This brings home what the riots are all about...

...people bitching off, blaming the youth of today, immigrants etc etc.

A load of bairns in court today - 'one observation is that there are no parents here'. One kid just been sentenced and doesn't have the bus fare to get home.

So all the fowk bairning abart the kids, have a think. It's the parents that should be up in court. And no doubt that's your generation (or your generation brought them up).

http://twitter.com/#!/SkyNewsOlympic

 

Youths, immigration, unemployment, poor parenting, they have all contributed, it is society in general that is down the drain.

 

It is a lack of acceptance of personal responsibilty that is the problem.

There is an element of society who have been 'mollycoddled' by various governments into believing that they have rights without responsibilities.

It has precipitated a benefit/compensation culture where it is always 'someone else's fault'.

I agree that bad parenting is a significant factor in the problem, but there's always been 'bad parents' trust me I know. The one thing that has changed to me is the total lack of respect in some quarters for any form of authority figures.

I still believe however, that the majority of people in this country and I include every age/ethnic/religious group are decent people who are prepared to work for themselves and their families despite what the media print.

 

The other explanation is that the Police only caught kids because the real crims had buggered off in vans with all the loot two hours before they turned up

 

I think you'll find the response that most of us on here would give when they found out their kids were involved is similar to below.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-14501790

 

Apart from a bloke at work I was arguing with yesterday who said "you can't blame the parents" and how could he control where his kids went!

 

Presumably he didn't see the point that if your kids are brought up properly anyway, there wouldn't be the need to worry what they may be up to?

 

Bugger that ! there's no way that we wouldn't have known. I still ask even though they are in their 20s.

 

I agree that the majority are good, decent folk but there is a significant minority, and it is growing.

 

Unfortunately many of their parents received as sparse a responsible upbringing as their kids now in the dock. The problem goes back much further than the last generation. "Your generation" is a bit of a sweeping assertion. Presumably you wouldn't want to be held responsible for the next generation's faults.

 

It's not that these are bad parents, or even that 'these are bad people'. It's that what has happened in Britain is that a whole slice of our demographic has turned it's back on hope, depth, and the value - or even the possibility - of ever doing or achieving anything of substance and what we are seeing at the moment, on the streets of Tottenham, Enfield et al. is the end product of a nation that has simply given up.

These people would rather choose honest crappiness over a pseudo-civility.

We have quite simply, become a nation of atom-shallow no-hopers who's lives revolve around celebrities, getting rich and Big Brother.

What we are seeing is decades of bad examples and ****** up morals, spilling there way down through society and pooling at the bottom. Who really is to blame? These 'feral rats' that are rampaging through the streets? How about the 'feral rich' that are sitting atop of our society looking down, shaking their heads in disgust and muttering literary nothingness about how this could've happened when they too are to blame for what society has become.

This country still has a huge percentage of people who do believe in a hard days work and who do believe in treating others with respect and dignity.

However, as witnessed, it still breathes with acidic lungs, and falling from the droplets of perspiration are the remnants of a society that has for too long lived a sub-par existence, whilst all about them, footballers and bankers and politicians lie and cheat and get paid really rather handsomely for it.

These people SHOULD know better. What they are doing is terribly, terribly heinous and on the surface, looks like it is being done without justification.

However, if David Cameron, Milliband and all the other 'deities' want a social reform. Then they can't just hope to start at the bottom and stick a big plaster over this terrible wound in history. They have to start at the top. They have to take a long hard look at themselves and others like them, and kick on from there.

This country has what I believe to be something akin to HPV running through its core, only in this instance, it is curable. It can be attacked. However, merely freezing off the visible parts in hope that things will be alright, isn't going to work. It has be eradicated throughout. Otherwise, what hope do we have?

 

Poet, great post and on the whole I agree.

Still think it is easy to 'turn your back' as you say if someone else is picking up the cost.