An article here claims that in fact, Spain will end up like England in this respect. Depressing really, if it's true.

http://iberosphere.com/2011/08/anarc...ay-soon-2/3438

Not Geordie or Mackem riots either.
Just them horrible savages darn sarf, (I class Manchester as down south also).

To be serious the younger Spanish are generally better behaved, (though I see signs of that changing).

More importantly they will be fully aware of the consequences from Spanish police who wouldn't worry much about taking prisoners.

I think the Jocks and the Geordies got it out of their system at an early age (joke for all those who remember the Dandy)

This is not some woolly left wing hug a hoody plea. However, if we do not work out why this happens and stop it, we are doomed to repeat it over and over, because there will be more of the little shits in ten years when these have been breeding.

Our education system is a joke. Parents aren't just unwilling to control their children, THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO.

One parent was asked why he didn't keep his child in. His rely was actually quite informative. He said, "How? I'm not allowed to lock him in his room. I'm not allowed to hit him. How exactly do you propose that I punish him or stop him going out to the riots?"

Personally, I think he has a point.

So what do we do? Attack those who say we must find out why this is happening and treat the cause, not the symptoms? Or start thinking long and hard about why it happens.

Personally I doubt that anything will be done, because it will be unpopular and difficult.

In the interim, what is needed is a set of rules that are applicable under conditions of riot, and anyone stupid to go to one who gets hurt due to heavy police action has no redress. The police need to be able to go in hard and fast before it gets out of hand. We must also hope that the government then don't use those powers to suppress legitimate protest.

Being as appalled as everyone else by these horrific events, I watched a programme showing the first of the rioters appearing before the courts. I expected to see horrible people being sent to prison and I was going to cheer silently.

The first case I saw was of a 24-year old woman who admitted stealing a television from a looted shop in Enfield. She was training to be a social worker and couldn't sleep all night after what she had done. She went to her local police station the next morning and confessed what she had done.

If I had been a magistrate, I wouldn't have known what to do, but I would never have sent that woman to prison.

(She was remanded on bail for three weeks for reports).

Life's never black and white, is it?

I agree the education system is poor and I think modern teaching methods plus lack of, or difficulty of enforcing discipline in schools are two of the main reasons with many 15 yr olds unable to do what 11 yr olds were capable of back in my days.
However teachers need support from parents and therein lie some of the problems, both lack of control and lack of home education being high on the list.
I'm not clear what you mean by "not allowed to".

I would have thought that parents should have sufficient ability and power to be able to control their kids by a variety of means up to their mid-teens at the very least and possibly longer, though obviously it may not be so easy with one parent families, another common cause of difficulties, as I suppose are parents switching partners, but that is typical of the todays world and unlikely to change in any event.

Sometimes it needs to be said, even if it's hurtful, Unstable people corrupt the weaker among us who applaud arseholes without knowing it.

There are some dreadful posts on this thread, posted by someone who should be sectioned because he's not right in the head.

This post should be removed. It's more than hurtful. If You can remove it yourself HBG I think you should.

You may be right, who knows, I'm just a fallible human being who knows nothing.

I was walking past a neighbour's house a couple of years ago and found a Spanish youth spraying graffiti on his wall. The neighbour is Swedish and spends eight months of the year in Spain. He's a retired builder and his house is a palace, he works on it every day of his eight months in Spain. It took him years just to build his beautiful wall.

The Spanish kid with the spray can was around 12 years old and not even five feet tall. I vaguely know his family who live around the corner, ten of them crammed into a two bedroomed house.

I walked over to the kid and told him to stop. He ignored me and carried on spraying. I took his can from him and threw it away. He ran away.

A week later my own wall was covered in graffiti. I've purposely got a scruffy wall to deter the graffiti sprayers. I sprayed on top of the graffiti to partially cover the rudest parts.

Then I knocked on his parent's door. That was a big mistake. It has not improved the quality of my life and I may have to move away at some stage. (After the court case).

That's the conundrum. You can say nothing for an easy life or speak up when you judge something to be wrong. I'm not very good with the former and it has got me into trouble more than once.

Oh he won't. he took offense long ago when I criticised that revolting old bag thatcher, because he has her as his personal pin up girl. Since then, he just dribbles spite like a tired old hack. Like the other one who should go back to stirring her cauldron. She took grave offence when I said I disliked women who hang around boards fishing.

Can't think why. Someone asked me why I posted aggressively to some people. These are the sort of people, and this is the reason why.

Leave it up. People will read his ridiculous prose, and their spite, and they will see what they really are. Two people whose major contribution to the board is to pick, to whine to try and wound. Lesser people living lesser lives.

I look at the rioters whose only joy is to diminish other people's lives, and I see reflected here similar things.

Leave to post as a memorial to a lesser being.

If I had any powers at all I would have ensured that she never finished her training and never entered such a profession. She would make a very bad social worker if this is the type of behaviour that she can lower herself to.

Rosemary

I personally fail to see how someone with half a social conscience could do it. I think people like that should be punished far more severely.

One little shit was asked to apologise, and she just smirked. They have no comeback to that (she was too young) so presumeably they just told her to go have a nice riot.

I'd bring the age of criminal responsability down to 10 at least. If you are old enogh to go to a riot, you are old enough to have the book thrown at you.

I think you'd be wrong Rosemary. Everyone can make one mistake. Ask yourself if you never broke the law...at all! You'd be surprised what some of the people you'd now look up to have done in their youth.The fact she had a conscience is what marks her out from the rabble. And the fact that she now understands her own human fallibility will probably add to her ability to be a good social worker. After all, if people can't be helped to reform at all. What's the point in having social workers?

Angie must agree
she had the opportunity to enter into a profession that requires degree level training and that she turned herself in because she was worrying about it shows there is alot there that is good.
it would be typical of our topsyturvey ways of looking at things that she will never achieve what she aspired to. That she has "been there, done that, have the stripes, got the tee-shirt" would mean she will be a rare social worker - she will be talking to people from knowledge and experience rather than having just read the books
- would Baby P have happened if the social workers and dept head had personal experience of life rather than wallowing in the experiences of others??
rgds

First off, I agree that it isn't the end of the world if you make a mistake, the real thing is whether you move on, reform, and repay. Let's hope she does that.

However, looting is a little bit of a step to far for me. Like saying of a rapist, well, he only raped one woman, so let's treat it as a mistake. (I accept that's a tad extreme, but hopefully you get the point.)

Shoplifting a mars bar is a mistake. When the other people are smashing windows and looting, that's the time someone should say, 'My being here is a bad mistake.' Time to go!