The Right Stuff

I would like to pass my condolences to the Sqn Ldr and his wife, whose son Tom tried to help a woman out on the train and was stabbed to death by a piece of scum for his trouble.

This kind of selfless act is what we in the Armed Forces should be about, although I am sure there will be those who will say that he should not have got involved. Well, Tom, bless you for caring enough to help - it's just a sad reality that society was not worthy of your sacrifice.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-2202262,00.html

 

asst_dep_to_dep_asst, totaly agree mate , my heart bleeds when I see the state this country is getting itself into .

 

So who is to blame for the state of crime in the Free World-much of it committed by the young?

Is it my generation of pre and during WW11, who raised the children who are now the fathers of present day youth? Did we all spare the rod and spoil the child,or can we just hold our hands up and blame it on the politicians we elected and on the crap on television?

I think society is doing one of its swings and round-abouts. Crime and violence in the 18th and 19 century was rampant, but the general polulation living outside the large towns and cities never heard about it.

We as a whole have lost any sense of responsibility for our actions, so why should we point the finger at our youth. There is little responsibility practiced in the home, none at all in our schools and if a policeman should raise his voice let alone his hand to some gobshite mouthing off it is instantly a big deal, especially if such person should be an immigrant or refugee.

We have all sat back and allowed the things we used to be proud off fall by the wayside. As long as we had a 40 hour week-good wages-24 hour drinking-footie and cricket and sleeze-heh! the world wasn't such a bad place.

But the chickens unfortunately are coming home to roost. Here in Toronto it is now more likely for an innocent to get shot at than it is in New York. Toronto used to be called Toronto the Good, well unfortunately that is history now. When I read about the goings on in your once Green and Pleasant Land it is cause for concern, especially if I read how the wives and sweethearts of your overpaid and over inflated footie team are spending on their shopping sprees in Germany.

I wonder if this is what Winnie Churchill meant when he stated, 'THIS WAS THEIR FINEST HOUR?'

 

Wouldn't argue with any of your points. I believe that the reasons are many, but the biggest is the creeping acceptance of the second class, whether in the law or in education. You will read in other threads on this site that some feel the world owes rights to the despicable perpetrators of violent and sexual crimes, so the Service and ex-Service community contributes as much to falling standards as does the population as a whole.

On the whole, the most important relationship in anybody's development is with their parents and it would appear that very few parents actually have a meaningful, supportive and mentoring relationship with their children any more.

 

There has always been a perception of declining standards and rising crime, but these perceptions are historically problematic. For those of you interested in this line of argument who doubt what I am saying I suggest you read Geoff Pearson's lucid book Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears.

I think there are three significant contributory factors at work here. The first is the increased propensity of the popular press to sensationalise crime. Although they certainly did this in the 18th & 19th centuries, since few read the papers, the information they imparted was less widely disseminated than is the case today. The second reason I attribute is the unwillingness of parents to perform their historic role of taking responsibility for raising their children: teaching them the social norms of the society in which they live and punishing transgression. The third, which is linked in part to the second, is a reluctance in general by the wider community to take their individual & collective responsibilities seriously, instead expecting the police to do it for them. This manifests itself in a number of ways, from failing to support individual initiatives by community minded individuals like forces personnel who intervene to parents themselves who contest third party intervention. I have frequently been taken to task by selfish parents who seems to believe that their children are entitled to vandalise private or public property in say furniture shops, National Trust property or in other people's homes (!) without censure. I intervene because I know that failure to do so will result in these children growing up as delinquents, no matter how middle-class their people are. These are the real problems society faces.

The minor problems society faces are the ones that seem to engender the most panic yet statistically are the least problematic: child abuse is mostly carried out in the home by fathers or close family members/friends upon children, typically most likely daughters and by families that may have lived in an area for years. The media give the impression that the main problem is lone strangers moving into the area - it is not. Paedophiles who are monitored by being on their local sex offender's register are the least likely to reoffend. Those who through experiencing vigilante action go underground (as happened after the News of the World "expose") pose a much greater danger.

The decline in points 2 and 3 noticably set in following Thatcher's assertion that collective duties were to be regarded as subordinate to, and indeed quite possibly subversive of, the notion of individual freedom central to the libitarian Thatcherite philisophy. It is most problematic in the generation colloqually known as Thatcher's children - more so that in the offspring of parents of the 1960s or even the post-WW2 generation, and is very striking. Sadly no political consensus yet exists which seeks to challenge and reverse this ideological subordination of responsibilities to rights, instead of balancing them in order to create a social (and legal) equity in human inter-relations. This is what really needs addressing, not headline grabbing, so-called initiatives, which gain nothing but short-term relief.

 

At least it is not just the UK, I had been back in Bangkok less than 24hrs when I had to put away some gobby Australian who tried to thump me for getting a taxi before him. It does seem to be a great british tradition for thuggery, I am ashamed when I see drunken twots yelling at the top of their voices at pub kicking out time. My view changed years ago after some aggro in Guzz and that is when trouble starts you have to bring it to a hard swift conclusion before you let them hurt you. Just a sad fact of modern life and it won't get any better. Give it another 20 years and it might be like mad max.
Sad about the dead guy though, I hope the little prick that did him gets what he deserves.