Pretend Police Force

[petemcewan 27]

If we look at the Stats for knife crime it's astonishing. It's young males at war with each other. What's wrong with them? Do they have nothing to live for except killing one another? Is it now a right of passage to have at least one murder to your credit?

[Top Cats Hat 10]

I know that it is an unfashionable viewpoint but some of this situation has to be attributed to Thatcher's attempts to destroy the concept of society and replace it with the concept of the individual and the accumulation of wealth. This has been aided and abetted by decades of drugs policy which has now made selling illegal drugs one of the top five most profitable businesses. And it is a business that you can start at 12 or 13 and don't have to go to college to study for. If you can survive long enough to earn £5-10K a week before the age of 20 why would you ever choose to spend years doing a crap job where you will never earn anything like that amount? It is all about easy money. Thirty years ago those without money but wanted more had ambitions to be a footballer or a rock star. Now if you ask the same person what their ambition is, most of the time it will be 'to win the lottery' or 'be a celebrity'.

 

It is ultimately a moral decision, but when you have been brought up with no real sense of society and your place in it, as well as constantly being told that you have to have 'things' like cars, jewelery, the latest iPhone or facebook 'likes' to be valued by others, it is easy to see how young kids choose this path.

 

I suspect that most of these kids who end up stabbing or being stabbed are not the ones making the big mulah, but the mules and workhorses making money for others or simply sad wannabees who think walking around with a knife makes them a man or some deluded idea that it will protect them.

 

This problem with some of our young people has taken decades to get to this level and will take decades to recover. It is not a problem of law and order or 'bad people'.

 

It is a problem with our society.

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by Top Cats Hat

[petemcewan 27]

Top Cats Hat,

 

I couldn't agree with you more.

 

I'd like to add the following:

 

According to the sociologists, there are agencies at work in a society that socialises young people into moral and law-abiding citizens They are the following: the Family,  School, and the Church-and its associations.

It appears that they are all failing.

 

Addendum.

An amoral and greedy society will spew forth amoral and greedy citizens.

 

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by petemcewan

[El Cid 210]

33 minutes ago, petemcewan said:

According to the sociologists, there are agencies at work in a society that socialises young people into moral and law-abiding citizens They are the following: the Family,  School, and the Church-and its associations.

It appears that they are all failing.

 

Families are failing to do this because they no longer have the church and the schools are doing their best to take over the parents role, but failing.

Parents no longer feel its their role to teach children various things, because the school should do it.

All that being said, if the police could do a better job of tackling knife crime the figures would not be so bad.

[tinfoilhat 11]

I am the right age to go this me me me attitude that came from thatcher. I grew in the 80s and 90s, so by that standard all I really knew was a Tory government until my early 20s. In many respects society has become softer (in a good way) not harder. But young men seem to be quite happy to kill another for almost trivial matters. 

 

Im not sure what this is down to but I’m loathe to blame it all on thatcher. A lot of these kids would have grown up under governments of all colours, yet most would be knife carrying killers would be hard pressed to name any PM. It’s a poverty thing, it’s a break down of families maybe. 

 

One thing though, Sheffield has made quite literally millions of pocket knives over the decades. Most of them didn’t end up embedded in a young person, yet going back 40, maybe 50 years a lot of young men may have carried one habitually. The difference is the propensity for violence.

[El Cid 210]

11 minutes ago, tinfoilhat said:

 The difference is the propensity for violence.

 

I believe I read that the levels of crime/violence is at the same level of the 80s?

[Top Cats Hat 10]

16 minutes ago, El Cid said:

All that being said, if the police could do a better job of tackling knife crime the figures would not be so bad.

I doubt there is a great deal that can be done about it by the police.

 

This is a problem that greater police numbers or increased stop and search will do very little to change.

[Robin-H 11]

1 hour ago, El Cid said:

I believe I read that the levels of crime/violence is at the same level of the 80s?

And I believe lower than the 70s or 60s, so pre thatcher.. 

[petemcewan 27]

Robin- H

 

I was a teenager in the mid-sixties. I hung about with a pretty tough bunch of lads from East  Manchester.

But none of us was involved in violent crime, murder or drug dealing. I appreciate that I'm being subjective.

But can you direct me to a source for your "lower than the 70s or 60's". ?

 

 

 

[tinfoilhat 11]

1 minute ago, petemcewan said:

Robin- H

 

I was a teenager in the mid-sixties. I hung about with a pretty tough bunch of lads from East  Manchester.

But none of us was involved in violent crime, murder or drug dealing. I appreciate that I'm being subjective.

But can you direct me to a source for your "lower than the 70s or 60's". ?

 

 

 

But alot your peers, statistically at least, would have been very keen on football related violence, something that's really quite a rarity now days. 

[Top Cats Hat 10]

16 minutes ago, petemcewan said:

I was a teenager in the mid-sixties. I hung about with a pretty tough bunch of lads from East  Manchester.

But none of us was involved in violent crime, murder or drug dealing. I appreciate that I'm being subjective.

I remember seeing a Tommy Steele film from the mid sixties where Tommy Steele got fed up with his job, told his boss to do one and walked out.

 

On Monday morning he just walked into another job. Now I know that was a film but that was how it was in the 1960s when we had virtually full employment. If you were a straight white, working class male in the 1960s life wasn't too bad. Fast forward to the late 70s and early 80's and everything has changed. There is no longer such a thing as a guaranteed job for life. For many young people there is not even a guaranteed job. If you were black or Asian even less so. So we had a generation of people who didn't work, who grew up and begat a second generation who had no experience or expectation of work.  

[phil752 10]

12 minutes ago, Top Cats Hat said:

I remember seeing a Tommy Steele film from the mid sixties where Tommy Steele got fed up with his job, told his boss to do one and walked out.

 

On Monday morning he just walked into another job. Now I know that was a film but that was how it was in the 1960s when we had virtually full employment. If you were a straight white, working class male in the 1960s life wasn't too bad. Fast forward to the late 70s and early 80's and everything has changed. There is no longer such a thing as a guaranteed job for life. For many young people there is not even a guaranteed job. If you were black or Asian even less so. So we had a generation of people who didn't work, who grew up and begat a second generation who had no experience or expectation of work.  

to be honest don't know what you are saying? if you are in  a needed job it is the same.

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by phil752