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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.135
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 04:12 pm:   

Read this and define what constitutes a crime in Britain these days. 3O calls to the police and nothing.

And they won't declassify cannabis because it constitutes a crime.

I know the two are unconnected, but it makes my blood boil.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 06:56 pm:   

Quote from that article:
Chris Tew, former Assistant Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police, said: "Anti-social behaviour often occurs in residential areas when no actual crime is being committed. There's no damage or assault and it doesn't pass the threshold for a crime."

DOESN'T PASS THE THRESHOLD FOR A CRIME!!! That makes my blood boil!
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.145
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 07:22 pm:   

In fairness of the former ACC, I think he is merely pointing out that it should be a crime, but according to the law it isn't. Either way, Caroline, it also makes my blood boil.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 08:52 pm:   

The thing is, what makes certain human beings (if you can call them that?) think it's acceptable for them to pick on people who are less able to defend themselves?

If you look at, let's say, cats, at least once a male cat becomes too old and is no longer considered a threat territory-wise, the younger males leave them alone, even let them share a bit of territory with them. But humans (only some, obviously - thankfully not everyone is like that) think that bullying someone older/more infirm/somehow different to themselves is fine. Sometimes, I just don't understand people.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.145
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 09:22 pm:   

My girlfriend read this and was shocked. This kind of thing simply doesn't happen in Poland. Of course there's crime, just like anywhere, but not the kind that includes 'people' throwing eggs and stones at somebody's house and ridiculing somebody because they are handicapped.

It's disgusting and embarrassing for me as a British citizen.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 09:37 pm:   

I wonder if it's a "British disease"?
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 10:38 pm:   

It's made the TV news. But no one's really surprised. With folk bringing their kids up using the TV as a pacifier and not embracing the imagination in direct contact with them, through interactive storytelling, development of empathy is severally hampered. The parents of these kids are right now worrying only about being blamed. And wondering who they can blame to prevent the responsibility falling on their rounded, slouched shoulders.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 11:43 am:   

Caroline - I think it is most definitely a British disease. I have worked with over 20 nationalities, and I have yet to meet a nationality who would allow this to happen within their community.

This kind of thing really worries me, especially when I'm returning to England next summer for a year. It worries me because I always feel a little left of centre whenever I'm back, which I guess is the adjusting period, but then I start reading the papers, and remembering how violent Britain is. It's always been like this, but it took stepping outside of the country to realise just how crazy the place is. I love England for many reasons, but there are many reasons including the violence which make me want to stay in Poland. It's a Catch 22 situation at the moment for me. This mentality which the aforementioned post describes, just sickens me.

I hate saying things like this. Even thinking them, because I don't want to seem like one of those ex-pats who keeps knocking the place he came from.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 11:44 am:   

should read: a nationality which would let...
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 11:53 am:   

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I haven't encountered cruelty, intolerance, racism, etc, from those nationalities I've met, far from it, but I'm referring to a particular kind of inbred menatality that appears to exist within the provincial towns of England and the rest of Britain.

Just take a walk, if you dare, on Friday or Saturday night through the average town, and it's a toss of the coin whether you get your head kicked in, irrelevant if you are a man or woman. The next week the local paper is full of stories about some poor woman walking home from a nightclub and being raped. Sometimes the woman doesn't even make it home.

My friends from other countries visit places like Edinburgh and London, and tell me how great it was. I agree. But these are the tourists among my friends. Those that come looking for work begin to see an entirely different culture. They are shocked. I guess old stereotypes plays into it, especially since a lot of my students still think London is fog enshrouded and English men are reserved and cold.

Ah, I'm babbling again. And probably raising a lot of hackles no doubt.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 12:14 pm:   

England has become a melting pot in recent decades due to its own liberal values not having caught up with the reality on the ground.

The "implosion of empire", geographical location (as first port of call in these islands) and the failure of the country's infrastructure to cope with a frighteningly expanding population are the catalysts for the Ballardian nightmare we see unfolding on the news every day.

The authorities really do need to adopt a zero tolerance attitude to all anti-social behaviour as a matter of EXTREME URGENCY (like get on it now!) to have any chance of regaining control. Teaching basic morality (the difference between RIGHT and WRONG) also needs to be included in school curriculums from the very earliest age.

We've had problems of our own in Ireland (haven't we just!) but I have to say the sense of community over here (even if still largely segregated lol) tends to keep these kinds of shocking amoral crimes against defenceless neighbours relatively low.
Come back to me in another ten years though...
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:02 pm:   

Christ, in ten years we'll be riding jalopies with flame throwers just to get down the local supermarket Reminds of what Bill Hicks said in Revelations about ordering a pizza.

Stephen - expanding population or not, my argument is that the violence, the attitude, doesn't only stem from undervalued elements of the community (sorry, elements is the wrong choice of word); people; those that are 'disenfranchised', relegated to a deprived social order, but that the violence and behaviour is no longer systematic of one group, but appears to emanate from all levels of society.

Let's be honest about this. People who don't have work, money or anything of 'materialistic' value, people we might bracket as poor, are unlikely to be populating the town pubs through the simple fact they can't afford it. So, just who are the people we see destroying property, instigating violence and generally scaring the crap out of everyone else on Friday and Saturday nights?

This violence is not even necessarily viewed as something terrible by a large proportion of people because we have come to accept it as part of normal British life. Just like secondary school, you understood there was a good chance you'd at some stage be involved in a fight. You accepted it because you thought it was normal behaviour. And this is the way of most schools throughout the world, I guess. But since when has it become normal to have to literally pick your way through the town's debris and injured just so you can go out for a beer?
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:11 pm:   

In the 1990's when I was studying at Sunderland University, a large percentage of my friends were attacked. Saturdays were always the worst because of match day. If Sunderland lost we avoided walking through the city centre. If Sunderland lost we avoided walking through the city centre. We had to actually plot a route to and over the Wear river just so we could get to our student nightclub. I lost count of how many of my friends were attacked.

I made friends with quite a few of the locals and they said what I'm saying now, that the violence came at you from all levels of society. They said in any one gang, for every two or three kids who came from broken homes, there were just as many kids who came from well-off backgrounds, whose parents were loving and caring, not cold mechanical beast as sometimes betrayed of the middle-class.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:11 pm:   

So, the question is why? What's the cause?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:18 pm:   

I went out for a night in Stoke city centre last year while visiting friends and found the experience terrifying - like nothing I had ever seen before! Wherever you went there was a palpable atmosphere of simmering violence in the air that made me afraid to make eye contact with anyone. Witnessed several street corner punch ups that night.

Came home to old Belfast and thought "there may be areas of this city I wouldn't be seen dead in without a union jack/tricolor badge" but at least I can go for a drink in the city centre and feel safe.

It's like I said the authorities in England need to get tough - and I mean tough - on these louts like NOW!! I say that as an Irish Anglophile by the way...
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:30 pm:   

That's it, mate. Places like Stoke, St.Helens, Carlisle, Bradford, Wallsall, the list goes on. The cities will always be violent places, and that doesn't excuse it, but the towns are a law unto themselves.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:30 pm:   

Just a quick response as I'm in a rush at the moment ..

You guys are both right - and what you've said about it not being as bad outside the UK scares and surprises me.

I'm an oldie. When I was a youngster, there WAS a sense of community - at least in the smaller towns which I frequented then. I'd assumed this rise in violence and intolerance was a "generation thing" rather than a "UK thing" - ie. kids nowadays not being as well brought-up or whatever as they were in my day, etc. I'd assumed this was "normal" behaviour nowadays - but to realise it wouldn't be tolerated in other countries is pretty scary to a Brit!
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:38 pm:   

Part of it's a police resources issue. It's easier not to waste the manhours sorting a teenager out because the resultant sentencing for any crime is too soft to have an affect.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:49 pm:   

Mark - I couldn't agree more, and that makes me feel as if I'm rallying against everything I believe in. I don't want to have to say lets adopt a zero tolerance attitude, or the response is too soft, lets toughen up. I want to believe in compassion, I want to believe in understanding, I want somebody to listen to those who need that. But when I read about this I can only wonder if anything at all will make a difference.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 01:55 pm:   

You're voicing the compassionate liberalism that English society has always been proud of Frank. But now that very holding back from drastic measures has become a part of the problem.

Zero tolerance to all offenders and moral (non-religious) education of children are the only answers - how else can we rebuild that lost sense of community. I sincerely believe that.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.144
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 02:24 pm:   

Stephen - and that's my problem. A contradictory one. Speak to Joel about this. He has an infinite amount of patience with regards to this. He speaks intelligently, rationally and compassionately about it. BUT, I feel my own beliefs slipping.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 03:57 pm:   

Joel's approach is commendable and one I'd like to see being implemented. But at the same time there are those who are lost, who have ingrained behaviour a touch of kindness will not help, becuase it will only be seen as a sign of weakness.

In the case we're all scandalised by, the vicious gang doesn't understand its the freak and unslightly, not the disabled person it tormented.
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Barbara Roden (Nebuly)
Username: Nebuly

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 216.232.181.247
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 04:22 pm:   

Part of the problem, from what I see (and of course I don't live in the UK, so may be way off base here) is that profound social changes over the last three decades have altered the landscape dramatically. The disappearance of traditional (for which read manual) jobs open to those with limited education means that you have a large group of people whose employment prospects are low to non-existent, and this has been going on so long that you now have a second generation of young people who look around and can perhaps see no one in their family who has ever been gainfully employed. The education system has failed them - or is seen to have failed them, by being irrelevant to their lives - and the only sense of community that they have is with others who share their background, education level, and sense of disenchantment and disenfranchisement. Add to the mix recession, and the perceived threat of immigrants 'taking our jobs' (even though the jobs the immigrants are taking are by and large ones that these young people are either unqualified to do, or wouldn't do anyway as they're seen as 'demeaning'), and you get a toxic mix, breeding a huge group of people with little education, no aims, no purpose, no prospect of a job (and no incentive to go and get one, because they don't have that as a model to inspire them), who see anyone not like them as 'the other', and a target, particularly if they're seen as weak or vulnerable in some way. Sympathy, empathy, kindness, charity, respect: these might as well be a foreign language. I don't know how you change the situation, but it's going to take a lot more than slaps on the wrist, or a talking-to, or resorting to 'let the police deal with it'.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 05:12 pm:   

Yup.

There's also something else,a recent phenomenon folk didn't have in the still sort of recent past. growing up in a craphole, people do now see on TV the lives of the folk who seem to have everything they haven't. The sudden realisation that life isn't a level playing field hurts and thus is best sneered at and ignored. 'I'm not working in McDonald's while you go to private school and come and sneer at me.'

Real class resentment.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 05:13 pm:   

No one's responsible any more. And if you blame someone else for things, you're as good as saying there was never anything you could've done to change it.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 06:34 pm:   

Barbara - I agree with what you say here wholeheartedly. I, too, think the problem is down to lack of opportunity, poor education and nothing to aspire to, nor good role models to follow. Youngsters feel there is no hope for them, so why bother?

Not sure though, Mark, that I agree with your comment about people seeing on TV the lives of the folk who seem to have everything they haven't. I was brought up on a council estate, with poor relatively uneducated parents (mum was a cleaner and dad a plasterer). I remember myself looking at people on TV or reading about them in magazines and thinking "Why do they have that when we don't?". But that was 40 years ago, so it's not a new thing at all.

And then I didn't turn into some kind of yob, did I? There was nothing whatsoever to do in our small town. No cinema within a 30 miles radius. My parents didn't have a car for much of the time (except for a few years when dad had a van provided by his boss) so we didn't get out much. There were no computers or games consoles. We had to make our own entertainment - reading books (mostly Pan horrors in my case!), going for walks, cycling, etc. It annoys me when you hear kids nowadays say "there's nothing to do, which is why we do these things". We REALLY had nothing to do but to make our own amusement - but we never went round terrorising people because we respected the older generation and we knew right from wrong. Nowadays, there seems to be no sense of knowing right from wrong. I really do believe it all boils down to failings in the education system. And now I'm rambling ...
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.83
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 09:55 pm:   

Barbara - I agree with nearly everything you've said, well, in fact everything you've said, but my point of view is that Britain cannot lay the blame for crime and violence solely on the 'disenfranchised'.

Case in point (doing my Serling impression), in Poland there is real poverty, yet nobody goes round the town centres on a Saturday night laying waste to everything and everyone.

There's a marked difference between British culture, of the contributing reasons for its crime, compared to other countries. What it is, I have yet to understand.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.83
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 10:14 pm:   

I think what I am trying to say is that a country as affluent as Britain, which we are in comparison to many other countries, can no longer ignore the fact that, as I've said before, the problems are a symptom of not having, when, as I've repeated this many times, it is a classless entity, for the most part.

Not having role models could be argued by any country. Look at any number of countries who have real problems when it comes to a lack of something, i.e. running water, electricity, food, water, their crimes are results of this, not because they didn't have role-models to look up to. Their crime is symptomatic of something we can even justify, maybe not condone, but we can see the source of origin. Where on earth is the justification in what prevails in Britain. I don't see it. I came from a really poor family, from a terrible, terrible background, yet I know the difference between right and wrong.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.72
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 10:26 pm:   

Caroline - I wasn't laying everything down to one cause. There's multiple reasons. The bad behaviour pervades throughout the classes (eg David Cameron's hellfire club or whatever it was called at university). We're a more informed society and social injustice is now very evident to folk. But growing up, it never occurred to me there may be opportunities in the world open to someone like me, working class lad shivering in a radiator-less room to do homework or trying in a warm roon filled with cigarette smoke and a blaring TV. No example of higher education in my family. Parents who gave me everything they could while implying that anything we didn't have wasn't worth having or to be sneered at. Denial.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.100
Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 - 11:20 am:   

I have to retract part of my statement after some consideration. I think that the evolution of our own lives is too complicated for me to make sweeping generalisations about others as in, 'I know the difference between right and wrong'. I say this because life is just too indeterminate, unpredictable and arbitrary for all lives to move in similar directions.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 - 05:17 pm:   

When I say zero tolerance from the 'authorities' I don't mean just leaving it all up to the police - though clearly they will be in the front line.
There needs to be a much tougher and better coordinated strategy that icludes the police, the courts, politicians, social services, the education system, councils and local community groups.
Perpetrators of violence, destruction, threats and intimidation against people and property need to be identified and dealt with harshly and consistently until the message filters through that this behaviour will not be tolerated in society.
Look what this approach achieved in the former murder capital of the world New York. It's a shame we have to resort to such shock tactics but to do nothing and let the situation deteriorate further would be a greater wrong. That's my opinion anyway.
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Barbara Roden (Nebuly)
Username: Nebuly

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 216.232.181.247
Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 - 06:25 pm:   

"There needs to be a much tougher and better coordinated strategy that icludes the police, the courts, politicians, social services, the education system, councils and local community groups."

I agree, Stephen. It's a serious, wide-spread, and deep-rooted problem, and it's going to take a lot of work by a lot of people to sort it out.

"Perpetrators of violence, destruction, threats and intimidation against people and property need to be identified and dealt with harshly and consistently until the message filters through that this behaviour will not be tolerated in society."

I agree with this too, but only to an extent. Simply identifying and then dealing harshly with criminals, and those whose behaviour is anti-social, isn't enough; the underlying causes have to be identified and then dealt with, to stop the criminal and anti-social behaviour. Otherwise you're simply rounding the same people up time and again, throwing them in prison with other, similar, people, and then letting them back onto the streets, only now with additional grievances, anger, and some newly-acquired skills and ideas, none of which are going to be positive.

And like Frank I, too, wonder why this seems to be so much larger a problem in Britain than elsewhere. Here in Canada we certainly have disaffected and disenfranchised young people with little education and few job prospects, but we have only a fraction of the problem that Britain seems to have, and then only in major cities like Vancouver and Toronto (where such behaviour is usually gang related). We certainly don't have scores of young people roaming the streets in cities and towns large and small, terrorising and intimidating the population, and I can't think of too many places where people are afraid to walk at night, anywhere in the country.

When I moved to England (well, Wales) in 1992, I was surprised by the number of British people who, when they heard my accent and realised I lived there, and wasn't just visiting, expressed something close to amazement that anyone would choose to move from Canada to the U.K. The tone in which this was said always struck me as more appropriate if you substituted 'Rwanda' or 'Somalia' or 'North Korea' for 'Britain'.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 - 07:18 pm:   

By harsh treatment I mean removal of their liberty and enforced reeducation of these individuals to show them the effect their actions are having on the community and perhaps some sort of reward incentive for changed behaviour.

Instead of just throwing them in a cell where their frustrations can simmer they should be made to give something back through some kind of compulsory community service scheme. All this needs is a cohesive strategy to be implemented across all levels of local government. The courts, police and prisons working with local councils and community groups to identify the regular offenders and make them spend their time more positively. I believe most offenders once they've sobered up will see they've no choice other than to cooperate while the minority of hard cases who refuse can than be stripped of privileges, comforts and rewards as an added incentive to the others. I'm just spouting off here but the answer surely must be something along these lines.

I'll be advocating a return to National Service next lol.. hmmmm...
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.166.237
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 12:36 am:   

"There needs to be a much tougher and better coordinated strategy that includes the police, the courts, politicians, social services, the education system, councils and local community groups."

Barbara, see below. Is Belfast taking a lead here? Surely this type of initiative is taking place over the Irish Sea?

A blueprint for creating a `Safer Belfast` has been unveiled.

Headed up by Belfast City Council, the plan has been launched by Belfast Community Safety Partnership to target four key areas: anti-social behaviour, alcohol-fuelled violent crime, fear of crime, and hate crime.

Built on extensive public research and consultation during the last two years, the Safer Belfast Plan 2009/11 aims to address concerns at grassroots level.

Councillor Pat McCarthy, chairman of the council`s Health and Environmental Services Committee, said:

“We all want to live in a city that feels safe, and is safe, and there`s a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes to tackle community concerns. But this plan aims to create a more coordinated, joined-up approach so that agencies can share information and work together to provide the best possible solutions, with Belfast City Council as the civic leader.”

The council and its partners already deliver a number of successful initiatives under the `Safer Belfast` banner. Recently, the council hosted its second annual hate crime convention in Belfast`s Waterfront Hall. Youth diversionary work is also key in tackling anti-social behaviour across the city and the Youth Awards have gone from strength to strength since their inception in 2006.

Suzanne Wylie, head of the council`s Environmental Health Service, added:

“These awards, along with our community safety grants, help give recognition to communities that are working hard to find solutions to local problems. As a council, it`s important that we empower communities and give them the `tools` they need to bring about positive changes in their area.

“We`ve also set up anti-social behaviour forums across Belfast and we are currently developing a tension monitoring process to identify and deal with issues such as hate crime. As part of our commitment to tackling alcohol-fuelled violence and crime, we have ongoing work with off-licences and the pub trade, as well as our `Get Home Safe` campaign.”
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.166.237
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 12:47 am:   

Whilst I applaud and fully support the above plans I am always very suspicious of sensationalised news reports designed to create fear and do not want to see us, the law abiding citizen, handing over too much power to the police. The majority of youths today are law abiding and inoffensive. Crack down on the yobs for sure but not at the expense of my liberties thanks very much.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.108.128
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 09:24 am:   

How's about a huge Escape form New York wall? Tell all the bad people to stay in it and let the nice people out...
You know the Roman empire started in precisely this way, a walled-up city of crims that grew?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.108.128
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 09:26 am:   

I think young people should be made to work in gardens, big allotments where they have to grow their own food to supplement benefits.
And I definitely believe in a national service that isn't military based, but rather community development bound.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.188.75
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 10:27 am:   

Send them all to Australia!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 10:44 am:   

The walled up city or stick them all on an island idea sounds good on paper (don't it just!) but would only be storing up trouble for later when they all broke out. Look at Australia!

Likewise J.G. Ballard and Margaret Atwood's scenario of keeping all the "respectable" (i.e. well off) people in luxury domes, with the dog-eat-dog criminal hordes outside, would only work until the domes were punctured.

So I guess the only real option is the long haul solution of reintegrating these individuals back into society by rebuilding their sense of communal responsibility concurrent with an intensive reeducation of moral values plan from the ground up - starting as early as pre-school days.

Then again vigilante patrols armed with Uzi 9mm machine guns taking out perps with maximum prejudice could be fun! Hey you, scratching the side of that car! Brrrrrrtttt-aat-at...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.108.128
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 10:59 am:   

What it boils down to is the differences between levels/types of society increasingly grate on one another to the point it's like a small scale war. My youngest has some quite rough friends, and has been bringing them to our big garden to play. I was quite happy with this till several thefts started taking place, and they started being quite cheeky with us when we asked them not to throw our gravel on the grass. These lads are gypsy folk, and have rubbed me up so much the wrong way I've turned quite prejudiced against them. I wasn't before; in fact I always considered myself quite tolerant.
Are there any 'types' we can be justified in slagging off? My wife hates my anti-chav stance (I sympathise with them to a large extent, I just wish they would me...at all. :-( ), but I can't change it because I have more encounters with them than she does (i.e. she drives, I bus).
Hang on - we've had this one before.
Joking about the walled city btw. Hope you all realised.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.126
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 11:31 am:   

I'm heartened by some of the thoughtful comments here - a sensible mixture of asserting that some things are unacceptable to society but still treating people humanely.

It seems to me that real niavety is adopting a brutal approach. Things are complicated and will take time and intelligence to solve - the realists are those with the mental fortitude to accept that. Brutality, thinking in tabloid headlines, is a refusal to solve the problem. Indeed, it is part of the problem itself.

Reactionary thinking is living in denial of life's complexities, like self-medicating with painkillers rather than accepting that you need surgery to fix a problem properly.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 01:39 pm:   

>>Send them all to Australia!<<

We did that last time, Huw!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.233.95
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 01:53 pm:   

Yeah, they got you back with Neighbours.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 02:03 pm:   

>>Yeah, they got you back with Neighbours.<<

That's so true.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 02:05 pm:   

But made up for it with Home and away - the world's greatest soap opera.

We should just chop thieves' hands off and castrate rapists and paedophiles. Bring back the stocks and the death penalty. that'll sort this place out.

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