Sunday 24 January 2010

'THERE WERE NOWT ELSE TO DO'


Some readers might recognise my title tonight as being an explaination by one of the anonymous little thugs who were sentenced this week for the horrific and perverted attack on two young boys. What I fail to understand is why they are entitled to anonymity and protection at tax-payer's expense for many years to come, whilst their victims will just have to make the best of it.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is time for the pendulum to swing back in our society,. David Cameron has been lambasted for using this case as an example of how we have become a fractured and sick society but the inescapable fact is that he is correct.

When are we going to wake up to the fact that until we hold  people responsible for their poor and criminal  behaviour and actually punish them in some way that is a  real punishment, we will just get more anti-social and criminal behaviour? What is wrong in naming and shaming?  Whilst supporting and working with 'toxic' parents does that mean that criminal conduct is effectively un-punished?

We have had a 'toxic' culture in this land for too long (13 years now) that has failed to address punishment and shaming as a deterrent.  We have a situation where wriiten policies are spouted by schools, police and any government paid body you can think of, as they address 'Government Targets' and deal with mountains of paperwork and form filling, but fail to achieve what they have written down.

We do not need a paper trail that requires our police to spend 7 hours out of 8, form filling. We do not need an NHS body to explain that an 80 year old lady died in hospital with neglect of her condition and chronic bed-sores because the correct paper trail was missing. Have we forgotten that our schools are meant to look after and educate children?; that our Police are meant to prevent and solve crime and bring felons to justice?; that our nurses are there to look after patients?

Has form filling , report writing  and 'inter agency' consultation and referral missed the point that we are actually dealing with 'real' people?  I want head teachers to be able to 'punish' errant and disruptive pupils; I want the police to be able to deal with and the Courts punish, errant and  anti-social behaviour. I want nurses to treat bed-sores in elderly patients. Is that too much too ask for? It was done 30 years ago for goodness sake.
I am reaching the opinion that the cane in schools is a needed option; that 'birching' as was practised in the Isle of Man has a lot to commend it;  that simple good nursing as Miss Nightingale established is what we should return to.

In the mean time the innocent will suffer and the criminal, whether by default or intent, will continue to not be held to account.


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

A lengthy posting but I'll only take part of it and refer to the Doncaster case. Here we have an inadequate social services department struggling with the outcomes of an area of high unemployment dating from the decline of heavy industry. We have large families with hopeless parents opting for the easy way out-alcohol in this family's case, living in run-down council estates where the more traditional social housing tenants have bought their houses and moved on leaving a nucleus of homes bought to rent and insufficient housing for those who need it. Poor attendance at school because it doesn't seem worth going if there's no job at the end of it.

Housing estates built to replace slums that have been allowed to turn into slums with no facilities, decent shops or public transport.

I don't know this particular estate butI have known many like it and what they all need is some investment inot infrastructure.

We need to invest in these areas and prove that there is light at the tunnel's end for them. We need social services that are properly funded with adequate resources. We need to teach people that we are all responsible for our own behaviour. We need to teach parenting skills and encourage community involvement. We need more Sure Start centres to help parents suffering low self-esteem to appreciate they can cope.

One minor point in all this is that a Conservative government is pledged to slash public expenditure on the very areas needed.

Anonymous said...

Clare Middle School Suffolk is one for you to watch Bertie. Parents and the local village trying to take over and run it as an independent.

Sick of the "Professionals" lording it over teachers and parents and pupils.

I am trying to book places for my wife and I on two Private Landlord seminars this week. One is about controlling rent arraers caused by new Labour's change to Local Housing Allowances which enable tenants to pocket two months rent before you can get the rent paid direct. The other is about Private Landlords dealing with anti social tenants in their property.

The Housing Assns (Quangos) are not, for example, using the Family Intervention Tenancies introduced by Gordon Brown as part of joined up approach to dealing with anti social behaviour.

The FIT (for social landlords like housing assns) make a compulsory condition of a tenancy, upon new tenants with a known ASBO history, that the tenants MUST co-operate with intervention. The FIT in efect introduces Judicial authority much earlier than reacting too late to anti social behaviour. Why are the Housing Assns letting us down ?

What is happening in some areas as councils impose priority tenants on housing assns (IE ASBO tenants being repossessed only to have to be rehomed as priority elsewhere) is that the housing assns choose to place the problem ASBO type tenants next to owner occupiers (rather than another tenant of the assn) and preferably as close to a police station as possible too. Also main roads where it is more difficult to gather crowds etc

Then teh assns have "Stages" ... they will avoid duties of care to kids in an ASBO household. They will avoid making reports of noise nuisance to the council. In turn the council will avoid recording same as a statutory nuisance. I know of one council in which diligent noise nuisanceofficers wanted their council to take the housing assn to Court but of course it was blockered.

The ASBO neighbours from hell that I am concerned about now were driven out of their previous house by the women in the street (I have been researching to expose the lies of the housing assn which then gets them bleating Data Protection as a flag to hide behind to avoid being caught out lying) What had happened was that the ASBO family had made life hell for disabled pensiners next door to them .. Burgled the pensioners. Burnt the pensioners fence and shed. Authority was impotant and incompetent and eventually the street (blessed as the cllr told us with a number of very tough women) sent a message by painting over all the window panes in the ASBO household. Then when they did not take the hint the windows were put in. And so it went on till the council urgently rehomes the ASBO family next to an owner occupier.

I have been quoted just £800 to put an ASBO family out that is disturbing my tenants. Guaranteed to force them out. The "Service" starts with a visit to open negotiation in which the ASBO family father will be KO'd on his doorstep or KO'd and dragged to his doorstep to set the tome. The firm boast they rarely have to call with their vans and evict and clear the house. It is usually £800 for one knock at the door and one KO punch.

After the EDL demo at Stoke I think the Police and the Govt are bricking it. People have had enough. The BBC camera at Albion Square Stoke was off set during the demos to avoid revealing that less than one hundred Anti Fascist counter demos turned up. The people who broke the police cordon were peacful citizens wanting to get away from the Sknhead chanting of the pk,ants and far right who were only there to discredit the EDL. It was when police told ordinary Joe public they were trapped and not allowed through the Cordon that the ordinary citizens said NO. And the police line was breached open. Ordinary people in this country have had enough.

Anonymous said...

TDC is trying to impose an ALMO system on their social housing tenants without any consultation.

ALMO is Arm's Length Management Organisation whereby a third party takes over running a council's or councils' social housing for profit.

No-one here has surveyed the tenants to ask their views nor has anyone told them that, if this goes ahead, the organisation running the council's housing stock could be based anywhere so no local contact just a long-distance phone call to some unknown organisation.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure bringing back institutionalised bullying would have prevented this tragic case. Their father is a bully. Bullies beget bullies. What this family lacked was intervention, care and support at an early stage.

Anonymous said...

This is what is really going on in Kent and in our schools what are any of the parties doing about it bugger all !

Brian Gerrish 'child stealing by the state'

Ask yourself,why dont all parents know this , why are the media so silent?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85nO1UMUznQ

ARK and the Adams Family

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyqsOBkLWh0

ARK Schools, Academies and eugenics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBxQpft5F_k

Anonymous said...

As usual it appears that it is always somebody elses fault.
No one seems to accept responsibility for their actions whether it was the 2 boys, their parents, the social workers, the police or any of the other people involved.

Anonymous said...

Why do you suppose that the pen-pushing culture has been around only 13 years? It certainly started during the Thatcher years. I was teaching in a comprehensive school then, and suddenly everything was being centralised, so that we had no freedom to teach our pupils what was important. We had a National Curriculum.

For many years, the UK has shown little interest and commitment to children and young people. The interests of big business have come first for many a year now. Sadly, a Labour government has done next to nothing to promote the healthy development of children in terms of minimum standards/numbers of playgrounds on new housing developments, or in finding ways and means of occupying disaffected teenagers who really should be at home, supervised by their parents, doing their homework.

I watched a programme on TV today in which a couple were looking for a new house. They had two daughters and two horses. In looking for a suitable property, the horses were mentioned countless times and the girls hardly at all.

Until the population in general learn once again that their children should be their total priority, we will continue to see the decline in standards of behaviour.

Anonymous said...

Anon. 15.22 I agree totally with you but sadly, some people have no parameters when it comes to behaviour and no concept of what is acceptable. In this case, the parents were quite clearly responsible for not teaching their children what is right and wrong.

An alcholic father who beat up his wife and children is never the best teacher for anyone but the wife stayed out with him out of fear, perhaps and lack of awareness that she could do something to get out of the abusive relationship.

The social services were neglectful in not acting earlier.

There are sociopaths in our society who have to be locked up for our protection but it's more a pity these cases aren't picked up earlier so the assaults carried out by these two children could have been prevented.

Social services are damned if they do and damned if they don't but by the time they are involved the damage has been done.

JamesG said...

Richard Card is the world's most boring man - FACT!