大象传媒

So what happens to RFK? Could you at least tell us what was in it? It sounds as though some ex-CIA guy was having some fun.

On HIV is it worth indicating whether there is any prospect of a cure?

On oil why are oil companies so cool? High prices from high demand is good but it uses the reserves up (carbon shortfal still assumed to be 2020 etc) and will accelerate the push to alternatives. But they don't seem worried and their share prices are steady I think.

On 42 days why not look at the US and ask how come they manage with a minute amount of time (8 days I think). Are they more efficient or do we have more complex problems. It would be interesting to see Labour defend that. They can't just rely on the usual sleight of hand and hyperbole.


Vroom vroom MI5.

The government creates dissent in the classroom by giving pupils who it deems 'living in poverty' 拢30 a week Education Maintenance Grant in addition to all the other benefits their parent(s) are getting. In London, it comes in handy for buying drugs, knives and KFC.

I forgot a couple of ideas:

Where are Labour in their recruitment of a General Secretary (why is it taking so long) and when is the police funding/Abrahams enquiry to report?

Scotland. Is anybody taking the prospect of a separate Scotland seriously? I assume that you don't simply work out the plan on election night 2010. I also assume that it will take years to prepare computer systems and that planning must be done first or you have a yee-haa situation with consultants. When do you start to discuss the divvy-up of things like armed forces. Will Trident submarines we are still to pay for renewing be sited in Scotland? Could they be sited elsewhere? Are there going to be knock on effects to Wales and then by implication NI? Could NI be destabilised?

the question is are we locking up too many children. Answer is NO!. We are locking up adults i.e. children who have been allowed to run riot throughout their youth and then the authorities decide that at 16 they are responsible for their own actions and penalise them for the same behaviour that they have been following all their teenage(and younger) lives.If the do gooders still think that they have served children well since the outlawing of corporal punshment then they need to seriously asses their own consiounce because at present every kid knows their rights when it comes to their problomatic behaviour but are completely oblivious as to their responsibilities as a member of society. Unfortunately, all the talking and strategies in the world will do no good, except to make the politicians think that we beleive their crap retoric, because now that discipline has totally broken down, there is absolutely zero chance of regaining the respect for right every child has been deprived of in the last 20 years

bankblogger,

if, as seems from your post, you think that every child has lost any sense of right and wrong in the last decade, you need to assess the quality of your information (that's assess, not asses, as you wrote - 'asses' is the plural of people like you who throw hyperbole around and buy in to a media and moral panic concerning feral youth, and says something about your own education, to be frank). How many children do you know? How many have you asked about right and wrong? (I'm beginning to think it might make more sense to ask which newspaper you read, to be honest.)


You seem directly to relate the abandonment of administering beatings to young children as a form of chastisement for perceived transgressions with the decline in morality you claim to perceive - is that just misty-eyed nostalgia for all the times you were caned, or do you have some sort of evidence to back it up?

Compare juvenile delinquency here in the UK with that in countries (such as in Scandanavia) where beating children has been outlawed for some time, and where social policies are considerably more 'do-gooding' than here in the UK. What could it mean?

Blame the children if you like (and stand on the ramparts demanding the right to beat them as soundly as you see fit - or to have them beaten, if you lack the stomach yourself, for their own good as well as society's good). Don't look any deeper, engage critical faculties or look for causes beyond the bleating headlines of the right-wing press, whatever you do.

K

thegangof one (1)

RFK is happening tonight - I'm sorry for the delay which was caused buy the breaking Spelman story on Friday's programme.

Peter

Thanks PeterBarron.

DRKF77,
Did you actually read and understand my point. We have children, and I do mean children, roaming the streets with very little sense of purpose except to be as unsociable as possible. Whether this is intentional or a symptom of the lack of discipline shown by parents and schools is irrelevant. The relevance is that they are allowed to do so without any consequences!!. Are you a supporter of the ASBO (our so called saving grace against unruly youth) or do you agree that it serves as a badge of 'Honour' for some. You mention Sweden as a paragon of virtue but our culture is completely different to theirs. As a matter of fact, Sweden has an undercurrent of gang culture which will soon dwindle down to their kids!. My info is pretty good and so are my experiences. Remember, children are not silly and they do say what grown ups seem to want. Woz me spellin' ok

DrKF77 #5

I am not a great expert on children. I do not support beating the hell out of a child who has done something wrong.

However the police always talk about the need for early intervention. What do they do in Scandinavia in that regard? Is it similar to what we do here?

I do have the feeling that the reason that we have so many knifings and shootings amongst young people (especially in SE London where I used to live) is that these kids have never had any "corrective" experience prior to killing somebody. They therefore could have been saved, along with their victims. Costs would have been reduced so spend the money there.

Also I am broadly a social democrat but is the Scandic model viable as a comparison? In some of the cases of teenage stabbings it is drug related and related to territory. I gather, but do not have hard information about numbers, that some of these gangs are influenced by internet guidance from US gang members. If so perhaps they are ahead of us in combating that influence.

bankblogger,

of course I read your post - the only thing is, it seems to have changed somewhat between comment 4 and comment 8.

Let's do a ittle textual analysis, shall we?

In post 4 you state: "at present every kid knows their rights when it comes to their problomatic behaviour but are completely oblivious as to their responsibilities as a member of society" and then later "there is absolutely zero chance of regaining the respect for right every child has been deprived of in the last 20 years". Seems pretty definitive to me - you are stating quite clearly that this entire generation of children, in toto, every last one of the little devils, lack any moral sensibility.

By post 8 this has become: "We have children, and I do mean children, roaming the streets with very little sense of purpose except to be as unsociable as possible" which lacks the punchiness of the foregoing. For a start, you no longer seem to wish to include every child who has grown up in the last 20 years (I read it more as 'we have *some* children...' although i stand to be corrected), and second, you now highlight their 'little sense of purpose' as being important, rather than diagnosing an irretrievable moral breakdown on account of their not being beaten often enough.

It's good you've backed down from the orbit of Planet Daily Mail and thought a bit about what you are writing. We do not (whatever your experiences, I would suggest) live in a country suffused with gangs of feral children on every street corner, and I rather suspect you know that I was right to pull you up on your hysterical hyperbole. What useful purpose can that possibly serve?

I have to disagree that the causes of any such problems are irrelevant, though (unless, that is, one wishes to address the problem, whatever its cause, by means of administering beatings to children, which you seemed to show strong support for in post 4, but of which I see no mention in post 8). Surely, rather than simply knocking sense in to them with sticks or whatever, understanding quite how we have got to the stage we are at (whatever that is - it would help if we could have a reasonable discussion of the extent of the problem you diagnose without the emotive language and anecdotal evidence) would help us to find a solution? That doesn't involve sticks?

Indeed, I still maintain your horizons are somewhat limited if you are looking to blame either The Parents or The Teachers, exclusively, for what is part of a wider and deeper set of social changes over the last couple of decades. Your throwaway 'little sense of purpose' seems to me to be a better starting point than your current line of argument.

Finally, I didn't mention Sweden specifically (did you read my post?) and I wasn't suggesting there are not cultural differences (did you not understand my piint?) - rather, I was suggesting that it is precisely in those cultural differences that we might be able to get an idea on where we stand, how we got here and how we might proceed.

K

Spelling much better, so there's no easy way for me to call you an ass this time ;)

Why is Newsnight so obsessed with the Spelman expenses story which dates back more than 10 years but ignores the indefensible expenses claims of many MPs just last year? Is it because many of these are Labour MPs? Crick's report and his postings show him to be on some kind of manic vendetta against the Conservatives. I note that he does not seem to reply to comments but perhaps someone from the editorial team would be so kind as to furnish an explanation.

PHYSICAL AND VERBAL PAIN

In connection with various punishment beatings above (actual and proposed) I gather it was recently shown that the same areas of the brain light up for either physical or mental chastisement. Is it possible that supposed civilisations who see punishment as a way to a positive attitude in the punished, might be same civilisations that bomb the crap out of other countries to bring peace and enlightenment?

WE HAVE LIFT OFF

I am in Meldrew meltdown:

Barry George was obsessed with Jill Dando! So was I!!
So were most of the men in the bloody country!!!

Next?

He had a thing about guns. Oh for goodness sake. . .

If he had an inside leg measurement he is guilty for sure.

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I already did my blogs on Emily items...

So i am not going to retype the words.

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