Warning...a mega rant......

I am officially a member of the older generation.

I took one look at the appalling rioting in London yesterday and am now watching police dispersing more rampaging youths again tonight, while listening to people try to explain why it is "all the government's fault", and these young thugs/hoodlums - well...apparently it is not their fault. Nothing ever is. WHAT??

Oh, give me strength.

Call in the army. Bring in the water canons. Or, as my friend's 90 something year old mother says, spray the lot of them with gentian violet and then round them up over the next 2 weeks before the purple wears off. Looting. Homes and cars and businesses destroyed. People's lives wrecked.

There is NO EXCUSE for wanton destruction.

There is NO EXCUSE for looting.

There is NO EXCUSE for violence.

Where is the respect? The justice? The law? The order? Do not come to me with "people have lost trust in the police". "People have no jobs". OH?? So that is reason to take a trolley of goods from a store including a plasma TV???????? I don't have a plasma TV. In fact, I do not know anyone who does. Everyone has a choice about how they act. These hoodlums young people have choices. They are making the wrong ones. And now I am listening to party politicians sniping at each other, and I want to scream, because this nonsense HAS TO STOP.

Some kids grow up with no respect, yet with the expectation that they can have everything they want without any effort on their part. They are taught their rights, but not that with those rights comes responsibility. I used to teach some like them. You have no idea. I see hundreds of young people on TV as I write, taunting the police and running around with hoodies on, trying to obscure their faces, and WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS????????

And the opposition politician says............ they have nowhere to go. WHAT???? They can go HOME. My kids did not need entertainment out every night. They were not there out on the street loitering, causing trouble. And get this, my kids had a Dad who was away 9 months of the year. They didn't live in a "normal" ideal family It was different. They had friends round to our home, and they had a huge amount of fun RIGHT HERE, WHERE I COULD KEEP AN EYE ON THEM.

You may have caught the idea that I am:

1. irate
2. shouting
3. beyond frustrated
4. angry
5. did I mention IRATE??????

I am a parent. I believe a parent has work to do, and that work revolves around delivering a law abiding, respected and respectful child into the world as an adult. I get 18+ years to do this. Until then, I need to nurture, monitor, guide, and love him or her, and make sure he or she keeps on the straight and narrow, learns the difference between right and wrong, and how to make good choices. This is what parents get to do. I believe in standing up for what you believe in - including taking part in PEACEFUL protests. I did just that as a student. But violence????? Oh no. Never. Ever. No. Way. 

Arson? Shudder.

I do not need to hear about social deprivation. Nor do I need to hear about "poor kids". They all have mobile phones, and apparently cars at their disposal right now (on TV). And, apparently, a great deal more disposable income than I have. What gives them the right to run as a pack of wild animals? Threatening older people?

Lock them all up and toss away the key.

As I said at the start of this mega rant, I am now a member of the older generation. The generation who was raised right. It is not about race or ethnicity or class or education. It is about very very bad decisions made by out of control kids with no respect for law and order, who should now have to suffer the consequences of their actions.