Welcome to New Labours Britain

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

What do you expect when you institute a massive welfare state that teaches people to rely on the state for everything, and never, ever tells them they are in the wrong about anything, that its always somebody else's fault?

That people would be virtuous and hard working?

Crazed Rabbit

What on earth are you talking about? Wherever you're describing, it isn't Britain.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Ok, ok, I was using a wee bit of hyperbole. /sarcasm off

My point, lost, apperently, in the hyperbole, was that kids need to work so they can learn responsibility, and need to be told some things are wrong. You can't give handouts and avoid criticism and expect responsibility and morality. Otherwise, some'll be deliquent tramps and do disgusting stuff like vandalize funeral processions.*

Crazed Rabbit

*NOTE: This is a gross generalization.

[English assassin]

Ok, ok, I was using a wee bit of hyperbole. /sarcasm off

My point, lost, apperently, in the hyperbole, was that kids need to work so they can learn responsibility, and need to be told some things are wrong. You can't give handouts and avoid criticism and expect responsibility and morality. Otherwise, some'll be deliquent tramps and do disgusting stuff like vandalize funeral processions.*

Crazed Rabbit

*NOTE: This is a gross generalization.

The Rabbit's right. Its called moral hazard. With the best will in the world, you provide welfare so that, say, people who lose their jobs get tided over 'til they find another one. The trouble is people adjust their behaviours as a result. Next thing you know people are thinking life's not so bad on the rock and roll, especially since there's always a few cash in hand jobs to be found.

(NB before anyone asks, I do know what its like and I know its not all Dom Perignon. I also know if you grow up in my part of London your only chance to get a home is either to be very well paid or to be unemployed and preferably pregnant. If you can manage a mental illness and not speaking English that would be better still. Together with means tested benefits that ensure you are no better off in a lowly paid job, oops I mean that redistribute wealth to the most needy, there is a huge moral hazard. I regularly see people whose family live locally, who grew and went to school here, who have a job like, say nursery nurse or shop assistant, and who cannot for the life of them understand why they will never get a council flat whereas if they were unemployed they would be tiop of the list. nor can I.)

Mind you I don't think the welfare state is responsible for teenagers throwing stones, but a culture where if a policeman asks them what they are doing they are off down the Police Complaints Authority bitching about harrassment is.

[Al Khalifah]

What do you expect when you institute a massive welfare state that teaches people to rely on the state for everything, and never, ever tells them they are in the wrong about anything, that its always somebody else's fault?

Oh you forgot makes all your decisions for you and spends as much of your money for you as possible on inefficient public services that you rarely use.

They'll probably just get ASBOs.

On the subject of ASBOs and the like, I was disapointed to see on my return to God's Own Island that a group of losers have been given them to stop them from hanging around infront of our local Tesco Express because they were harassing people. So now they hang around in a dark public underpass, harassing people.

Well done Tony, an inspired suggestion, move your problems to another place in the hope they'll go away.

[Adrian II]

Mind you I don't think the welfare state is responsible for teenagers throwing stones (..)

How refreshing.

(..) but a culture where if a policeman asks them what they are doing they are off down the Police Complaints Authority bitching about harrassment is.

Right you are; they should have their f****** faces bashed in before being booked on trumped up charges. That'll teach them.

[BDC]

Nothing to do with the welfare state, we have had it for nearly 60 years, and this is a pretty modern thing.

[Idaho]

Nothing to do with the welfare state, we have had it for nearly 60 years, and this is a pretty modern thing.

No it's not. It's as old as the hills. Plato used to grumble about the rowdy and disrespectful youth. Why do you think Moses made it one of the commandments to respect your mother and father? Because mom and pop were no doubt getting dissed too much even back then.

[Duke Malcolm]

We youth have just got worse in recent years... Rock music and the Euro Techno dance trance stuff is probably what caused it...

[English assassin]

Right you are; they should have their f****** faces bashed in before being booked on trumped up charges. That'll teach them.

..."its the only language they understand"...

I think there is probably a half way house between unrestricted police brutality and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC writing why oh why articles before popping down to the old Bailey and pulling in £50 grand of taxpayers money defending murderers, don't you?

But, I'll bite. There was no evidence in the Indy story that the boy WASN'T a rapist was there. Or a robber. if you are a policeman and you see people waling the streets who got off on serious charges, and you reckon they did it (and generally when the police prosecute they do reckon the person did it) it can't be easy can it? And if I was free to start a tape recording when I liked I bet I could get the Archbishop of Canterbury on tape calling me a [merchant banker] if I'd sworn at him enough before I pressed record.

(Well, OK, not the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the Bishop of Oxford would be a cert. Just tell him you believe in God and think homosexuality is a sin, press record and listen to the expletives fly.)

[Adrian II]

I think there is probably a half way house between unrestricted police brutality and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC writing why oh why articles before popping down to the old Bailey and pulling in £50 grand of taxpayers money defending murderers, don't you?

So murder suspects have a right to legal defense in your country? Tsk tsk, what is the world coming to?

Oh look, now Japan has gone socialist!

Erm, just between you 'n me, English Assassin: you don't suppose yobbism has anything to do with capitalism and consumerism tearing up the social fabric of otherwise decent societies, do you?

[King Henry V]

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think now is the time to bring back corporal punishment, starting with a flogging in the public square. The wounds shold then be rubbed with salt, then lemon jiuce. Then we would have some order!

[English assassin]

Actually the case I was thinking of was a so called "cut throat defence", where Baroness Kennedy, well known doyen of the liberal left, was acting for one of three scumbags. Said scumbags were all present at the beating and stabbing to death of a victim, but what do you know, each scumbag swore he was just standing there while the other two got busy with the knives.

So of course each one of them had to be separately represented at huge expense by QCs, who went home each night to their million pound houses, who would never been seen on the estates where these gangs rule, but who are only too happy to write long articles in the Guardian saying how terrible the breakdown in society is how its all the fault of capitalism, and how we ought to be much nicer to the yobbos.

Meanwhile the people who actually have to live with the yobbos just want them locked up, if not taken down to the canal and shot.

In the end of course the three were all convicted, because juries aren't totally stupid. And yes of course murderers have to have a defence, even Hitler would have to be defended if he turned up. But be honest isn't there something in this story that just slightly sticks in the throat? Other than the knives wielded by Ms Kennedy's clients I mean.

you don't suppose yobbism has anything to do with capitalism and consumerism tearing up the social fabric of otherwise decent societies, do you?

You know, everyone laughed when GW said he thought the cause of crime was criminals, but when you think about it there's a lot to that. (It helps if you releate to it as something like a haiku, I find). Yobbism has a lot of causes. Some of them, with my JAG hat on, are in the hands of society and need to be removed. You can't ask a 14 year old boy to work hard and pass his exams if he thinks its going to make no difference to him if he does or he doesn't. Some yobs come from a terrible background and know no better, though that may not be much consolation to you as they kick your head in. But ultimately in most cases the yob has made a choice; shall I be nice or shall I be nasty? And its not capitalism that makes him choose to be nasty.

Oh and BTW I agree with whoever it was said this sort of thing has been going on for a very long time.