Sleeping it off on the back seat of the 171 - hopefully. Who was to know whether this was just a casualty of too much good times, or something else? And what response would an offer of help or concern get? According to the general wisdom, anyone can be an enemy. And young people carry knives. So don't get involved. If someone wants to die on the back seat of a bus, what business is it of ours?
So the entire bus from Peckham to Catford simply turned away and hoped for the best.
Assuming again that this was innocent enough, and ignoring any larger condemnations of society for the time being, the more mundane fact is that this spectacle is only possible on the unsocial, greasy ghetto of the top deck of one of Batty Boris Johnson's beloved routemasters.
Downstairs, or on a Bendy Bus, instant peer pressure, facial contact and a diverse passenger list creates a far more social environment, and people tend not to disgrace themselves.
Shame Boris can't learn the same lesson somewhere.
It is a shame that the grimy doings of Ray Lewis and Boris Johnson's cavalier sense of society have managed to partly overshadow the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service.
It is even more shameful that it has distracted from the fact that Britain is a chronically Paedophobic state, which only sees young people as a menace to be defeated as ruthlessly as possible.
The inevitable tactic of the right, when cornered as they are today, is to demand "Well, what would YOU do?"After all, they don't know. The hope being that there is no hope. The implication being that, in this case, the only way to teach children respect is to make them afraid, as embodied in the teachings of The Lewis Cult. The confusion between Respect and Fear is common among petty dictators and tories of every stripe. And naturally, the only remedy within their scope is fear. Teach other people to be afraid of you and they will do what you want them to - whatever that might be.
Nowhere, in the squalid lexicon of right wing so-called 'thought' is the notion that the main beneficiary of sociable behaviour is the person behaving sociably. That Virtue is It's Own Reward. Everywhere, the message is that 'Values must be instilled' in some forceful, no-nonsense manner, by repetitive physical violence if necessary. Tough Love. Lots of shouting and bullying - as in The Lewis Cult. Teach kids that the way to succeed is to be fearsome, and that will stop them carrying knives. It is perhaps Johnson's greatest betrayal of London that he fails to see the absurdity of that infantile proposition.
I realise the reactionary right haven’t got a clue about all this. It is unfair to expect them to. By definition, their primitive anti-social ideology is incapable of understanding how society works, and so cannot be expected to come up with any ideas for making it better – not that they want to, of course. Their objective has never been a better society but a more profitable one for the few greedy, ruthless, selfish, unscrupulous people willing to exploit the disadvantages of others. As this week’s shameful revelations have shown – and co-incedentally, as was also revealed by the story recounted this week of the struggle to establish proper health care in Britain against the concerted and rabid opposition of the tories and their cronies.
So to create a better society, sympathetic to the needs of children and their parents, the forces which are destroying the communities which used to mitigate anti-social behaviour have to be faced down.
- Control the property market.
- Bring the car industry to heel.
- Make the owners of the hate-mongering gutter press pay some tax.
- Provide proper places where young people can meet and learn how to engage with one another and people of different ages.
- Restore community centres to communities, and communities to the people who live in them.
Every community needs a centre. The greedy impatience of the last 30 years has seen most community centres either demolished, sold to the dodgiest con merchants of all - the churches, or converted to luxury housing. The one of the sourest betrayals of all, a Labour Southwark council sold a well-used swimming pool, gym, tennis court and creche, with a distinguished architectural and social heritage, to the highest bidder. This was once known as The Peckham Experiment, and was one of the most advanced, humane pre-war health projects of all. This act of municipal vandalism would have delighted Johnson and the bullying weirdo Lewis, who are incapable of caring about kids because their politics insists that kids must be dominated, not nurtured. That is why we have an underclass of kids who feel that society is their enemy, because politicians like Johnson, Thatcher Blair and the rest ARE their enemies, devoted to suppressing all their natural needs - which are in direct conflict with the most powerful business sectors - and corralling whatever abilities they have in the direction of preserving the political and economic status quo. Of carrying on with the same reactionary social policy that 'We've always done it this way, so we'll carry on doing the same.' Which is the worst excuse for thought in human history.
In the last 60 years, most of Victorian Britain has been finally buried. By 1970 most houses in the country had plumbing, electricity and access to a free painless dentist. The NHS was thought to be one of the last nails in the coffin, as it was. But there is still one task left for any politician seeking to fully provide for Britain that which a ramshackle Victorian Free Market system cannot. Namely, a National Youth Service, to replace the current ragbag of charities, voluntary organisations, local government initiatives, Coca Cola marketing opportunities, religious madrassars of all faiths, and straightforward loony sect leaders and charlatans like Ray Lewis - all failing miserably to deliver any significant results in the battle against the sickness inflicting the young generation - the rulers of the future.
A casual glance will show that the current youth provision landscape as chaotic and devastated as the post-Somme post-Great Depression medical provision which confronted Bevan and Beveridge. It is the job which the Attlee government might have got around to in a second term had it realised that when the bombsites and other free play spaces had been redeveloped, and Britain grown prosperous and frantic once more, that the needs of children would tend to be forgotten, as they have been, with the result that they are now killing each other in London at the rate of about one a week.
Tackling this will provoke just as much opposition and hatred as did Nye's Bevan's Act of Parliament to save the health of the nation from the profiteering quacks and self-appointed quartermasters of national pain and relief, the tory BMA. Any act of parliament will face blatant anti-democratic sabotage, as committed by the medical profession in 1948. So it will take a very large politician to lead such an initiative. And that is the problem.
"Where oh where is he? Where can that man be?"He or she will have to face even more vitriol and lies than did Bevan, if that is possible, given the expansion of the mass media since that time. But whoever it is, they can take hope from events in the most unexpected of places, the deep south of the USA, from the chilliest corners of which Ray Lewis sought inspiration for his doctrine of Marching to Strength, but also where Barack O'bama is now using the power of personal publishing to win in states where jews are traditionally too black.
Kids now have a voice of their own. Some of them, a representative section, are able to voice their concerns and articulate their needs. When confronted with the "harsh voices " raised against improving public health, Nye Bevan only had the "silent voices of the poor" to comfort him. This time, the voices would not be quite so silent - if there are any politicians with Nye Bevan's guts.
Ray Lewis's passport to the unquestioning adulation of the tory party was, as far as anyone can discover, that he was:
a) not afraid to deliver the good old 'Clip Round The Ear' to any child who displeased him, and anyone who does that is fine by your average tory.
And
b) That he had something called 'charisma'. The ability to influence others.
Much nearer the truth is the theory that he was merely a weirdo cult leader who seemed to have had a pathological need to shout and scream at children. Whatever he was really, David Cameron loved him for it. Both seem to be nothing but sad reactionaries who can't tell Respect from Intimidation.
Nye Bevan had charisma and could make things happen. He was a dreamer and a builder. Ray Lewis is just a drab little glory-seeking power-worshipper of the most orthodox kind, as are his tory admirers. If only they were to realise that the NHS started life, not in the learned mind of Beveridge, or the political ambitions of Nye Bevan, but anonymously, on some cold wet Wednesday night in Tredegar in the 1890's, when a resolution would have been passed to establish the Tredegar Worker's Medical Aid Society. There will be minutes somewhere detailing who originally realised that a co-operative effort would provide far more peace, health, relief and happiness than the survival of the economically fittest, as was the delusion at that time. But there is no statue to him or her outside Bart's or King's or across the Thames from Parliament at St Thomas hospital. As is often the case, the nameless and silent are often responsible for far more good than the noisy and famous.
There are a smattering of organisations now which understand the genuine needs of young minds and bodies, and which are fighting a losing battle against the rod-wielding gutter press, determined as ever that pain should always be available as a means of controlling youth. But they can never hope to succeed while they rely on random patronage, and for as long as their methods and ideas remain unmonitored and largely untested.
But in general, the field of 'play provision' is a branch of the construction industry. A cash-cow for a grant-chasing cabal of second rate landscape gardeners with a portfolio of second year BA designs to palm off on gullible councillors and residents' associations over-stuffed with leaseholders - whose only concern is that it doesn't cost them any money, and it takes the sound of children away from their windows. For some reason, children's voices do not add to the value of an ex-Right To Buy property. Shabby little spiv outfits with names like 'Spacewurx' and 'GroundSpace' are all too ready to cover land with great play potential with their bland, dead flatpack solutions. They should be the first to be taken out and shot.
Bernard Crick, the prominent biographer of George Orwell claimed in one of the centenary TV documentaries that Orwell said he would have given up all his literary achievements to have been Prime Minister Nye Bevan's speechwriter in a socialist government. I would dearly love to know the source of that claim. It says everything about two of the greatest Britons ever, both of whom would readily accept that the real work of civilisation is done by the little nameless people of history. Like the people who created the Tredegar Workers Medical Aid Society, even though it was only a matter of self-defence, rather than any great money-making scheme. Perhaps somewhere there is an organisation now at work with young people, and a humanitarian strong enough to champion its vision, which could together do for Britain's neglected and alienated young people what T.W.M.A.S. and Nye Bevan did for the nation's health.
See Also: 'Kiddispoons'
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44300000/jpg/_44300583_thomas_daley2.jpg
How can this boy on the end of a diving board help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of.
It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unemployment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business cabals started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam of manufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Beijing august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and can still run on slavery, as India, the biggest democracy of all, shows.
Beijing Olympics 2008
The report asserts that while financial gain is a common motive for many offenders, the proceeds often spent on "non-essential, status-enhancing" items, much wider forces were influential.
Co-author of the report Trevor Bennett says:
"The decision to commit street robbery can be explained in part by particular characteristics of the street culture...
"This finding is important, because British research has tended to explain robbery in terms of rational choice and to focus instead on the role of cost-reward calculations.
"Our research suggests that any explanation must primarily take into account cultural factors associated with life on the street."
University of Glamorgan's Centre for Criminology Report into Street Crime
On the BBC today, the father of Tom ap Rhys Pryce said he understood that some street robbers were seeking thrills. "We have to try and divert that desire for excitement or kicks or a buzz...into a different direction," stressing the need to "help people who are in a disadvantaged situation... to get educational facilities." saying this "could mean sport or music as well as ordinary academic help so that they can achieve their potential... rather than just wandering the streets".
He has set up a charity to do just that.
Also on the BBC, Camilla Batmanghelidjh, of Kids Company, said street crime was a "systemic problem", adding
"It would be really sad if this report got translated as a bunch of young people robbing for fun. It is not about that.
"It is for 'kicks', but you've have to understand what the 'kick' is. The 'kick' is people who are victims for prolonged periods of time developing a cycle of revenge so that they then get a high from victimising someone else."
The reaction of Tom ap Rhys Pryce is quite amazing, given the prevalent tide of opinion. It is more than mere charity, it is an act of deep understanding. His interpretation of the general conclusions of this report give us all direction.
We live in a vast commercialised bureacracy. It is failing, and the only solutions being offered are those which will merely add to the bureacracy and make it even more inefficient, while doing nothing about the commercial values it promotes. And it is the commercial society which creates the Street Culture which the report uncovers.
We also live in a culture of power and money. Which are essentially the same thing. Together or apart they are the measures of status, either in the boardroom or on the sreet, and once achieved, status tends to excuse the methods by which it was achieved. We don't care how most billionaires got rich, and neither does the culture we live in. All the law really says is: Don't Get Caught. It delivers no incentive to social responsibility whatsoever because a consumerist competitive economy is not a positive force, encouraging people to take pride in being part of a community, but a negative one, urging everyone to clamber over their fellow human beings in order to escape from any resemblance of community and live in encapsulated isolation surrounded by toys, chemicals and sex. Its property laws are therefore only there as a sanction against actions which disturb the commercial process.
Every millionaire alive got rich by winning that Rat race, and every teenager mugging 'for kicks' is simply doing the same thing for the same reasons. The ones who go on to become millionaires, and there will be some, will be forgiven in turn, while their mates, who lost the race, will be known as Losers. Nothing is worse than being branded A Loser. Either in the street or in the boardroom.
Calls for more education, more punishment, 'individual responsibility' and more parenting are, of course, futile. And worse, a distraction. Until people feel genuine community responsibility, the streets will be no safer. And before there can be community responsibility, there has to be a community to feel responsible towards. At the moment, very few people live in a community of any kind.
It is impossible to say how much time and thought and money it will take to create a viable society, in which people are law-abiding because they naturally sympathise with the victim, rather than through fear of punishment, but that is what must be created, and must be started sometime, and to ask how much it will cost is almost to cause it never to happen. The cost of not creating it will always be much higher.
The current approach of blaming anyone in reach is a road to hell, and a further reinforcement of the culture of division which has created the devaluation of human life and values which the report of Professor Trevor Bennett and and Dr Fiona Brookman has highlighted.
THIS COUNTRY HATES CHILDREN Little Richardjohn - 51st post - 1 Sep 2004 17:54
Standards of behaviour, rates of crime, and levels of drug abuse will keep on getting worse until this country decides to spend some money ensuring that kids are not forced to play in the streets.
Simple as that.
We treat kids like Precious Little Angels when we want them to be status symbols, but when they want to be themselves, we treat them like animals. We kick them out into the streets amongst the cars and drug-dealers and then expect them to be Little Lord Fauntleroys.
It is this country's attitude to children that stinks, not the attitudes of the kids themselves. There was a period of five years when my local council's budget on Youth spending was actually zero - zilch. With the result that most kids are completely bored out of their skulls and can't wait to be old enough to be smashed out of their skulls.
It is absolutely no use saying :'Well, I blame the parents.' Parents have no control over their children after the age of fourteen or so - that's the point of being 14 - you are nearly an adult and the less you do what they tell you, the more of an adult you are.
Besides, MacDonalds and the Music Industry have more control over children's attitudes than parents ever do. 'Discipline' is another chimera, another cop-out to avoid spending any money on proper youth facilities which would keep adolescents stimulated and amused. Which would allow them to socialize in a neutral environment which they felt they were in control of in some way and which gave then a greater sense of belonging to a wider community.
What community to kids belong to now? If it isn't dripping with Bling and driving a Porsche they don't want to know. And is it any wonder?
Thanks again Maggie Thatcher, hope the boy gets what he deserves.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
update 15/2/07
"UNICEF report ranks well-being of British, U.S. children last in industrialized world"
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007...pe/EU-GEN-Germany-Child-Welfare.php
Tell us something we didn't know.
But at least it's now official. We hate children most. We are officially the most paedophobic industrialised country.
And is it any wonder? The sole purpose of everything else in our godforsaken consumerist orgy is to bring as much gratification to those who can afford it as possible, so why shouldn't children serve the same purpose? They have become another product, a toy designed to enhance the social standing of the owners and make them feel good about themselves.
They do not represent the future, or even human beings in their own right. If they did, we would treat them as human beings. Our society would see that by wasting the social instincts of the next generation of decision makers, we are committing social suicide. But instead we bow to the needs of our cars and the Property Market by cleansing our streets of children, whenever they appear to be enjoying themselves, or merely being children.
From an early stage, if they are to learn to socialise and feel part of their communities, children need some kind of space, however primitive and improvised, they can call their own. Where they are NOT confined and bossed about at every turn, where they get the chance to negotiate their own rules. The technical term for this process is 'Play'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_%28activity%29
The destruction of communities and the unprecedented consumer spending boom of the last ten years has bulldozed away Play, replacing it with television. There was simply no money in it...
Unless we blame British parents en masse. There is that excuse, I suppose. It seems that catching the ferry from Calais infects every parent with a virus which numbs the sense of nurture in human beings. Shouldn't we try to come up with a vaccine of some kind? Until then, all british parents should be put in prison, perhaps. It's the only way!
kids that do no wrong george nelson - 49th post - 26 Nov 2004 14:34
It would seem the little darlings of Bournemouth have been playing children’s games.
I think it’s called terrorise someone who is defenceless 40 year 10 girls attacking 1 year 11 girl threatening to kill her oh the share bravery of them.
Oh well I suppose it is only to be expected now that there are no restraints on kids.
You better not punish them though else you will end up in court for trying to keep your kid on the straight and narrow road.
Just remember not to scream at them too loud else you might hurt their little feelings oh dear what shall we do?
The funny thing is it’s never your child it’s always someone else’s until the knock on the door comes. [reply] [Complain about this post]
re: kids that do no wrong Rosie T - 802nd post - 12 Dec 2004 15:36
I too was bewildered by this. I live in Holland and I give both lines and detentions. Admittedly, this policy is not approved of by the specialists and school psychologists, who insist that understanding and talking and positive feedback are the only way to deal with bad behaviour.
Biggest problem though is parents. They often write me indignant letters that are twice as long as the lines I gave their child, Lol! [reply] [Complain about this post]
re: kids that do no wrong Little Richardjohn - 434th post - 13 Dec 2004 18:52
So what sort of provision is made by the Dutch state for the street needs of teenagers?
As you probably know, in Britain, we spend almost nothing on keeping pre-adults off the streets. That is their natural habitat before they are old enough to drink. And then they are drunk all the time.
We kick our kids into the streets with the pimps and dealers then expect them to behave like angels.
How much control do you think Dutch parents really have over their kids?
I've noticed that once kids are bigger than their parents (which is happening earlier these days) there is no holding them. I was certainly like that as a teenager, and I had an almost idyllic childhood.
So what do we do? Lock them indoors - UNINVENT TV? Because let's face it, Rupert Murdoch and the other media Gorgons have much more control over children's attitudes than even my parents ever did over me. And that was some time ago now.
Punishment is not the answer. Investment is.
re: kids that do no wrong Rosie T - 814th post - 14 Dec 2004 14:32
Provisions for kids here depends on where you live: plenty of provisions in the areas where there is a lot of crime and vandalism, but very little in other areas.
Personally I think there's nothing wrong in kids hanging around the streets; we did it all the time, and had great fun. Only difference is that we didn't break the law, vandalize or go too far with our mischief, because we were too scared of our parents finding out. Why were we so scared? I was never beaten, it was simply that I was scared of them, they were figures of authority and would give me such a telling off if I misbehaved that it influenced my behaviour. [reply] [Complain about this post]
re: kids that do no wrong Little Richardjohn - 440th post - 15 Dec 2004 12:57
But you're talking about a time before the streets were as full of extremely valuable items of private property (cars) than they are now.
And the streets of somewhere like London were, until about 1978, full of areas of 'waste' ground, derelict land mainly left over from the war and undeveloped because of the economic climate.
Other places had similarly flexible environments.
Kids were able to crate a territorial identity from such places. The whole British adventure playground movement grew out of them.
Then property values increased and they all got built on. From about then, the streets have become a disputed territory between kids trying to socialize and adults trying to protect their property. It's a fatal recipe. [reply] [Complain about this post]
re: kids that do no wrong Rosie T - 828th post - 15 Dec 2004 13:08
That is a very pertinent argument, Richard! Our village is being re-vamped at the moment and a "hanging-around" place for teenagers has been included in the plans. It is in a wooded area behind my house (!) and is to be on a hillock, so the police can keep an eye on it. But I don't think I'd have found this very attractive at their age! You are absolutely right, they do need territory and not more structured "constructive" activity centres where they can be policed by adults.
re: kids that do no wrong Little Richardjohn - 444th post - 15 Dec 2004 13:42
Gratis.
Having had the childhood I did, I weep for kids nowadays.
They are like caged animals.
A canny business operator should seize the gap in the market for a range of 'Kiddispoons' after-school teenypubs. Membership-only, adult supervised, democratically-run, alcohol-free hang-outs where kids between oo.. twelve and 18? could go to pretend to be grown up AND have fun and even do their homework... Think of the joy of not having them under your feet ALL the time and knowing that they were OK. You could even have a webcast on an intranet system to all members' families so that they could be sure of their safety.. and on and on and on.
We simply don't make any INVESTMENT in kids. They are simply future units of production, it seems.
re: kids that do no wrong Rosie T - 835th post - 15 Dec 2004 14:22
"Having had the childhood I did, I weep for kids nowadays.
They are like caged animals"
Me too, Richard. I sometimes tell my enthralled pupils some of the stuff we used to get up to as kids, and the incredulity and envy on their faces is pathetic. [reply] [Complain about this post]
re: kids that do no wrong Little Richardjohn - 451st post - 15 Dec 2004 15:04
So what sort of generation are we (and Rupert Murdoch and other comparable pornographers) creating?
re: kids that do no wrong Rosie T - 839th post - 15 Dec 2004 15:13
I suppose we are simply postponing puberty: they get it "out of their system" at a later stage, when they are students or working and living out of the home. Unfortunately this results in binge drinking, reckless driving, etc. At that age most of us were married or had our noses to the grindstone.:)
re: kids that do no wrong Little Richardjohn - 452nd post - 15 Dec 2004 15:41
It seems that the play deprivation of the Thatcher's children, for instance, has produced a race of people with only two states of consciousness:
Mindless work and wrecked out of their brains.
With maybe just a touch of Big Brother for a hangover cure.
That's life for these poor creatures.
