Im sorry but its 2009 , where have you been for the past twenty years. It is every man for him or herself, thats what we have tolerated from industry and finance, its been bred and now you reap the harvest. Thats what those lollypop chicks dont seem to understand, they are an obstacle.
England and the rest of the developed world have traded a healthy society for healthy individuals, but a certain portion of your society has developed a fatalistic attitude, there is no reason for some of those kids to figure on having any sort of life outside that of a serf, and they know it.
The question is does it burn out and turn out a generation of kids, that a britain in a hundred years will think this is a dark ages, or does it pan out more darwinian.
…not to mention the rise of moral relativism and the decline of public religion. Or do you only cite factors that support your preconceived political views?
The OP’s question may refer to Blighty now , but its been pretty much voiced complaint in different parts of Canada that I have lived in, in otherwords , nothing new.
So why do you call it a “Rough” council estate? It sounds pretty civilized to me…
I am also your age, and as a child lived in a luxurious suburb of London (two families on my street owned a Rolls Royce). But I always locked my bicycle when I rode down to the shops to buy Smarties and an ice lolly for a shilling.
And we locked our doors.
If Britain is broken today, maybe it always was…but nobody paid attention.
School bullying is a serious problem today. It was when I was in school, too. But nobody was paying attention. My teachers proudly told us to read Tom Brown’s Schooldays for moral guidance.
(note for Americans: Tom Brown’s Schooldays is a classic British book that legitimatizes Dickensian social mores. It’s comparable to a teacher in Mississipi proudly telling his students about the glory of the Ku Klux Klan.)
I can’t really see anyone reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays willingly now. I’ve never got through all of it. But I can’t see how you class it as ‘Dickensian’. The sort of searing social satire which Dickens favoured is wholly absent.
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
Potential H-bomb
God save the queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In england’s dreaming…
there’s no future no future
no future for you
Sorry for the delayed response, I finally got my recall after being laid off for three months, but in ansewer to your question, yes I was being serious.
Some of the things described in that BBC piece resonate with what some small town folks here describe when their little piece of Canadiana meets big city folks. The rudeness, speed of life, and disregard in general I suppose. This is not some active movement on the part of city dwellers, but a programing.
The social behaviour on the part of folks mentioned, from the binge drinkers, underage drinkers, petty crime etc, is not all that different from our reservation natives, close enough that I would love to see an anthropologist do a study between the two.
One thing I am curious about, folks from the UK tend to live quite close to their neighborhood bars, enough that walking is the done thing, where as in North America, the big cities will have their locals, yet the majority of the drinking population will be driving to and from the bar. Binge drinking and drinking and driving are problems, they tend to be far and between.
So I mentioned exposure to North American pressures normally associated with working conditions, obviously a few people think not, so as a resident, what do you think changed, enough that it makes you want to emigrate.
I would think that people going out with the intention to steal would target wealthy areas,with that on their minds they’d be likely to take anything unlocked whether or not they really wanted it.
Times have changed for the worse as far as anti social behaviour is concerned,this is reality however much people would like to bury their heads in the sand.
Maybe you as an individual experienced a pretty hard time when you were young but that doesn’t necessarily reflect society as a whole as it was at the time.
Nowdays you are probably right, though if a thief considers that there isn’t going to be anything worth stealing in the premises then he/she isn’t going to waste his/her time and effort breaking in.
Well I for one still meet pleasant, friendly people every day, don’t always lock my doors (including my car), don’t feel in danger 99% of the time, don’t feel that the children who live near me (or with me!) are particularly disrespectful, etc. etc.
So for me the short answer is no. Surprisingly, unless you read the Daily Mail chances are we’re not going to hell in a handbasket any more than we were 20, 50 or a hundred years ago. Nostalgia is a dangerous disease!
But even in poor houses here at least, probably similar in the UK, you’ll get MP3 players, mobile phones, jewellery, flat screen tellies etc. maybe not as much ready cash lying around though.