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January 14, 2006
Respect?
It appears that our Illustrious Leader grows ever more desperate as one after another of his "Flagship" initiatives crashes to the dust and burns on the flames of failure. Earlier this week he launched yet another grandiose publicity stunt policy "initiative" at a cost of vast amounts of taxpayers money declaring that he intended to reform the youff culture of yobbism he and his touchy feely mob have created. Scenes of him jet washing graffitti off a brickwall in his sharp suit and carefully stage managed setting in Swindon almost provoke laughter. Sadder though were the comments of two policemen hauled off their normal duties to watch and protect this complete twerp from his "adoring" public.
Policeman One pointed to the large crowd of lounging "youff" and said candidly to the assembled press that he didn't think the watching graffitti artists were much impressed. Policeman Two told the press that the real problem was that Blair and his minions have hamstrung the police, stuffed the courts with people who simply do not consider any punishment is appropriate for bad behaviour and constantly let hardened young criminals go without any penalty at all.
The much vaunted ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) is, according to Mr Blair, working and just needs to be tightened up. According to the police it is the latest "Badge of Honour" for young thugs, you have no street-cred if you have no ASBO. Given that around 1600 have been issued since they came into the legal arsenal you would think they might have made some impact, but no. Largely because the courts rarely enforce them and if the offender is dragged into court for breeching it, they are usually cautioned and no further penalty imposed.
The latest proposals include "Parenting Orders" which are supposed to force parents to discipline their kids, attend "parenting classes" and a range of penalties for parents who fail to control their children. Given that most are on benefit (second or third generation of benefit takers who have never worked many of them!) and could now be threatened with eviction from homes and so on, I predict that there will be an instant redress to rehouse in some other area as to refuse to do so would be a breech of the "Human Rights". Never mind anybody else who may be the victim of these abusive thugs - Blair and his cronies live in areas and places protected by regiments of security guards and police the rest of us don't have recourse to, so, as long as it's not on their doorstep, its OK.
But, wait, Shock! Horror! Our Illustrious Leader has also confessed that his elder children were smacked when small! Send in the Social Services Gaulieters! Haul him into a Family Court! Let's see him defend his party's attempt last year to criminalise parents smacking their children now! Ah, but he's given that all up now that he has a younger child and has "given up disciplining him!" Ah, so perhaps he now needs a "parenting Class"?
When you look carefully at the fine print in this latest piece of nannying, you quickly discover that future parents will find themselves under the close supervision of all the Politically Correct social workers, home visitors and midwives who must now supervise new parents, "educate" them in "correct" parenting and "parental responsibility". The fact that most of these people are "experts" in other peoples children, never having had time (or perhaps having the sense not to have) their own. I once had the dubious pleasure of having to discuss parenting with a woman young enough to be my daughter who held soime very definite views on how to bring up children - but had none of her own. All her "experience" came from her ideological brainwashing and from interfering in other peoples lives. This is the barmy army Blair plans to unleash on parents! This is how he plans to introduce State interference right inside that most impregnable place in English Law - private family homes!
Most amusing of all is his "fond remembrances" of the Govan home of his grandparents "where people had respect for their elders and betters". Really Mr Blair? Perhaps the backward looking Rose Tinted hindsight glasses are a little flawed. Govan a hundred years ago was rough, tough and shipbuilding navvy territory. Respect was due to the Gang Bosses and Foremen and to the Owners who paid the wages. Kids learned to respect elders - or get a smack around the ear or - literally - a belting across the rear end if they did not. Idylic it certainly was not - unless, like the Blairs you were in that comfortably well heeled bracket of Doctors and Lawyers with servants and enough money to buy respect!
The real problem which Blair and those like him seem totally unable to face, is that they and their toadies have taught, for the last forty years, that young people have to challenge everything and everyone. They have promoted the idea that "youff" is wise and burning with the desire to "modernise" and for "fairness". They simply cannot face the reality that children, like adults, need order. They need to know that their inexperience means that they have to learn from those who are older in order to avoid falling into the same traps. They need to learn where the boundaries are, what is permissable and what is not. If they are not taught this early, it is too late to try when they reach their teens!
So, now that Mr Blair and his cabinet of "ex-rebels" and "ex-Hippies" are the people in power, what is their vision for the future Britain? A workers paradise? Perhaps, but only if you have a vision of paradise that includes State interference and control in every facet of family and personal life. Watch this space, Soviet style Marxist/Leninism is not dead, Mr Blair and his cronies are introducing it here by stealth. He knows that he cannot win the already lost battle against the yobs, so now he is going to try, as he has done with his laws on homophobia, Islamophobia, "race hate" and "sexism", to bring in a legal requirement that people show "respect". The question is, respect for whom?
You may rest assured it will not be for the ordinary people of this country, it will be for Blair's yobs, Gauleiters and cronies. The rest of us don't count in this once green and pleasant land now firmly under the heel of the most oppressive collection of dictators since Cromwell's Puritans.
"Respect" will become yet another of the words this nasty little dictator has debased in our language, it will join "integrated", "modernising" and "institutionalised" in the collection of landmarks that mark his failures. Let us hope for another Glorious Revolution to throw these quasi-Presbyters and Puritans out of office forever!
Posted by The Gray Monk at January 14, 2006 02:05 PM
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Comments
I just want to add that the parenting classes are a complete waste of time, because in most cases the parents don't have the power to intervene when their child misbehaves. It's not just parents on benefits who are faced with being made scapegoats by the government. Parents who work full time are if anything, more vulnerable.
I heard a story last year, firsthand, from a teacher in an inner London boys' school. The kids are tough and the parents are either fiercely defensive about their misbehaving sons, or afraid to try and tackle issues like drugs, truancy and theft.
This teacher was suddenly summoned from a classroom one day by the school secretary - one of the boys was having a fight with his parents in the foyer. Why were they fighting? The parents were on their way to work that morning and saw their son heading away from the school.
Knowing that if he played truant again, they would be put in prison, they jumped out of the car, grabbed him and drove him to school. They then frogmarched him into the foyer, where he promptly tried to escape the moment they began to explain it all to the school secretary.
As the boy dashed out the door, his father caught him and began to beat the living daylights out of him, no doubt because he had no idea how else to keep the little turd on the premises. The teacher was now in the unenviable position, since he was a witness to the boy's beating, of having to testify in court against the father, while thoroughly sympathising with the parents' position.
The government is attempting to make parents scapegoats for the antisocial behaviour that its legislation has made possible. They even hold parents who work full time and couldn't possibly prevent their child playing truant responsible, while at the same time saying to children "if they smack you, or if they don't give you all the toys you want, it's a breach of your human rights..."
I'm not sure who they'll blame next, but it sure as hell won't be themselves.
Posted by: groendraak at January 18, 2006 04:21 PM