Why dose the media want us to believe that world is now a more a perverted place say than it was 40 years ago. What has changed. For example I can remember when the local secondary school had cross country runs and the girls used to run over a 3 mile or so course out in the public roads even over a very nasty common in Wait for it in there navy blue knickers. Do you think this would happen today. I do not think so Why? Whats changed ? We know a very respectable woman who was in a supermarket, She worked for a police force. A little child spoke to her. Her mother went crazy. What sort of society are we shaping for the future.
A society of paranoid, brainwashed, self obsessed maniacs, who will ultimately ruin their childrens lives, as their parents did theirs. Multiply that up, and you've got a lifetime of misery for everyone involved. The death of 'community' will be the death of society unfortunately, and community will die not at the hands of the media, but at the hands of the voyeurs. Or as they say in Germany, 'schadenfreude'.
We have a government who use fear of whatever they can to distract us from the real issues, a media who willingly helps them, a hopelessly divided population whose majority seem to believe them. I don't think much has changed in our lifetime, stop reading certain papers and life will be a lot better.
I'm lucky to be old enough not to remember those navy blue knickers. (All my schools were boys schools) It's ironic that parents today save their kids from perverts only to let them surf porn all night and exchange obscene images on their 'phones all day.
If only the title had read 60 years ago Todays kids and parents also missed out on being starved, bombed, shot and put in concentration camps. I don't think [-]the world[/-] England is any worse today, just different.
The media relies on advertising the very products which most damage society's basic values. So we have kids who value property (which they never pay for themselves) above personal relationships. The "right" make of phone, trainers, people carrier, i-phoney, games box and all the other important "little necessities" without which life would be intolerable for the young. All made by child slave labour in China and with no intrinsic value beyond that applied by the media and the stick-on "makers" label. Mix in a vast bunch of drooling, Pavlov's pups with absolutely no understanding of product identity and placing. All this or exclusion from the group or society as a whole? Get a life! Adopt a Chinese child slave and let your kids get on with their lives. This wasn't why we manned the barricades in the 60s! Our fight for freedom from blind authoritarian adulthood has been highjacked by multinational commercial interests. Our "better world" has become an overheated, drug dazed, credit wracked, snacking and bottle sucking, oblate spheroid. A poisoned, designer labelled, built over, stressful rat run without a single safe road or playing field left to play on. Perverts? What perverts? They are all at home sharing their dirty pictures online. They haven't any time left to go out and molest kids as well. If they did start looking for kids you can absolutely guarantee the parents would be at work earning this year's kitchen which nobody ever uses except to heat up a TV meal in the microwave. Or this year's new "family" minibus car park menace for two and a half occupants. Or next year's family holiday in some packed paradise/hell on earth staffed by semi-slaves. I wonder if there are any perverts amongst the smiling hotel staff? You'd better keep your kids away from church too if you have any hope of financial compensation for your inadequacies as a "caring" parent.
You forgot to include 'surgically clean' in your better world description. I was moaning about all the 'take the baby to the pub' mums the other day, when my mum came out with what I consider to be an absolute corker. "The problem with parents these days, is that they don't understand the difference between caring for children and caring for pets. You don't sit there stroking them all day long like a dressed up poodle, that's just not how you raise kids." The Media-trained parents of today are gonna produce a generation of truly hopeless 'individuals'. It's really very sad. It'll all swing full circle obviously, as everything in fashion always does, but there's a lot of kids that will suffer wretched adult lives as a result of all the 'caring' parenting they're enduring at the moment.
Sorry? Did I miss something? The media helps the govt? Since when? They spend their whole time either blowing out of all proportion every mistake the govt makes (although they need little help on recent evidence) or just plain making up scare stories about the govt. The buggers will be bored after the next election as the old loonie lefty stories of the 80's won't wash with NL in opposition, and they can't attack the govt they support can they? Only when the Tories were clearly finished in the mid 90's did they even think of criticizing them. Think of the poor press barons in the next decade, and shed a tear. All that anti Labour vitriol and no one to use it on........... On that last comment, spot on. As someone else said, we moan (a lot) but compared to how people lived in the past we have it pretty darn sweet thanks. Yes communities are breaking up, but that's an inevitable consequence of the post industrial era. We are becoming more and more Americanized, in govt, Education, Law enforcement, how we deal with out children, our attitude to threats to them, litigation and that's even before we get to commercialization and the US middle classes becoming (as is ours) more and more isolated from other people. If you don't like it, well, don't vote for either of the 'big two' next time out. Because both have openly encouraged it over the last 27 years, while holding up the scarecrow of 'Europe' to allow it to gather pace.
Do you think it may be because we have an abundance of news 24 hour news channels. That take a situation and nit pick every thing they can out of it even invent situations that are not even in peoples mind's and say what if this what if that. This leaves this open for all sorts of abuse what if that. Do you think there just putting things in peoples minds that were not there in the first place worrying everyone to Death . Funny old world How many of you guys have waited for your wife on a shopping Mall. All you can do is enjoy the weather and watch people go by. You see a pretty girl a skirt is round her ears. she give you a look to say what you looking at you dirty old basket or words to that effect. When they do not realise when they dress like that when they are out. Every ones allowed to look its not a crime they are out in the public domain. They can not chose who looks at them.
I was at a black tie function over Christmas where I was seated next to a bloke in his eighties. He told me this story about when he was in the war. He was in the channel on a ship when it was sunk by a German sub, a number of his friends died and he was left floating in the channel for 11 hours. He was given a week of compassionate leave to go home. During his leave his commanding officer turned up after four days and said that he had to come back immediately as they had a new mission for him. In November of last year somebody broke into his shed and stole his lawnmower. He had three calls from the police asking if he needed counselling for his traumatic event.
The media goes both ways, one way when it suits them and the other when Alistair Campbell loses it It wasn't called the Blair Broadcasting Corparation for nothing.
I worry my kids don't lead adventurous enough lives. Saying that I grew up in a small seaside town in Scotland ( although I'd go shopping on my own to Glasgow from about 11 upwards) and we had access to the beach and lots of woodland and the roads were quiet enough to be reasonably safe for bikes. From about the age of 6 I was pretty much given free reign : so much so that I would be shooed out of the house if it wasn't raining and not expected to return unless it was feeding time , bed time or I had sustained an injury requiring hospitalisation or I had been arrested for injuring someone that required hospitalisation. Rode my bike on the main roads. Climbed trees played in woods. Crossed railway lines ( non electric ones). Went swimming in rivers and the sea unsupervised. Played in PCB and mercury ridden derelict industrial areas. Played Soldiers/Cowboys and Indians/ The Professionals/Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. With huge groups of other kids all armed with very realistic looking cap guns ( one kid used his Dad's shotgun on occasion...unloaded). Fished , which were then cleaned using a sharp pen-knife that I carried around without ever threatening or stabbing anyone with it or feeling like Osama bin Laden just for having it in my pocket. Walked by myself to and from School ( at least 2 miles). Had punch ups that usually ended in black eyes and bloody noses and handshakes without adult intervention or ensuing law suits. I 'd say I was doing all the above from 5. My kids don't do any of this stuff and the thought of leaving them unsupervised outside on their own cogniscence frankly fills me with dread. However I do worry that they are missing out and they love to run free(er) when they are visiting my home town. (London being admittedly a different kettle of fish) I worry we are creating a generation of moppets.
I worry you're right. Of course we become more risk-averse as we age simply because we're more aware of the negative consequences of actions. But need we put this onto the next generation? I'm only 20 and (touch wood) childless so I'm speaking from the perspective of the younger generation but I was thinking how dangerous some of the activities I participated in when I was younger actually were and whether or not I'd allow my children to partake. King of the hill, for instance, involved a group of us running up a steep incline (about 1:2) whilst another group stood guard on the slope, pushing the others backwards down the incline in order to remain 'king of the hill'. Having watched the injuries people get from the Gloucestershire cheese-rolling, I'm aware how close we potentially are to breaking one's neck by throwing them backwards down an incline like that. Would I let my hypothetical five-year old play that? I'd love to be ignorant of it... I also think health and safety rules and the increasing prevalence of tort cases has a lot to do with making us far less a nation of risk-takers. The liability if injure or damage occurs negates any fun you have whilstever you're worrying about the potential consequences. I think it's up to the children to make their own mistakes and enjoy the ignorance of youth whilst parents look on with a nervous smile and try not to intervene and stifle the child's growth and development.
Do you think its sad that kids today have missed out on Climbing trees and they no nothing about birds eggs and never taken a slow worm home. Also never took mice home. My brother did this many years ago and my mother flushed them down the toilet. Airguns were harmless then the BSA 2 2. we had we would shoot matchboxes in the back garden. It was great fun. We never point the thing at anyone. Catapults were great fun. How about Scrumping apples. When mum used to take us to the beach i was always fascinated why old dears sat there with there legs open It intrigued me. Its only now i am older i know the answer.. it was to keep the flies of there fish and chips.
I have a question regarding this matter, it it the law to be "offered" counselling after a traumatic event like that?, I was not offered it, to be honest I don't think the coppers gave a monkeys what happened to me, probably thought I was making it up....