What the hell is happening to kids in Britain?

Question

I'm talking about this:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007090140,00.html

(Yes I know the Sun is a crap paper - my other half bought it)

Are things really this bad? 17 year olds out of their boxes on drugs, shooting each other, carrying knives,living off crime with absolutely no hope of getting a job or doing anything with their lives?

I'm 35 and grew up in a poor area of South Wales where there was little work, and very little for kids to do. I remember underage drinking and smoking, petty crime and kids smoking the odd spliff but nothing like this! Has it got this much worse over time? Is it just in the large cities like London and Manchester that things are this bad?

What are the Government going to do (aside from wasting taxpayers' money on wars in Iraq and filling the job market with Polish immigrants that is)? What can they do to make things better?

As the mother of a 12 week old baby boy it scares me to think of him growing up in a country like this!

Answer 1

We defiantly should put the children of this country first and not employed Polish immigrants in work that we can do. There are Eastern Europeans doing work which is well paid like working in Lloyd's bank. I think that children feel disillusioned in this country through lack of education. We need as a nation to be educated with skills, however all Blair has managed to do is boast about the amount of students going to university to do a degree which will not get them a job at the end of the day. I have an M.A and a degree and it hasn't helped me at all in the job market, children need to be trained in skills at school and be more exposed to other languages so they can work abroad if they so desire.
I think that Blair should be made aware that as we have the fourth richest economies in the world, we should spend more money on training schemes so that children became employable and don't feel that they have not got a future. In the long run it will pay off to educate these children, because it will keep them of the streets, their will be less teenage mothers as Britian has the hightest percentage per-se, and less trouble as youths will have other things to occupy themselves.

Answer 2

You shouldn't believe everything self-dramatising teenagers tell Sun reporters cooking up a story. His gang may be the nastiest bunch since the Krays, and there are a lot of guns in Manchester, but if people were actually getting shot at the rate he claims there wouldn't be dead kids on the front pages of newspapers. It would be too common to put on the news. All this boy seems to have been able to do is smoke some grass and get himself nicked for theft. He is out of work and will stay that way if he steals from people. (I notice he hasn't yet worked out how to get hold of a drink more than once a week . Remember - I thought your generation were undisciplined yobs).

Answer 3

Yes Ladymoon it really is an awful situation - the trouble is no one seems to teach respect anymore.
I was brought up by my Grandparents and they taught me respect - I passed my knowledge of respect on to my daughter and she is now 29 and everyone that she meets all say what a wonderful attitude to life she has.

Yes something needs to be done but I don't think that this Government will do anything (all talk and no action).

At the moment crime is in all the cities and eventually it will overspill into our sleepy little towns.

Maybe conscription should be brought back - I am sure that discipline for 2 years would sort out most problems with the gun happy gangs. (Just a thought).
Yes if I had young children today I would think the same as you do and I just hope the future will improve for all of us.

Answer 4

Ask any instructor and that they are going to provide you a catalogue see you later you will pass to sleep in the previous they have been given to the tip! i ought to have completed that on the age of 8 and maximum of my classmates ought to too! It replace into the 1st subject taught in Junior college interior the Nineteen Fifties! those days we are advised we are Multi-Cultural and would't try this or coach that because of the fact God Forbid we would disenchanted between the minority communities. We cant coach our toddlers their own way of existence or faith or historic previous with out frightening some-one so the Goverment's answer particularly of being settle for it - it is OUR rules Amend the regulation to slot who-ever complains. If sufficient British human beings lived in an Arab u . s . a . (and a lot do) would they regulate (as an occasion) their Alcohol rules for us. And any-one that thinks the mum and dad could be those doing it then why have faculties if so.The goverment would be happy however, Ignorant anybody is far less annoying to regulate. That way leads Backwards not Forwards!

Answer 5

It is worth remembering that in the forties, fifties and early sixties, when Britain was a lot poorer than today, when only the richest families owned things like cars and televisions, our kids were a lot happier and none of the problems you refer to seemed to happen.

So what was different then. Basically it seems that discipline at school was much tougher with the use of the cane but that was banned in 1986 and most of the problems arsising from lack of school discipline seem to have happened since then, as the Sun reports. Also in those days kids on leaving school had to do two years National service in the forces where they got a bigger dose of discipline and were shouted at from morning to night. Yet talk to any old timers today about their National service days and they will tell you how much they enjoyed it and that it did them a lot of good. National Service ended in 1963.

Today of course we have this silly Human Rights act that prevents re-introducing the standards that existed then. So what the government should do is bring back the standards of the fifties.

Answer 6

it's not just the large cities that have this trouble. But I feel it's down to a lack of respect. Nobody is allowed to be firm with the kids anymore, even the parents are discouraged from smacking them. Even in the wild, there is a hierarchy and should anyone step out of line the elders come down hard. Therefor the younger members of any troop learn respect and responsibility by knowing their place within a group. Kids today are treated as equals and so they grow up with no respect for anyone else.

Answer 7

We need to keep a sense of proportion, which the Sun avoids doing at every opportunity (any excuse to sell news print). Only a very tiny minority of youths are involved in crime and it is highly unlikely you will even come a mile within meeting any of them. These teenagers are also mainly involved in inter-gang crime and less interested in ordinary members of the public.

If I was an newspaper Editor the picture would never have run. It was a cheap jibe at Cameron and missed the main point of his visit to Manchester (No, I am not a Conservative voter).

So enjoy life, burn the Sun to reduce your energy bills and do not worry about crime.

Answer 8

It is as bad as this in certain areas-mostly the worst council estates.Kids grow up in an area where all the older teens are doing drugs,hanging round in gangs and carrying weapons.

To be safe they feel they need a weapon and the backup of being part of a gang.To fit in with a gang they commit crime,drink,have underage sex,do drugs and get in fights and so on.

The cycle continues like this.

Answer 9

I know what you mean i live in a town in the north east and some of the kids there are just idiots we are in fact the town with the most vandalism in the north east. However i am lucky as the part i live in isn't to bad. Every couple of days you always see a different window smashed on a bus shelter. What joy do these people get out of doing this? I'm 15 and can't understand it!

Answer 10

You are so so right and I cant blame you for thinking of your child in this way , my parent didn even think of what school to send me there, the school was so bad, I think what hell place i wnet to , however, I went onto further education, worked really hard, this country has many bad kids its so terrible I dont see any desecent kids at all today, no one wants to be educated its just so bad, and yes they wasting money like that when there could do alot better from it , these people are just a waste of life really.