As a bit of a clue, it is an essential part of something, which, despite appearances, is nothing whatever to do with a telephone exchange, although, in one sense it could be said to be programmable!
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
In the works ....
A bit of fun for today. Anyone care to identify what this is?
As a bit of a clue, it is an essential part of something, which, despite appearances, is nothing whatever to do with a telephone exchange, although, in one sense it could be said to be programmable!
As a bit of a clue, it is an essential part of something, which, despite appearances, is nothing whatever to do with a telephone exchange, although, in one sense it could be said to be programmable!
Monday, 6 April 2009
On Holiday at last!
Mausi has come to the UK to spend her usual Easter time-out at Tewkesbury. Today she has accompanied the Monk to Worcester Fire & Rescue Services and listened all day to an introduction to the new Code 9999 for Fire Safety. Absolutely ripping! To be honest, it wasn't that bad. Mausi learnt quite a few interesting things today. And it was good fun listening to a lecture in the secure knowledge that she was doing it for fun and wouldn't have to remember anything from it to pass an exam.
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, a busy week for those involved in services of worship at the Abbey and a busy one for the worshippers themselves wherever they are. The services today have been very full, with many visitors and a big turnout of the normal congregation as well. Bishop John, the Bishop of Tewkesbury, Assistant Bishop to the Bishop of Gloucester, presided at both the Parish Eucharist and at the Sung Eucharist at 1100.
Tonight, instead of Evensong, we have the St Mark Passion, a Cantata by Charles Wood entitled The Passiontide Cantata.
May all my readers have a blessed week of preparation for the great Feast of Easter.
Tonight, instead of Evensong, we have the St Mark Passion, a Cantata by Charles Wood entitled The Passiontide Cantata.
May all my readers have a blessed week of preparation for the great Feast of Easter.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Thought for the day
Thought for the day on Radio 4 is often stimulating, but one I heard yesterday was a good wake up call. The UK's Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, spoke very powerfully of the cycle of history. It has a nasty habit of repeating itself as soon as it fades from human memory. This is something I am all to well aware of myself as in my own chosen profession and career I have seen lessons learned in blood and lives change the face of our operations more than once - and I am now seeing those who have displaced, replaced and otherwise assumed the posts us "dinosaurs" have left discarding everything we learned and adapted to deal with - and now they are repeating the mistakes that cost my generation so dearly.
The Chief Rabbi used the Passover tradition, where the Jewish gather the family and tell the story of the Exodus - an event 33 centuries old - to their children and grandchildren. Why is it important that they remember such ancient history?
Perhaps most importantly it is that event that defines them as a people, they passed from being a suppressed minority into being a nation that not only has its own history and traditions, but came to be the "chosen" of God. Secondly, as he pointed out, nations that forget or abandon the teaching of their national history, that do not give their children and their children's children that same sense of identity soon cease to exist. He pointed out that British History and perhaps more specifically English History is now taught, if at all, in a derogatory manner, emphasising the worst and denigrating the finest achievements. If that continues, we have no hope of survival, for the tide of history will engulf us in a morass of the mistakes of the past.
His second example was the Great Depression of 1929. Those who lived through it vowed it would "never happen again" and, as long as they were alive it was a promise they managed to keep. But, and this is telling, one of those survivors wrote in 1954 that it could happen again - as soon as his generation was no longer around to recall how it had happened and what had caused it. And now, 80 years on, it has happened again - and for all the same reasons.
Our present UK government suffers from a peculiar form of hubris. They do not believe that there was ever a "great Britain" and they do not believe that there is any purpose in studying history. Both of those doom this nation to oblivion - unless some of us make the effort to keep that history in perspective, keep it alive and, perhaps most importantly, keep alive the lessons that it teaches. If we do not, there are any number of really nasty events that are likely to be repeated.
The Chief Rabbi used the Passover tradition, where the Jewish gather the family and tell the story of the Exodus - an event 33 centuries old - to their children and grandchildren. Why is it important that they remember such ancient history?
Perhaps most importantly it is that event that defines them as a people, they passed from being a suppressed minority into being a nation that not only has its own history and traditions, but came to be the "chosen" of God. Secondly, as he pointed out, nations that forget or abandon the teaching of their national history, that do not give their children and their children's children that same sense of identity soon cease to exist. He pointed out that British History and perhaps more specifically English History is now taught, if at all, in a derogatory manner, emphasising the worst and denigrating the finest achievements. If that continues, we have no hope of survival, for the tide of history will engulf us in a morass of the mistakes of the past.
His second example was the Great Depression of 1929. Those who lived through it vowed it would "never happen again" and, as long as they were alive it was a promise they managed to keep. But, and this is telling, one of those survivors wrote in 1954 that it could happen again - as soon as his generation was no longer around to recall how it had happened and what had caused it. And now, 80 years on, it has happened again - and for all the same reasons.
Our present UK government suffers from a peculiar form of hubris. They do not believe that there was ever a "great Britain" and they do not believe that there is any purpose in studying history. Both of those doom this nation to oblivion - unless some of us make the effort to keep that history in perspective, keep it alive and, perhaps most importantly, keep alive the lessons that it teaches. If we do not, there are any number of really nasty events that are likely to be repeated.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Strident atheism
Recently I have noticed an increasing number of extremely strident and vituperative attacks on faith, specifically, on any form of Christian belief. One, on a forum I follow dedicated to Scifi, contained what I can only describe as a virulent attack on God, describing Him as a "baby killing ..." and the rest was equally ill-informed and offensive. The following day there was a news item trumpeting the availability of a "parchment" certificate of "de-baptism" accompanied by the statement that "a hundred thousand people in the UK are actively seeking to have their baptism annulled." Sadly, what this tells me more than anything else, is that they do not even begin to understand what baptism represents or that it is not some sort of permanent marking - failure to live up to the vows made at baptism or simple failure to even attempt to grasp the essential elements of the faith you were baptised into is sufficient to annul it. One of these rather sad people - aged he says 54 - is planning to sue the Church of England to have his name 2erased from the baptism registers" of the church in which he was baptised.
All I can say is that tells me that he is afraid of something - perhaps even afraid that his avowed "rationalist atheism" might turn out to be wrong and that nasty indelible baptism may turn out to mean that he winds up in an afterlife he doesn't believe in. What a shame, and what a great shame that those who are so quick to attack faith, don't take the trouble to find out what it is they reject.
I find it fascinating that these attacks are almost exclusively directed at Christian beliefs by a group who seem to be afraid that they are losing the battle to spread their message of unbelief. It is equally interesting to see that they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on Christian Forums and in Christian Chat rooms trying to denigrate the faith of those in these electronic discussions. Visit the BBC Faith Forum and what you find is a small number of truly angry and offensive individuals attacking everyone who dares to challenge their vitriolic attacks on our faith.
It is pointless trying to reason with these people, it simply drives them into an even more offensive frenzy. Considering that most of them will loudly and constantly proclaim that they are being rational and anyone of faith is not, you have to wonder why they get so angry when you try to discuss your point of view. Richard Dawkins is a case in point, he almost froths at the mouth as soon as he is confronted by someone who does believe in the Almighty and His Grace and, if you have the time to waste and read his book, you very rapidly discover that his understanding of Christianity or any other faith is so superficial it is nonexistent.
That much was obvious from the post on the Scifi Forum, the poster (and I note that his comment seems to have been removed by the Moderators) was trying to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his statement that we cannot expect God to rescue us from the folly of destroying our planet's ecosystem, was saying that there is no God. Having actually heard the Archbishop, rather than having read the selective report on it, I can say that is most certainly NOT what he said and nor would he ever imply such a thing. Only someone with a completely closed mind and a lack of any understanding of the manner of God's working in the world could possibly make the conclusion he did.
As I said, I do wonder what it is that drives the atheist adherents to feel that they have to attack the faith of anyone who doesn't share their rather sad view that our existence here is all there is? I can only think it must be the fear that they may be excluded by their own actions and want to make sure everyone else is too. Fortunately for us all - including them - God is far more merciful and just than we can even begin to imagine and they may yet be pleasantly surprised by Him.
All I can say is that tells me that he is afraid of something - perhaps even afraid that his avowed "rationalist atheism" might turn out to be wrong and that nasty indelible baptism may turn out to mean that he winds up in an afterlife he doesn't believe in. What a shame, and what a great shame that those who are so quick to attack faith, don't take the trouble to find out what it is they reject.
I find it fascinating that these attacks are almost exclusively directed at Christian beliefs by a group who seem to be afraid that they are losing the battle to spread their message of unbelief. It is equally interesting to see that they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on Christian Forums and in Christian Chat rooms trying to denigrate the faith of those in these electronic discussions. Visit the BBC Faith Forum and what you find is a small number of truly angry and offensive individuals attacking everyone who dares to challenge their vitriolic attacks on our faith.
It is pointless trying to reason with these people, it simply drives them into an even more offensive frenzy. Considering that most of them will loudly and constantly proclaim that they are being rational and anyone of faith is not, you have to wonder why they get so angry when you try to discuss your point of view. Richard Dawkins is a case in point, he almost froths at the mouth as soon as he is confronted by someone who does believe in the Almighty and His Grace and, if you have the time to waste and read his book, you very rapidly discover that his understanding of Christianity or any other faith is so superficial it is nonexistent.
That much was obvious from the post on the Scifi Forum, the poster (and I note that his comment seems to have been removed by the Moderators) was trying to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his statement that we cannot expect God to rescue us from the folly of destroying our planet's ecosystem, was saying that there is no God. Having actually heard the Archbishop, rather than having read the selective report on it, I can say that is most certainly NOT what he said and nor would he ever imply such a thing. Only someone with a completely closed mind and a lack of any understanding of the manner of God's working in the world could possibly make the conclusion he did.
As I said, I do wonder what it is that drives the atheist adherents to feel that they have to attack the faith of anyone who doesn't share their rather sad view that our existence here is all there is? I can only think it must be the fear that they may be excluded by their own actions and want to make sure everyone else is too. Fortunately for us all - including them - God is far more merciful and just than we can even begin to imagine and they may yet be pleasantly surprised by Him.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
A new Darien Adventure?
Or perhaps it was the South Sea Bubble revisited? Am I perhaps reading too much into the fact that the two UK banks who seem to have brought our entire financial system crashing down and plunged the English based one's in jeopardy are both Scottish? Royal Bank of Scotland is considered "too big to be taken over" so the UK taxpayer has had to rescue it, unlike HBOS (also known as Halifax Bank of Scotland) which our Scottish lead Cabinet approved a buyout by Lloyds TSB - without apparently disclosing the fact that HBOS was so deep in the mire that it has dragged Lloyds, one of the best managed and safest down into the mire with it. I should perhaps explain that Halifax Building Society became a "bank" and went public, only to find itself taken over by Bank of Scotland as the two biggest Scottish Banks tried to outbid and outgrow not only each other but every other UK and EU bank they could find.
It was the recklessness of the Scottish Parliament in the late 17th Century that brought the Scottish economy to its knees and it seems that the Scottish extravagance exercised by our Scottish Labour MP Chancellor and now PM has ruined the UK economy just as surely. The Darien Adventure saw the Scottish Parliament "buy" land in South America from the Spanish. They then sent out shiploads of Scottish peasantry (and a few middle class folk just to govern them) and tried to establish a colony on the Darien coast. The equivalent of buying swampland in Florida today to build your dream home. They compounded this a few years later (After the English had bailed them out and forced through the Act of Union 1707) by throwing even more money into an investment scam that came to be known as "The South Sea Bubble". The bubble burst and scuppered Scottish dreams of buying independence from the Union for three hundred years.
Now they seem to have tried it again, only this time Labour's Scottish MPs and Cabinet are ruling the English and paying the bills in Scotland out of Union taxes, the bulk of which are raised in England. And once more they have been profligate with the money. And once again, the bubble has burst and the economy is in deep trouble, they have borrowed to the hilt, sold off the industries we used to have, cut the armed forces to the bone, reduced the fleet to a skeleton and the RAF to a shadow. Our banks are now in the hands of Civil Servants who couldn't manage their way out of wet paper bags or sold off to the Spanish. (Santander, the Spanish Financial giant has swallowed everything the Treasury hasn't yet managed to ruin.) Our Merchant shipping fleet is no longer British flagged or owned and the few remaining industries are owned by French, German or Japanese corporations. Even the Vauxhall car plant is likely to go as a result of GM's woes in the US and Mister Obama's insistence that GM must cut back and reshape itself. Very little of the UK's commercial activity is now UK owned and even less of our service providers. NPower, the former British Nuclear Power generator is now owned entirely by a German power supplier, the French on SE Power and London Electric and Thames Water and Severn Trent are also owned by European companies.
I have wondered before this whether our present government, the cabinet was, until recently almost exclusively Scottish or Welsh, wasn't running an agenda which was to completely destroy the "English" in revenge for their imagined "victimisation" under the Union. The recklessness of the spending plans they have espoused, even though these often contained elements of double accounting, were simply unsustainable and have led us to a position where the pound has crashed in value and the threat of our foreign owned industries closing down to save the jobs in their own countries is very, very real. Today we have suffered yet another rise in fuel tax - the government hoping that we won't notice in the plethora of stupidity that is the demonstrations against the G20, but we will and we have. As for the morons who want a return to the "Fuel Tax Escalator" all I can say is that there is some swampland owned by the Scots that needs a new bunch of settlers. Oh, and it won't be accompanied by the benefits and handouts you currently enjoy.
Labour's Darien Adventure has brought our economy to its knees, we can only hope that we can save enough of it to bring this nation back to productivity and restore our fortunes. It is time to put an end to the Tax and Spend of the socialist left and restore some common sense. Perhaps we can even persuade Mr Brown to remove himself and all his PC Brigade North of the Border - and invoice his Party for the £400million they shelled out to build a Parliament that now costs several billion to run - and is probably another major cause of the economic woes we face.
As I believe Cromwell told Parliament - "For too long you have disgraced this House. In the Name of God - go!"
It was the recklessness of the Scottish Parliament in the late 17th Century that brought the Scottish economy to its knees and it seems that the Scottish extravagance exercised by our Scottish Labour MP Chancellor and now PM has ruined the UK economy just as surely. The Darien Adventure saw the Scottish Parliament "buy" land in South America from the Spanish. They then sent out shiploads of Scottish peasantry (and a few middle class folk just to govern them) and tried to establish a colony on the Darien coast. The equivalent of buying swampland in Florida today to build your dream home. They compounded this a few years later (After the English had bailed them out and forced through the Act of Union 1707) by throwing even more money into an investment scam that came to be known as "The South Sea Bubble". The bubble burst and scuppered Scottish dreams of buying independence from the Union for three hundred years.
Now they seem to have tried it again, only this time Labour's Scottish MPs and Cabinet are ruling the English and paying the bills in Scotland out of Union taxes, the bulk of which are raised in England. And once more they have been profligate with the money. And once again, the bubble has burst and the economy is in deep trouble, they have borrowed to the hilt, sold off the industries we used to have, cut the armed forces to the bone, reduced the fleet to a skeleton and the RAF to a shadow. Our banks are now in the hands of Civil Servants who couldn't manage their way out of wet paper bags or sold off to the Spanish. (Santander, the Spanish Financial giant has swallowed everything the Treasury hasn't yet managed to ruin.) Our Merchant shipping fleet is no longer British flagged or owned and the few remaining industries are owned by French, German or Japanese corporations. Even the Vauxhall car plant is likely to go as a result of GM's woes in the US and Mister Obama's insistence that GM must cut back and reshape itself. Very little of the UK's commercial activity is now UK owned and even less of our service providers. NPower, the former British Nuclear Power generator is now owned entirely by a German power supplier, the French on SE Power and London Electric and Thames Water and Severn Trent are also owned by European companies.
I have wondered before this whether our present government, the cabinet was, until recently almost exclusively Scottish or Welsh, wasn't running an agenda which was to completely destroy the "English" in revenge for their imagined "victimisation" under the Union. The recklessness of the spending plans they have espoused, even though these often contained elements of double accounting, were simply unsustainable and have led us to a position where the pound has crashed in value and the threat of our foreign owned industries closing down to save the jobs in their own countries is very, very real. Today we have suffered yet another rise in fuel tax - the government hoping that we won't notice in the plethora of stupidity that is the demonstrations against the G20, but we will and we have. As for the morons who want a return to the "Fuel Tax Escalator" all I can say is that there is some swampland owned by the Scots that needs a new bunch of settlers. Oh, and it won't be accompanied by the benefits and handouts you currently enjoy.
Labour's Darien Adventure has brought our economy to its knees, we can only hope that we can save enough of it to bring this nation back to productivity and restore our fortunes. It is time to put an end to the Tax and Spend of the socialist left and restore some common sense. Perhaps we can even persuade Mr Brown to remove himself and all his PC Brigade North of the Border - and invoice his Party for the £400million they shelled out to build a Parliament that now costs several billion to run - and is probably another major cause of the economic woes we face.
As I believe Cromwell told Parliament - "For too long you have disgraced this House. In the Name of God - go!"
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Boys behaving badly ....
A conversation a few days ago set me thinking and doing a little digging into the reason that so many young men and teenage boys seem to have social problems today. Several reasons suggest themselves as pieces of what does seem to be a very complex puzzle, and some of them certainly aren't rocket science.
Where women were at a disadvantage fifty years ago, young men are increasingly disadvantaged today, particularly, it seems, if they are white and lower middle or working class. Young men and boys are now routinely portrayed on TV as stupid, inept and generally incapable of getting anything right. Girls on the other hand are portrayed as bright, adept and always in control and this theme carries through a range of media. Look at the Harry Potter series, Harry and Ron are always clumsy and obsessed with sport or dodging study while Hermione is always on top of the game, way ahead of Harry or Ron and certainly the brains of the outfit. Yes, Harry or Ron sometimes behave heroically, but generally they are shown in a rather negative light against the brilliance of Hermione.
Studies recently have shown that boys and girls have different learning processes, yet our education system is now geared only toward the system by which girls learn best and placing the boys at an immediate disadvantage. There is a reason truancy is higher among boys than girls and it is, quite frankly, that the education system is designed to demotivate the boys. It is no accident that boys do well in "Boys only" schools, and girls do even better in "Girls only" environs, but this does not fit the current trend to socially engineer a society in which white men are relegated to second class citizens. All too often at present one hears politicians calling for quota systems to be introduced to "redress the balance" and "raise the profile of the under represented", all of which directly impact on young white males. What does this tell the teenager struggling through the feminised Comprehensive (Failure) School where he is unlikely to get the sort of education he needs to rise above the herd and get that boost into university (Assuming if he is in England, that he can afford the fees or find the means to pay back the loan which pays for them.) which may eventually enable him to get a well paid position in a career of his choice.
I recently asked a young man what he intended to take as his A-Levels once he has his GCSE's (He's bright and predicted to get A's and B's for the GCSE's he's taking.) and his response was disturbing. It was simply, "I'm not taking any. What's the point, I won't get a better job with them, all the good jobs go to girls now." How do I persuade him otherwise? On the same day the Chairman of the Local Government Association was demanding that my former profession must be forced to recruit women only until the service reflects 40% women and 5% ethnic minorities. I have nothing against women or any other section of society, but I do have a very strong view of anything that smacks of discrimination, whether dressed up as "positive" or otherwise. The line between "positive" discrimination and "negative" is extremely thin and our present lords and masters are walking a very dangerous line in promoting a policy that our youth see as biased and unfair to anyone white and male.
Then there is a apparent increase in violence practiced by our teenagers. Again our government has disarmed the populace, removed the right of self-defence (It's so tied up in legal niceties its almost impossible to prove that you were defending yourself, a situation not helped by every criminal charged with violent and deadly assault trying to argue that he was "in fear of his life".) that the only people who now routinely carry weapons are the criminals - and the youngsters who have no role models worthy of the name to emulate. Take a look at the most popular video games, almost exclusively gory and violent and then tell me yet again that these have no influence on the mind of the player. In my own youth we played with toy guns, and we knew it was all make believe. None of us would have dreamed of taking out our father's service pistol or rifle and playing with that, we knew what the consequences were likely to be. Now we here of "anger management" counselling for the violent, but this seems to include encouraging the afflicted to play his favourite and frequently truly violent game!
I will say that I am no prude, yet I am now probably going to prove that I am by saying that I find the dress (or lack of it) of many young girls (and I do mean young!) disturbing. Then these same girls complain that the boys are only interested in sex. And the boys find themselves accused of harassing the girls or, worse, of molesting them or even in extreme cases of rape. Yes, I'm getting older, but no self respecting girl would have dreamed of dressing the way so many now do when I was a teenager, for one thing their parents would have banned them from setting foot outside, let alone run off to see the boys like that. So what do we expect our boys to do or think when an attractive girl wears a provocative outfit and then sends such mixed signals? Why are we, and they, surprised when the boys respond inappropriately?
Our boys today frequently have no real role model, no one who sets an exemplar pattern that inspires any boy to follow in that lead. Who are these kids "heroes"? pop stars, most of them drug takers and most of them really socially repugnant. Football stars, many of them with "anger management" problems and some really anti-social attributes. Where do we think the boys get this habit of spitting everywhere and all the time from? On the one hand they are constantly told that discipline at home infringes their "rights" yet we expect them to impose their own "self discipline" without ever having any guidance on what is, and is not, socially acceptable behaviour until they get hauled before a magistrate for the routine slap on the wrist in a family court.
This flows over into the perceived state that a "single parent" home is better than a home with a father in it. Yes, some fathers are bad parents and yes, some marriages should not be perpetrated at all cost, but far too many young mothers seem to think they can do the job better without a father around and many seem to be encouraged into this by the ubiquitous "Social Worker". Fatherhood has been given a very negative image in recent years again creating the mindset among many teenage boys that once they got the girl pregnant they have no further role or place in her life. Many of these do not even know for sure who their own fathers are because they are themselves from a home in which "father" changed regularly according to their mother's latest fling.
This is, as I said at the outset, a very complex issue and political ideology which pursues a "social engineered" society is not helping it at all. In fact it is a major part of the problem. Our young men and boys are being made to feel that they have no place in our future society. They feel they have been sidelined and are cut off from any hope of a meaningful place in that society. They are not given the best educational opportunities because the system has been slewed against them and feel they have no real chance of finding a suitable career and future. So what have they got to lose when they pick up a knife or a gun, deal in drugs or get a girl pregnant. In their eyes nothing and our society will have no future unless this trend is reversed - but it may already be far too late for the present generation.
Where women were at a disadvantage fifty years ago, young men are increasingly disadvantaged today, particularly, it seems, if they are white and lower middle or working class. Young men and boys are now routinely portrayed on TV as stupid, inept and generally incapable of getting anything right. Girls on the other hand are portrayed as bright, adept and always in control and this theme carries through a range of media. Look at the Harry Potter series, Harry and Ron are always clumsy and obsessed with sport or dodging study while Hermione is always on top of the game, way ahead of Harry or Ron and certainly the brains of the outfit. Yes, Harry or Ron sometimes behave heroically, but generally they are shown in a rather negative light against the brilliance of Hermione.
Studies recently have shown that boys and girls have different learning processes, yet our education system is now geared only toward the system by which girls learn best and placing the boys at an immediate disadvantage. There is a reason truancy is higher among boys than girls and it is, quite frankly, that the education system is designed to demotivate the boys. It is no accident that boys do well in "Boys only" schools, and girls do even better in "Girls only" environs, but this does not fit the current trend to socially engineer a society in which white men are relegated to second class citizens. All too often at present one hears politicians calling for quota systems to be introduced to "redress the balance" and "raise the profile of the under represented", all of which directly impact on young white males. What does this tell the teenager struggling through the feminised Comprehensive (Failure) School where he is unlikely to get the sort of education he needs to rise above the herd and get that boost into university (Assuming if he is in England, that he can afford the fees or find the means to pay back the loan which pays for them.) which may eventually enable him to get a well paid position in a career of his choice.
I recently asked a young man what he intended to take as his A-Levels once he has his GCSE's (He's bright and predicted to get A's and B's for the GCSE's he's taking.) and his response was disturbing. It was simply, "I'm not taking any. What's the point, I won't get a better job with them, all the good jobs go to girls now." How do I persuade him otherwise? On the same day the Chairman of the Local Government Association was demanding that my former profession must be forced to recruit women only until the service reflects 40% women and 5% ethnic minorities. I have nothing against women or any other section of society, but I do have a very strong view of anything that smacks of discrimination, whether dressed up as "positive" or otherwise. The line between "positive" discrimination and "negative" is extremely thin and our present lords and masters are walking a very dangerous line in promoting a policy that our youth see as biased and unfair to anyone white and male.
Then there is a apparent increase in violence practiced by our teenagers. Again our government has disarmed the populace, removed the right of self-defence (It's so tied up in legal niceties its almost impossible to prove that you were defending yourself, a situation not helped by every criminal charged with violent and deadly assault trying to argue that he was "in fear of his life".) that the only people who now routinely carry weapons are the criminals - and the youngsters who have no role models worthy of the name to emulate. Take a look at the most popular video games, almost exclusively gory and violent and then tell me yet again that these have no influence on the mind of the player. In my own youth we played with toy guns, and we knew it was all make believe. None of us would have dreamed of taking out our father's service pistol or rifle and playing with that, we knew what the consequences were likely to be. Now we here of "anger management" counselling for the violent, but this seems to include encouraging the afflicted to play his favourite and frequently truly violent game!
I will say that I am no prude, yet I am now probably going to prove that I am by saying that I find the dress (or lack of it) of many young girls (and I do mean young!) disturbing. Then these same girls complain that the boys are only interested in sex. And the boys find themselves accused of harassing the girls or, worse, of molesting them or even in extreme cases of rape. Yes, I'm getting older, but no self respecting girl would have dreamed of dressing the way so many now do when I was a teenager, for one thing their parents would have banned them from setting foot outside, let alone run off to see the boys like that. So what do we expect our boys to do or think when an attractive girl wears a provocative outfit and then sends such mixed signals? Why are we, and they, surprised when the boys respond inappropriately?
Our boys today frequently have no real role model, no one who sets an exemplar pattern that inspires any boy to follow in that lead. Who are these kids "heroes"? pop stars, most of them drug takers and most of them really socially repugnant. Football stars, many of them with "anger management" problems and some really anti-social attributes. Where do we think the boys get this habit of spitting everywhere and all the time from? On the one hand they are constantly told that discipline at home infringes their "rights" yet we expect them to impose their own "self discipline" without ever having any guidance on what is, and is not, socially acceptable behaviour until they get hauled before a magistrate for the routine slap on the wrist in a family court.
This flows over into the perceived state that a "single parent" home is better than a home with a father in it. Yes, some fathers are bad parents and yes, some marriages should not be perpetrated at all cost, but far too many young mothers seem to think they can do the job better without a father around and many seem to be encouraged into this by the ubiquitous "Social Worker". Fatherhood has been given a very negative image in recent years again creating the mindset among many teenage boys that once they got the girl pregnant they have no further role or place in her life. Many of these do not even know for sure who their own fathers are because they are themselves from a home in which "father" changed regularly according to their mother's latest fling.
This is, as I said at the outset, a very complex issue and political ideology which pursues a "social engineered" society is not helping it at all. In fact it is a major part of the problem. Our young men and boys are being made to feel that they have no place in our future society. They feel they have been sidelined and are cut off from any hope of a meaningful place in that society. They are not given the best educational opportunities because the system has been slewed against them and feel they have no real chance of finding a suitable career and future. So what have they got to lose when they pick up a knife or a gun, deal in drugs or get a girl pregnant. In their eyes nothing and our society will have no future unless this trend is reversed - but it may already be far too late for the present generation.
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