Riots

[Serial_Apologist]

OK then, Honey (on the sofa)

[ahinton]

SA is right as far as this goes, but it isn't as simple as that, and it shouldn't be used as an argument against physical punishment of an appropriate nature, which the LIbs often try to do. Nobody wants to revert to the Victorian horrors of schools, but the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.

Children need limits - it makes them feel secure - and when these are absent, or vague, or changing, the security disappears. Add to this a diet of not really appropriate media output and possibly absent or uncaring parents, and the resulting need for attention can lead to just the sort of behaviour that can result equally from physical brutality.

Show me an unbiddable child and I'll show you a family that is in some way dysfunctional, whether it is a rich one or a poor one in economic terms.

As to both parents going out to work - well, I'm afraid I'm old-fashioned on that one. Babies need their mothers, and that's an end of it. Just because parents want a bigger house, or two new cars, or all the latest gadgets on credit, and can't afford them without both working, has meant that so many young children suffer - not wickedly, but in terms of deprivation of affection and family presence.

Yes, the liberal ideal means that we should all be able to have what we want, when we want it, by right, whether we can afford it or not, and to hell with the consequences of people who suffer along the way, including our children.

But the moral ideal says "hang on, let's wait till we can afford it, and let's grow together with fewer material things but within the bounds of a loving family that eats, lives and talks together. And if that means that one of us has to stay at home till the kids are a bit older, then one of us will do so."

I'm sorry, Simon, but your attempts at rationality still reveal unwarrantable and unwelcome insensitivity. Many young people simply do not have access to two parents much if at all, for reasons quite other than the need for each of those parents to go out to work at all hours just so that they can afford two iPhones and other less than direly necessary trappings of present-day societal expectation; many such children have divorced or separated parents or parents who, whilst still living together, have each to go out to work at all hours just in order to keep a roof over their own and their children's heads and fund their children's state education (which doesn't come cheap, let alone "free at the point of sale"). If some of these people said to themselves "hang on, let's wait till we can afford it, and let's grow together with fewer material things but within the bounds of a loving family that eats, lives and talks together" - a worthy ideal indeed, don't get me wrong - they'd never be able to fund those basic necessities of a roof over their heads, the food to eat and the education and healthcare that they need, never mind the so-called "luxuries". And how will these parents manage in later life without the pensions that they were led to expect that they might have in order to help fund the retirements that they'll be unable to afford to have, especially when, at what might otherwise have been their retirement ages, they're worried sich about how to help out with their children's massive university debts and their inability to put down a deposit on a modesthome, let alone qualify for and be able to service a six-figure mortgage thereon?

On top of all of that, your so-called "diet of not really appropriate media output" is something to whose eternal presence you and everyone else has to get accustomed because it's there but which you and others have the ability to decide either to accept or reject or take in its appropriate stride - and, frankly, woe betide anyone who does otherwise! We're not so far off the time when people will be able to hack into one another's brains and perceive and report their thoughts as they occur, just as they can now hack into people's phones, computer systems, back accounts et al, so please don't give us all this 19th century nonsense! We're all going to have to get used to all that and learn to manage it appropriately (or fail to do so at our peril). One thing that people like you seem to fail to take on board is the fact that, where some people might say "it was different in my day" (whatever that's supposed to mean, if anything at all), what we must recognise (or, once again, fail to do at our peril) is that what we all encounter may well be quite substantially different by next Monday, never mind at some indeterminable point during the next decade or later.

[Serial_Apologist]

Simon may not still be here for that, ahinton - maybe he's a figment of his own imagination right now.

[french frank]

Thinking back to my childhood, sort of middle middle class, living in a secure but not affluent comfort, as children we didn't have much because there wasn't much to have. An interesting factor is the way the definition of poverty has changed. Some people are classified as poor who would be in not very different circumstances from ours. I had hand-me-down clothes and in the summer the toes were cut out of our sandals so that they lasted out the season. But there wasn't any shame in that because all kids had the toes cut out of their sandals. In our village school, from the doctor's children to the farm labourer's children, there wasn't any noticeable difference in our obvious material circumstances - no expensive clothes or gadgets of any sort.

Now, people feel there's an injustice in having to live without what 'everyone else' has. And there's so much to have. There's a need to keep up. There's a younger generation that spends so much of its time with its peers, they have their own shared culture in a way we never did and it is hugely based on fashion(s) to belong. Of seeing what others have and buying it too. Seeing what other people's kids have and making sure your kids have them because the culture demands it. The children will be at a disadvantage, perhaps be ridiculed, if they don't have the required gear.

What I really don't know - because I have no experience of it at all - is how poor is 'poor'? How much resentment is based on a 'real' 1950s 'poverty' and how much on the values of the market-driven consumerist world in which the young are now brought up?

Education is another matter ...

[Mr Pee]

And a good starting point would be an exercise in talking to and listening to the very people involved, the victims and the perpetrators.

Half right, amateur, which is pretty good for you. We should indeed talk with and listen to the victims. As to the perpetrators, they have foregone such niceties.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thinking back to my childhood, sort of middle middle class, living in a secure but not affluent comfort, as children we didn't have much because there wasn't much to have. An interesting factor is the way the definition of poverty has changed. Some people are classified as poor who would be in not very different circumstances from ours. I had hand-me-down clothes and in the summer the toes were cut out of our sandals so that they lasted out the season. But there wasn't any shame in that because all kids had the toes cut out of their sandals. In our village school, from the doctor's children to the farm labourer's children, there wasn't any noticeable difference in our obvious material circumstances - no expensive clothes or gadgets of any sort.

Now, people feel there's an injustice in having to live without what 'everyone else' has. And there's so much to have. There's a need to keep up. There's a younger generation that spends so much of its time with its peers, they have their own shared culture in a way we never did and it is hugely based on fashion(s) to belong. Of seeing what others have and buying it too. Seeing what other people's kids have and making sure your kids have them because the culture demands it. The children will be at a disadvantage, perhaps be ridiculed, if they don't have the required gear.

What I really don't know - because I have no experience of it at all - is how poor is 'poor'? How much resentment is based on a 'real' 1950s 'poverty' and how much on the values of the market-driven consumerist world in which the young are now brought up?

Education is another matter ...

Ah, but where would you be, without your computer, FF? (And where would WE be???) Do you have a car?

[french frank]

Do you have a car?

No, it was stolen on March 16, 2011

[scottycelt]

Well, whether you throw them out on the street, force them into further crime to support themselves or lock them up in prison, your taxes are going to have to support them. And one way or the other, you'll pay for all the damage they cause too. We'd better get our thinking caps on to come up with a more effective way than that of spending our money on them, hadn't we?

Absolutely, if ever there was a self-defeating, unthinking, emotional knee-jerk reaction it is this one, though news like the death this morning of the 68-year old man, who tried to put out a fire before being attacked, can make the rest of us automatically cry out for vengeance. However, throwing the criminal and his family out onto the streets is hardly likely to improve matters for the rest of us.

Every criminal should be given the chance of redemption so that if he/she truly wishes to reform they have the opportunity to do so. That is, of course, after they have been given the most appropriately severe sentence for the crime(s) committed.

However, when they eventually emerge from prison, employers, quite naturally, will not exactly be falling over themselves to offer jobs, so I think there is certainly a case for the State to demand some form of continuous community work (removing graffiti, etc) before any social security payments are provided.

If this ultimately costs the taxpayer even more money then so be it. We have to live in this real, often unfair, world not some imaginary Utopia where the 'goodies' always end up completely in control of events.

[Sydney Grew]

. . . some imaginary Utopia where the 'goodies' always end up completely in control of events.

There is still hope though - fast forward five hundred years into the future when we will be governed by incorruptible and absolutely fair robots. That's the way is it not.

[scottycelt]

There is still hope though - fast forward five hundred years into the future when we will be governed by incorruptible and absolutely fair robots. That's the way is it not.

It all depends on which set of humans will be organising and implementing the robot-programming, Mr Grew ... ?

[amateur51]

If this ultimately costs the taxpayer even more money then so be it. We have to live in this real, often unfair, world not some imaginary Utopia where the 'goodies' always end up completely in control of events.

Glad you called it an 'imaginary Utopia', scotty - or else I was going to ask for details

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

We have to live in this real, often unfair, world not some imaginary Utopia where the 'goodies' always end up completely in control of events.

But we can all try to make things better than they are.

[Mr Pee]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html

[scottycelt]

But we can all try to make things better than they are.

Well, er, yes, of course ... isn't that what we are all aiming for despite our wide differences of opinion .. ?

[amateur51]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...ial-value.html

i can't imagine that there are any knees left to jerk in London W8 after that tirade

Just one sentence will suffice: "Repairing this terrible damage also means, dare I say it, a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality"

Great stuff, Mel!