Melaine Phillips

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html

<For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.>

Typically the feminist approach will be something along the lines of "it is the fault of the patriarchy".

Merinda Devine wrote
Radicals' ire is misplaced, children need fathers

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/radicals-ire-is-misplaced-dads-do-count/story-e6frfhqf-1226116976732

<THE reaction to my column last week pointing out the perils of a fatherless society is a case study in how intimidation, vilification, distortion and outright lies are being used in an attempt to silence unfashionable opinions.

Peter wrote: "Those of us who grew up in the fifties and earlier under those tight controls can't understand today's free-ranging kids. "

Can't understand the kids? And yet, he has written an article about what to do about them?! I grew up in the fifties and the behavior doesn't surprise me. The way I see it, the attitudes of the 50's created these problems.

So who benefits from maintaining a long-term welfare-dependent population in the style to which it easily becomes accustomed ? I'm sure that there are many, many well-intentioned social workers and counsellors and liaison officers and education workers and community officers and recreation workers and community development workers and family well-being workers and home-maker workers and various other bureaucrats, as well as teachers and nurses. But imagine what might happen if - presto ! - every able-bodied person on long-term welfare had a job tomorrow: how many professionals might be out of work by next Monday ?

So how can they ensure their lifelong employment, which they studied so hard and long to earn ?

I'm certainly not saying that there is any conscious manipulation of people's situations, but more likely a sort of gut feeling, a tendency, to avoid 'solutions' in favour of issue or problem 'management'.

But the question of class exploitation is unavoidable: the possible exploitation of the under-class by a professional class, funded from outside that relationship by governments, who take the advice of those professionals through their peak bodies.

Is it healthy ? Is it necessary ? Is it too late to repair the damage ?

Joe

Tossing out statistics relating to the gender of parents who are raising these kids, does not prove that the problem is a result of 'fatherlessness' or of single mother parenting. There are other things that might be taken from these statistics. Perhaps 'children who have been rejected by fathers' are having trouble with moral choice? Or maybe it's to do with 'fathers who refuse financial support for children, showing kids how to evade adult responsibility'? Or 'violent fathers can get what they want from their kids, through the courts, so why shouldn't I throw my weight around?' Or some other thing altogether.

I personally wonder about the thoroughgoing marketing our kids are exposed to from the womb, these children are being born to consider that 'getting stuff' is a most important life goal/activity. No doubt various class and economic factors can then line up as the ones that have created cohorts of children who think that rioting is a good thing, given that some groups in society will never be able to have the stuff the telly tells us we need to get, so that we can be the people we want to be and/or have a 'good life'.

Then of course there's the fact that single mums often live in poverty. This means that their kids also live in poverty. Maybe poverty is the problem.

To quote from a post of mine on another thread,

In 1923 half the Victorian police force went on strike over better pay and conditions. From Wikipedia;

"On Friday and Saturday nights riots and looting occurred in the city, resulting in three deaths, trams being turned over, plate glass windows being smashed and merchandise looted from stores. Constables on point duty were jeered at and harassed by people until they retreated to the Town Hall, where the crowd taunted them to come out. Tramways staff and uniformed sailors helped to direct traffic in the absence of police."

"The rioting and looting was quickly attributed to Melbourne's criminal element by all of Melbourne's newspapers, but subsequent court records show that most of the offenders who were apprehended were young men and boys without criminal histories. "

Note "young men and boys without criminal histories". This was not an era known for its unsupervised children nor fatherless homes nor indeed social media. So why so strikingly similar to the English riots?

Last night I was shown a Melbourne Sun newspaper from 1956. The headline story was about two 15 year old Melbourne teenagers who had used knives and a slug gun to kidnap eight young schoolboys who they subsequently  stripped naked, tied to a tree and over a period of time tortured them by shooting them with slugs, beatings and branding them with red hot knives. 

Where was the blame laid? At the feet of an American comic that had been reprinted in Melbourne some months earlier. It had depicted tribal ritual branding with red hot knives.

Earlier times were not that rosy. I think kids of this generation act remarkably well all things considered, but so they should in a welfare society such as ours. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be making every attempt to secure decent upbringings for them, including some of the authors measures.

Let's just keep it real though folks.