Tuesday 24 June 2008

Is there a social problem in Britain, and if so, what would you do to remedy it? Be sure to show your workings.

Caution. This post may upset.
It also may not read like a well constructed argument.

I was in bed this morning, listening to Radio Five Live, and Victoria Derbyshire's discussion show. A woman rang in to add to the topic of sex education in schools, and said that she saw older boys repeatedly having sex with eight year old girl in the next garden. She called the police, and shouted at the boy, who responded with swearing, and leaving the girl lying on the ground with her underwear round her ankles. The caller claimed that she had called the police, and that nothing had been done by them.

This evening, I was treated to an hour long documentary, "Cops With Cameras" on ITV.  Normally, I can be entertained by stolen car chases with a passive/aggressive voice over, or youths being pummeled by HM Rozzers accompanied by dramatic music, but this took things to a new level. Here, as police were arresting Bob Marley (not that one) some local herberts took time out of their day to swear and abuse the coppers. Who laughed it off. Surely, that's a criminal offence, to abuse a police officer?

Another aspect of the programme was a relatively mid-scale drugs bust, with a obscured man in his pants vehemently denying that there were any drugs in his house. Once the dogs were in, they found substantial quantities of amphetamines, cannabis, ecstasy, and boxes of knock-off clothes and counterfeit cigarettes ("These are bad for your health!", as one helpful officer described them).

The day before I saw a programme "Snog, Marry, Avoid" on BBC3. On researching this paragraph, I saw that today they are showing "Britain's Youngest Grannies". Two of the contestants seemed to be too caricature-ish to be invented. One had just received a boob job as a present from her father, the other appeared to think that she could channel Paris Hilton.  In their preview videos, the one went out with black electrical tape as suitable upper-wear, both were keeping the fake tan and glitter industry alive. One even went under the name of Levi, even though she was called Gemma.

So, from listening to the radio, watching the box, as well as looking out of the window, I can tell that this island is sinking under the weight of track-suited school-avoiding knife-wielding sex mad boys, who know the law and refuse to respect the authority of anyone, and girls who view Barbie as a viable fashion icon, whose only interest is clubbing and who believe any attention is good attention.

All this can surely lead to one inevitable conclusion...

As you may be aware, the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe. Did you know, in 2006, there were 1200 births to girls under 16, and 45,000 births to those under 20?

Anecdotally, it has long been suggested that having a baby as soon as possible is a direct route to a free council house/flat, combined with benefits. According to a Councilor who spoke on the radio this morning, she is besieged with young women demanding a house, and near to their mothers'. The caller who spoke about the disgusting perpetual rape of the girl said that she lived on an estate that was full of households with the school age mum with no interest in baby.

This doesn't seem to be a problem limited to one part of the country, we have systematic, knowing abuses of our benevolent benefits system by people who have no interest in either formal learning or working.

So what do we do?

I understand that every baby has it's own story, and that generalisations like this could upset people. So, sorry if you think that this post is attacking you, or someone you know. It isn't. What it is doing is acknowledging that there is a problem of abuse of benefits, housing and society.

Can we stop child benefit immediately? No, as this will only pull the rug from under the very people whom the benefits were created for, the mothers to provide for the children.

The same can be said of disability benefit. There is widespread abuse of this - a case in point being the men (it always seems to be men) who claim for being written off in an industrial accident yet are filmed by Police casually throwing petrol tankers into the sea. Surely something sensible can be done?

If all benefits were to be stopped overnight, there would be radio phone ins jammed with rightly unhappy genuine claimants, and the Police would have to try to control the looting.

The Police have a very difficult job in controlling the feral youths on the edge of society. I'm sure they would love to belt some sense into them, but they cannot. They can't sentence them - that's up to the courts - and often have to deal with them them the day after the courts release them with no sentence. Our prisons are so full of scum, there is no room left.

Which brings me back to the drug dealers. Drugs have exploded in availability and reduced in price. Vietnamese gangs are renting houses to farm cannabis. Offices up and down this land are awash with staff still coming down off their weekend ecstasy buzz on Monday, and have official procedures for "Suicide Tuesday" - when the high finally wears off. I have no evidence to support this, but I believe that some lottery winners have a lot to do with the rise in organised crime and drugs in the UK. 

According to Camelot's most recent winners press release, The National Lottery has paid out over 2,100 million pound plus prizes. Surely not all of the money has gone to the 'deserving'? Examples like Michael Carroll tell us that statistically, some of that money makes it's way to the more nefarious members of society - in turn unlocking the door to the toys of say, counterfeiting or buying lorry-loads of drugs.

In the same way that the car helped social mobility in the 20th Century, enormous swathes of cash may have helped to mobilize the criminal element in the 21st.

I understand things change, but surely, in the truest Daily Mail islander fashion - something MUST be done to stop the crims and the council estate no-go areas?

One answer may be to make schooling non-universal. Instead of wasting time and money on making kids go to school only to exclude them, ask the parents whether they want their kids to go or not, and then spend the rest of the cash on extra Police, and each school class is reduced, solving overcrowding.

Or possibly, in the words of on of the late Kenny Everett's characters, "Round 'em up, put 'em in a field, and BOMB THE BASTARDS!"

Normal service will be resumed, as soon as I have calmed down. And no, I'm not drunk, either.

No comments: