by bigmick » Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:55 pm
Andy and Conn make good points, and the reality is of course that a solution such as mine is probably 50 years away from coming to pass. I do think though that we run the risk of over analysing problems sometimes.
Yes I'm fully prepared to accept that the fact that these lads are brought up in down trodden circumstances, often from broken homes and with little or no hope in life has a direct impact on the direction they are going to take. There is no question that they have been dealt a bum hand, and that they seek position, notoriety, power and "respect" in the same sense that most post people do, only they go about it an entirely different way. Sociologists and acedmics though can knock themselves out all they like pontificating about the why's, the wherefores and the "do you mind if I don'ts", society has a duty to ALSO address the here and now problems.
On these estates, the vast majority of people are hard working, honest folk who wish to go about their normal business peaceably. Their children are potentially anything they desire to be given a break or two, and every parent has the right to dream of the best for their kids regardless of social background or group. When you have this cancerous element though swaggering around the place, infecting everyday life to the extent that people are afraid to go out of their homes, kids heads are turned away from more conventional means of earning money (going to school/work etc) and more onto drugs, gangsterism and the rest, something major has to be done.
Make absolutely no mistake about this, if the gangs were having an effect on kids in Chelsea, Kensington, Hampstead, the boys of Eton, Harrow and the like, something would be done and fecking sharpish. Because though it's the working class kids who are falling by the wayside, or kids from ethnic backgrounds, feck all is done about it. It's the people on the estates who have to put up with the grief, and have to put up with the fact that their kids have a significantly higher chance of going wrong than would otherwise be the case. Liberals jump up and down whenever solutions are muted, but they back the wrong horse I'm absolutely certain of that.
Nobody could pretend that the recent anti terrorism laws which have been rushed through are fair, they aren't. Nobody could pretend that they aren't open to abuse by the authorities, they are and the authorities make full use of the apportunity I should think. The ends though justify the means, and if it prevents a bunch of radicals from blowing up buses and trains, killing hundreds of innocent people then it's a price well worth paying. Yes you're occasionally going to get a horror story of some young bloke who came into the radar and was entirely innocent, but oce again it's unfortunate but entirely a price worth paying. It's the same thing with attacking the gangs head on, yes the "rule of law" as we know it may become more blurry than we have known or would like in an ideal situation, but the law-abiding decent people deserve a solution, and they deserve it now.
Socialologists have pontificated for years and Societies throughout the World have become more lawless not less. My argument is let them muse over the problems, the "roots' of crime, but in the meantime lets clear the streets of bad apples, before more innocent young kids are sucked into the whirlpool of wrongdoing.
A good example of what I'm talking about is when people talk about "prison not working". Well it works in the short term. Nobody to the best of my knowledge has ever molested a kid while they've been inside, or commited a rape (of someone of the opposite sex anyway) while they've been inside either. Acedemics and guardian readers have had the playing field to themselves on law and order for 30 years, it's high time we had some common sense I think.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".