Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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Spin, not
face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's
chosen method of communication. Ordinary
people are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question
which throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member
might reveal himself or herself to be a human being like
us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she
might tell the truth.
Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September
16, 2004
Discipline?
We can only learn it from our parents
I
was one of the original London Teddy Boys. When we first
appeared, the police and the media accused us of every sort
of mayhem and mischief, though the reality was very different.
We were, in fact, just a bunch of pasty-faced youths who
wore Edwardian-style fashions and hung about on street corners
trying to look harder than we were. We lived in the shadow
of fathers and uncles who had fought a world war. Many of
us, in turn, went on to do National Service.
After
grammar school, I became a long-serving officer in the London
Fire Brigade, the father of three, stepfather of four, and
I have an exemplary record. My poor, but devoted, parents
made sure I had a first-class education and disciplined
lifestyle.
These
days, it's the turn of the 'feral' youths in 'hoodies' and
baseball caps to take the stick. But if they lack the discipline,
respect and values of my 'yob' generation, it's because
they are the products of substandard, anything goes parenting.
That, in turn, is the fault of lazy, self-serving politicians
and a society obsessed with materialism.
The
young, with their half-formed minds, have too much to say
and too great an influence. Society
has become lazy and apathetic in its attitude towards directing
teenagers to civilised behaviour. We have betrayed our greatest
asset - our young - and we must live with it.
Respect?
My generation had it in spades. Teddy Boys or not, we knew
our parents had earned it the hard way through war, courage
and sacrifice. We can't start another world war to gain
the respect of the young, but wee can fight a system that's
destroying the credibility of parenting, marriage and the
cornerstone of civilised society - discipline.
We
should stop whining about the old days and shying away from
harsh decisions. The young weren't around in the old days
- they know no different. But we were, and it's time we
knocked a few parental and political heads together and
stopped betraying all those magnificent people who gave
their todays for our tomorrows. John Barker, Angmering,
W. Sussex - Daily Mail, May 26, 2005.
Who's
keeping the peace?
What
has become of keeping the Queen's peace? Policemen once
swore to uphold and maintain that peace when they were appointed
constables. A breach of the Queen's peace was - and, I believe,
still is - a criminal offence. Why have none of the louts
and yobs who have made life hell for so many of her people
not been prosecuted for having, at the very least, breached
the Queen's peace.
Letter
from David Bourne, Winchelsea, E. Sussex, Daily Mail, May
26, 2005.
Cowboy
Britain
Watching
a Western on TV, I realised nothing much has changed. Half-a-dozen
gun en wandered into town and caused mayhem because the
mild-mannered sheriff saw no need to get tough. After a
few killings, the sheriff, in despair, yelled: "Why?".
A gunman replied: "Because there's no law here to stop
me, so I can."
Doesn't
that just sum up our country today, Sheriff Blair?
Letter
from J. Davies, Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire - Daily Mail, May
26, 2005
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What
this family tells us about Britain today
When
will our politicians wake up to the fact it's THEY who have done
more than anyone to create this culture of yobbery?
by
Melanie Phillips - Daily Mail, May 19, 2005
With
respect, the government does not have a snowball's chance in hell
of getting on top of the yob culture about which the Prime Minister
professes to be so concerned.The situation is dire. Vicious, even
sadistic crime is commonplace. Disorder and threatening behaviour
are a modern plague, and whole communities are under siege from
crime and yobbery.
A
benefits boom for single mums
Daily
Mail, May 18, 2005
Soaring
benefits have pushed up incomes of single mothers by half
since Tony Blair came to power, official figures revealed
yesterday. The tax credit system introduced by Gordon
Brown has given them the fastest-rising incomes in percentage
terms of any group in society.
On
average, a lone mother now gets £205 a week including
benefits and tax credits - almost the same as a single
mother without children. Single mothers incomes averaged
£137 in 1996.
Their
50% rise compares with a 29% increase for single women
without children, and 39% for women with partners who
have children.
The
figures from the Department of Trade's Women and Equality
Unit are further evidence of the huge impact on lone parent
families of the tax credit system, which funnels cash
to boost earnings and to pay for childcare, and is heavily
biased in favour of single parents over two parent families.
Almost
a quarter of all children are brought up in single-parent
families, a 25% increase on the mid-1990s. Analyst Jill
Kirkby of the Tory-leading Centre for Policy Studies,
said: "Incomes of women bringing up children alone
have been boosted at the expense of couple parents. It
is time to redress the balance.
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Abigail
Witchalls remains paralysed having been savagely stabbed in the
neck while pushing her 21 month-old son in his buggy. Phil Carroll,
father of four, was left in a critical condition after being attacked
by two hooded youths, part of a rowdy gang causing trouble by
his gate in Salford.
Chief
Superintendent David Baines, who is investigating the attack on
Mr Carroll, has painted a horrifying picture of feral children
intimidating entire neighbourhoods, with minimal control over
their behaviour and little parental authority over their lives.
Tony
Blair says he wants to restore a culture of 'respect'. Yet in
the next breath he implies that respect has disappeared because
of deep-seated cultural changes over which he has no control.
NOT
SO FAST, PRIME MINISTER. Yes, our society has changed in many
disturbing ways which have helped create this this epidemic of
lawlessness. But what governments say and do sends powerful signals
which help shape a society's behaviour. And far from taking the
necessary steps to hold the line against social collapse, Mr Blair's
Government has repeatedly weakened and undermined it.
Certainly,
it has thrown up a plethora of initiatives in this week's Queen's
Speech. But these amount to little more than vacuous gestures,
tinkering at the edges or locking the stable door after the horse
has been allowed - or even encouraged - to bolt.
Its
proposed curbs on guns and knives will add little to existing
police powers. Its proposals for compulsory drug-testing or excluding
drunks from city centres are frankly insulting given the damage
caused by its own policies.
Its
urban regeneration programmes have produced an explosion of pubs,
it is further encouraging round-the clock drinking and its downgrading
of the dangers of cannabis has encouraged a rise in the use of
a drug which is now frequently implicated in save criminal attacks.
What
makes this crisis positively surreal, however, is that the single
most important cause of feral children and the collapse of respect
for authority is the single issue that no politician will talk
about - the destruction of the family.
The
biggest reason for the rise in crime is the relentless growth
of a lethal sub-culture of fatherless children and disorderly
homes. While many lone parents do a good job of bringing up their
children, the fact remains that most delinquents have fractured
family lives.
There
are whole communities where committed fathers are unknown. As
a result, the process of socialising children has broken down,
leading to youngsters from emotionally chaotic backgrounds violently
acting out their disturbance in school before being sucked into
crime.
The
truth is that the family is the crucible of social order. Break
the family and you beak social order. How can children respect
their parents when at the deepest level they believe that their
parents have abandoned them? Such abandonment makes children feel
they are worthless. If they don't even respect themselves, how
can they be expected to respect authority?
Mr
Blair was absolutely right to say that the causes of crime are
rooted in family and parenting, but he cannot just shrug off responsibility.
For his Government has consistently promoted the lethal fiction
that all types of family are of equal value in bringing up children.
Tax
and welfare policies have provided financial incentives for lone
parenthood and penalised marriage. As a result, cohabitation has
soared and getting on for half of all children are now born outside
marriage. The Government refuses to shame or stigmatise people
for bringing up children in fatherless households or with serial
partners, the surest predictor of crime.
Yet
Home office minister Hazel Blears, is prepared to shame the unfortunate
children they produce by making them wear distinctive uniforms
when performing community service - which itself is a wholly inadequate
response to the crimes they have committed and their need for
the disciplines of punishment.
Beyond
the family, too, authority has run up a white flag. Discipline
in many schools has collapsed through the malign confluence of
politics and culture. Children are out of control, their parents
parents are often even more violent, teachers no longer have the
training to cope, and government makes the whole situation impossible
by giving children rights which can be enforced through a whole
bureaucracy of hearings and appeals.
As
for the police, they have simply abandoned the streets to the
gangs. The youths who attacked Mr Carroll were part of a threatening
mob who were drinking alcohol from litre bottles and smoking cannabis.
It is all very well for Mr Baines to highlight the daily intimidation
that is going on in such areas, but why aren't the police putting
a stop to it?
Now
the Government intends to give local authorities more powers to
deal with graffiti, fly-tipping, abandoned cars and other low-level
nuisance. But what aren't the police already preventing the routine
spitting, swearing, urination, litter and menacing 'hoodies' which
produce the climate of intimidation on our streets?
We
surely don't need more legislation. What we do need is for the
police to implement the laws that already exist. We already have
initiative come out of our ears: parenting orders, Sure Start
projects, 4,000 Anti-Social Behaviour contracts, 66,000 fixed
penalty fines, intensive supervision orders, Acceptable Behaviour
Contracts, Youth Offending Teams.
Yet
the more initiatives that are produced, the worse it all seems
to get. Just how long will it take for the penny to drop? What
matters above all is that a consistent signal is given that not
just lawlessness but incivility and both formal and informal rule-breaking
will not be tolerated.
In
the US, crime and disorder have been curbed by precisely this
consistency, from pro-marriage and abstinence policies to zero-tolerance
of crime on the streets. But in Britain we are going in the opposite
direction. Faced with the progressive collapse of social order,
politically correct Whitehall latches on to one alibi after another
to avoid facing up to the need to restore individual duty and
responsibility.
So
we read that civil servants are flocking to read the latest fashionable
tome, Respect In The Age Of Inequality, by the sociologist Richard
Sennett. But Professor Sennett is not proposing to restore respect
for authority. Instead, he is attacking disrespect for the poor,
which he believes is expressed by the fact that some people succeed
and others do not. The best route to respect, he says, lies in
empowering people to discuss their own behaviour 'so there is
peer pressure to behave rather than imposition by authority'.
This
ideological nonsense merely reinforces the infantilism which has
so eroded personal responsibility, and is precisely the kind of
gobbledegook that has helped get us into this mess in the first
place.
Respect
for authority has been eroded because it is no longer being earned.
At every level, authority has been in full retreat- from the family,
the schools and the streets, aided and abetted by a (Labour) government
which has chosen to release the demons of individual 'rights'
at all opportunities. Now we are all paying the price.
What
this family tells us about Britain today
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