With a situation like this, the most helpful thing, for me, is to reflect and reassess the role I can play here in Ulverston.
It is not healthy, I believe, to write off happenings elsewhere as though they have no relevance to things that happen on our doorstep.
What most people agree is that the eruption of heartbreaking lawlessness has a multitude of different causes. No one issue is at the core of the violence.
The message for me comes from my experience as a teacher in London in what was seen as a very caring school, whose head set this agenda and was the reason I chose to work at his school. The result of the head's approach was that parents with problem kids sent them to our school from many parts of the area so that we struggled with teaching many difficult children.
The message I took on board is there are a substantial number of children who have parents that couldn't cope with their own kids. One talked to parents where the kids at home set the rules. If the parents couldn't cope then who were the people who would act as parents. The answer had to be - the rest of societies adults. They - we - needed to take part in setting the standards and encouraging youngsters to grow up responsibly.
Many caring adults have taken on teaching to fulfil this role others have become social workers and youth leaders. Most are paid to do this.
Another group of paid workers who help maintain an ordered society are the police - many of these, especially in Ulverston have chosen this career to help society function and do it well.
Now the caring professions are being stretched. It's a time when people who already have full commitments of work and their own families to accept that they have an important role in helping to parent other people's children.
The lesson to learn is that we all need to take on board our reponsiblity to help bring up all the children in our community. It's all too easy to think that because some people are paid to do a job then it's entirely their responsibility.
Regretably there are some people who refuse to engage in problems when they occur, their solution is to move the problem on elsewhere so that an uneasy calm is maintained and disruption exists away from their area.
This strategy appears to work - initially - but the underlying disruption is not dealt with.
The message for us, I believe, is to fully engage in our society and assert ourselves and even help beyond our immediate circle of responsibilities of home and family.
We need to tackle irresponsible behaviour by talking and remonstrating with these people who act disruptively.
In the long term, it does not help to push the problem away from us, to expect that "they" - the police; teachers; social workers; councillors; local government - should be dealing with it.
We need to be part of a responsible society and play an assertive role.
What then could we do today, tomorrow this week to do something positive in the town where we live.
This may need us to get involve with areas of town outside our immediate cosy enviroment and demonstrate involvement with other people in the town so that all sections of our town are kept in touch with each other and attitudes do not polarise into us and them.
When others are experiencing problems we need to first understand them by talking directly and second we need to become part of the solution.
19 comments:
Dear oh Dear, you may come up with all the psycho babble and A level sociology you care to but the situation boils down to one basic - lack of respect. END OF. I see it daily on our streets in Ulverston. Kids walk about using foul language not caring who is within earshot, litter is dropped without a thought as to who clears it up or the mess it causes.And who do they answer to? Nobody. Teachers are totally ineffectual, Parents don't care, the police are never about.
Last week I saw 2 girls (20s) literally screaming obscenities at each other, and kicking the s*** out of each other on Market Street, at about 8.30 pm. Time was, if you had a dispute you kept it private and went out the back of the pub to sort it. No more.
Significant that the government recently rejected considering Bill Bratton as a possible London Police Commissioner. He was responsible for the "zero tolerance" policy of New York Police where no crime or offence was considered too trivial to pursue. Time we had ZT here. And yes I do mean locking the yobs up and YES I don't care if criminal convictions ruin their miserable lives. They may just be an example to their feral friends who may just have enough brain cells to conclude that respect matters and that their actions really do have bad consequences.
Joseph
This is typical of the people who want to spectate - do nothing and just moan.
What did you do today, yesterday, last week, last month, last year to encourage the respect you talk about?
When the two girls, you talk about were screaming at each other :
What did YOU do ?
You whinge about how everyone else does nothing. Why is it you exclude yourself?
Aren't you part of the problem?
You sit at your computer and blast out how it's everyone else's fault but oh no, the problem has nothing to do with your lack of action.
Let's have some involvement so that we can show you some respect.
Criminal behavior starts with the disrespect you describe being allowed to thrive by the public - that's you - doing nothing.
Zero tolerance means that every time you see something that you believe needs a response - you are the first to take that action - supported by the rest of us.
Give us your real name for a start.
We have a Police Force (Service?) they are paid to be vigilant and to halt such situations. You feel I should have waded in to stop the fracas? Fine, so that would have been me against the two combatants and their friends. I do not want to earn respect from a hospital bed!
Oh ! I could have phoned the cops. It crossed my mind. But then so did the prospect of being a witness and living in the same small town as those I would testify against. Believe me, they have zero respect for courts and would not view retaliation against me as anything other than my just desserts.
I, in no way, feel it is "everybody else's fault", all of us have problems and concerns in life, the difference between me and you and the scum who pollute our streets is that we make a choice to deal with/solve/endure our problems in a civilised, proper manner whicH does not impinge upon the lives of others. The fault lies fair and square with the perpetrators, be they rioters in London or girls scrapping in Ulverston. They make a choice.
I'll tell you what I did last week to earn respect - I lived my life quietly, I opened doors for others, I gave up my seat on a train to an elderly woman, I didn't parade about town effing and blinding, I didn't drop my chip paper in a garden, I didn't piss up Leather Lane, I helped a blind woman down a set of steep stairs, I didn't hang about street corners discussing in very explicit terms my sex life or the size of my boyfriend's dick. To me, that is not "earning respect" thats just living a decent life, that's normal.
Drastic measures are needed and people such as yourself, full of "liberal ideas" only hinder our progress to a better, well ordered society.
Respect?
Where's your respect for the police, teachers, parents and others that do step in and try to maintain standards.
Two more comments, one re "its everybody else's fault" - have you listened to the looters and their apologists. For them it IS everybody else's fault, the "blame" for riotous, violent behaviour is not with the perpetrators, it lies with the government, the "cuts", the Police, the system. Robbing an injured boy is the fault of all these? The world and the UK is mad!
On zero tolerance - it doesn't begin with me. It begins with me having faith in a system which will not tolerate bad behaviour, which will deal in the severest manner with wrongdoers and take zero heed of excuses and platitudes about unemployment. It begins with a system that recognises these idiots make a free choice to inflict their problems upon others and therefore place themselves, freely, at odds with the rest of us.
Joseph,
Fully agree with you. When I was a kid I was scared s***less of the boys in blue. If you broke the law you faced the results. What happens nowadays, a little kick up the backside, some community service that you wont do and thats it.
I blame a lot on parents. What do they think their little angels are up to when they are roaming the street, singing lulabyes?
I dont think so. Parents today dont give a monkeys about what their little darlings get up to so long as they can pick up their Giros and pop down to the local.
Obviously there are many responsible parents but they keep their noses clean, keep out of the way and dont cause trouble.
National Service, compulsory community service with strong penalties if it is not done, bring back the birch, let the coppers give a clip round the ear like in the past and stop these little gits from ruining our lives.
If it was up to me I would implement a Zreo Tolerance ASAP. Send the offenders to a remote island where they can beat each other up and let them ruin our own lives.
Geoff I hope your comment about stepping in to stop trouble was very tongue in cheek. How many young people carrry knives nowadays? It is no good having afterthiughts about what is right to do when you are on the mortuary slab with a hole in your chest.
Take a walk aroung Burnley, Blackburn, Birmingham, London at night and I defy you not to feel intmidated by the gangs that roam about. Take a ride on London Underground after 9PM and see what fright is.
The Rev.
Church of Common Sense but becoming a bit lapsed!
It would be good to have some comments from people who live in the real world of dealing with disruptive hoodlums.
What we are getting I fear are the ramblings of people who avoid the problem and have fantasy solutions that can't be taken seriously because they are totally impractical.
Geoff,
I dont consider myself a rambler.
The situation regarding civil unrest has gone too far for any normal measures to have any effecr.
What we need are hard measures to counteract the actions of hoodlums, lunatics, yobs and anything elase you care to call them. Try a straw poll of the genreal public and see whos remedy the ordinary man on the street prefers.
I can guarantee that a hard course of action will be favoured by most normal members of the public.
Joseph lets have your view on the subject again.
The Rev.
P.S. I have two very normal children of my own. They have had a loving and caring upbringing and my eldest has just got a masters degree.
We all sit down to eat. Used to go on holiday together. Talk through problems, laugh together and generally have a settled life.Not bad for someone whohas such radical views eh?
No roaming the streets beating up anyone they please, smashing shops and looting , setting fire to buildings etc.
How the hell do you talk to people who think that that trype of behavious is normal?
The Rev again.
GD, your comment about hearing from people who "live in the real world of dealing with disruptive hoodlums" gives the lie to your hopeless and feckless "ideals" on this topic.
For several years, until recently, I worked in the prison system, day after day greeting the vans bringing in new inmates. With them came their paperwork, including their criminal records.
Believe me, these people had chance after chance, courtesy of our courts, to talk, be listened to, be coounselled, helped and guided. They simply stuck up 2 fingers at the system and carried on with their behaviour. They start with petty theft, minor assault, minor disruption. Then "graduate" to robbery, burglary, GBH and worse.
A society/system which had zero tolerance would impose harsh sentences right at the very start of their criminal career which may bring the scum up short and cause
them to maybe THINK about their actions and its consequences.
I, and thousands of others have seen where your "understand and talk" fantasy gets society vis a vis the type of rat we saw foraging in London and Birmingham this week. Maybe you should rethink things and take heed of REALITY.
"Joseph" and "The Rev" -I have no respect for you.
You want to put the blame elsewhere - you wish to play a cowardly role of proposing expreme solutions when you refuse to do anything about disorder yourselves.
You are so weak that you can't even identify yourselves.
The problem in our society at the moment, starts with young people not being disciplined.
When two girls are abusive in the street you run a mile and talk about being attacked with knives and ending up in hospital.
What a lot of rubbish.
It is because people like you do nothing that young people become increasingly brazen and keep pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with.
The present philosophy that it's all the police's fault is a thoughtless option.
The police are there to support our actions: to step in when things get out of hand as they have done recently. They are the last resort.
Long before actions become extreme, we are missing countless opportunities of taking moderate actions ourselves. If there are problems then the police will back us up and get our message across more effectively.
It's all very well jumping on the band wagon of blaming "them".
The problem develops because WE don't act in small incidents.
We need to start acting like adults, not wimps who are so afraid they are too frightened to even identify themselves.
What do you think is going to happen if you do?
Perhaps instead you will earn some respect from the people who know you.
Try it - it's a good feeling.
Totally agrre about the young being disciplined from an early age.
So who should start their discipline.
Obviously it is their parents.
Just take a look at the parents of these rioters and looters. On their admission they do not care what their offspring do at night. Thye let them wander around in gangs, terrorise the general public, take no respect in the legal system and if someone takes a stand against them I.E. the poor chap who was attempting to put out a fire in London and got murdered, they attack in the most cowardly way.
What chance does the ordinary person on the street stand?
Fortunately I have not come across such a problem but I am damned sure if I came up against such a group of hooligans I would run a mlle.
Joseph has had vats experience of these type of people and if you cant take his word for what they are like then I am afraid you are living in an extremely sheltered bubble.
My da and brother have both worked in the juvenile punishment system so I have some experience og how the system works.
So lets see these latest bunch of rioters, looters, murders have their day in court and go home with a smack on the backside, a bit of community service and then they will be back on the street as soon as they can tyo cause more mayhem.
The Rev.
AKA Mark Ashby.
Not having your "respect" is the very least of my concerns!
I can only relate my own "hands on", face to face actual experiences. Whilst talking/counselling/guidance may work in a minority of cases, hard experience tells me that the majority of people reject it. Hence the numbers of previous convictions which have gone unpunished (in any meaningful way) prior to a yob eventually landing in jail.
Inside, they are offered more counselling and the like and most of them comply with that regime - you know why? Because compliance gets them time off their sentences and helps with parole applications etc. In short they get back out quicker and the whole cycle of offending starts again.
Take a walk tonight Mr Dellow, I suggest around 10.30 pm in the town centre, should you happen upon a bunch of lads swearing, shouting and spewing up walk over and politely ask them to desist.Explain to them how their behaviour is disturbing your right to a peaceful evening and tell them that if they persist you will call the police. If I'm around GD, I'll call the ambulance - for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwRMi7ATo3M
And he muttered "sorry" - not loud enough for us to hear.
I've also got a video where I apprehend someone for driving while on his mobile phone.
"Joseph" it's a myth that you get thumped - many times people are apologetic and at the worse they rant briefly for being caught.
It depends how you do it. Basically people like to be liked and feel bad when critised.
Having been a teacher one learns how to intervene reasononally effectively.
I've seen a little old lady walking across King St in front of a car that was travelling too fast and wagging her finger at the driver.
He slowed.
The confidence and instinct of how to handle this kind of behaviour needs to be developed gradually.
Try easier situations to start.
With kids creating a lot of mess at lunch time flicking chips and leaving cartons on the floor, I asked:
"Don't you think that you're creating a lot of mess ?"
Two tried to mouth off at me but eight agreed rather sheepishly.
If more of us expressed our views we would all start to change attitudes.
Perhaps we all need 'assertiveness training'.
These are times when we all need to contribute to parenting people who've never had it.
Dear o dear, I reiterate my opening comment. I have walked over the 590, half way across the lights change, I got a lengthy blast of the horn and the "finger"! The young "lady" just couldn't wait for me to walk maybe 10 feet.
NOBODY involved in the riots and looting should receive less than 6 months jail.
As for our own home grown gits - I have just walked through our town centre, as ever its full of knobheads shouting and bawling. They certainly disturbed my peace but not evidently our Police "service" - nowhere to b e seen!
I did see a PCSO trudging up the Gill, but she' ll be tucked up in bed by now.
Looking back on your previous ramblings, I, the Rev and you can agree there is zero respect. You deal with the 15 year old MUGA vandals, let public opinion deal with thje rioters and murderers.
Welcome Mark Ashby
So giving some one who is using their mobile phone whilst driving is your answer to controling the riots.
I too have had experience of the teaching profession and it seems nowadays that we are unable to control the actions of unruly pupils.
What example does that give if we cant even instill the basic principles of good behavior at school And before you say it teachers are powerless to control puplis due to oue litigious society.
Teachers are unable to punish our little darlings. OK teachers can try to instill the best principals of good behaviour but if a pupil does not want to accept that where next.
No longer the clip round the ear like I had at school and ,OK, it is a cliche, but it did me no harm.
Now compare stopping someone form using a mobile phone whilst driving to stopping these yobs from murdering three people who were just trying to defend their property.
It is tribal behavious and it has becoem acceptable.
If I did not have respect for the country that I was bborn and live in I would bugger off abroad PDQ.
Mark Ashby.
Still preaching from the pulpit of the church of Common Sense.
Mark,
I find myself needing to repeat what I believe.
I worked as a teacher for ten years in a difficult school - Hainault Forest High School - a school that has now been taken over under special measures
I joined the school because I was impressed with its Headteacher Mr Westbury.
He had attracted an excellent team who practiced a way of dealing with unruly pupils. Sadly he was followed by a weak head and the ethos he created has apparently not survived.
Unruly kids can be dealt with by a good team that develops firm guidelines and devotes energy into strict monitoring of behaviour.
First the kids have to want to come to school - the lessons have to be interesting they have to feel welcome - on the schools terms. Then if they step out of line there have to be structured consequences by a coordinated approach from the Head down to - and very importantly - the Form Tutor - who needs to keep tabs on all 30 of his/her charges - every day.
It can be done with dramatic results - our form achieved 50% with five A-C grades in a school with an average of about 28%.
It's a similar approach that I would want to apply here in Ulverston. If we all got involved with what was going on around us, backed by the police then we would avert the development of problems from poor behaviour in our communities.
A similar approach has been found to work in dealing with gangs which I will cover in a future posting.
When did you stop teaching?
I guess it was some time ago.
Nowadays it is a badge of honour if you can fail your GCSE's. Howe can we instill the ethic that hard work rerwards us all.
My two kids left school a few ywears ago but both had a very hard tiem trying to do their work over and above disruptive pupils.
Nothing that the head and other teachers did was effective.
On the pther hand I went through the grammar system when if I mucked about I got the slipper!
I only wish that I had tried a bit harder at school.
Now transfer your ethics to today.
Kids dont even go to school. Their parents dont care less if they go or not.
It is seen as a weakness if gang members go to school.
Gang members are now being recruited form age 6 upwards. In fact an ex Ugandan gunman aged six has been accepted into one of the top London gands because of his experience!
AA I said before this is tribal warfare and I am at a loss as to how it can be stopped.
Stop immigration.
Send troublemakers back to their homw countries.
Send offenders to a remote island where thay can kill as many of their types as possible. It is blood lust when the rampage starts and the police, general public and you and I are powerless.
Drastic measures maybe but we now live in a society that is rapidly, and I mean very rapidly, falling apart.
Mark A.
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