The mindless murder of young Rhys Jones in Liverpool this week has given us a very disturbing insight into gang culture among the young. The stories told by members of The Noggzy’eds and the Crocky’eds, their nihilistic view of life and their perverted loyalties. Evidence presented in so many news reports suggesting this behaviour is not confined to one city but spread over the whole country.
It makes the assurances of middle class bleeding hearts that “there have always been gangs and things are no worse than they ever were except in the eyes of the hysterical media,” seem rather hollow. Things seem to have run completely out of control in the past few weeks, perhaps it is because the school holidays have freed more young people to roam free, looking for “laffs.” That could explain the recent violence. But the problems are not confined to violence. Irresponsibility is at the root of problems relating to drugs, drinking and sexual behaviour.
Not long ago on a daytime TV show I saw two young men, both in their teens, swaggering around bragging about their sexual prowess. Both were still in their teens, one had fathered eight children, the other claimed nine. Neither had kept in touch with the mothers, probably the kindest thing they had done for those girls. Worse though, neither young man saw any reason to change their behaviour, both said they would refuse to use condoms as it was “unmanly” and both felt that fathering a lot of unwanted children “proved they were men.” The attitudes are primitive.
It does not matter how many A-levels pupils can be coached to pass, if the system is not teaching young people how to behave it has failed abysmally. Real education does not begin until after we leave school. Schools should give us the basics, literacy and numeracy and it should at best teach people to think rationally and instil curiosity and hunger for knowledge.
What is going on may seem like The End Of Civilisation As We Know It but we can get things back on track quite easily. Firstly, the world has TOO MANY ARSEHOLES. These people, mostly members of the nationwide ubergang, The Needaspikethroughtheir'eads must be controlled.
Most important, we need to stop them breeding. In the 1960s or 70s Indira Gandhi’s government in India offered men transistor radios in return for having a vasectomy. Only they did not explain what a vasectomy was. We could try something like that to stop the arseholes from breeding. Offer them an X-box or a few rocks of meth perhaps? The cost benefit to society is enormous when we consider the cost of providing care for a few dozen abandoned children for eighteen years.
Second, young people who have never been subjected to proper discipline but only punished for disturbing parents who were sleeping off a booze or drugs binge should be taught that actions have consequences. Kill somebody and you spend the rest of your life doing hard labour in unpleasant conditions. Terrorise someone and we send you to work as a street cleaner in Baghdad or somewhere. It does not take much imagination to make the punishment fit the crime.
Thirdly, and more controversially, there has to be a concerted effort to rebuild communities. Reverse every law Margaret Thatcher’s government ever passed. Build social housing, invest in railways and bus systems, deprivatise everything that was stolen from public ownership and sold for pennies to Thatcher’s and Blair’s cronies.
In Britain our biggest problem has always been the division of society on lines of class. No human being is of less worth than another because of where they were born or how they speak, or what educational qualifications they have. Personal wealth does not make somebody more worthy of respect or bestow privilege on them.
If we attack the problem at both ends, show people who wish to be anti – social that society can be nastier on a bigger scale that individuals ever can and start to repair the damaged caused by the warped political thinking of people whose ambitions outweighed their abilities, we can change course.
We have to become a society again.