Just what the hell's going on in London?

Mr. Tea said:

There are absolutely loads of factors invloved, and the economic one is obviously very important. But it's also the case that kids from single parent families are disproportionatly more likely to have few quailifications, abuse drink or drugs and commit crimes.

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yep, but its not the only cause, nor is it the main one

There's a good interview with the Stockwell pastor on the video section of the BBC website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6367301.stm

where he comments that essentially Trident worked in that it took out all the larger players, and now the younger ones are vying for position. And if anyone knows the truth about the situation, it'll be him.

I lived just down the road from there for 20 years, Landor Road where that kid's estate is off has always been rough, Peckham has always had its fair share of trouble and kids in Streatham are vicious...it does seem to be really kickin off at the moment though. We need more of an internal and organised community response, cos the police are useless, no-one I know will deal with them.

I think about this quite a bit, because I live and work around this area. My sis teaches at a secondary school in tooting so we talk about these issues regularly.

Firstly it's worth pointing out that south London hasn't turned into san andreas overnight, contrary to the impression given by some of the more excitable media reports. There isn't anywhere in south London that I'd consider to be a no go area - some places require a bit more vigilance than others, but that's natural. There's a steady drip-drip of violent crime, and you always see a few of those big yellow police witness boards dotted around, but no more so than in any other large city. What seems to have happened is that several murders committed over a short space of time - coincidence, it would seem, as none of them appear to be directly connected - have pushed this issue up to the point where the media sense a story in it. The fact that this is now driving government policy says a great deal about the political bankruptcy of the current rabble in power, but very little about the reality of what's going on in south London. Several other cities in the UK have been subjected to this kind of hysterical war-on-the-streets coverage over the last decade - Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Nottingham (although strangely not Glasgow, which, as I learned this week, has the highest murder rate in western Europe).

That said, there is a genuine issue with the progressive alienation of underclass youth over the last twenty years or so. It might be more acute with black kids because of factors specific to afro-carribean culture, but my instincts are that it's more of a class issue than a race issue. If you went to former milltowns in South Wales or Nottinghamshire, or fishing villages in East Scotland, I'm sure there'd be no shortage of white kids facing similar problems. The point about 'the kids feeling they have no future', as made upthread by swears, is true as far as it goes, but it's not very useful. It's one of those classic liberal/thatcherite tug-of-wars, and it obscures the truth - which is that they do have a future, if they want it. There s provision for them in education up to degree level (albeit debt-incurring), and enough jobs to go round once they come out the other side. We've had a decade of economic growth in the UK and there are big skills shortages in all sorts of areas. I remember this point being made very eloquently by Logan Sama a while back in a thread about grime lyrics. I think there's a tendency for well-meaning people in government to accept these kid's views at face value and focus on endlessly tweaking the institutions that serve them. This is counter-productive - it creates beaurocracy and change fatigue in the institutions themselves, and it makes them a sitting duck for political-correctness-gone-mad journalism. Ultimately it demoralises the people working there and pulls them away from the kids who need help.

A better approach would be to ask, why this belief is so prevailent amongst underclass youth? Unfortunately, that's complicated. It was exacerbated by the thatcherite assault on working class communities in the 80s and labour's unsuccessful attempts to assimilate her legacy over the last decade, but it's roots go back further than that. IMO, the key to the way these kids are behaving does lie in family, in it's widest sense. In every conversation I have with people actually dealing with these problems, it keeps coming back to the themes of family, parental attention and authority, and male role models (because this is ovewhelmingly a male problem). It's a grave mistake for the left to downplay the role of the family in raising and socialising children, and it's deeply saddening that 'the family' as a concept has effectively been ceded to the right as political territory. Because the right cannot get over the idea of family as a nuclear unit above and apart from society. In reality, effective families are pyramid shaped, with close family at the top of an ever widening base made up of extended family, trusted friends and neighbours, support networks like church groups, professionals working within institutions, and finally the wider community. If you cut the nuclear family off from that, you put a lot of pressure on it - if money is tight, the pressure is that much greater (because middle class families can at least afford home helps and holidays together to get the quality time needed to deal with these issues). Families need support networks, both fiscally and in terms of human contact, advice and practical help. When people talk about 'family breakdown', they're actually talking about the breakdown of this wider family that supports and protects the nuclear unit.

But the really important thing is for politicians to stop squabbling about who caused it, accept that it has happened, and start trying to address it. If the functions of the wider family aren't being performed, then the state will have to step in to perform them in the short term, while trying to encourage the regrowth of the wider family in the long term. The criminal justice system should be changed to give local communities thier own elected magistrates who can dispense small punishments for petty crimes - unpleasant stuff like hiking in the rain or digging flowerbeds in the park - and stump up the money for professional people to administer such schemes. There needs to be a direct link between crime and punishment, rather than a long, abstract legal process that kids don't understand and ends up with them being sent down and ruined for life. Kids should also be encouraged to take responsibility for thier own actions gradually, rather than making a sudden transition from innocent child to fully culpable adult on thier 16th birthday. The government also needs to stop sending out mixed messages in education, accept the vital community role of schools and help them fulfil it. Help schools to reflect thier local areas by stopping rich parents from bussing thier children out, and stop imposing ridiculous quasi-free market conditions on school funding. The aim should be to have all schools attaining an equal standard of excellence and service, not to kill off the failing schools - because when a school fails, all the kids in it are failed too. Above all, politicians of both parties need to accept that real communities can only be built on genuine authority and ability to make changes, and that means devolving power and resources away from the centre into smaller community-based institutions.

This will all cost money. But prisons, quite apart from the social cost, consume an absolute fortune of public funds - all politicians from left and right know this, but they're too shit-scared of the media to change it. It's depressing that no-one ever makes the case against incarceration from a right wing perspective that might get more sympathy from the Daily Mail - ie that we demand value for money in every other area of public spending, but we're quite happy to write blank cheques for the criminal justice system. There will always be a tiny minority of people who are a genuine danger to the public and need to be incarcerated - the reason that the prison system is under so much strain at the moment, and so many lives are being wrecked, is that kids who are basically decent are being dragged into criminality. Policy should be focussed on keeping out the marginal elements, who can be rehabilitated, so more resources can be used on the genuine wrong'uns.

Gabba Flamenco Crossover said:

'the kids feeling they have no future', as made upthread by swears, is true as far as it goes, but it's not very useful.

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Yeah, emphasis on "feeling" there. Of course there are opportunities for anyone focused enough, but that's not the attitude young people generally have. I'm not saying personal resonsibility doesn't come into it and that it's all society's fault. Perhaps more specialist, vocational education is required, rather than teaching pupils rudimentary three Rs skills and then cramming half of them onto often pointless degress and the other half onto the dole queue.

matt b said:

its a tiny part of it.

in iceland there is a higher % of single mothers than here.

their prison population is thelowest in the OECD (37 per 100,000)

income disparity, the run down of social networks etc is far more important

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The low crime rate is clearly a function of it being too cold to leave the house. Global warming will see an unprecedented crime wave in Iceland, mark my words.

A tragic story in today's Guardian by Matthew Taylor and Alexandra Topping

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/Story/0,,2015238,00.html

The quote that did me in was...

"Yesterday a website dedicated to Billy, whose street name was Remer, showed a video of the teenager rapping with friends. Underneath, posts praised the "fallen soldier". "I hope da mandem hu dne it read all des messeges so dai knw dat remer...was loved by all," read one.

On the Fenwick estate, where Billy died, teenagers said mandem was slang for gang..."

If Guardian journalists don't understand what man dem means ( literally, "the men that..." ), if they are that far removed...it just makes me want to cry.

....and I pretty much agree with everything you've said Gabba, I'd vote for yer!

I think that they should ban violence from television and advertising.
I haven't had a TV for 15 years and when I do see it I am always shocked by the violence depicted, even in the daytime I have seen shows with people being shot etc.

am I an old fart?

I really think we should set an example to people with entertainment, not just cater to the lowest of the low.

I am ready for people to tell me it is irrelevant but I am not so sure.

Also I get a general sense these days that a lot of people have no sense of society / the idea that others are similar to them in terms of having an inner life / feelings / any right to expect what they themselves expect from others.

have i turned into the daily mail?

obviously people need hope and a dad helps and all the things above and big up GFC for the amazing post above.

From No Child Left Behind Campaign

Did you know?

• Black pupils start primary school with some of the highest scores in baseline assessments of initial ability, but within two years they slip behind other children
• Latest Government figures reveal a gulf between the performance of black teenage boys and their white classmates at GCSE.
• At 11, only 62 per cent of boys attain the expected standard in the national curriculum English test, compared with 72 per cent of white boys.
• The decline accelerates at secondary school; just 35.7 per cent of black Caribbean pupils achieve five good passes.
• Just 3,028 black children took A levels compared with 109,000 white students, and their results were an average of one grade lower in each exam.
• There is evidence that some schools are "institutionally racist" and expel black pupils three times as often as other children, according to a Government-funded report.

It is therefore essential that:

• We raise the profile of our educational demands and place them on the political agenda
• Black people develop visible leadership and speak out against the inequalities that exists in the education system
• Black community leaders and faith leaders need to organise, mobilise and participate in direct action to highlight the concerns we have around the education of our children
• Demonstrate to our children the importance and value we place on their education

The objectives of the day of action is to:

• Highlight of the issue of inequalities that exist in the current education system
• Demand high expectations, high standards and high performance from our educational establishments
• Demand a reduction in the number of school exclusions
• Demand support for supplementary schools and education projects
• Insist Local Education Authorities (LEA’s) develop a wider range of curriculum material that provides positive images of Black people (not just as part of Black History Month).

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Can I clear something up for everyone? San Andreas isn't really an especially bad city. That's just in the video game...

Yeah, it is. I think the use of "San Andreas" in the game title is more in reference to that fault line, and the urban centers that are built around it in general. San Andreas the city isn't such a big or bad place.

Another thing: the problem with making the absence of the father a focal point in fighting the breakdown of "family values" and whatnot is that women usually end up losing when this happens on the level of policy. They end up being effectively "blamed" and "punished" socially, which gets us nowhere either...

^that's why its being rolled out, again.

Mr. Tea said:

Something I've noticed in this thread is that it seems to be very 'politically incorrect' (awful phrase, but bear with me) to even consider many of the social aspects that are contributing to this problem.

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example?

Mr. Tea said:

Well, what we have in Britain at the moment, in regards to single-parent families, is two rather unfortunate extremes - on the one hand, absent fathers who have no interest whatsoever in bringing up their kids, and who make every effort not to pay maintainance, let alone see their children - and on the other, men who really want to be good fathers and see their kids, but are obstructed by a system that is biased against them, and can make it very easy for the mother to deny all access if she wants to.

I think there are moves afoot to try and discourage the first sort of father and help the second, which both seem to be good things.

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that's just a huge over-simplification. my dad didn't fit into either and friends who have kids and have seperated from the mother of their child don't either.

nor is the 'system' biased against fathers in the way you describe- fathers' lack of payments is a much bigger deal

the issue is not about fathers, its about wider social breakdown

so simply because i disagree with scapegoating single parents/absent fathers, i ignore personal responsibility?

total bullshit