The New Barbarism

[rynner2]

But I seem to recall some people here acting oddly because of fear not long after 7/7, so it seems to me that part of what's going on is down to a perceived threat, that probably isn't there. By this I mean that whatever furore is out and about in the press at the moment tends to make things seem worse than they actually are. I don't think this is anything new - as ArthurASCII has pointed out. I mean, it's not as if we have huge gangs of youngsters knocking the shit out of each other, as was the case with Rockers and Mods - and that was 40-odd years ago!

Personally, I've never been bothered by modern terrorism threats (eg, 7/7) (too vague), or even Mods v. Rockers (just gang on gang).

But from my life experience, what's happening now is new and frightening.

Now, any honest citizen is not only at risk of random attack (as ever), but he is at greatly enhanced risk if he attempts to stop young trouble-makers in the street, since they have no respect for authority or the older generation..

 

[ghostdog19]

You don't remember the 1980's then? Riots and Strikes, Mass Unemployment

Also, I'm talking about minors, not miners.

 

[rynner2]

I'm talking about minors, not miners.

Yep, good point! Let's not get deflected into irrelevent stuff.

 

[ghostdog19]

Now, any honest citizen is not only at risk of random attack (as ever), but he is at greatly enhanced risk if he attempts to stop young trouble-makers in the street, since they have no respect for authority or the older generation..

re: poor chap in Warrington. I'm not altogether comfortable with the philosophy that "it's always been this way, same kids different hairdos, don't worry yourselves about it, it'll all be alright after a nice cup of tea". Without doubt, respect is deteriorating.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

You don't remember the 1980's then? Riots and Strikes, Mass Unemployment

Also, I'm talking about minors, not miners.

Not all the rioters were Miners.

But of course, back in the Eighties, under the benign rule of Good Queen Maggie, Summers were golden and it didn't rain. Beer tasted better and champagne flowed in the streets. Young scamps still touched their forelocks to the Vicar and brought an apple for the teacher, whilst bowling their iron hoops down cobbled streets, on the way to buy a Hovis loaf for their mums.

Or, was that the adverts?

 

[rynner2]

Or, was that the adverts?

Yes it was.

Please stick to the point.

 

[ghostdog19]

You don't remember the 1980's then? Riots and Strikes, Mass Unemployment

Also, I'm talking about minors, not miners.

Not all the rioters were Miners.

Or Minors.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

You don't remember the 1980's then? Riots and Strikes, Mass Unemployment

Also, I'm talking about minors, not miners.

Not all the rioters were Miners. But of course, back in the Eighties, under the benign rule of Good Queen Maggie, Summers were golden and it didn't rain. Beer tasted better and champagne flowed in the streets. Young scamps still touched their forelocks to the Vicar ant brought an apple for the teacher, whilst bowling their iron hoops down cobbled streets, on the way to by a Hovis loaf for their mums.

Or, was that the adverts?

I'd agree with the contention that consumerism is responsible (though partially, imo) for some of today's problems. I think there's both a psychological aspect of the consumerist ethic and a more practical aspect, namely that consumerism through promoting a never-ending array of rewards and a never-ending race to acquire such rewards has encouraged a breakdown in family life. It doesn't strike me as mere coincidence that in Britain the problem of familial breakdown is worse than in comparable countries just as our problems of anti-social behaviour are.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

... It doesn't strike me as mere coincidence that in Britain the problem of familial breakdown is worse than in comparable countries just as our problems of anti-social behaviour are.

Unfortunately, this may be true.

 

[Quake42]

It doesn't strike me as mere coincidence that in Britain the problem of familial breakdown is worse than in comparable countries just as our problems of anti-social behaviour are.

You see, my problem is that statements such as this are tossed around quite casually, but is there actually any evidence that anti-social behaviour is so much worse in the UK than in France? Or Australia, Canada, new Zealand?

I think Pietro is right to say that much of the current hysteria over "youths out of control" is a media invention. I don't know if anyone has read the book "Hooligan" which is a history of moral panics over wayward youth, often violent, frequently working class. What is interesting is how the same issues come up over and over again and every time people act as though it is a new issue. The reference to "everything changing around 1985" made me smile - one theme of the book is the tendency for people to claim that "things were different 20 years ago" - interestingly it is always 20 years ago, not 10, not 30.

To be perfectly honest I do not believe that the streets of Britain's towns and cities are any more dangerous than they were in the 70s, 80s or 90s.

Still, I don't think there is any doubt that children and young people show a lot less respect to parents and teachers than in previous years. I would be interested to know if this trend was repeated in similar countries, or is the UK especially bad for this?

 

[Analogue Boy]

I have made a posting and a reference before to the 'Penny Dreadful' culture of violent youths in Victorian society. It was worse then as you'd see violent fist fights outside houses and that would involve beating up the family_missus and kids. At least by comparison we now have a modicum of restraint.

I have also posted on the anti-smoking board that alcohol (and the access to it by teenagers) costs this country more than the hideous self-inflicted results of smoking. By a Billion and and a bit.

Nothing changes. Society will, by and large, choose its own means of causing predjudice and injury to other members of the populace and the rise of the teenager, although not named as such then, has been a constant problem since the greeks started philosophising.

The problem is, in the mediocre society we seem to have here is that there is no real protest, no long term goal - no higher ambition than that of rising higher in the group and gaining more kudios and more stuff so I think that antlers should be worn instead of hoodies so we get a real pecking order sorted out.

This is what happens when you put your wishlist and dreams in terms of consumerism.

We need a new BIG IDEA.

 

[ghostdog19]

I have made a posting and a reference before to the 'Penny Deadful' culture of violent youth in Victorian society. It was worse then as you'd see violent fist fights outside houses and that would involve beating up the family. at least we now have a modicum of restraint.

Well if this is what you call restraint...

Police quiz teenagers over death

Aug 13 2007

by Luke Traynor, Liverpool Echo


MURDER squad detectives were today questioning six teenagers after the death of a man attacked confronting vandals.

The 57-year-old father of three approached a gang outside his Warrington home on Friday night afraid they were damaging his car.

He was then assaulted by up to nine youths.

Neighbours gave him first aid and the victim’s distraught family nursed him on the pavement in Station Road North until an ambulance arrived.

The man was taken to Warrington General Hospital with serious injuries and died yesterday.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

I have turned to the font of all modern wisdom for the final word, tonight. For "BRITAIN is on the brink of ANARCHY"

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007380532,00.html

Anarchy in the UK as yobs rule

The Sun. By DAVID WOODING. August 20, 2007

BRITAIN is on the brink of ANARCHY after a weekend of yob violence, campaigners said last night.

As figures revealed knife crime had DOUBLED in two years, a string of incidents left law-abiding citizens living in terror.

A mob BESIEGED a police station.

A man and a teenage boy were MURDERED in separate incidents and paramedics were ATTACKED as they tended a father and son.

In one county, 999 callers were told there were only THREE police on duty in a town of 22,000 people.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust and a serving cop, said: “Violent crime has reached epidemic proportions.

“We are experiencing anarchy on the streets of Britain. There is no other way to describe it.

“If the Government doesn’t get a grip soon, I predict outbreaks of civil disorder within three to five years.”

Mr Brennan branded Labour’s election winning tough-on-crime slogan “the biggest deception in British history”.

He added: “I met somebody this morning who has just been mugged for the fourth time.

“He didn’t report any of the attacks because he has got no faith in the police any more.”

Tories accused the Government of taking two years to wake up to the explosion in knife crime.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “Knife crime is just a symptom of the breakdown in society on our streets. “The Government owes it to the public to get a grip of drink, drugs and the broken homes that have spawned this plague on Britain.”

One of the weekend’s murders took place in Croydon, South London.

A man in his 20s was stabbed repeatedly in the street.

Police were called after a nearby resident heard screams and a disturbance. The victim’s name had not been released last night.

The other killing happened in Farnworth, Greater Manchester, where Andrew Holland, 16, was knifed after a row at a chip shop.

* HELP us put a stop to gang culture by clicking here.

Note strident use of block capitals.

 

[Analogue Boy]

I have made a posting and a reference before to the 'Penny Deadful' culture of violent youth in Victorian society. It was worse then as you'd see violent fist fights outside houses and that would involve beating up the family. at least we now have a modicum of restraint.

Well if this is what you call restraint...

Police quiz teenagers over death

Aug 13 2007

by Luke Traynor, Liverpool Echo


MURDER squad detectives were today questioning six teenagers after the death of a man attacked confronting vandals.

The 57-year-old father of three approached a gang outside his Warrington home on Friday night afraid they were damaging his car.

He was then assaulted by up to nine youths.

Neighbours gave him first aid and the victim’s distraught family nursed him on the pavement in Station Road North until an ambulance arrived.

The man was taken to Warrington General Hospital with serious injuries and died yesterday.

If you start searching 'youth assaults' from ancient greece onwards....

I get your point. But it has been pointed out before we have had gang culture with bike chains, flick-knives going on from the fifties. That's recent.
The same happened in Victorian England. I'd say that violence was more widespread. As a computer games artist, I've looked this up. Where games are now to blame, video nasties were previously to blame. Before that it was rock'n'roll records and before that it was the violent Penny Dreadful comics.

It comes down to one thing. These kids must have a custodian of some sort as I can't believe these are all waifs and strays. A whiff of a scintilla on a bit of wrong doing and we should be asking the parent/s what's going on.

But do you see the big message being put across here..'Don't get involved'?

The bigger question as Forteans on the board is What do we do about that?

 

[ghostdog19]

The same happened in Victorian England /Penny Dreadful / It comes down to one thing. These kids must have a custodian of some sort as I can't believe these are all waifs and strays.

You mean Fagin?

But do you see the big message being put across here..'Don't get involved'?

yeah, I see the big message being put across here. Stick your head in the sand. It's always been this way. It'll all blow over. Don't know what idyll you nay sayers seem to come from, but where I live it's got notably worse in the last few years. What strikes me is this is possibly a question of geography. I agree to a degree with Pietro_Mercurios point regarding the popular and unpopular press. Evidently the bad weather isn't enough of a story. But I know there's a distinct difference in how things are now and how they were not even ten years ago, never mind twenty years ago, and that has little to do with newspapers as I've worked with the police and dealt specifically with anti-social behaviour. There's a marked increase in youth crime and the local police force and schools are struggling. Now, in a lot of areas the problems are as simple as there being not enough for youths to do, or places to go. So youth centers are set up in village halls and the like (only, in our local area they burnt ours down after stealing the computers from it). People are increasingly at a loss for what to do about it, and yet when you have discussions regarding discipline it's almost a taboo. Teachers don't feel they have any authority. Neither do the police. But like I say, my experience of it is possibly a question of geography, as it seems others are living in areas where such things do not happen or do not happen to any alarming degree that they might be concerned. I just don't buy this 'kids will be kids, it's always been that way' notion as it doesn't deal with the problem we're faced with now.

 

[Analogue Boy]

God forbid that Dangerous Dogs and Great White sharks should come into the equation.

No. I don't mean Fagin actually. I mean a specific culture of victorian youths with their own dress code (Probably trousers hitched up around their shoulders) that caused mayhem and violence and knife crime without the benefit of a split-up family, an unhinged DVD collection, a set of wax cylinders which played backwards invoked the will of Satan, or even a skateboard. The big thing was the hoop. That and a natural inclination to violence. How they invented marmite is yet to be understood.

 

[ghostdog19]

God forbid that Dangerous Dogs and Great White sharks should come into the equation.

eh?

No. I don't mean Fagin actually. I mean a specific culture of victorian youths with their own dress code (Probably trousers hitched up around their shoulders) that caused mayhem and violence and knife crime without the benefit of a split-up family, an unhinged DVD collection, a set of wax cylinders which played backwards invoked the will of Satan, or even a skateboard. The big thing was the hoop. That and a natural inclination to violence. How they invented marmite is yet to be understood.

Hence my point regarding there being nothing better to do. Or are you addressing the point raised by others regarding "Consumerism"?

 

[stu neville]

And how much of it is because of a whipped up media panic? True. However. A man in Warrington the other week stepped out of his house to tell a group of youths to stop vandalising. They set on him like a pack of dogs and killed him. That, unfortunately, is grim reality.
............
But living in the thick of it can tell quite a different story.

True.

I'm lucky in that in the last year I moved from a rough area to somewhere fairly genteel, but the nerves still return whenever I see a group of youngsters congregating.

It's really hateful that every time I go out, I find myself pondering my tactics of self-defence and/or counter-attack if I should be set upon.

And this is what this thread is really about.


FEAR.

...and a big part of that fear is the knowledge that if you ring the police, they'll just tell you there's not much they can do about it unless there's an actual crime being committed. Once a crime is committed, they'll give you a log number and say they'll get someone out as soon as they can (and then, two or three hours later, they'll ring and ask if said people are still there.) I've been there - I lived in a rough area for a while, and despite being a big and assertive bloke I knew far better than to go out and remonstrate beyond a certain point (you could go out and try to be reasonable and occasionally it'd work - if they were getting lairy though, and there were seven or eight of them, what are you gonna do? Ring the people who should be equipped to deal with it.)

Now, I don't blame local police for this - it's the strategic people in their divisional HQs with PowerPoint presentations and no idea what real problems local communities face. They put a 6 month dispersal order on the area in which I lived - and then weeks later decided to shut the local nick from 20.00 to 08.00 and all day Saturday and Sunday, to "streamline the local service". So dispersal order or no dispersal order, there were no cops to enforce it anyway. You'd ring, get a log number, a few hours later a lone patrol car would swing by, and piddle off again.

We were lucky, in a way - many neighbours had a much worse time at the gangs hands than we did. To us this gang was an irritant, but to our neighbours they were a source of genuine fear - all we got was the odd broken window and the occasional football zinging off the front of our house - the family a few doors down had airgun pellets through their windows, bricks through their front door, their bin emptied all over their garden every day for weeks.. why? because they'd given a statement against one of them, whom they'd seen breaking into a car. And statements have addresses on them (which causes a lot of prosecutions to flounder as people hastily retract it on learning that this is the case.)

Again, it's the rights of the victim being less important than the rights of the criminal. Rights are all very well, but I've always thought rights should be commensurate with responsibilities.

It doesn't strike me as mere coincidence that in Britain the problem of familial breakdown is worse than in comparable countries just as our problems of anti-social behaviour are.

You see, my problem is that statements such as this are tossed around quite casually, but is there actually any evidence that anti-social behaviour is so much worse in the UK than in France? Or Australia, Canada, new Zealand?

No - the British media, however, are a lot more sensationalist. I've been to Marseilles, and as with pretty much anywhere once you get beyond the bright and breezy touristy bits there's as much darkness to it as anywhere else - same goes for Sydney and Melbourne (I've not been but my sister-in-law is from the former), New Zealand has a proportionally huge violent crime rate but seriously downplays it as tourism is so important, and Canada may have a much-vaunted low gun-murder rate but violent crime is hardly non-existent, especially in the larger cities (again I have relatives in Toronto.)

When we lived in New York we didn't feel any more at risk than we had in the UK, to be honest. There were places you didn't want to go, but 99% of the time you didn't need to go anywhere near those places anyway, of which exactly the same is true here.

To be perfectly honest I do not believe that the streets of Britain's towns and cities are any more dangerous than they were in the 70s, 80s or 90s.

I remember my father's best man, a pub landlord, having to board his pub up pretty much every other Saturday in the 70s as his pub lay directly between Temple Meads and Ashton Gate. The football hooliganism thing was today's gang culture writ large and concentrated into a few hours a week. It's all tribal - a sense of belonging. Perhaps that's what's missing in so many fractured families.

 

[jefflovestone]

..could this be the utterly hi-jacked term "respect"? "Famous" people are the only ones who seem to get any these days, so rather than striving to be a policeman or a doctor or an astronaut or (heaven forfend) a teacher, for whom hardly any children (or indeed a number of adults) seem to have any regard or respect, kids instead seem to focus on those who will get some admiration, however misguidedly. I don't think fame in itself is the objective, it's the trappings and the praise that goes with it. And praise is something everyone desires, deep down - and there's precious little of that around these days either.

The problem with politicians and media using the word 'respect' is that I think it's dependent on 'worth' anyway; you need to deem something worthy of respect and give it worth before you respect it.

Generally, I agree with what you've said though.

 

[jefflovestone]

... but it does strike me that most people, young boys particularly, need to feel they can identify with a group and be part of a hierarchy.

IMHO it was ever thus. Teddyboys, Mods, Rockers, Skinheads; there is always a new gang culture ready to replace the last, and the Media loves to scare us with dire tales of flick knives, bike chains guns or whatever.
I see nothing new here, just another fashionable mutation of tribal behaviour, this time based on the American gang model. In a year or two there will be something new to be morally outraged about.

You'r right, the actual premise of youth gangs and unruly groups and individuals is nothing new. Every generation or decade has it's demonised youth figures and hindsight and generation gaps has a habit of making the past just seem that little bit better and little bit rosier. However, what seems to be the big difference is, as I and others have pointed out, it's a matter of how common this is now.

I'm almost 40 and when I was a teenager, people did carry knives, there was stabbings, there was mindless vandalism &c. However, even then, I was aware that this behaviour was always at the extreme end of a spectrum; whilst the bulk of my peer-group were no angels, we were aware there was a marked difference between those who carried and used knives &c. and the rest of us. Now, I'm not so sure. I think what was extreme then and what's practically normal now has somehow shifted. What was extreme behaviour then is seen as less so and almost expected whilst what was the extreme end is now filled with gun crime and harder drugs &c.

 

[jefflovestone]

...

You've seen more decades than i and, accordingly, more variations on the gang culture, but do you really think the current incarnations are nothing new? For me, the body count alone sets them apart. Whereas a solid beating may well have been common, we now have plenty of those plus a growing number of murders committed by young people.

If you'd been listening to BBC Radio4's PM prog. tonight, you'd have heard one commentator point out that crimes of violence involving knives had actually dropped considerably since 1999 and the number of actual serious assaults had stayed about the same.

There's a great deal of 'Silly Season' hype going on at the moment originating from the Media, particularly the Tabloids... According to the BBC.

Any links to these figures. Not doubting you but would like to see what they were actually totting up and how and which areas were covered &c.

 

[stu neville]

The problem with politicians and media using the word 'respect' is that I think it's dependent on 'worth' anyway; you need to deem something worthy of respect and give it worth before you respect it.

You're right - respect is becoming meaningless as a term in common currency. It should, maybe, be admiration tinged with fear* but in a positive way, as it represents something to the greater good of society, or morality, or whatever. Respect among many of the young seems to mean the same admiration/fear mix, but representing something purely about personal gain or that of one's immediate circle only.

*By which I mean fear of sanction, which will be imposed, if accepted ground rules or laws are disregarded.

 

[jefflovestone]

I don't believe we can ever get a fair picture. Crime statistics we know are massaged,

Crime statistics are fudged from the source. A lot of official government figures are compiled from figures sent from magistrates courts and, I know for a fact, that there's pressure on the courts to only submit certain numbers.

But living in the thick of it can tell quite a different story.

I agree whole-heartedly. My own personal experiences vouch for this. I get some form of grief on average 3 or 4 times a week; last night I was threatened by a group of about 20 youths and had pieces of tarmac thrown at me from both males and females alike. In the same street, a few weeks ago, my nephew and his friend had their mobile phones, wallets and even a piece of clothing taken off them.

Last year, in separate incidents, one of my brothers and two friends were all hospitalised due to assaults.

 

[jefflovestone]

I don't think this is anything new - as ArthurASCII has pointed out. I mean, it's not as if we have huge gangs of youngsters knocking the shit out of each other, as was the case with Rockers and Mods - and that was 40-odd years ago!

I think the example you make is an interesting one specifically for the part I've emboldened. I think that's one of the fundamental differences now.

When I was a teenager there were large, organised gang fights were I lived. They could get pretty nasty I know of an incident were someone was knifed and this was over 20 years ago. However, the idea of a group of people as large as that singling out a random individual would have seemed fairly alien to me and people I knew*. To me, that's one of the big differences here.


*I must admit, we actually did this in school but were aware that we were doing so in the confines of what we could get away with at school. The idea of taking a knife to school and stabbing someone would have been madness in the late 70s and early 80s.

 

[jefflovestone]

You don't remember the 1980's then? Riots and Strikes, Mass Unemployment and YOPS kids counting lamposts?

I remember all those things, as well as the 3-day-week of the 70s &c. This is one of the reasons that I think the idea of 'poverty' and standards of living playing a factor in much of today's less pleasant aspects of society is fairly curious.

Or, maybe we've just got older?

*Comte St. Germain face* What do you mean by that, exactly?

 

[stu neville]

I’ve started a new thread rather than continue from the otherin Mainstream News Stories as I believe that it’s a far wider issue than education and I don’t want to derail the existing thread.

..and it's developing into a fascinating one, at that, and given it's themes I've moved it into the Human Condition forum.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

... It's all tribal - a sense of belonging. Perhaps that's what's missing in so many fractured families.

Unfortunately, as with ted_bloody_maul's previous comment about the break down of the family and therefore of social order being less of a problem in many places on the continent, I believe there's a great deal of truth in this.

...

Any links to these figures. Not doubting you but would like to see what they were actually totting up and how and which areas were covered &c.

I did have a good look, last night. Also to see if the programme had been cut into topic sized chunks. Unfortunately, not so far and statistics are a can of writhing eels at the best of times, anyway.

I'm not saying that aren't serious and growing problems with violent youth crime in Britain, or elsewhere for that matter. Every time I pop back, for a week, or two, I have detected a sort of increasing grubbiness and sense of wear in the social fabric of Britain, I must admit.

But, I am saying that if you could take a step back and look at the general tenor and structure of this particular 'moral panic', given its timing in the middle of the Summer and it's similarity to other panics of Yesteryear, you might get an impression that there's a recognisable pattern to it which also points to previous panics and the way in which the media in Britain can whip up a moral outrage.

IMHO. The British Media, especially the Tabloid Press, is like a parasite. The sort that injects poison into its host (in this case British Society), which it uses to break down the hosts blood and weaken it, then it sucks the blood and poison back up again. partially digests it and then injects it back again to repeat the process, until its host sickens and dies. Then it goes off to seek another victim.

The Sun, The Mirror, The Mail and etc. are injecting this poison into British Society (a Society which already fears and mistrusts its unruly young, because many of the old family links and relationships have been weakened, or swept away, in Post Industrial, Post Nuclear Family, Service Industry Britain). Then they point the Disproportionate Finger of Blame at subsections of the Failing Society (this Summer's Scapegoats for the failings of the whole Society) and demand Moral Outrage and that Something Must Be Done. This kind of Tabloidisation of the problems of British Society has been going on for Decades.

Why does it seem to be hitting home harder, this time? Perhaps, because it's not children suffering at the hands of Paedophiles, or being battered by their parents, but adults being attacked by children. If the topic rings the right bells, even the best of us can lose our objectivity and succumb to the hype.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

You don't remember the 1980's then? Riots and Strikes, Mass Unemployment and YOPS kids counting lamposts?

I remember all those things, as well as the 3-day-week of the 70s &c. This is one of the reasons that I think the idea of 'poverty' and standards of living playing a factor in much of today's less pleasant aspects of society is fairly curious.

...

Unfortunately, the 'Poverty Trap', where people can't afford to break the cycle of dependency on social welfare and the increasing polarisation of British Society, as the well off leave the deprived areas of British inner cities and towns to their fates, has led to several generations of institutionally dysfunctional families, where the possibility of upward social mobility has more, or less completely ground to a halt, or gone downhill in reverse.

Nearly Thirty years of just scraping by, at the Bottom of the Social Ladder and no prospect of anything better than Turkey Twizzlers, in sight. That can't be good.

 

[Quake42]

Why does it seem to be hitting home harder, this time?

I think it's hitting home harder this time not because it is adults being attacked by children, but because unlike many of the previous panics (such as predatory paedophiles), most of us have some experience of wha5t the atbloids are on about. Most people have at some stage been intimidated by groups of youths hanging around on street corners, or perhaps experienced youths behaving badly on a bus or train but been too afraid to say or do anything about it.

We also have a curious attitude to childhood in this country I think - children are sentimentalised while they are little but as soon as they hit adolescence the demonisation starts.

There is clearly an issue with behaviour in schools and a lack of respect from teenages to adults generally. The apocalyptic vision of a nation under siege that we are currently being fed by some sections of the media seems, however, wide of the mark.

 

[Quake42]

Unfortunately, the 'Poverty Trap', where people can't afford to break the cycle of dependency on social welfare and the increasing polarisation of British Society, as the well off leave the deprived areas of British inner cities and towns to their fates, has led to several generations of institutionally dysfunctional families, where the possibility of upward social mobility has more, or less completely ground to a halt, or gone downhill in reverse.

Nearly Thirty years of just scraping by, at the Bottom of the Social Ladder and no prospect of anything better than Turkey Twizzlers, in sight. That can't be good.

It isn't as simple as that though and I think blaming it all on "Thatch" is a bit of a cop out TBH. Firstly, many of the families you speak of, while at the bottom of the heap in contemporary Britain have, in real terms, much more wealth than many working people even twenty or thirty years ago. When I was a child my parents worked - albeit not in very well paid jobs - but lookiing back things were a real struggle for them. We lived in a tiny house, ate cheap (although nutritious) food, could not afford holidays etc etc. I don't recall feeling especially hard done by or feeling then need to vent my frustration with my lot by terrorising grannies.

Secondly, some of the "feral youth" we hear about actually come from very affluent backgrounds and poverty - absolute or relative - clearly isn't a factor.

I wonder if there is something in how children are treated from a young age? Parents do seem very reluctant to discipline their kids and I have lost count of the times I have seen children if various ages running amok in pubs and restaurants while their parents simply smile indulgently. Schools similarly find it impossible to discipline kids as in many cases their parents will make complaints if their little darling is punished in any way. It seems almost impossible to expel problem pupils now, whereas in my day it was relatively easy. So children are not taught boundaries when they are small with predictable results once they hit adolescence.