In the UK, almost all school children wear a uniform. The idea is simple: that there is a certain “our school” way, that everyone is united in some manner. It also makes it very easy for people to complain, and the usual “you are representing our school” derives from it. In theory, these are generally good things. They encourage a sense of belonging, something which is rather lacking in society today. However, where school is involved, all of these ideals tend to be filled with a certain sense of naffness. I’m sure everyone can remember a school assembly in which the entire school was berated because of the activities of the usual minority who give everyone a bad name. After those we’d be given a lecture in all of the previous concepts about representing the school. No one ever listened, and no one really cared.

Everyone just hated the uniform. No one wanted to wear it, simply because a) it’s terribly uncomfortable and b) it made you stick out like a sore thumb. When the usual inter-school rivalries set in, the pupils of Our Lady of Religious School would often do anything they could to avoid the Evil and Wicked children (so the rumours said on the playground) of Inner City Comprehensive. At that age, if these concepts of belonging and representation work, then they only do so on the sub-conscious level. Otherwise, you spend all your time trying to evade the “benefits”, sometimes trying to express your individuality, which then gets you into trouble. On the conscious level, they are a failure. They actively encourage rivalry between children who otherwise would have no quarrel with each other.

To me, uniforms are a representation of something more sinister in society. The only possible benefit they have is that they remove the idea of a fashion war happening in schools. This is something I can’t deny, and I would have difficulty devising another system that escapes this. I hate the idea that a child from a poor family may have to suffer because they can’t afford to buy the best trainers on the market, while Rich Child with Inherited Wealth can.

But everyone remembers the moment in which they never had to wear their school uniform again. The shackles of conformity were broken; at long last, the freedom to wear whatever you choose.

Then, suddenly, you start in the world of work.

And then you discover that, in fact, uniform is still alive and well. Women have a little more flexibility. But men don’t. It’s either a suit, or… a suit without a tie.

Oh dear. It then dawns on you that, in fact, you haven’t left the manacles of conformity behind at all. Indeed, it was just a temporary slipping of the noose while the hangman adjusted his line. Worse, whereas before your parents ironed your uniform for you, now you have to iron a perfect crease in your trousers and take a terribly long length of time ironing your shirt. Then you have a suit jacket which needs dry cleaning every now and then. Oh, the extra effort and expense!

Then you ask yourself the question: why? Why the hell is it like this? Why do we trust the man in a suit more than the man in a tracksuit? Is there a proper reason other than the fact “it’s always been that way”? Isn’t the man in the suit just as likely to want to screw you over – in business terms – than the man in the tracksuit? Why does a suit give an impression of professionalism? Why does a strip of silk, or even polyester, around one’s neck give the idea that this person is someone who you can trust, and then, in all probability, stab you in the back at the first opportunity to enhance their career over you?

So we conform. We go back to our uniform days and relive them, again and again, until retirement. There are only a few lucky careers which don’t require people to conform to some kind of dress code. In many ways, it’s very similar to the argument we’ve been seeing this week over whether Jon Snow is right to receive the indignant protestations of the Poppy Fascists. Why are people so hell-bent on forcing their regimented ideals on each other?

I have always been of the opinion that just because something has always been done, that alone is not enough to justify it continuing to be done. Everything needs to prove itself in the here and now. If people’s opinions are dated back to the Victorian age, when Rich Businessman wore a black-tie suit and so was the right kind to mix with instead of the povvos in the slums, then they have no place in today’s society. And not just because any old, or even young, fraudster can now buy a cheap suit in Matalan…

Therein lies the problem. So many people, holding so many stereotypical values, socialised, even indoctrinated, upon them by a so-called tolerant society. It may not seem like a serious issue, talking about why we wear uniforms, but it’s only when you examine the subtle prejudices and assumptions that lie within – only when you scratch the surface – do you discover some very revealing, and equally fascinating, aspects of human psychology. The undercurrents of the argument run throughout many layers of society; and all emanating via an issue which I doubt very few people ever even consider.

So next time you stand there making a choice between the stripey tie, the dotted tie or the Father Christmas, all singing, all dancing, novelty tie… ask yourself: is this what expressing your individuality, your independence as a person, has come to?

Is that what we call freedom?

“The problem for society is to catch children BEFORE they go wrong.”

Of course, it is normally dangerous to argue with the Sun, lest one be branded a terrorising, judge-loving, paedophile. But it’s important to be aware of how accurately their thoughts will be reflecting vast swathes of the nation. But then, once I realise this, I plunge into despair as, yet again, the country descends into paranoid fervour: and this time about an item of clothing no less.It pains me to read such weak logic. If you take the point to its conclusion, the next stop is to say that all children who have already gone “wrong” are therefore worthless to society. So there is no point trying to bring them back into the fold; we might as well jail them forever. In which case, why on earth would one wish to spend a fortune when we know for a fact that they have already gone “wrong” and, if the only way of solving the problem is to catch them before they have been ASBO’d, then it would make logical sense to order a mass extermination programme of such offenders.

I shouldn’t be surprised that the Sun would employ such poor thinking. But I come back to my original point: this is probably how a lot of the nation is thinking right now. I care not for David Cameron’s call to give “hoodies” more understanding. I care even less for the government’s response calling Mr Cameron “vacuous”, because I already know that the government had long ago turned its back on trying to solve the causes of crime, as soon as it realised that tackling crime requires far more effort, money and time – something the taxpayer just cannot tolerate for long – than merely talking tough on jail sentences, issuing on the spot fines, summary justice, all so that people perceive that “justice is being done”. That is much easier by comparison, and so we shouldn’t be surprised that all governments end up down that route.

It hurts me to know that tolerance is now so low in this nation, community relations so poor, that any attempt at finding a solution short of banging the offending item of clothing in the nick is derided as being not from the real world. Do we now have so little interest in our fellow humans that we are prepared to treat them like animals? The rabid dog bites, so it is destroyed. The feral hoodie happy-slaps (remember that moral panic?), so they should be jailed forever more, because they have “gone wrong”.

That’s where all this is leading. Of course there is an issue, and of course there are people suffering because of the actions of a mindless minority. I have seen it myself. I have suffered it myself. But it doesn’t make me lash out. It makes me wonder. If people have “gone wrong”, what has caused that to happen? Why did it happen? What can we do to change that? Do we need to fundamentally readdress the way we look at society?

These are enormous questions. To me, it is is not good enough to simply dismiss a certain element of society, the demoralised and downtrodden youth, as being “wrong” and so therefore beyond help. The problems are age old. Mr Cameron may have done us a favour to at least bring up this issue, but to me he is talking about it in the wrong way, and is too distant from the problem to have credibility in this field. He should not be talking about “hoodies”. He should have talked more generally in terms of the whole of youth culture. The whole of our aggressive, materialistically excessive, culture.

Yet we can do something which animals find it very difficult to do. It is obviously better to catch people before they do wrong, but we would be a weird species if we never did wrong. The key point is obvious: mistakes are made, they can be learned from, then change can be actioned. Today – wrong, and maybe still wrong tomorrow. But next month, next year? Change is a slow process, but people can improve. The answers are always the same: raising aspirations, raising standards of living, forming community bonds to tackle problems together, rather than twitching the net curtains while the poor bugger over the road gets his head kicked in for asking a few drunk kids to move on; tackling alcoholism, tackling drug addiction with proper rehabilitation for endlessly underfunded anti-drugs programmes; a robust economy, supporting those who stay at home to raise the next generation rather than be demonised as benefit scroungers… this is just the beginning.

Or you could chuck ’em in prison, hoping a stiff sentence and a stiff something-else from Big Bubba will straighten ’em out (pun intended). But if you do that, don’t be surprised if they come out and nothing has changed. After all, how does one resolve the circular argument: if you have a rising prison population, doesn’t building prisons mean you concede that prison doesn’t work? How can prison be serving its intended purpose – deterrent and rehabilitation - if you’re having to build more and more of them? When do you stop to say: enough is enough?

Because that’s what I have said. If our politicians cannot see the absurd conclusions of their twisted logic as demonstrated in newspapers like the Sun, then they will continue to be an irrelevance to providing a solution. Because, unfortunately, they are the only ones who can solve this. From the national government, striving to improve conditions for all, to the local councillors, who should be out on the streets in groups, engaging, without prejudice, local people and those who are slipping into the underclass. These people are the only ones who can provide the funding and the impetus to solving these problems. Voluntary organisations can only scratch the surface on their own. It needs complete joined-up thinking, partnerships between local government, national government, voluntary organisations and the people on every street to communicate and mobilise to begin tackling the poverty of ambition that pervades the housing estates of many corners of Britain.

The people at the bottom are the key. Cameron just looks like another liberal toff, not able to speak the language of the younger generation. He means well – or at least he appears to (and maybe that’s what’s important in this cynical media age) – but he cannot drive the solutions on the ground. They are different in every community.

Only the people who care for the plight of their fellow human, no matter how much damage they’ve done can make a difference.

Only the people who care about others throwing away their lives in the pursuit of ludicrous, arbitrarily created glorifications of (to pick one example) gangster-life which sells so many products, when there is so much to be achieved in life, can make a difference.

Only the people who still care enough to help others despite such adversity can make a difference.

Do you care?

Of course not. Yesterday’s measures outlined by the government in a “leaked” letter to Rabid Reid, are nothing short of dictatorship. So now we’re going to give power to the executive to decide when it wants to disregard a judgement in a court of law? Will anything stop the Prime Minister from tearing up all those liberties that we once treasured? More to the point, will anyone even notice, or bat an eyelid? As long as we get rid of those foreign types who murder our mistresses, rape our children or steal a bag of salt and vinegar crisps from the corner shop. Who needs rights?

Then, in a supreme example of muddled doublethink from the government, all of the endless erosions of our civil rights actually count for nothing. We are still free. We are still the bastion of liberty that is the beacon for the rest of the world to imitate. No. The concept of Britishness is as just as alive and well as before, and it encompasses all of those wonderful things in the first paragraph. Hang on… does that not account for every other liberal democracy on the planet? Yes, I believe it does. So while the government is desperately trying to carve up a definition of “Britishness” on the back of a fag packet, something that will not affect our lives one bit, they are actually doing away with all of those things they claim to be part of our society.

Then they have the cheek to tell us that they will soon be indoctrinating these “values” on our children. What they actually mean is that they will be indoctrinating their version of what were once our values onto the population. They will accept what they are told, and they will believe that when Tony has curbed our rights to protest, assemble, speak, or be judged by a set of our peers, it is all to protect us from the greater evil of the dastardly, out of touch, judiciary. All of this despite the fact that the government passed the Human Rights Act 1998, in a glorious triumph of at last giving us proper protection of our rights that is normally afforded to others in a written constitution, and now they are distancing themselves from their own legislation. The legislation which the judges rule on. Now they have decided that we do not deserve these rights.

In fact, so far are they from the original position that the only people who deserve “rights” are those who are obedient and turn out well disciplined future citizens who will not complain when they are faced with the burden of paying for the enormous state pensions of the future. Oh, and maybe they should only vote Labour too. Well, why would you need any other party if that is going to be the only principle to our society any more, if the only issue that matters is if ‘the law-abiding majority can live without fear’?

New Labour would like a country of drones who never question anything. There is a difference between “breaking the rules” and breaking the law. Now we are not going to be able to test the boundaries of those rules any more. And yet, it is only by constantly innovating, creating and challenging accepted norms that society progresses.
A revolution is occuring under our noses. But it’s not one we seem to care about. The British seem to have lost interest in how vital rights are; and there’s no greater evidence than that of how many people wish to tear up the Human Rights Act, leaving the government free to once more drive through anything it wishes as long as it has its compliant majority in the Commons. Perhaps when people are on the receiving end of the “speedy, simple summary justice” that Tony Blair wants to place throughout our justice system, where the word of a corrupt police officer is good enough to stitch you up, then maybe then they will care.

Until then, enjoy your Britishness lessons, kids. Maybe they will teach us how to rebel? It’s something we seem to be out of the habit of doing.

“One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock, drink?” Maybe.
“Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, drink?” Looking rather unlikely.
“Nine, ten, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock, drink?” I don’t think so.
“We’re gonna drink around the clock tonight?” If you want to die, then go ahead.

People seem to have lost all touch with reality over this story. We know there is an issue with drinking culture in this country. Yet, it is not really something we can address with legislation. Nevertheless, there should be no reason why a small minority should be allowed to give justification for resisting the long overdue overhaul of our drinking laws. Why should the government, in our allegedly liberal democracy, tell us when it’s time for us to go home?

I strongly believe that these licensing laws will not make the situation any worse. We’ve all seen the statistics that most places have applied for just one or two hour extensions. The number of 24-hour pubs is going to be measured in hundreds, maybe one or two in most urban districts, and certainly not in rural areas. Yet, how many times have I seen the vox pops on local media, and even on national TV, that are full of people seeming to think that the government has passed laws which will make every pub open 24 hours. Are people really that stupid? I’ve heard so many expressions of sympathy for landlords that will have to stay open all the time when there might be no one there. Ummm…

There’s also the physical aspect. If it takes 10 pints to get you drunk, and 15 to get you roaringly drunk, then it is still going to take exactly the same amount if you are in a 24-hour pub. You literally cannot drink non-stop. You Will Die. It’s as simple as that. If you are going out with the goal of getting drunk, then you will likely achieve it. If you are going out with the goal of not getting drunk, then an extra hour of opening time is probably not going to convince you to get drunk. And in any case, it is a poor landlord who keeps serving someone who is truly wasted. It’s not in their interests to have the place full of half-dead people.

There is also the issue of economics, which is the main reason why most pubs are not bothering to seriously extend their licences. There are just not enough people around at these times to outweigh the overheads and labour costs that an extra four hours or so might produce.

And besides… nightclubs have been able to serve drinks until well into the night with late licences for years. I hate nightclubs. Why do I have to go to a nightclub, paying extortionate entry fees for somewhere that might be crap, just to carry on drinking if I want to stay out a little later? It would be much easier if my local could open just that bit longer, especially as pubs tend to have better atmospheres than nightclubs. What if I worked odd shift patterns, and my life didn’t fit neatly into the 9-5 bedlam?

The nonsense drummed up by the media on this one is wholly unjustified. The simple truth is that we already have a binge drinking culture in places in this country. You can’t get drunk, and then get drunk again. You can’t get drunk, sober up, get drunk, and sober up, again and again over a period of 24-36 hours without suffering pretty dire consequences. People need to sleep eventually. People do have jobs to go to. People who don’t have jobs won’t suddenly have extra money to get drunk more often now the law has changed. Some people get around the law by stocking up on alcohol well in advance from supermarkets or off-licences anyway.

Solving the binge drinking culture requires a reassessment of drinking pricing, drinking advertisements and people’s attitudes. The only problem with the latter is that it is difficult to do, and I don’t claim to have much of an idea of where to start. Yet, if the logic that more drinking hours will equal more binge drinking is true, then it should also mean that restricting drinking hours to a few in the day, or maybe even abolishing it altogether, will solve the problem. I think we’ve been down that road before.

It all adds up to make this the biggest non-event of the year. In the meantime, enjoy the extra freedom to drink at your own leisure and at your own pace! In these days of continuous civil liberties restriction, we should celebrate anything that gives us more power over our own lives, even if it is just a little change. Might come in handy when we’re drinking Victory Gin in a few decades time…

So, then, it would not be alien to us to make choices in areas where choice is taboo. The public sector for instance. Starting with schools, then hospitals and ultimately which ambulance you’d prefer to be driven in because it has a lower accident rate and higher quality speed drivers.

The question is, do we really want that choice? And if so, will it achieve anything?

The government likes to claim that choice will help drive up standards. That’s a questionable assumption in the first place, but let’s run with it.

The public sector is not really a place where choice is compatible. We want things done as best we can, and as quickly as we can. Both of these may or may not involve too much of a consideration on cost, whereas the private sector ethos places great importance on the bottom line. An immediate incompatibility.

Say you are a parent. You have a choice of School A or School B for your 11-year-old child. School A is local, but not too good. School B is 10 miles away, but it is very good. You want to get your child into School B, and you, by some miracle, manage to achieve it. In the meantime, many other parents fail, and are forced into School A. Good schools for the few, not the many.

But let’s assume that Labour is right. The choice ethic makes School A work harder. School A sacks its headmaster, and drafts in a whole new management team. Over 5 years, they turn the school around. School A’s grades (which, incidentally, are measured by a school grading system no one trusts, but everyone hails the God Of League Tables anyway) improve enough that they are now on a par with School B.

The system is then equalled out. Choice has “driven up standards”.

But then what happens to choice? If School A and School B are the same now, why does it matter any more which one you choose? Why not go back to School A because it’s closer?

In this manner, why have choice in the first place? The theory is wonderful (there is no guarantee that School A would turn itself around: the problems may be sociological which the school cannot control), but in the end, the public sector has produced two largely undifferentiated institutions, both equally good. Choice is no longer necessary. The short-term choice has eliminated choice in the long term.

Contrast with the private sector. Marketing speaks of the 4 P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. That decision between Mars and Snickers is on product: nutty Snickers or smooth Mars? How about a decision between Tesco and ASDA? Price virtually the same. Virtually the same range of products on offer. No difference in place. But promotion? Ahh – some differentiation is finally achieved: a psychological distinction between whether you prefer the fact that “every little helps” or you enjoy tinkling the back pocket to hear that satisfying jingle of loose change.

In short, private sector choice works because there is so much that you can differentiate on.

But in the public sector… if choice equalises standards, then choice is no longer needed. If the argument then were stretched to say public schools should compete for students on more than just chances of success and general school atmosphere, then I would argue that we are entering dangerous territory. If the product is the same and the price is the same, only place and promotion are left. I don’t want schools advertising for pupils by creating “brand images”; this only prays on a mentality I don’t want to see in education. This leaves only place… and suddenly we come back to where we started.

In an ideal world, most people would prefer the local school and hospital to be top notch. No one, in these circumstances, really wants to make a choice between which school and hospital you should go to. They could, should and can all be good. If Labour’s argument that choice will achieve that is borne out, then choice will eliminate itself from the equation, and we’ll be back to square one – you go to the local school or hospital because they are just that: local.

This is a vast oversimplification of the concept – there are hundreds of factors at play in society that are at the heart of the public sector reform issue that do not figure in discussions about private sector success – but it is the key principle upon which Labour’s reforms are being built. I believe choice may have some role to play initially, but it is neither the end, nor the means to achieve it. It is simply a part of a much wider solution to improving the public services: one which involves considering everything from society in turn, and not one which assumes that a private sector ethos will work wonders in an area where its ideas are largely incompatible.

Ahh. Children. Love ’em or hate ’em, they are going to be the ones paying your pension in the future. Indeed, some of those children will be tomorrow’s new weasel-faced politicians. Others will be your lobbyists, pressure group members, animal rights extremists and maybe even a few criminals in there too.

In other words, they are the society of the future. But what kind of society will that be?

In theory, they will have imbibed the values of the existing society, so they should continue to maintain the status quo, but there is no denying that each passing generation brings with it something new – something they have learned through childhood in response to a changing political climate or advances in technology, for example.

When you look at it that way, could there be any other response to the “Love ’em / Hate ’em?” question, but to pronounce your love for all children, because, after all, they are going to be the architects of the society that your children and grandchildren will grow up in, and – who knows – you may even live long enough to see “their” societal values being played out in your own lifetime.

In any case, even if you don’t, I have. I’m at that age of life where childhood has gone – but the memories are fresh – and adulthood has just about begun… but still trying to figure out my place in that. In other words, my generation: Generation Y as those crazy sociologists call it, is beginning to come to pass. And they’re going to keep coming for many more years to come. And so, as far as I’m concerned, right now is as good a time as any to realise that what we’re seeing in society – which I have discussed in the past as a gradual disengagement from it – is a product of our own neglect. We are forever drifting apart, and the growing isolationism of our lives is the root cause.

Yesterday I was out shopping, and outside the supermarket waiting for his parents was a kid, making weird noises and entertaining himself in the way kids do. Now, after the summer, I’m so used to just reacting to this by being equally stupid, looking for some way to join in the game as the way to just generally chat to a child. He seemed like a happy kid and prepared to engage.

I did make the noise, but didn’t get a response. It was because I wasn’t loud enough. And that only happened because half way through something dragged me back.

“Societal norms” clicked in my head. I said to myself, “You don’t do that here! What if people think you’re a paedophile or something?” I had no response, and immediately pulled back. And for all I know the kid would have replied, and the parent wouldn’t have been bothered. But still I held back, because it’s not worth the risk. Better to be safe than sorry.

And that was that. It got me thinking… we’re all in the “Better safe than sorry” mindset. There is some logic behind it, but it’s gone too far. There is no doubt in my mind that everyone is on the steady path of disengaging with society because we have the fear of the unknown in us. Society is not prepared to accept that a 20 year old man’s motives for talking to a random child on the street might actually be motivated out of good than malice. It’s being led by a cynical government that’s driving communities further apart with fear-based politics – witness the hoohah being caused over “chavs” and anti-social behaviour – and a failure of policy on the international scene that is driving a wedge between “us” and “them”.

You only need to look at the crazy story that developed within the past few days about how a hospital has banned people from cooing at babies. This is symptomatic of the perceived problem we have. Parents may or may not want people cooing at their baby – that is immaterial. However, what we do have is a cultural notion building up that since we are disengaging in other parts of our lives, we should continue spreading this theory. The baby has a right to be undisturbed.

Yet, by doing so, we are continuing to contribute to our decline. Babies quickly understand that smiles are infectious, and they are the sign that something is right. Especially seeing a wide variety of smiles from many different people. The baby quickly learns to be sociable, and to not fear those random faces of strangers quite so much. The beginnings of an optimistic outlook on life could be formed from here. There is so much that happens in a child’s first year of life that will forever impact on its future that we are only now beginning to understand the importance of it.

But take away all of that, and we fan the flames of possession. Only “we” are allowed to coo at “our” baby. Underlying message: beware of others.

I’m not trying to say that this one policy change will cause a radical decline in behaviour. My point is simply to illustrate that this is one out of many cases that has caused us all to take a step back, and then to look down upon society through a snooty nose. How many of us can honestly claim to know our neighbours these days? When sitting on a public bench, or on a bus or train, do you occupy as much space as possible “in case some nutter sits next to me”? How many people smile, say hello and thank you to shop assistants? How many of us these days strike up conversations in as many situations as you can think of, even if it is just about the weather? Do you carry an iPod or MP3 player around everywhere with you so you can avoid being dragged into such an awkward conversation by shutting out the world? Are you concerned about the people who run your local youth clubs, because “it isn’t natural for people to have such a high interest in children”?

We have become endlessly preoccupied with the tiny risk that, in our day-to-day lives, if we communicate with people too much we are going to stumble upon the nutter or the psychopath who is going to ruin everything, from as small as being looked at as if you were something on their shoe, to as large as getting assaulted or worse.

In my view, the risk is worth it. This is not something a government can legislate on. It can’t bring us back together. Only we can do that by taking that very decision to do something about it.

Think about it, and be honest with yourself. Knowing what you know about me – that is, nothing – if I had made a random noise to your 10-year-old child and then tried to start talking to him… what would your reaction be?

You may find the answer somewhat illuminating.

But this post isn’t about Iraq. Iraq is the only exception to the thesis I am about to launch into. I believe that Britain has a problem. It’s not one that people will be prepared to admit to, and it appears to be something buried deep within the psyche of the nation. The symptom of this problem is responsible for some of the problems we see in society in terms of a small minority of people (not just children) who have no respect for the law. On top of that, we have people who like the law only when it is on their side. But underneath all this is one of the problems: Britain’s obsession with abuse; that violence solves all, and feeding a general culture of misguidance.

Let us begin with speed cameras. Adults crave for respect to the law. Yet, see a speed camera – or better yet a speeding fine – and most adults blood will boil. “It’s just another government stealth tax!” they yell as they slip a cheque for £50 in an envelope to pay the fine. Once caught, most adults don’t reform. Fines are a blunt instrument. We just resolve never to get caught again. Who hasn’t driven through speed camera zones to see a remarkable reduction in speed just for a short while only for the engine to start revving again once you’re out of danger?

So immediately, most adults have no right to preach observance to the rule of law while being hypocrites in their spare time. Law is not selective. It is, once passed, an objective standard or criteria by which officers of the law and the judiciary cast judgement. Speeding is breaking the law. Not wearing a seatbelt is breaking the law. Using a mobile phone while driving is breaking the law. You have no excuse if you are caught. You are a criminal.

It’s those last four words that rile people. “I am not a criminal!” they shout. The aggression builds. How could you possibly be a criminal? You pay your taxes. You keep your garden tidy. You don’t attack people in the street. You’re the model citizen!

You aren’t. Much as it pains me to say it given the experience of the poll tax, if you want people to respect the law, you’d better take a look at yourself first. If we accept that our government is legitimate, and it has the authority to act on our behalf – and we do – then we should not be surprised if we choose to take on that authority and lose. Building “respect” in society as part of the processes of socialisation start at home. There are far too many parents these days, and we’re not just talking about inner-city parents here, who wash their hands of their children. The schools are there to do the educating! I have work to do feeding and clothing my child with the best hoodies. I’ll let them work out what’s what.

You’re wrong. And that’s the first step. Neglect. Neglect is abuse. In my last post I complained about the fact that we seem unable to engage lower generations in any kind of conversation. This problem starts at home. The rise of the two-income household is not inherently a bad thing. I have no problem with two parents in a household working hard and earning a living. The only problem is what follows on from that. Children within such families have a habit of disconnecting from their authority figures. The parents are too tired to deal with problems. That “problem” might even be just helping with homework. The stress levels in work are too high… you don’t want to go home to have to engage with your adolescent (and now increasingly pre-adolescent) and demanding offspring.

Our problem is that we are forgetting what it was like to be young. From the ages of 10 onwards, children begin to realise that there is life beyond the home. Things start to get a bit complicated. A lot of wires in the brains are not fused yet to deal with adulthood, yet adulthood and its values are foisted and expected from such individuals from this increasingly early age. To guide you through this process of mental maturation – something far more important than physical maturity – we need support. We need our parent(s) to be there for us. Someone who can share their experience, give friendly advice, set clear boundaries, show what is expected of you, being flexible to situations and allowing more as the years go by. In other words, children need mentors and role-models.

Do you think the stressed out, exhausted workaholics in this nation can adequately supply that? Children and young adults naturally will get into trouble. There will always be some problem. And when that challenge arises, the adult’s response to it will have a long lasting impact. Wave your hand and say, “I’m watching EastEnders!” and suddenly the child has been rejected. A rejection is a permanent black mark. Children will always bring problems, and more than likely at the most inconvenient time. If you can’t be interested in your protégé’s problems, and aren’t prepared to drop everything at a moment’s notice – thus setting an example of how we should interact with each other – then why should they give a damn for your authority? The seeds are sown.

In the meantime, the adults watch the news. They see a story about a police officer driving 159mph who gets away with it. Hoho! How bad is that? They shout abuse at the TV screen – “it’s one rule for us and one rule for them!” they roar, conveniently forgetting their own selective interpretation of the law on speed. Children witness it… more disrespect is cultivated. It now looks like it’s OK to oppose authority? If my parent(s) are doing it, then why should I? After all, these are the people who I look up to the most. I get it now.

Meanwhile, we miss the story demonstrating for all to see just how the police like to fit people up. But that doesn’t matter. The kid probably deserved it. The police are normally right.

Bzzt. Error in logic. On the one hand we don’t really care about police brutality. Some of us secretly crave that the police come decked out with AK47 assault rifles. We want the police to have the authority to implement their own version of justice out on the streets with their batons and stun guns. Some of us even want the army to do the police’s job. By cracking that baton, some skulls, and maybe bringing back the birch, the cane and some capital punishment to go with it, all the problems would be solved.

But wait a minute? What about the copper at 159mph? What about the copper telling the kid how he’d “write it up properly”? If police officers don’t even respect the law, why would you trust one implicitly to hold an assault rifle and accurately dole out justice 100% of the time?

The fact is the police are as corrupt as the rest of us. A lot of us have no respect for the police – I include myself here – for reasons that we find difficult to back up. Police corruption is normally kept hush-hush. Allegations of this kind of behaviour are normally investigated by fellow police forces. Coppers don’t do another copper over. So if you accuse the police of being bent, you’re only going to look like a criminal yourself. The classic, “The innocent ones have nothing to fear!” gets wheeled out. Would you like cameras throughout your house to make sure you don’t beat your wife, or take drugs in your own home? Why not? I thought you were an innocent one?

This is the fundamental flaw in the British people. We encounter a problem and our first instinct is to lash out at it. We like to use our fists. We are a notoriously aggressive nation. We measure our worth in the amount of pints we can drink before we hit the floor, and then on how much we value brawn over brains. If people don’t like who we are, then fuck them. We have bigger muscles than them. If our kids step out of line, then whack! – take that you little bastard. The headmaster isn’t getting respect from the kids? Then why not give him back the cane, and belt the little shits back into line. That oughta teach ’em.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a fear culture. We have the government leading from the front in scaring us into isolation. We have a complicit media who like to do the same and then magnify the problem many times by clamouring for dictatorial measures to solve the problem.

There is a reason why we live in a liberal democracy. The principal tenets of the Liberal Revolutions of the 17-18th centuries were that we were fed up with autocratic leaders, making up the law as they go along, showing no respect for fellow members of society and putting themselves up on a plinth as somehow being morally superior by nature of their position. The rule of law was devised so that everyone had the same objective code to work from. We rejected dictators, because they had a habit of interfering here, there and everywhere for their own ends, and to be frank, a lot of them were psychotically deranged, taking pleasure in the beheading and torture of dissidents.

We decided we didn’t want that. We created systems of government that kept them out of our lives as much as possible. That is why it is called liberal democracy. We believe that individuals, families and to some extent society should be empowered to solve its own problems. Governments only tend to mess things up.

Now we’ve encountered another problem. This seems to be reversing. Bring back national service. Ban hoodies. Ban children from congregating in groups more than two. Bring back the birch. Bring back the rope.

Authoritarian measures. Authoritarian measures to solve a general decline in respect.

Where I come from, respect is earned. Whoever heard of respecting the puny headmaster who gets his jollies out of thrashing the living daylights out of kids? Why was it that it was always the same people who ended up in front of the headmaster, week after week? Why do we really think that abusing and assaulting children will restore respect to society?

Perhaps there is an ulterior motive. For respect, do we need to read fear? Do we want to get to a situation where the nation is constantly on edge for the police officer with an itchy trigger finger? Where adults have the right to violently assault their children, without understanding that the age-old maxim of “violence breeds violence” is true? Where adults violently assault each other to solve their problems?

I don’t want that. I want us to be in a situation where people respect and tolerate the law not because of fear of being caught, whipped, brutalised or even summarily executed by police officers, but because they believe the law is right and in the best interests of society.

And the only way we can get to this position? Like I said, it all starts at home. Start with your own respect for the law. Then try to engage with other people from other generations. Your own kids would be a start. They need you in their corner: they don’t want to be ignored, and they can’t be told that everything they do is right either. You need to draw credible lines and boundaries. You need to offer support, attention, reassurance and an open door. Many children don’t even bring problems to their parent(s) because they don’t feel they’ll get a fair hearing. Listen out for cries of help. Encourage those who don’t want to ask to feel there is no shame in talking out problems. Communication is the best resolution. Parent(s) can’t expect schools to teach this kind of thing. Our teachers are supposed to give children knowledge and information about the world. But only parent(s) can really impart wisdom.

Once we start to foster back the values of talking, debating, exchanging opinions and preparing solutions acceptable to all, then we also demonstrate the reason why we have politics, not just at a national level, but everywhere. The art of politics is all around.

It is the first solution from which all other solutions are derived.

It is the only solution.

This hasn’t been better summed up than in the nonsense of the past couple of days. I’ve been finding it hard to believe that people are seriously getting themselves worked up over an item of clothing, but when the Express announced its new “Crusade!” today that hoodies should be banned, I realised that this nation is in the grip of a seizure of stupidity, led by the moronic “free press”. We love to hail our free press as the finest in the world, holding the government to account. But they sure are pillocks.

You would think this nation would tire of moral panicking on demand of the Express, the Mail, the Sun and the Mirror, but no… it seems we are just as eager for it as ever. The tiresome weekly demands from these papers never seem to come to anything, but they sure as hell create a fine excuse for a good few days of the worst journalism the country has to offer, where anything and everything can be linked back to the initial item of moral panic. The problem now is that we no longer have a government who can act as the voice of reason, ready to inject a little seriousness into the debate.

Instead, they roll over and prepare another crime and disorder bill for Parliament to digest. Another piece of badly thought out, poorly drafted legislation hurtles towards the statute books. Meanwhile, the real issues remain off the agenda, for they aren’t vote winners. Let’s face it: you either talk tough (and talk is cheap), gain support, ride to the rescue of the nation and then look like a saviour, or you could look at the real problems in the destruction of society from further isolation, which might cost a lot of money and also might look “weak”.

There is no contest.

This government has also gone so far as to realise the power and the opportunity a good old fashioned moral panic creates. It even whips them up by itself now: witness the rubbish talked about the threat of terrorism during the passage of the “Anti-Terror” legislation. It’s funny how since that passed, we’ve had nine or ten control orders placed on people and then absolutely nothing since then. Are we really expected to believe that the threat of terror was so high that nothing less than the suspension of Habeas Corpus was necessary to defeat these 10 individuals? Do we really need so much legislation to tackle every single ill in society? If there really was such a threat from terror, why have no more control orders been issued?

We have a government that is media obsessed. It is so focused on pandering to certain segments of society that it would drop its trousers for them if it was asked. As many people, including myself, warned about New Labour, it is not remotely interested in resolving the real problems of society. It seeks power purely for the sake of it, and when in government it will do as much as it can to hold onto power, even if it means selling itself down the river for the latest craze. The traditional Labour project is dead.

Meanwhile, Britain slides into fever over pieces of cotton. It is not the government’s role to tell people what they can and cannot wear. There is no uniform for society. We must stop blaming the youth for everything and anything. There are problems, I admit, but they are vastly overstated. Attempting to demonise people wearing hoodies (criminalisation is not feasible) will only tend to make the problem worse. I have not worn a hoodie in many years, and now I’m getting the urge to go out and buy one just for the sake of rebellion. Now they have been given their official recognition as the Most Evil Item of Clothing, you can be sure that sales are going through the roof in stores nationwide. What better way to express your contempt of adulthood than to wear the Evil Garment and thus prove your rebel credentials?

Groupthink is bad for society. This is the problem. We are increasingly at risk of setting off intergenerational warfare in this country. We have adults – who have the power to stop this nonsense but choose not to – who believe that they are the last bastions of “normal” society. Only they can save us from certain doom. Meanwhile, there are children, ever more emancipated, who feel the oppression of adults on them on a permanent basis means they must be rebelled against at every chance, in order to disrupt the social order that adults want to inflict on them.

Neither position is correct. Neither group has the right to be obeyed. Mistrust breeds further mistrust, and we are already deep within this cycle that it looks increasingly difficult to get out of. There is far too much generalising in society. We’ve got to get back to realising we are dealing with individual cases here. Each individual case likely has an individual problem. Hoodie wearing may or may not be a symptom of a much wider problem, and it’s blindingly obvious to say that the hoodie itself is not causing it. Sure, many individual cases will have similar problems, but the generalisation is unhelpful. Each one needs to be dealt with down at their level, in their language, and dealt with in a way that empowers the individual to choose to better themselves. Forcing the issue often makes the problem worse.

Having said that, there are a lot of adults who have serious problems too. The breakdown of deference in society is a very good thing. Class barriers are deeply wrong. That doesn’t mean there should be a certain level of respect for fellow humans, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the people who start these crusades are middle and higher class members of society who are endlessly concerned that their rank on the social ladder is in serious jeopardy. Of course, this is a generalisation – something I have just said is bad. But it is a similarity that will occur time and time again. The individual adult cases will also vary.

But is there something that can be done to make some initial progress? Yes. It’s very simple. It’s also free.

Reopen lines of communication. Talk. Listen. React. Calmly. Restate. Debate. Resolve. There is a way to work out what the problem is for everyone, but be prepared to accept that you might also be a problem. Change is needed from every direction. Only when each side knows what the other wants, and has been able to cast aside all prejudices, can a genuine solution be worked upon. The solution might take time, effort and yes – even money. By doing this, we instantly work upon solving the first problem at the root of this whole business: the isolation and fragmentation of individuals and subcultures in society.

In this case, the government can set an example… perhaps even lead the way. But it chooses not to.

Another wasted opportunity, lost in a further mire of blustering authoritarianism. Thanks, Tone.