Comments on: British Mass Hysteria

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 04:44:53 +0000

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By: Danieru

Danieru — Tue, 17 May 2005 02:10:55 +0000

The small things campaigning of recent years is nothing new. Clinton and his administration won back support for his second term by moving away from the wider, Democrat issues to appeal to the common voter. The example that comes to mind was the huge government and media barrage at the times on chips you could put into your TV to control what your kids were watching.
Politics has never been so shallow since (New Labour based its original, and highly successful campaign on the Clinton template)

By: Eddie

Eddie — Mon, 16 May 2005 08:34:38 +0000

Money already “moves with the child”. Government formulae supply schools with money based on the number of pupils they have. I fail to see how this could help restore “respect” in society.

Bob – yes, I agree. The whole hoodie thing is a needless diversion. Instead of the media wasting its time talking about this (and I don’t count myself in this because my post is a critique of the media and of British sensitivities) it could be discussing the real problems. Like I said, New Labour likes to engage in pointless diversions. You don’t restore respect in society by every day telling everyone that you want to restore respect in society.

It’s time for action. But the action that will actually make a difference is not at the forefront of the agenda. Instead it is dismissed as “soft”. People don’t know the meaning of the word.

This has highlighted many problems. Not least of all with society, but as Bob has pointed out too, with the education system. It’s another issue, but they all work together to produce what we have now. This needs a much wider fix, and we need to stop looking so narrowly at things as if they are all existing independent of one another. Education, parents, individual children, and yes, the government… they all have a role to play in turning this around.

By: Phil Hunt

Phil Hunt — Mon, 16 May 2005 01:04:26 +0000

Bob,

a fix for (1) is to abolish league tables, allow schools to expel any student they like, and introduce vouchers so the money moves with the child.

a fix for (2) is — at least in part — to abolish building regulations that artificially increae the cost of housing

By: Bob Salmon

Bob Salmon — Sun, 15 May 2005 22:26:40 +0000

I think this is most sharply focussed at two of the groups who are associated with both sides of the divide: parents and teachers. Disclosure: I am a dad and my wife’s a teacher.

An interesting couple of thought experiments to play when you’re considering the state of society, youth etc:

1. Imagine you are a teacher in a state secondary school. Not in a sink estate, but teaching something traditional like maths or French. This is done best with the aid of talking to real teachers rather than watching the TV adverts for teaching.

The government, with its concern for standards and parental choice, which leads to the national curriculum and league tables, requires you to get your pupils to Pass Exams. Not to know or even enjoy the subject, just Pass Exams.

The parents sometimes think they can outsource the whole education thing to the school (that’s what you do, isn’t it – teach them?) and also maybe the discipline thing too (something they’ve not been doing since the child started to push for boundaries aged 2). Or alternatively they wonder what gives you the right to dare give their child a detention.

Oh, and you’re probably a woman and some of the 15 year old lads (and some of the girls too, plus the younger ones) tower over you and it’s just the power of your personality against theirs sometimes. You’ll probably get sworn at, maybe threatened and possbily hit – maybe by the parents too.

2. Imagine you’re a parent. You believe in an inclusive society, giving those who need it a helping hand up. You bought your house before having children and it’s on a council estate that’s now mostly in private ownership – at the time you bought it you couldn’t afford anything more as it was your first house. Next to your neighbours is a new estate, now done by a housing association and your neighbour (who’s a taxi driver) says there’s a drugs problem there.

Your house is at the end of a cul-de-sac, and 2 cars have been abandoned outside your house of the last 3 months. Each time the local kids use them for entertainment, which leads to smashed windows, ripped off wing mirrors and eventually a fire. Your child isn’t old enough to go to school yet, but you can see that ahead and wonder – do I want my child to have these kids as friends?

—-

The second one really happened to me. The first one happened to my wife, although thankfully she has avoided physical assault.

The reason why I post this is because political debate, and possibly blogs in particular, can be so divorced from reality sometimes. If our politicians and commentators had taught in our state schools, and had lived in less than ideal places and tried to raise a family, it would greatly inform the debate. Or, if those two aren’t available options, try helping at a youth club.

While I’m rambling, I think hoodies is a smokescreen. The real problem is who’s wearing it (which sounds horribly like “Hoodies don’t hit people, delinquent teenagers hit people”). If you can work out what makes the teenager delinquent then it doesn’t matter what they wear.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Sun, 15 May 2005 17:17:43 +0000

An interesting post, Brian. First of all, let me say that my post was written no more than minutes after seeing the headline on the Daily Express that day: perhaps not the best moment from which to write a considered piece on a subject, given the rage it filled me with.

The thing is, most of what you say is right. I accept that there are problems in society at the moment. Howver, I also believe that these problems are also vastly overstated in a lot of cases, and they certainly have been since this story broke. This is a problem that affects people, but not as widely as the papers claim.

What I object to is the fact that the story fails to cover the angles that you have eloquently summed up. My protest, which is what drove me to write this post, is on the whole against the shoddy media coverage of events in this country. It seems to me that anything that can create a moral panic must be worthwhile and should be stoked up as much as possible.

Then you have a government that bandwagon jumps willy nilly. I don’t know if you saw Harriet Harman on Question Time, but she left a strong inference, which was widely ridiculed, that the government was looking carefully at proposals against hooded tops. The fact is that to legislate on this is nigh on impossible (what could the law possibly be? Everyone must have their face visible in public? How do you get around the religious issue there?) and everyone who knows how the law works understands that. Even the government knows that, but that doesn’t stop them pretending that they are “taking care” of the problem by talking tough while actually doing very little.

You outline the real solutions to the problem, yet I don’t see any of them in action. The government loves to pay lip-service to the “tackling the root causes” of everything, but as we’ve seen them demonstrate time and again they are not fit to bear the mantle “the party of social justice”.

New Labour loves to create a sideshow. This problem – and as I said, I accept it is one – is symptomatic of a generation falling by the wayside. It will not be resolved overnight, and it certainly won’t be resolved by banning things. Hoodie or no hoodie, CCTV evidence is invariably not clear enough to convict someone outright. It will require time, effort and probably lots of money. That is money society is not willing to spend.

So who blinks first? We have this permanent standoff between the generations being established which helps no one. Talking tough is not going to open the lines of dialogue. Neither is talking soft, because that gets you no respect. Youths and children these days are finding it increasingly difficult to relate to their elders, and vice versa. The reason is still simple: we aren’t communicating. No one knows what to expect from each other. No one is setting credible and legitimate boundaries. New Labour’s bluster won’t help anyone. This needs a long term solution, but the best and simplest start is to engage in inter-generational talk. There will be bumps along the way, but it’s got to be stuck to.

New Labour has got to lead from the front. We have a society that is breaking down, and yet we want to rebuild it by whipping people into submission with ever increasing authoritarianism. That doesn’t seem like a coherent plan to me.

This is an issue I’m extremely interested in and it’s one I’m going to write some more on in the future. In the meantime, I am very happy to hear the thoughts of others, and so I thank you for your considered contribution.

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Sun, 15 May 2005 15:35:12 +0000

I don’t readily spring to the defence of New Labour (least of all Hazel Blears of that ilk), but isn’t all this a bit heavier than the suggestion will stand? No-one, to the best of my knowledge, has proposed to ban these hoods as the sole measure against hooliganism and intimidation on the streets and in other public places (apart from the Bluewater shopping centre, which can’t do much else about it). To give it its due, the government is doing all sorts of things to try to make our public spaces safer and less scary.

I know of more than one elderly Londoner who is literally too frightened to go out because of the infestation of their local streets and shops by gangs of youths, some of them more children than youths, who deliberately and credibly threaten people at whom they have taken some irrational offence, or just for the hell of it. Of course not all groups of young people in hoods mean to threaten or intimidate others: but because some of them do, it’s natural to fear that others will, too, especially if their uniforms, language and manner are the same. Some of them — probably a minority, but how is one to tell them apart in an advancing group? — are drug addicts on the prowl for the necessary money, and not especially fastidious about how they get it. Some are also, or instead, drug pushers. Some feel in urgent need of a mobile phone or a credit card or three. Some have a gut hostility to black people, or to white people, or to toffs or tramps or tarts. The distinguishing characteristic of them all is that they can safely discount any fear of being stopped and subjected to any kind of restraining authority. Even if they are unlucky enough to encounter the occasional policeman on foot (as distinct from a cop in a speeding car with sirens screaming or on a ten-foot-high horse), and even if that passing cop, against the odds, intervenes on behalf of some menaced passer-by, they know they’ll be let off with a warning, safely ignored: or, at worst, if hauled before the beak, bound over, perhaps repeatedly.

And a lot of them wear hoods. People in the street who behave in a menacing fashion look even more menacing if their faces are concealed under hoods,with or without baseball caps (or motor-cycle helmets or balaclavas). The very word has an undertone of violence: American slang for crook, perhaps derived from hoodlum; Robin, robbing the rich to pay the poor. Concealment from CCTV cameras: why would they need that if they mean and do no harm?

It’s easy for youngish, fit middle class types, who rarely need to stray into places where these groups patrol because they live in cosy middle-class areas and anyway reckon they can look after themselves in a punch-up, to poke fun, but isn’t there a genuine case for removing at least one source of fear and intimidation for the peace of mind of the old, the weak and the vulnerable, so long as it’s accompanied (as it is) by other measures designed to get at the roots of poverty, rotten education, lousy housing, no-hoper parenting, de facto segregation, discrimination, and all the other seed-beds of alienation and violence? Getting a few cops out of those cars and offices and off those horses would be a start.

Sorry to sound like the unspeakable Blunkett and the (if possible) even more unspeakable M. Howard, but a reasonable proposition shouldn’t be condemned by the company it keeps. At least let’s discuss it!

(I await counter-comments in a crouching position.)

Best
Brian
15 May 05

By: Stephen C

Stephen C — Sat, 14 May 2005 15:49:43 +0000

‘Twas ever thus. Communists, unions, video nasties, alternative comedians, paedophiles….

Be afraid… be very afraid…

(Let’s follow this to its logical conclusion. If we were correct to fear all those things we’re told to fear, wouldn’t we all be dead by now? Wouldn’t barely 20% of us make it to adulthood? Wouldn’t everybody living in an urban area be no longer, well, living?)

In government, no one can hear you scream…