Riots

[Anna]

Please don't blame the schools for the inadequacy of some parents.

No, indeed not but if the parents are inadequate shouldn't the schools bring the parents in during lessons for them to observe and teach them how to help their children at home? That wouldn't involve after hours activities. My niece is in a Lancashire junior school dealing with children with learning difficulties, specifically language problems due to hearing difficulties or difficulties with English. Yet again she won't know until the end of this month whether she has a job for the next academic year due to Council cuts. As she says, how can she abandon these children who she has nurtured for the last couple of years, it's not right to just let them slip through the net

[scottycelt]

I would go so far as to state that the culture surrounding football matches is the single most pernicious influence in society today. Five minutes watching the average game will convince you that there is no respect for authority among players, managers and spectators alike. Can we be surprised that this spills over into society at large with the inevitable outcome we are now witnessing?

Although I'm a football fanatic, I believe there is some truth in what you say, but your use of the word 'single' is rather OTT?. Alas, there has always been a yob spectator element attracted to 'the beautiful game' (though I suggest that has a lot more to do with local and national tribalism than the game itself), but in previous eras managers kept their distance from controversy and players generally were conscious of not setting a bad example to youngsters.

However, if we are looking for principle root causes for the recent thuggery and looting, and other problems in society, I suspect that widespread drug-taking and the need to feed the habit has played a much larger part.

After all, we are already regularly informed by the police that this is the principle cause of much crime, especially burglaries, knife and gun offences.

But how to stop or even reduce it, and then we're back to a quite separate and just as problematic discussion already well-aired on these boards ..

[Panjandrum]

Please don't blame the schools for the inadequacy of some parents.

The deeper root cause is surely the inability to enforce discipline or inculcate the need for discipline and social responsibility in parents and would-be parents. While I am, au fond a libertarian, the withdrawal of benefits from the parents of those found guilty of these or other criminal acts could be a start on the right track.

[Panjandrum]

Although I'm a football fanatic, I believe there is some truth in what you say, but your use of the word 'single' is rather OTT?. :

By "single" I meant the most important factor, rather than the only one, in the sense that football is the most significant aspect of many young men's lives. Consequently, the behaviour they witness (and participate in) on the playing field and terraces has an enormous influence on them. There are, of course, other factors at work and to suggest otherwise would be overly simplistic.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yes Panjandrum and would you accept that the lack of discipline applies in the senior levels of the cabinet in this government [BSkyB Murdoch discussions] [several nasty spins in the Brown Blair reigns] ... the Met Police [NI relationships and cash for stories, indulging preferences on sus stops, sickies ] and the City [insider dealing, speculation and the usual run of casino and the bonus culture] ... there is a strong sense of entitlement without responsibility in many boardrooms as well, not to mention the BBC ....

i find that nothing in what you, or any other of the 'moral responsibility' school of thought making statements, say that can be uniquely applied to the kids and others looting and rioting .... if there is a malaise it is one they share with all other elements of society ... just as there are many youngsters living on ghetto estates with dysfunctional families who d not break the law .... circumstance is a great driver of human behaviour and i think that we shall come to see that the events unfolded from Saturday - peaceful protest and witness sparked into riots and some looting into organised riots and looting on a growing opportunistic basis through Tuesday and Wednesday ... with gangs, contagion and competition all fuelling disorder ... it is not that 'they' are sick, we are sick; not 'they' are criminal, we are .... and we do little effective to reform and hold responsible those who exploit system to their own benefit ... as a middle rank policeman said on the news about the Met leadership .. "it is supposed to be Public Service, not Self Service" he was referring to how they reward themselves [one could add that the salaries of local government senior executives are well beyond their just deserts ... is this not a form of greed and criminality?]

i am not arguing that policing the streets and arresting the criminals is not an absolute priority, but punishing them will not offer much in the way of improvement, and the only moral improvement that will really work is one that we all have to adopt ... it sometimes strikes me that the greatest sin of the rioters is to disturb our blithe ignorance of how they live while we pursue our own lives ... how dare they interrupt?


btw not my list just my reference ... two criminologists produced it for BBC i thought it was a handy little list ...

[Mahlerei]

Having watched today's Parliamentary debate and listened to the endless loop of moral outrage and self-righteous posturing I am struck by the hypocrisy of a House that has little right to use words like 'responsibility' and phrases like 'the differenec between right and wrong'. And then for Macaroon to box it all up, dump it on the estates and call 'them' sick is, frankly, sick-making in itself. As calum says, the malaise is everywhere, from crooked politicians, bankers and tax evaders to scroungers and benefit cheats. And I heard some pompous twit going on about role models, too. Where are they I wonder? It's not just about absent fathers but about corrupt politicians, police and football 'stars' who earn and squander obscene amounts of money (when they're not fighting in the streets or shafting their friends' wives or girlfriends).

I didn't think today's Parliamentary would yield anything useful, and it didn't. A parliament of fowls, clucking and squawking, beady eyed, sharp beaked and essentially aimless. Depressing.

[Serial_Apologist]

Nice idea, Anna, but many parents couldn't care less and certainly wouldn't attend.

And of course often impracticable, with both parents out at work

[Anna]

As calum says, the malaise is everywhere, from crooked politicians, bankers and tax evaders to scroungers and benefit cheats. And I heard some pompous twit going on about role models, too. Where are they I wonder? It's not just about absent fathers but about corrupt politicians, police and football 'stars' who earn and squander obscene amounts of money (when they're not fighting in the streets or shafting their friends' wives or girlfriends).

But Mahlerei, as I asked before, aeons of posts ago, what is the difference between those on the estates in similar circumstances, deprivation, no fathers, etc., who don't loot? What stops them, what makes them study, want to make a life for themselves? Now, if the politicians could find out why, we may get somewhere as what needs to be done. I don't like all youngsters being tarred with the same brush

[Panjandrum]

But Mahlerei, as I asked before, aeons of posts ago, what is the difference between those on the estates in similar circumstances, deprivation, no fathers, etc., who don't loot? What stops them, what makes them study, want to make a life for themselves?

Personality counts for something here obviously. Throughout history there have always been those endowed with more than the average amounts of testerone, bellicosity etc. We can't expect everyone to behave the same in every circumstance, but only that their range of behaviour will fit between certain parameters or "norms". Some will no doubt feel scared and disgusted by the violence: others will be attracted.
That's a fact.

[Serial_Apologist]

Personality counts for something here obviously. Throughout history there have always been those endowed with more than the average amounts of testerone, bellicosity etc. We can't expect everyone to behave the same in every circumstance, but only that their range of behaviour will fit between certain parameters or "norms". Some will no doubt feel scared and disgusted by the violence: others will be attracted.
That's a fact.

I fall rather into the brutalisation explanation. Sure, small children can be often seen bashing each other, squabbling over possessions - a subject in itself, ahem! The small child, endowed by nature with survival mechanisms, is enculturated by the values of those around him or her. My own view however is that, for the child to develop into the disturbed individuals for whom violence is a welcome thrill, some kind of brutalisation has to take place, whether it be physical punishment or repeated humiliation.

[Pianorak]

. . . I do know, as children, we were taught not to swear, lie or thieve both by our parents and by the school, the penalty being a clip round the ear. . .

I think the rot began to set in with the abolition of the "clip round the ear" which in one fell swoop emasculated the whole teaching profession and the police force. Anti-authoritarianism was the watch word from then on. And as Simon has pointed out, in my view correctly:

. . . However, the real root causes of most of society's ills - these riots included - lies with a) the philosophy of rights becoming more important than responsibilities and b) the lack of boundaries to freedom. . .

[Simon]

But Mahlerei, as I asked before, aeons of posts ago, what is the difference between those on the estates in similar circumstances, deprivation, no fathers, etc., who don't loot?

Most of us know exactly the difference is, Anna - but you won't get an answer from Mahlerei - it's an inconvenient fact that doesn't fit in with his worldview... !

[Serial_Apologist]

I was subject to frequent corporal punishment at school, by prefects and masters, often for the slightest of transgressions, often without explanation. It probably gave much satisfaction, sadistic, sexual or both, to the dealers in it; anyway it probably did more than anything else to turn me into, first, an anarchist, then a communist (small c). It turned another lad into the savagest bully, out to exact revenge on anyone smaller than himself he could lord it over. I didn't have his physical build, and so had to choose another route. My favourite film remains Lindsay Anderson's "If" (1968), for its near-exact portrayal of the sub-fascist kind of regime that probably existed in most if not all public schools in England in the 1950s and '60s.

No doubt it also shaped many who came to run politics in this country at the time of Thatcher, and their benighted offspring.

[Panjandrum]

My own view however is that, for the child to develop into the disturbed individuals for whom violence is a welcome thrill, some kind of brutalisation has to take place, whether it be physical punishment or repeated humiliation.

I don't disagree with you. When I refer to a need for "discipline" I do not mean corporal punishment, which perpetuates the cycle of violence.

[Mahlerei]

But Mahlerei, as I asked before, aeons of posts ago, what is the difference between those on the estates in similar circumstances, deprivation, no fathers, etc., who don't loot? What stops them, what makes them study, want to make a life for themselves? Now, if the politicians could find out why, we may get somewhere as what needs to be done. I don't like all youngsters being tarred with the same brush

Anna

Yes, there are some who defy the odds and come out of the swamp but I can only imagine how difficult that must be in an environment where learning is held in such low esteem. Conversely, my son has a number of friends from well-off middle-class families who are frittering their lives away in a haze of weed and worklessness, despite getting all the opportunities others would kill for. No easy answers, it seems.

On the thorny issue of schools and the clip around the ear I think it's shortsighted to think that is/was in any way healthy or character building. Growing up in a (boarding) school system modelled on the British exemplar, where caning and random battery was the norm merely made me resent authority and despise bullies even more. Humiliation was merely the physical manifestation of an uncommunicative and domineering authority structure.