[HedgeYourBets]

PM outlines 'moral collapse' fightback

The Prime Minister has pledged to tackle a "moral collapse" in Britain as he dismissed claims that Coalition cuts were behind the devastating riots.

In what was billed as a "fightback" speech after the turmoil, David Cameron said that, while there were local triggers, most of the disturbances had been down to "criminality" and "indifference to right and wrong".

Mr Cameron added that politicians must challenge decades of erosion of social values rather than clinging to moral "relativism".

Mr Cameron said Coalition ministers would be reviewing all policies for mending the "broken society" over the next few weeks, ranging from education to health and safety rules.

The review will look at many areas including education, welfare, families, parenting and addiction.

After calling for "zero tolerance" against street crime at the weekend, Mr Cameron also said that he would speed up plans to tackle anti-social behaviour. http://www.itn.co.uk/home/26628/PM+o...#39;+fightback

[Lt_Apple]

Famous Last Words. England is Finished.

[TorryJens]

The thing is at least he gets it. The Left is constantly telling us it's about poverty, lack of opportunities etc. England has free education, healthcare, and a number of other benefits. The poor do not organize riots via social media, if they are starving.

[Raj_Copi_Jin]

Italy announced a programme of austerity. The people now know what to expect. In England there was no such announcement and so the public thought it would always be business as usual. It's wake up time. There is no British empire and what is left of the commonwealth looks after its own first. There are many Island nations that have next to no natural resources and one only has to look how they fare in this global economy. Even the Philippines has more going for it than Brittain.

[Big A]

Italy announced a programme of austerity. The people now know what to expect. In England there was no such announcement and so the public thought it would always be business as usual. It's wake up time. There is no British empire and what is left of the commonwealth looks after its own first. There are many Island nations that have next to no natural resources and one only has to look how they fare in this global economy. Even the Philippines has more going for it than Brittain. The poor in the West have more options than 90% of the world. If this is about race and class, why are Indian and Chinese immigrants in the UK so successful?

They have higher education rates, better jobs, and almost non-existent rates of broken families, teenage pregnancies, drug pedlers, or gangs running wild. The UK police had to make appeals to the parents of the rioters to come find their kids, because they have absentee fathers, and mothers hooked up on drugs.

I am not judging these people, for what circumstances they find themselves in, but Cameron is right that this is a moral issue.

If all moral choices are subjective, then we can continue to make excuses, while countries are burnt down.

[brraverishhh]

You answered your own question. It's never been about the realities of want and privation it's the perception of what one should have and be entitled to. Certainly the poor of the west have it better than the billion or so who have clean water to drink. We live in the west where people seriously suggest that cell phones and broadband internet are bona fide human rights. But on the other hand we don't expect people to be happy with having to sleep with their pigs and goats either. And in my mind it's not even completely about that either. It's about in part at least, the sense that when one does get what one wants that burning down your own house and your neighbor's house and his family business and smashing up everything and beating your neighbors up in the street and setting fire to police cars and running down and killing people are legitimate acts of social progress. And what's worse, the powers that be are so cowed so emasculated by their own tolerance not only do they send to the cops to stand there and do nothing, the cops themselves run away lest some some 16 year old yob hurling a brick at a store to smash the window and steal armloads of trainers falls down from the strike of a police baton and bumps his head.

[doctorzlo]

The swinging 60's saw the beginings of moral decline and the rot set in when they abolished capital punishment in shools. It's all about lack of respect for ones elders and peers brought about by the peers being not worth looking up to. Each generation tried to outdo the previous in its degeneration, Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Punks, Goths, etc etc and all protected by laws that say you can't clout your kids around the ear when they need it. Indian and Chinese immigrants never went through that and they still retain the pre 60's morality so in escence the west has sawn off the branch it is sitting on. Having said that, many of the drug peddlers in Sheffield are Indian by descent so western depravity is rubbing off on the new generations.
In our desire not to be another brick in the wall we have allowed the building to collapse.
Can we turn the clock back 60 years and start again please?

[doctorzlo]

I was raised in what you call the "morally degenerate" present society and I would never go out and take advantage of the genuine legitimate grievances of certain protesters in order to riot and loot and destroy. I know plenty of others who were raised in this "moral degeneracy" and feel the same way. It's not about corporal punishment in schools (I assume you meant this rather than capital punishment...), nor is it about rockers or goths or punks, or about having lots of sex. Nor do I think that Chinese families are a model we should strive to emulate, having good Chinese friends myself and knowing how irrationally harsh their parents have been with them.

At the same time, having gone through the Australian public school system, I think I've seen some of the worst this country has to offer. It begins with parents who don't teach their children basic human decency, and continues with schools which are too indifferent to actually enforce their own policies about drug use or violence or abusive behaviour (whether towards teachers or students) and punish these seriously (it doesn't have to involve beating a kid with a stick to make him learn to behave himself - suspension or expulsion or even a police complaint would be just fine). This is, to SOME extent, about moral collapse - that is failing to TEACH and ENFORCE morality - it's not about people's fashion statements (goths and the like) or disposing of antiquated and violent methods (corporal punishment in schools). It is also, in my view, a consequence of the Western world's wholesale adoption of consumerism as the ultimate end in life and rabid radical individualism, to the point where people have been robbed of community or nation and care only about themselves (the two trends, of course, are interlinked).

[NeroASERCH]

Many of the rioters were rich kids too, who just discovered that the cops are too weak to fight back.

I would agree with you since I am in my 20s. It's not about fashion statements, but at the same time you cannot enforce morality, if nobody can agree on what it is, in the first place.

It's the usual "do not impose your values on me" line.

[Big A]

How many people do you know who think stealing is right? How many people do you know who think assault is right?

There are certain basic uncontroversial moral propositions which normal parents should be teaching their kids and schools should be enforcing - particularly where breaching them is also illegal.

[MannoFr]

It's not about corporal punishment in schools (I assume you meant this rather than capital punishment...) You obviously never went to the same scool as me
At the same time, having gone through the Australian public school system Deffinately not.
England was so different to anything you or I have ever seen in Australia. You only have to look at soccer holigans in England compared to the Rugby fans in Australia, chalk and cheese. In an area that houses 200 people in Australia you have 2000 in England so obviously there are more youths in an area and thus more chance of friction.
Fortunately I had left school by the time they abolished education in England and replaced it with "Let kids learn what they want and lets waste time and funds on endless, pointless field trips"
We called all our teachers Sir or Miss and if we did wrong we got the stick. We learned the 3 R's and a bit more besides. At 16 I was doing differential calculus, calculating solids of revolution and doing proofs of theorems. The rubbish they turn out nowadays needs to take its shoes off to count past 10. I still maintain that when the leftists started getting a voice the rot set in and the whole society became warped.

[HedgeYourBets]

Well I can't speak about the quantitative aspect of it (more youths = more friction makes sense to me...) but qualitatively if you think Australian public education is any better than Britain's you're mistaken. I don't even think they have many field trips - they just don't teach anything. The situation was bad when I was in the system - and looking at my younger siblings now going through the system I think the situation has gotten even worse (mind you all this was under Howard). This transcends left and right - the problem is systemic. I honestly believe that the education system has degenerated to the point where, not only is it not beneficial, it is downright destructive. I don't care what the standardised tests say about the international performance of Australian schools, having gone through a "good" public school myself I know that I wasted six years learning what should have taken a quarter of the time.

And is it really surprising that this is the case? The entrance scores required to study teaching are so low that just about any idiot can become a teacher, social pressures push students towards mediocrity and laziness (being intelligent or hard-working is considered 'nerdy', no doubt you're familiar with tall poppy syndrome), and schools and parents alike fail to socialise (not merely educate) children to an acceptable standard of minimum civility. The result is a generation of arrogant, lazy, stupid, spoiled kids whose sole pursuit is to pleasure themselves without regard to the wellbeing of anyone or anything else.

[radikal]

I have a theory that because the third world is now developed and on the horizon, cheap labour is vanishing in these countries and no longer available to exploitation. Our system is no longer structured to educate our kids but to churn out easily satisfied cheap labour for our home industries thus replacing what we can't get over seas. Eventually social benefits will be reduced so that people have to take what ever work they are able just to survive.
In the late 60's when I left school the last resort was learning a trade now it has become the ambition of many. The sad alternatives are either slapping burgers or doing years of volutary work to gain enough experience to become employable. Kids are dissilusioned after years of being told "work hard and you will get a good job" and it doesn't happen. What is the answer? Where are we heading?
Regarding Fee paying or State schools there is no difference. At the end of year I was informed that my son was failing because he had not submitted homework all year. Ten months pass and then they tell me? I sent him to a very expensive private boarding school and after a few months when we visited we were told a similar thing. The kids still remember how I tore the headmaster a new A*****e, that was his responsibility and why I paid so much.
Concluding :- England or Australia the kids have been betrayed and we will pay the price.

[Fegasderty]

On the other hand the Police chiefs in Britain are FURIOUS that Cameron wants to hire Wiliam Bratton, erstwhile NYC and LA police chief, to straighten out what's wrong with their cops. Part of me hopes they keep messing up what they're messing up. If only for the entertainment value that mob anarchy during the 2012 Olympics will provide.

[Big A]

How many people do you know who think stealing is right? How many people do you know who think assault is right?

There are certain basic uncontroversial moral propositions which normal parents should be teaching their kids and schools should be enforcing - particularly where breaching them is also illegal. The UN convention on the rights of the child, gives the state more rights than the parents. Governments have worked for decades to get rid of parental rights on moral issues, thinking they know better, since they consult the "experts".

The Socialists use the state to enforce what they call "social justice" and then when they realize people are not all that virtuous, they bring in a police state with teeth. A teacher I had blamed democracy for wars and poverty.