Two quotes of the day:

If your parents smoked pot at Uni (and maybe worse) and regularly drink heavily and give you loads of money and let their daughters dress like mini Paris Hilton’s and sleep around and use the ‘F’ word in the house and watch porn on the internet and never go to church …then they will piss on war memorials. [P. Knightley]

I think Ian Blair should also have pointed out that the British are the number one nation for overstaying visas in Australia. The second place? The Americans. Also, Australia has to spend over $20 million a year topping up the pensions of elderly Britons living in Australia because they don’t match their Australian counterparts. This has been a sore point between Australia and the UK for years because Britain refuses to increase the pensions. [Elisabeth Oscar]

Leaving the Blair statement about Antipodaeans to one side as a bit moronic, the fact remains that both countries have appalling drinking habits in the young.

Don’t get me wrong – we got plastered and raucous in university days ourselves and I do seem to recall once waking up on a beach at a literature camp with some girl beside me so is there any clear water between us then and the young now?

In terms of drinking – no.  In terms of drinking well – yes.  The Telegraph writer confused two issues – the lack of a cafe society culture in a yob society and she’s right and then there is the binge drinking issue, which is more properly called the utter disrespect issue.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to realize that youth is out of control to an extent not really seen before, even though British history shows that the yob culture has been around for a long time.  Wiki says, about Hillsborough:

Hooliganism was particularly virulent in England, where it often involved pitch invasions, the throwing of missiles, or both pre- and post-match violence; the Heysel Stadium Disaster is a prominent example, where Liverpool fans themselves were involved. Because of these security standards, English stadia had a history of crushes since the 1960s.

America spawned the Ramones, the UK spawned the Sex Pistols.  There’s always been something a bit more vicious about the pale-faced, trousers half-mast British hooligan and “We Don’t Need No Educashun” came from a British band, not an American.  America’s large cities like New York and Chicago were a different matter of course.

There’s always been a gulf in this country between the adult world which gets on its high horse and lectures, as represented by teachers [who've these days overcompensated] and unruly youth.  There’s also been boredom for the youth.  American youth went surfing and sunbathing while British youth did football, drinking and fighting.

And yet it does seem worse now.  P. Knightley above is not far off the truth although the going to church bit I’m not so sure about – sitting on a pew does not, in itself, a saint make.

It seems to me that it’s a case of percentages.  What percentage of youth are the Hillsborough type and what percentage – average youth who get into a bit of hijinks but basically respect their surroundings?  I bicycle back each day past children going home after school and they’re in the supermarket too.  They seem basically fine, apart from the foul language.

Against that, an ultrachav and I both reached the same door at the same time, not so long ago and I can tell you that if that had happened in my part of Russia, she would have slightly paused and let the older person go through.  This one snarled, “Ju mind?” and gave me a look which required a brick to wipe off, before continuing on at a stately pace, with a grin on the face.  Total impunity.

Again, in Russia, if that had happened, a babushka would have come up and severely dressed that girl down for her manners.  Here, several people nearby raised their eyes to the ceiling and one or two others barged by us in their helter-skelter haste to buy their products.

As government stats in the UK are works of creative fiction and anecdotal evidence like this might not be typical, how can we know how bad the problem actually is?  I’d say endemic.  There’s an overall demeanour, a swaggering “you can’t touch me, you old f—er” I’m seeing everywhere I go now, which I don’t think was about in 1996 – not to this extent.

Solution?  No one wants to get to the root cause – the lack of moral code taught by parents and teachers and the “throw the hands up in despair’ mentality of the adults whilst facilitating, with money, laxness and the “out of sight, out of mind” attitude to their offspring who know how to play the aggrieved card to a tee.  As one commenter at the Telegraph said – what can you expect when the parents themselves were brought up with no respect?

My side of politics is wont to utter the word Discipline but one word does not a policy make.

It starts with the parents and their willingness to discipline, not with harshness, not with the “if you don’t eat yer pudding, you can’t have any meat” or “upstairs without no supper” but with the old military maxim “fair, firm and friendly”.

Every teacher of that old school, provided he/she loved the kids, never had discipline problems I ever saw.  The kids had boundaries and were cared for within those boundaries.  The boundaries were elastic and yet they existed in the kids’ minds.  I saw a grandfather one day and the toddler granddaughter ran up to the road, stopped, turned and then, looking straight at the grandfather, she put one foot back onto the road, to see the reaction.

She clearly knew the boundary, the rule, even though she was testing it out.  How many know any boundaries or rules today?

Perhaps this girl, when she becomes a mum [and not a welfare-dependent, single teenage mum], will apply the same rules to her son and daughter; perhaps this will be repeated across the land in countless households, perhaps the Judaeo-Christian ethic might seep back in, under another name.

There seems little chance the situation’s going to be retrieved any other way.

Filed under: Life issues & people