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pcwells wrote:As for breeding licenses, I can't think of anything more draconian. When I look at some of history's greatest thinkers, artists and scientists, there's a huge list that came from difficult backgrounds. Yes, their childhoods were an uphill struggle, but the people they became were amazing.

I think you have to be careful to balance a handful of success stories against the countless hundreds of millions of people with absolutely no potential and for whom there's no chance of ever amounting to anything. They're still humans and they'll need looking after in a fair and decent world in which "can dos" feel a moral duty to help the "don't get its". However...

I have a concept I call "Thatcher's Legacy". In the early 1980s, Mrs T's monetarist policies turned the country in a radical new direction. We would stop making things and start selling financial services to the rest of the world and become a crucible for technological advances. A few would make fortunes, while the rest would be left to find something new to do other than mining coal, turning out machine parts, etc. Manufacturing jobs were shed, deliberately. This bred DEEP resentment across the working class. The overwhelming majority were unable to adapt to Thatcher's Britain. With no competent opposition, and with the unions pilloried for the excesses of the 1970s, they were abandoned and unprotected from forces that seemed to be scoffing at their inability to be born with a good start in life. This emerging underclass had children. The biggest influence on a child's life is its parents (despite what the parents of tearaways might want you to believe about the schools). They picked up the same resentment for authority and government from their parents. Those kids are growing up and having kids themselves, and that resentment of authority has mutated into a more general resentment. It has been passed onto a third generation. This is the concept of "Thatcher's Legacy". It is anti-intellectual, lumpen, and ugly. Thatcher's Legacy, I strongly suspect, is a major reason why stupid, arrogant people such as Leanne Salt exist.

Quick! Nurse! The serum's wearing off again! Mr Thompson's having one of his "ideas".

I say the Spartans had the right idea when it came to child rearing.

greedoniz wrote:I say the Spartans had the right idea when it came to child rearing.

Certainly saved them from those bloody persians, I do agree that you have to be careful when discussing selective breeding in humans otherwise you can start to head down a very dark road, But i certainly stick by my point that some people are too immature to be parents and the people that have more kids purely for the benefits are despicable, Lazyness in the Extreme!

pcwells wrote:When I look at some of history's greatest thinkers, artists and scientists, there's a huge list that came from difficult backgrounds. Yes, their childhoods were an uphill struggle, but the people they became were amazing.

Absolutely - having a "poor start" does not mean that you cannot make something of yourself. There's an element of both society's effect on you but also personal responsibility.

In many, many ways I pity this lady, and I fully understand that it's not entirely her fault. But it is a bit her fault. Pointing and laughing isn't particularly constructive, but frankly, neither is excuse making.

This is not a "class thing". I would feel precisely the same about someone who was slim, well educated and middle class or whatever and had made the decision to live their life in way that simply fed off other people's gains. It just so happens that living on a sole income of dole money and benefits doesn't really fund a "middle class" lifestyle.

Reverend Tristan wrote:Liked the posts about people having licences to have children, great idea so we should only breed if aren't poor? What is poor? Where is the cut off point? I know if you're not of true royal blood lets stop ya breading That's a good idea. Next step if you're poor lets round you up and shoot ya then where do we go?

hang on, hang on, hang on...

a massive knee-jerk reaction to something that i fear, people missed the point...

before i start with this rant, and yes - it is a rant because some of you have somehow warped what i originally said, because i've hit a raw nerve, or that you just want to vent spleen too...

i was born in a council house, never had a holiday in my all my childhood - i had a fair few christmas's without anything, same as birthdays - boohoo indeed, my parents, despite being 70 this year, still has a mortgage...so yes, I'm well aware of having to make do and watch the pennies...my mum and dad would have liked to have had more kids, but could not afford it...

i was (maybe bluntly) that to decide, to ultimately choose to have a child is a massive responsibility - and yes, partly be able to care for one emotionally, physically and to an extend financially too...

let me point this out, the world is a massively over crowded place - look at the stats, and what we are potentially doing to ourselves...

the whole licence thing, i feel kinda weird having to even explain the analogy...you can nip out, do the deed, and get a pet very easily...

but then its still the extra rigmarole of having to register and own a licence...yet you could nip out tonight, meet the wrong person at the right time and get pregnant...easy...

the social responsibility of having a child is massive - if you want to be an idiot and label a mere metaphor/analogy/call it what you will as draconian and take it completely out of context..

then yes, i will gladly call you an idiot...and happily be banned/edited or whatever else...

good day sir...

EDIT - not aimed purely at reverend trist....

Tomo wrote:I have a concept I call "Thatcher's Legacy". In the early 1980s, Mrs T's monetarist policies turned the country in a radical new direction. We would stop making things and start selling financial services to the rest of the world and become a crucible for technological advances. A few would make fortunes, while the rest would be left to find something new to do other than mining coal, turning out machine parts, etc. Manufacturing jobs were shed, deliberately. This bred DEEP resentment across the working class. The overwhelming majority were unable to adapt to Thatcher's Britain. With no competent opposition, and with the unions pilloried for the excesses of the 1970s, they were abandoned and unprotected from forces that seemed to be scoffing at their inability to be born with a good start in life. This emerging underclass had children. The biggest influence on a child's life is its parents (despite what the parents of tearaways might want you to believe about the schools). They picked up the same resentment for authority and government from their parents. Those kids are growing up and having kids themselves, and that resentment of authority has mutated into a more general resentment. It has been passed onto a third generation. This is the concept of "Thatcher's Legacy". It is anti-intellectual, lumpen, and ugly. Thatcher's Legacy, I strongly suspect, is a major reason why stupid, arrogant people such as Leanne Salt exist.

Having grown up in a Northern mining town during the 80s, I agree with this 100%. I've long blamed Thatcherism for the appaling attitudes you see so frequently in this country - not just the reasons stated above, but also the more general 'greed is good' ethic, and the way in which the interests of a company's shareholders are made to take priority over its customers and employees.

Both my parents have worked in education in the North East for decades, and, as they tell it, the attitudes and behaviour of kids has deteriorated hugely over the past ten years, as Tomo's 'Thatcher's Legacy' becomes more evident.

I Can almost taste the Hovis.......

As a less draconian alternative to breeding licesnses, I'd like to see the following implemented:

Compulsory parenting classes in schools.

I fully support the teaching of sex education in schools, but feel that equal time and emphasis should be given to parenting skills.

I personally feel that if kids knew how much work and responsibility goes into being a parent, many more teenagers would make absolutely certain that 'accidents' didn't happen to them!

I'd choose education over a jackboot any day!

The biggest influence on a child's life is its parents (despite what the parents of tearaways might want you to believe about the schools). They picked up the same resentment for authority and government from their parents. Those kids are growing up and having kids themselves, and that resentment of authority has mutated into a more general resentment.

Three cheers! - the man has hit the nail on the head here. I've never heard a truer summary of the younger generation.

I was raised to respect authority via fear of my Mother. As a young lad, she plainly explained to me that until I was old enough to be held accountable for my own actions (criminal or otherwise), it would be HER who would have to face the consequences of MY childish mischief. A thought which made me wake up to the responsibilties of life from an early age, and ultimatley steered me away from anything unlawful.

As I grew up; this moral lesson had evolved into a version of my own respect for authority, which of course, I still have today. Even now some people STILL say you can't blame the parents.......erm, yes you can!

pcwells wrote:As a less draconian alternative to breeding licesnses, I'd like to see the following implemented:

Compulsory parenting classes in schools.

I fully support the teaching of sex education in schools, but feel that equal time and emphasis should be given to parenting skills.

I personally feel that if kids knew how much work and responsibility goes into being a parent, many more teenagers would make absolutely certain that 'accidents' didn't happen to them!

I'd choose education over a jackboot any day!

though, as i tried to explained (and maybe did so poorly, twice) it was an analogy...not a real-life suggestion...to highlight how easy is it to get pregnant and not think through the consequences...

i agree with the compulsory parenting classes completely...

why dont we touch upon the moral responsibility of paying taxes next? and the quality of the society you wish to live in, therefore dictates how much tax you should be paying...

greedoniz wrote:I say the Spartans had the right idea when it came to child rearing.

Is this how the Spartans actually raised their kids or how an admittedly dramatized inaccurate movie showed you they were raised?

Either way, if they did such a good job, where are they now?

Interestingly in pre industrial revolution England, there was no such thing as teenagers or children, from the age of one to about two, they were babies and were simply wrapped in cloth, hung on a hook and regularly fed by a wet nurse, (I can think of a worst life). Then as soon as they were able to walk they would help around the farm, admittedly only doing small things like helping to wash the veg or carrying seeds, but they were still part of the work force, by about ten they were fully fledged working adults.

Then along came slavery and suddenly people had a lot of free time and were able to spend that time thinking and learning, thus childhood was created.

For a long time, the idea that children were humans and part of this society was maintained until around the mid 1500's when the ideology and phrase 'spare the rod spoil the child' came into practice. Thus the new thinking of the day was that children were evil by nature, and needed to have the sin beaten out of them to make them into 'proper' adults.

This continued until (and again it was awhile ago that I studied this so my dates aren't fully accurate) but it was around the 1800 when the romanization of children began, suddenly children where innocent, happy, carefree little angles with none of the problems or worries of the adult population.

(incidentally childhood still ended at around the age of ten, the child labourers we hear about today where not children by that society's standards.)

While this ideology is at least better than 'Children are evil' It's still not close to the truth of the matter. Children are human.

And with this romanticized view of children in play, our society is forced to see those children who don't fit the smiling, cherubic dancing little angles package as monsters with something fundamentally wrong with them.

I was too young to remember the James Bulger case, but I do know that these two boys, both 10 years old, killed a Toddler and were imprisoned for twice as long as adults who did the same thing.

Why? Why were these kids so much worse than the adults who do it? Why did the newspapers have their eyes removed from pictures to make them look demonic? And why do people look at this case and instead of think "What is it in our society that makes this happen?' instead think 'Lynch them! Lynch the monsters'.

And for the last hundred years the rallying cry of the adult population has been 'What's wrong with kids these days.'

In the 40's and 50's we had the biker gangs causing trouble and disrespecting authority,

Through the 50's and 60s we had the beatniks and the hippy's taking drugs and having promiscuous under age sex.

I believe it was the 70's that we had the mods and the rockers having knife fights in Brighton. (in fact if you insulted a hard core mod, the response was to go to their truck, take out a sawed off shotgun and shoot you in the foot.)

In the 80's it was the 'teddy boys'

Now we have the 'Hoodies'.

And just like before the kids of the last few decades who were marginalised and hassled by the 'squares' and the 'pigs' now insist on doing it to this generation. Lets look through some of England's laws on Children.

A Child aged between 16 and 17 gets no social support as either a child or adult.

Children are not allowed to play ball games or socialise in a group bigger then two in any public place without being moved on by police (except fenced off areas such as playgrounds where kids can go round and round on the roundabout or back and fourth on the swing or up and down on the see saw as much as they like between 3.30 and 6.00)

Children can be arrested or threatened with arrest with our fun new A.S.B.O law for anything thought of as threatening anti social behaviour. Including Physical or verbal acts of violence, playing football outside their house, being in a group and talking, and my favourite ringing on doorbells and running away

Various shops are employing a new device called the mosquito that causes children pain and stops them from loitering. This is done for their protection?

I've saved the best for last, In a documentary called Atomic Cafe one soldier tells a story of how after serving a year in the armed forces during war time he returned with his platoon and they went to a bar for a celebratory drink and he was refused service because he was under age.
You have to be 18 to vote, drink, smoke or buy knifes and solvents, but at 16 you can join the army and kill and die for your country.

Yeah, its the children who are the problem.

Well agree with Gary on this. As for beardy going on about a tiny uni meal how much does he spend on nights out etc at uni? Typical of this country to point and shout at people but when they end up in that situation they seem to forget all the shouting they did. You wouldnt get this kind of whipping up the masses in the Guardian.

IAIN wrote:then yes, i will gladly call you an idiot...and happily be banned/edited or whatever else...

good day sir...

EDIT - not aimed purely at reverend trist....

No worries mate

I was talking to a social worker as I work in social care and she had a great idea, you should take a test to see if you have common sense when you leave school. If you fail then you need support for the rest of your life as you're too stupid to be in the world on your own and I know there are people out there like that

I agree that there has always been a way of labelling and scapegoating young people, but in many ways the situation is genuinely worse now than it has been.

I'm taking my mother's experience as a teacher as a yardstick here. She's been a teacher for almost forty years. It's true that there have always been difficult kids, but it was only in the last ten years that kids started physically beating her up on a regular basis.

And, out of fear of developing a 'bad reputation', the school in question did nothing about it and wouldn't support her in any independent action she tried to take.

Yes, she could have quit her job, but when those last few years of work have such an influence on your pension, the decision isn't that simple.

So I see a few things going on here:
First, a lot of kids these days have utter contempt for authority.
They know that schools have no real power to enforce rules or good behaviour.
Schools (or perhaps it's the local authorities themselves) are under so much political pressure to 'meet targets' and keep up appearances, that they choose to turn a blind eye to problems rather than confront them.

Add to that, the fact that schools and teachers are considered Public Enemy Number One by lazy politicians and sensationalist journos who look for their own scapegoats and would do anything but imply that the public should take responsibility for their own kids...

Okay. Off my soapbox. I'll be over there ---->