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[Rantor]

There is no reason why all children cannot be educated at an Eton/Manchester grammar school environment. If the parents/family is dysfunctional then send them to eton.

If this were put into practice you'd only end up writing letters to the telegraph demanding to know what twunt had lumbered you with 60% tax

Education (and health) are both areas that British policial parties will always pay lip service to reform ad nauseum while continuing to oversee a long term decline. I do agree to certain aspects of the VI arguments you raise, especially seeing this in operation elsewhere and looking at Britain from outside for a while. You do seem to forget that this is mirrored on the other end of the political spectrum - class politics ain't just limited to the guardianistas.

More than anything, the whole process is screwed as the rigid parameters of the debate can never be broken by the mainstream parties without alienating their tribe or terrifying the less commited voter into switching sides.

Of course, we could look into why people are dysfunctional in the first and I think you'll find that this down to a combination of Mrs T, sixites liberalism, sunny delight, abolishing national service and flogging.

[DodgyAgent]

If this were put into practice you'd only end up writing letters to the telegraph demanding to know what twunt had lumbered you with 60% tax

Education (and health) are both areas that British policial parties will always pay lip service to reform ad nauseum while continuing to oversee a long term decline. I do agree to certain aspects of the VI arguments you raise, especially seeing this in operation elsewhere and looking at Britain from outside for a while. You do seem to forget that this is mirrored on the other end of the political spectrum - class politics ain't just limited to the guardianistas.

More than anything, the whole process is screwed as the rigid parameters of the debate can never be broken by the mainstream parties without alienating their tribe or terrifying the less commited voter into switching sides.

Of course, we could look into why people are dysfunctional in the first and I think you'll find that this down to a combination of Mrs T, sixites liberalism, sunny delight, abolishing national service and flogging.

I still do not understand what Mrs T has to do with this at all. It was she that extended the power of consumerism to the working classes, the woman who gave working people the opportunity to own their own homes. It was she who broke up the contol of the trade unions of many entry level jobs. I am a huge admirer of hers and I will not accept that she was responsible for the underclass problem of today.

In my view people are dysfunctional because of how they are brought up. If a person has to fend for themselves, has to earn their own living , has to make their own decisions then this is how things should be. bringing people up in an environment of the "state will look after you" is exactly the environment that strips people of any type of responsibility at all. The government should ensure that children are equipped to stand up to the harsh realities of life, that they are confident, that they have aspirations, that they can read and write.

The governments are more interested in pandering to those they employ than they are interested in what "those that they employ" actually do.

If governments could show that they are as efficient at spending our Tax as Tesco are at delivering food at the most competitive prices with the most choice then there would be a moral case for raising them in the first place.

You are quite right. There is no mainstream political party that is the slightest bit prepared to take up this challenge, which is why knife deaths will continue.

[Rantor]

I still do not understand what Mrs T has to do with this at all. .

Bingo - too easy!

For what it is worth, macro-economic policies have consequences. I'm not interested in the whole british-leyland-leaving-corpses-piling-in-the-street script as this does not obviate the fact that the net result was de-industrialisation offset by windfall tax revenues being used to pay vast swathes of the country to sit around devolving into an underclass. That, and the milk of course, but she was right about the EU and some other stuff where she got the right idea about the role of the state.

On the other hand this was a long time ago (more than a generation) and I don't think anyone now can ever get away with laying all the blame for today's woes at her gov's doorstep when the areas in question have been run as Lab fiefdoms for yonks.

At the risk of sounding naive, doesn't peer-pressure/cultural factors contribute a helluva lot to youngsters carrying knives? It certainly seemed to be a huge factor where I grew up though it was still ok to think the 'chib-men' were sad cases.

Oh, Brillo Pad is on to something as well....

[snaw]

The root causes of crime are deprivation, there is nothing complex about it. if you look at any society capitalist or not, people need to have a cause or meaning to their lives. They need self respect and aspiration; sticking people on welfare does nothing, these people are as good as you and I, they just need the chances that you and I have had- the education for a start. Whether meaning in life manifests itself in taking responsibility for a family living off the land in the bush in Africa or gaining respect by being part of a gang living in an area of high unemployment in an inner city it does not matter. We live in a so called civilised society, yet it is a society that condones the existence of an underclass of deprived people. These same people are deprived because the state has decided to exclude them from the mainstream of life.

Why?

Because there are too many people with too many vested interests to, above all else, give the poor a decent education. People like you snaw are confused by this. You are confused because you think (wrongly) that your left wing credentials give you some sort of moral credibility. In actual fact your so called "socialist" credentials do nothing more than sustain an evil and destructive system that regularly churns out angry knife wielding young men and young women.

We're talking about knife crime, not crime in general. You're argument is that every society which has deprivation should have a correspondingly high crime rates - I'd agree with that. But it doesn't follow that they have high levels of knife crime - that's is a slightly more complex issue.

It should also follow, using your blinkered logic - that societies which have no socialist/welfare/whatever should have lower crime and violent crime etc. You only have to look at Britain's past - before the welfare state, or socialists to see this is patently untrue - or do you somehow believe the 21st century human is a different breed to the Victorian one?

I think you need to get your head round the concept that poverty and deprivation existed before the welfare state. They weren't created by it, and aren't the reason for it - I might agree that the welfare state can encourage people not to work and there is a balancing act as a society between providing a safety net and encouraging people to work.

But that's not the topic at hand: knife crime on the other hand, isn't merely a recent phenomenam - it's been a blight on Glasgow for a very long time - preceding the welfare state. Nor is it probelm as easily pin-pointable as saying it's purely poverty - poverty can't explain why this kind of crime (Or gun crime) is a problem in some societies and not others, of course it is a fcator. There are clearly other factors - I don't pretend to know them all but I'm aware that they exist.

[BrilloPad]

Oh, Brillo Pad is on to something as well....

I have loads at stats at home about how children are better off in a two parent home. I was raised in a single parent environment(my father died when I was 6) - and look how I turned out!

I hate men who, out of choice, done see or provide for their children. But to use that as an excuse to give a good shoeing to the good fathers is just not cricket.

[The Lone Gunman]

I think all sides have some valid arguments here.
I agree with a lot of DAs stuff about the welfare state generating and sustaining an underclas but I agree with Snaw that it is much more complicated than that.
The underclass (which is hard to pin down) is the problem. In the US it exists because there is NO welfare state. Here it exists because the welfare state has removed responsibility from individuals.

There are also issues of hope and aspiration and without these the underclass ends up being concerned with its own little world and nothing more.
As a society we seem to have lost all respect for one another, all the family and community values our parents and grandparents had have gone and it has been Governments (of all colours) that have allowed this to happen. Ironicaly, it seems to me that this has happened because individuals have been made aware of their own rights.

NL is the current Government and must shoulder at least some blame.
For me it is the fact that they seem to be making it easier to commit crime and harder to punish the criminals. They are also obsessed with showing us targets they have met. They have (as Dodgy said) reduced everything to the lowest common denominator instead of allowing each individual to reach their highest potential. By removing the possibility of failure nobody can truely succeed either.

[DodgyAgent]

We're talking about knife crime, not crime in general. You're argument is that every society which has deprivation should have a correspondingly high crime rates - I'd agree with that. But it doesn't follow that they have high levels of knife crime - that's is a slightly more complex issue.

It should also follow, using your blinkered logic - that societies which have no socialist/welfare/whatever should have lower crime and violent crime etc. You only have to look at Britain's past - before the welfare state, or socialists to see this is patently untrue - or do you somehow believe the 21st century human is a different breed to the Victorian one?

I think you need to get your head round the concept that poverty and deprivation existed before the welfare state. They weren't created by it, and aren't the reason for it - I might agree that the welfare state can encourage people not to work and there is a balancing act as a society between providing a safety net and encouraging people to work.

But that's not the topic at hand: knife crime on the other hand, isn't merely a recent phenomenam - it's been a blight on Glasgow for a very long time - preceding the welfare state. Nor is it probelm as easily pin-pointable as saying it's purely poverty - poverty can't explain why this kind of crime (Or gun crime) is a problem in some societies and not others, of course it is a fcator. There are clearly other factors - I don't pretend to know them all but I'm aware that they exist.

Snaw you have missed my whole point. It is nothing to do with whether a society has welfare or not. Those that have no welfare support suffer the same problems in a winner take all society. My point is that those that do have welfare do not use the tax for the benefit of the poor. Money that is spent on helping people out (at which point does this become welfare dependent or de motivating.. we have gone way past that point) is in actual fact spent on enhancing the power base of those who raise the money in the first place (usually socialists).

It does not matter whether it is knife crime, muggings or robberies, crime and unemployment are directly linked.

[Churchill]

It does not matter whether it is knife crime, muggings or robberies, crime and unemployment are directly linked.

Hear, hear!

The Devil makes work etc...

Chico.

[TimberWolf]

It does not matter whether it is knife crime, muggings or robberies, crime and unemployment are directly linked.

Hear, hear!

The Devil makes work etc...

Chico.

Do idle hands find work for the devil or does the devil find work for idle hands?

[snaw]

Snaw you have missed my whole point. It is nothing to do with whether a society has welfare or not. Those that have no welfare support suffer the same problems in a winner take all society. My point is that those that do have welfare do not use the tax for the benefit of the poor. Money that is spent on helping people out (at which point does this become welfare dependent or de motivating.. we have gone way past that point) is in actual fact spent on enhancing the power base of those who raise the money in the first place (usually socialists).

It does not matter whether it is knife crime, muggings or robberies, crime and unemployment are directly linked.

No, you missed the point of this thread - knife crime I believe - if you read back on what most people have been posting on.

No one would argue that there is a link between crime, of any sort, and poverty/unemployment etc. But it's not the only reason for knife crime - I'm not going to go to the effort of posting why all over again if you can't even be bothered to read the posts I've made detailing what I think.

You seem like a fairly decent bloke DA, despite our divergent political views - but you consistently, and irritatingly don't read what others say and assume you know, and subsequently transpose, other people's motivations for them.

Usually all down to socialists and the welfare state. It's a pretty limited, and one dimensional worldview. Probably why you relate to Mrs T as much as you seem to.