as young as two or three. :shock:

The searches were carried out despite all the children being below the criminal age of responsibility, which is 10 in England and Wales, meaning that none could be charged with offences.

The force which stopped and searched the largest number of under-10s during 2007 and 2008 was the Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest, with a total of 939.

It was followed by Leicestershire with 474, Hampshire with 128 and Lancashire with 84, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Police Federation, which represents front-line officers, pointed to high rates of offending in younger age groups and warned that it could see no prospect of a fall in the number of children becoming involved with police.

A spokesman, John Coppen, said: "Many parents these days do not know where their children are at night. In some areas there will be children running around at 11 o'clock or midnight.

"These figures show that at least officers are doing what they should be doing, and intervening."

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... s-two.html
 
everal forces admitted to using their powers to search children as young as two or three. Shocked
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I wonder if that was because they thought the parents had put something on them? Way back, when i worked in a charity shop, we used to get a family of gypos that came in shoplifting sometimes, they had no qualms about stuff going into the smallest one's pushchair.

Still pretty grim reading :(
 
We approach others’ children at our peril
Jenni Russell

There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.

I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them. :(

When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.

Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.

What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.

Last month in Bedfordshire, 270 children from four primary schools had their annual sports day without the normal audience of proud parents watching them compete. All adults except teachers were banned. The reason? The organisers could not guarantee that an unsupervised adult might not molest a child. They preferred the certainty of ruining the pleasure of hundreds, and the instilling of general paranoia, to the phenomenally slight possibility of a sexual attack.

This is part of an insidious new orthodoxy that’s taking hold: that only authorised adults have any business engaging with children. It is no longer just about sexual abuse. In Twickenham last month the mother of a five– year-old who was being bullied decided to talk to the offender. She knelt by his chair and asked him politely to stop. The next day she was banned from the classroom for doing something that would have been regarded as rational and responsible behaviour at any other time in the past century.

etc...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 797723.ece

I agree with the writer. It seems our world is well screwed up, spoiled by bossy 'do-gooders' who only ever see the worst-case scenario in any human encounter, and ignore the statistical fact that bad things only happen rarely.

Society has dug itself into a hole. We need to stop digging, and instead look for ways to improve trust between people, of all age groups.
 
Labour's lost generation: one in six young people do nothing
Record numbers of under-24s join the Neets' - not in education, employment or training
By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Record Numbers of 18 to 24-year-olds are not in school, college or work – and the figure is set to rise again over the next three months.

The number of so-called “Neets” (not in education, employment or training) has risen by more than 100,000 in comparison with the same time last year, to 835,000. The number of 16 to 18-year-olds in the same boat has also risen, by 24,000 to 233,000, to nearly 12 per cent of the age group as a whole.

Overall, one in six 16 to 24-year-olds (959,000) are now officially described as Neets, with the figure set to top the million mark in three months’ time as school leavers fail to gain university places. A record 60,000 are expected to be disappointed this year.

Opposition MPs immediately launched an attack on the Government’s record with David Laws, the Liberal Democrats’ schools spokesman, saying ministers had “failed spectacularly” to cut the number of unemployed youngsters and warning it “risks creating a lost generation”.

“This surge in the number of young people not in education, work or training clearly shows they are bearing the brunt of the recession,” he added.

A regional breakdown of the figures showed the problem was worst in the North East, with 9.8 per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds at risk of being on the streets.

etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/educa ... 73805.html
 
Britain's youngest bridegroom... married just days after 16th birthday
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:25 AM on 23rd August 2009

He may be too young to drive, drink alcohol or vote, but 16-year-old Leslie Coneley is old enough to wed his childhood sweetheart.

The teenager has become Britain's youngest groom after marrying just 18 days after his 16th birthday.
Leslie married long term girlfriend Bonnie Buckland, 17, at a lavish ceremony in Swindon, Wiltshire on August 7.

No expenses were spared at the wedding, which saw Bonnie arrive in a white horse-drawn carriage wearing a £1,800 dress. :shock:
After a ceremony at Christ Church in Old Town, the couple held a reception for 450 guests at the the Hilton in Swindon, which was paid for by their families.

Leslie told the Daily Mirror: 'All my mates are a long way from settling down. But there are people who get married at 40 and end up divorced, so why can't there be people who get married at 16 and stay together for life?

'So what if I'm Britain's youngest groom? Age is just a number.

'I don't think I'll be missing out on anything. If anything, growing up will be even more special because Bonnie and I will be able to share all our experiences.'

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0OzzNZOME
 
We had a couple in my year at school, back in Scotland, who got married at sixteen.

Mind you, when the lad was 14, he was 6'2", shaved and had a very creditable moustache.

Some people aren't mature enough to get married, in their Thirties and some should never get married.

Marrying young was a lot less uncommon 100 years ago.
 
I have a third cousin who was proposed to at 16, and with parental permission they married at 17. Within the year, I think, the two inherited the husband's sister's four children, who had been taken away from her. Now, about five years later, they're still together and doing fine, with two kids of their own. Pretty impressive for young-uns! If they can pull that off, surely two sixteen-year olds have a shot!
 
They should play William Shatner, that would send them off.

Sound of Music sends youths home

The Sound of Music has been found not to be to youngsters' taste
Songs from the musical The Sound of Music have been used to encourage youngsters to go home when youth clubs wrap up for the night.

Activities at the Hilton Community Centre in Inverness are so popular, staff have faced challenges in getting the youths to leave at closing time.

My Favourite Things and The Hills Are Alive have been played in an effort to disperse the groups.

Councillor John Finnie said nursery rhymes were used as a last resort.

Starring Julie Andrews, the 1965 film was a huge hit and later became a sell-out stage production.

More recently, it was the inspiration for BBC One's song contest How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

'Much appreciated'

However, the music has not been to the taste of youngsters attending clubs at Hilton Youth Club.

Highland councillor Mr Finnie said: "There has been a lot of work which has gone into the facilities at Hilton Community Centre.

"They are very attractive to young people and that is down to the work of volunteers, the council but primarily the excellent work of Hilton Community Centre management committee."

He said sports, music and computer games sessions were on offer.

But he added: "They are so very much appreciated by the young folk that they are very keen to hang around and don't want to go home at 10pm.

"So this is a creative use of music - classical music, musicals and if things get really awkward I understand nursery rhymes will be deployed."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scot ... 223956.stm
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A long but amusing piece:

What children think of the Beatles
Their parents love the Fab Four, but will today’s children download Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club on to their iPods?
Will Hodgkinson

Forty years after they split, do the Beatles have relevance for a new generation? Does anyone really care about Hey Jude and All You Need Is Love in an age when High School Musical and the Nintendo DS rule the world?

I’m putting the Fabs’ longevity to the test with the help of my children and their friends. Rowan (7), Fred (6) and Isabella (6) are joining Otto and Pearl Hodgkinson (8 and 6) in a Beatles study session.

For an agreed fee — a bar of toffee each — the panel will listen to a selection from the band’s repertoire on original vinyl format, before giving their considered opinion on each song. All I ask is that panel members refrain from attacking each other until the session is over.

Apart from Rowan, who claims only to know about the beetles in her garden, panel members are vaguely aware of the Beatles. “They look like me so I like them,” offers Otto, proud possessor of a mop-top bowl cut.

“They are a rock band from olden times,” adds Isabella. “They did lots of songs,” says Pearl, somewhat unhelpfully, but then Pearl’s musical interests are focused entirely on the soundtrack to Mamma Mia!, so she can be forgiven.

etc...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 825010.ece
 
I got a lot of laughs out that article. I particularly liked this line:

After musing for a while, index finger lodged in nostril, Fred concludes: “It’s good.”
 
Songs from the musical The Sound of Music have been used to encourage youngsters to go home when youth clubs wrap up for the night.
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They'd better watch it, they might find themselves needing some new drapes soon! :D
 
>>What children think of the Beatles
>>Their parents love the Fab Four, but will today’s children download Sgt >>Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club on to their iPods?

That should probably read "Their grandparents love the Fab Four..." :)
 
Another perceptive article about the growing gulf between children and adults.

School seeks dinner lady. Humans need not apply
Jenni Russell
Thursday 24 September 2009 22.00 BST

With its stealthy erosion of adults' powers to deal with children, the state is creating a menace beyond anyone's control

It was never in any election manifesto, and yet it will be one of this government's most disastrous legacies. The transformation of the relationship between adults and children into one of caution, suspicion, confusion and fear will outlast many other Labour reforms. Stealthily, and without open political debate, we have moved from the assumption that all adults have a role in socialising children, towards a new and uncertain world in which contact with children is increasingly regulated by officials and the state. It is a kind of collective madness, in which the boundaries of what we are allowed to do shift too fast and too secretly for us to keep up.

This week a dinner lady at a village primary school was sacked for telling a child's parents that she was sorry their daughter had been attacked in the playground at school. Carol Hill had found seven-year-old Chloe David tied up by her wrists and ankles, surrounded by four boys, having been whipped with a skipping rope across her legs. Hill had rescued the child and taken the boys to the headteacher.

That night she bumped into the parents, who were friends of hers, and offered her sympathy. It instantly became clear that the parents had not been told the story by the school. Their daughter had arrived home traumatised and refusing to talk about what happened, with a note saying only that she had been "hurt in a skipping-rope incident". As soon as the school discovered that Hill had told the parents the truth, she was first suspended for several months, and then sacked by the governors for "breaching pupil confidentiality".

This is a new world, in which schools may effectively lie to parents about traumatic events affecting their children, and yet where the only offence committed is by a person who unwittingly breaks that official secrecy. It is no longer the proper role of adults, even those in a tiny village, where everyone knows everyone else, to discuss the behaviour of children. It is for the state to define who may speak and who must be silent.

To officialdom, this is perfectly acceptable. What happened in Essex isn't an aberration, but evidence of a new philosophy in action. It's one that expects people to act not as concerned adults, but as automatons. Yesterday morning the chief executive of the National Association of Headteachers was asked what he thought Hill should have done in the instant that she realised Chloe's parents were in the dark. His response? That she should have refused to comment, and then followed "proper procedures and processes" within the school if she was unhappy with what the family had been told.

You don't have to be an employee to fall foul of the new norms. Parents are being caught out by them too. In London this July a mother was banned from her five-year-old's classroom for politely asking another child to stop his continual hitting of her son. Repeated requests to the school to do something had had no effect. It turned out that she was breaking the unwritten rule that says that no unauthorised adult – not even a parent – can remonstrate with a child.

In Tyne and Wear the same month, a mother who asked a group of bullies to stop attacking her young daughter was arrested in front of her children and held in a cell for five hours after the bullies retaliated by falsely claiming that it was she who had attacked them. Once again, the adult was punished for attempting to uphold the rules of civilised behaviour. Nothing in the system supported her. Talking to the children had made her a legitimate object of suspicion.

This removal of general authority from adults, and its gradual replacement by state-sanctioned interventions, is utterly corrosive. It infantilises grown-ups, who lose one of the roles that societies have always expected them to fulfil. It makes them timid, and demeans them in the eyes of their children, who see that they are powerless in the face of injustice. And by suggesting that adults may not approach, discuss or reprimand a child, it completely undermines the notion of a community, and the importance of social pressure and shame.

Exchanging these traditional bonds and constraints for sanctions imposed by schools, courts and police is not only wrong-headed, it is doomed to failure. The state can't enforce order everywhere and at all times; nor should we want it to. Last week's inquest into the appalling deaths of a disabled teenager and her mother, who burned themselves to death after years of bullying by a local mob of children, showed how powerless communities now are in the face of monstrous behaviour. The police were indifferent to their torment, and no adults dared to fill the vacuum. The children jeered that they could do what they wanted, and that no one could stop them. They were right. And the longer we continue on this deluded path, the more divided and out of control our society will be.
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The Guardian
 
Sounds about right :(

A few weeks back myself and several female neighbours were out chatting when an 11 year old girl who is friends with the chav family down the road came up to us and started calling us a bunch of nonces. All i could think was that if i sneezed near her and she fell over, i'd be up in court for assault on a minor :(
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Sounds about right :(

A few weeks back myself and several female neighbours were out chatting when an 11 year old girl who is friends with the chav family down the road came up to us and started calling us a bunch of nonces. All i could think was that if i sneezed near her and she fell over, i'd be up in court for assault on a minor :(
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My mum is a primary school teacher in a school that has over the last 5 years or so slowly become a dumping ground for kids with behavioural and emotional problems, along with a sizeable population of kids whose parents just don't give a toss. Some of the abuse, both verbal and physical (and, on at least one occasion, mental), she has to put up with from even very small children is quite frightening.

She gets bitten, she gets kicked, she has been accused of swearing at children, of hitting them, of singling them out for bizarre punishments. Children get a slight telling off for forgetting their PE kit and they go home full of tales where they have been called names and had their lunch thrown away by their mean teacher. And their parents, who it seems are incapable of using the power of rational thought to figure out that they're being spun a yarn, fly into the school full of fury and sudden righteous indignation that someone may have attempted to discipline their child.

Just last week a 9 year old, with a loooong history of violent behaviour, punched my mum in the leg hard enough to knock himself over because she had reminded him he wasn't allowed in the staffroom. She said the kid looked her right in the eyes, and with an expressionless face growled 'You bitch c*nt'.
He was excluded for 2 days. An emergency meeting was held to discuss this kids future. The teaching staff, you know, the ones that actually have to deal with this little shit argued that their school was not an appropriate environment for him. The LEA simply insisted he had to stay put. And he was back in school on friday where, on the instructions of some special advisor or other, a big fuss was made of him in order to ease him back into the classroom. My mum is beside herself with rage and despair whilst this kid is sat smirking at her from his desk.

And what exactly does this child learn from this? That there are zero negative consequences for him even if commits violence against an adult? That he should be allowed to do exactly as he pleases? That adults have no right to exert any authority over him? And what about the other kids in the class? Isn't my mum's authority diminished in their eyes now? This particular kids behaviour may be at the extreme end of the stuff my mum deals with, but the lack of consequences for any of the behaviour she is faced with appears to be absolutely the norm.
 
sonofajoiner said:
And what exactly does this child learn from this? That there are zero negative consequences for him even if commits violence against an adult? That he should be allowed to do exactly as he pleases? That adults have no right to exert any authority over him? And what about the other kids in the class? Isn't my mum's authority diminished in their eyes now? This particular kids behaviour may be at the extreme end of the stuff my mum deals with, but the lack of consequences for any of the behaviour she is faced with appears to be absolutely the norm.
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Kids like this, if their behaviour is left unchecked and unpunished, will learn nothing about the consequences of their actions, and by their teen years will be well on their way to becoming criminals.
It is the end of civilisation as we know it.
 
That does seem to be the problem. I'm not a huge fan of locking people up if it can be helped, but as far as the persistent offenders go who would have probably ended up in the can anyway, it's like they get ASBO'd first and keep on doing stuff, and then they get tagged and keep on doing dtuff, and then they end up in the can. And everyone has to suffer 3 times as much crap while the courts go through the motions of using these 'alternatives' to jail just for them to end up there all the same. At least that's how it's been with the local chavs.

I'll share this here as i'm in a fairly foul mood at reading it, names/addresses changed to protect, well everyone, it is an email copy in i got this morning from a neighbour to the local chavs landlords. I am apparently the one nicknamed 'nonce' :(

From: Mr Fish
To: Trickylettingagency
CC:thelocalplod
Sent: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:48
Subject: Attn Francine Re 11, Haddock Place

Dear Francine,

We are wondering if you are in a position to confirm whether the occupants of 11 Haddock Place will be leaving in October at the end of their tenancy agreement. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts the police cannot be in the street 24/7.

Gangs of young men congregate at the house until the early hours of the morning until they move off, a young girl around 9 or 10 years old is sometimes staying there and has shouting matches with a male relative who seems to be around now about how she doesn't want to stay in that house any more.

The family have names they use to refer to the residents in the street; Grass is the neighbours name, Nonce is Marie Strawberry's name and Slag is my wife's name that they openly mention from within the safety of their garden as we walk past. With the eldest sons imminent release from custody we are very much hoping you can put our minds at rest.

Regards
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My mom recently said she encountered someone I went to school with. It turned out it was the school bully from my third grade class. He was the only person who ever knocked me down in school. She apparently talked to him a bunch, and he said his parents had been going through a divorce during those days I knew him. It made me think, all those bullies are really just kids who are hurting and aren't getting what they need. It isn't a matter of them being punished and learning the repercussions of their actions. They know what they're doing is wrong; they are just lashing out indiscriminately. And there really isn't much you can do to help them, if they aren't your own. It's really very sad.
 
theyithian said:
'Upper Classes' are a very small minority of our population.

And the point i was making isn't that there's a lack of respect for 'higher' classes; it's a lack of respect for anyone.

It's true that the vast preponderance of violent crime and social breakdown is occuring in the... for want of a better marker... C2s and below. I think this is a Anglo-American thing, tbh. The link just doesn't seem nearly as strong in the other (Asian and European) countries i am familar enough with to compare. We aren't talking about stealing bread for the nippers here. There's a growing generation of barbarians in our cities. (At least the thug[ee]s had beliefs...)
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yeah your right in some cases they have to do the right thing, the right move



_________________
Orange County's best criminal attorneys
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
There's also the possibility that crude economics and the dismantling of the Welfare State have also played their part.
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As someone has just quoted a pretty old post of mine, i was just re-reading the thread. I must ask, Pietro, do you really believe the 'dismantling of the welfare state' to be a major cause of social breakdown? I ask, sincerely, as I certainly feel that a growth of the welfare state and state intrusion into personal affairs (not to mention a dependency culture that has eroded more natural social structures) is a significant cause of the breakdown.

We can't both be right!
 
Speaking as someone who works with wayward teens, I think the problem is at once both hugely complicated and quite simple. Complicated are the causes and possible solutions: the symptom we see is the simple bit, which is the same old rights vs responsibility discussion.

We discuss this with our charges, in an informal classroom debate sort of way (though we have to sneak the topic under the wire as if you weigh in with behaviour as a topic they tend to go seriously on the defensive, or just clam up altogether.) Basically, each know their rights with an uncanny degree of precision, even those who aren't particularly disruptive - but when it comes to personal responsibility, you just get blank looks or indignant "it's not my problem" responses. That's what needs to be dealt with, and it needs it early, and not just at school but at home, problem being that too many parents are themselves unaware of the concept in any meaningful sense.

How it started is immaterial, now - the fact is we're seeing the second or third generation of this problem, and punitive measures and bits of paper like ASBOs do nothing. From speaking to perpetrators, restorative justice is the way forwards. If they knock a bin over, they pick it all up again - simple, direct cause and effect and taking responsibility for their actions.

How should this be enacted and enforced? Discuss...
 
theyithian said:
Pietro_Mercurios said:
There's also the possibility that crude economics and the dismantling of the Welfare State have also played their part.
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As someone has just quoted a pretty old post of mine, i was just re-reading the thread. I must ask, Pietro, do you really believe the 'dismantling of the welfare state' to be a major cause of social breakdown? I ask, sincerely, as I certainly feel that a growth of the welfare state and state intrusion into personal affairs (not to mention a dependency culture that has eroded more natural social structures) is a significant cause of the breakdown.

We can't both be right!
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We could, if we actually meant two different things by, 'Welfare State'. See 'Political Correctness' for a similar confusion of ideas.

Lives spent wasted on 'welfare' aren't what was envisioned when the 'Welfare State' was set up, after WWII, nor was the hiving off of more and more of the NHS, Education and the social security into the hands of private contractors.

Nor is the encroachment of The State and the dis-empowering of the Public, 'The Welfare State', either. ASBOs, the demoting of low level street crime and Public Nuisance, to Anti-Social Behaviour, weren't the encroachment of the Welfare State, more the Nanny State. Nor was the registering of any adults contemplating working with children, as potential child abusers. They were social tinkering by a bunch of centre-right Neo-Conservative Libertarian lawyers, who know next to nothing about actually living in the social conditions with which they were tinkering.

It is possible to have a civil society and a functioning welfare system, but apparently not in Britain.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Nor was the registering of any adults contemplating working with children, as potential child abusers. They were social tinkering by a bunch of centre-right Neo-Conservative Libertarian lawyers, who know next to nothing about actually living in the social conditions with which they were tinkering.
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im sorry i cant let that one pass without comment. Youre talking out of your hat there. Neo-Conservative? try Neo-Marxist. Centre-right? try "nu labour/third way/burgeoning state interventionists".

The CRB came in in 1974 (LABOUR party admittedly small majority) and related ONLY to the "rehabilitation of offenders act". It was augmented by the 1997 Police Act (LABOUR - President Blaire's "things can only get better" realpolitik), was modified further in 2002 (LABOUR Blaire Brown Combine "nothings gonna stop us now") and in LABOUR 2009 was further modified to allow police "suspicions" to be included in the enhanced CRB request. and sold to any "company" including sole traders, and private individuals.

Say what you like about the Milk Snatcher and Major, but you cant accuse them of caring whether scout masters, dinner ladies or gentlemen, or your local bus driver enjoyed buggering schoolboys.That, i can say with total certainty, is an entirely leftist obsession.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
theyithian said:
Pietro_Mercurios said:
There's also the possibility that crude economics and the dismantling of the Welfare State have also played their part.
Click to expand...

As someone has just quoted a pretty old post of mine, i was just re-reading the thread. I must ask, Pietro, do you really believe the 'dismantling of the welfare state' to be a major cause of social breakdown? I ask, sincerely, as I certainly feel that a growth of the welfare state and state intrusion into personal affairs (not to mention a dependency culture that has eroded more natural social structures) is a significant cause of the breakdown.

We can't both be right!
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We could, if we actually meant two different things by, 'Welfare State'...
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Okay. Perhaps...

Lives spent wasted on 'welfare' aren't what was envisioned when the 'Welfare State' was set up...
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No, but nowadays that's an option. I'd say that's an expansion of the welfare state.

Nor is the encroachment of The State and the dis-empowering of the Public, 'The Welfare State', either. ASBOs, the demoting of low level street crime and Public Nuisance, to Anti-Social Behaviour, weren't the encroachment of the Welfare State, more the Nanny State.
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I agree. Although I'm inclined to think them parts of the same movement.

I have two allied points:

a) I think the actual welfare state has expanded: we allow people to live on unemployment benefit, we encourage people to claim disability benefit to keep down 'unemployment', we push unprecedented numbers into higher and further education for similar reasons, and we fund cosmetic and lifestyle treatment through the NHS. The current government is doing its best to close public-schools and stop home-schooling in order to bring everyone under the dreadful leveller that is comprehensive education.

b) The concept of the state providing basic services has expanded from a safety net (the welfare state proper) to a giant blanket in which all must be safely wrapped. The state's role has expanded vastly to bring everyone within its remit for some purpose or other. At the more innocent but hopelessly illogical end, those up to and including the moderately well-off are taxed heavily and yet can claim back countless benefits and credits. Similarly, some of the poorest still pay tax but then claim more than the amount paid back in benefits: this is lunacy as the taxpayer must pay to employ (many) people to administer all this bureaucracy. I don't think I need to post at length the list of other ways in which the state has intruded into the individual's life.
 
stuneville said:
Speaking as someone who works with wayward teens, I think the problem is at once both hugely complicated and quite simple. Complicated are the causes and possible solutions: the symptom we see is the simple bit, which is the same old rights vs responsibility discussion
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I remember having a rights/responsibility talk when I was at secondary school (around '93/'94 maybe?). I think myself and my peers were a bit non-plussed at the time, but there wasn't any real "yeah, so what?" reaction. I suppose things have changed a bit since then.
 
Zoffre said:
I remember having a rights/responsibility talk when I was at secondary school (around '93/'94 maybe?). I think myself and my peers were a bit non-plussed at the time, but there wasn't any real "yeah, so what?" reaction. I suppose things have changed a bit since then.
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It's possible they haven't that much - bear in mind the teens with which I deal are marginalised and not mainstream, and their education was at best disrupted and in several cases nigh-on non-existent. They represent the main demographic in most cases of serious adolescent anti-social behaviour, and as such a rights / responsibility debate with them will always be a different proposition to the norm.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a distinct creep of this mentality into wider teenage attitudes.
 
All kids need to learn is:

Do as you would be done by
What goes around comes around
Don't piss on your own doorstep
Politeness costs nothing

It's simple, and shouldn't take long to learn. So why do so many kids ignore these principles?
 
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