Next time I hear someone suggesting that the reason liberals don’t want to hang, boil alive, and generally fuck up Antisocial Youths is because we live in gated suburban communities sheltered from the Real Concerns of the Working People, I’m going to find out where they live.
Unless the complainant lives somewhere more Real, Urban and Ungated than I (which I suspect to be unlikely), I’m then going to don a hoodie, break into their house, and cut their fucking head off while they sleep. How’s that for antisocial behaviour, you smug totalitarian wankjob?
So you’ve identified one example of a liberal who lives in a rough area. Obviously, being that person, this particular example is going toloom pretty high in your mind, but why should it disprove the general rule? Frankly, liberalism on crime, like communist politics and economics, is the result of a misunderstanding of human nature that the man in the street can see through instantly, but an intellectual can convince himself of with enough effort and convulsions.
Even your example is rather qualified. You’re a man of working age, so you’ve less to worry about in terms of muggers and rapists than almost anyone else. If it was your grandfather or teenage daughter who lived as you do, I don’t think you’d be as happy about letting hooligans out to terrorise them.
Frankly no oone ever addresses the fundamental problem, which is the fucking appalling standard of parenting in the UK. Just look at the parents with kids next time you go to the supermarket….
Parenting is a vocational area like anything else, I’m very much favour of potential parents having to pass some kind of programme before they can breed. Something along the lines of don’t leave pans of boiling water in reach of young children, don’t somke crack in front of the kids, beating your wife in front of the children is a bad idea etc. etc.
I suppose the Economist has a woolly, liberal stance on crime then? Only the edition (damn their subscription only website) with the battered tin-can on the front (not the current one, but the one before) has an article pointing out that violent crime has fallen fairly dramatically in the last 10-15 years, but public perception of risk has not. It basically says the public are a bit silly, and that there is a strong correlation between rising fears about Yoof crime and a decrease in actual violent crime (like rapes, murder, muggings etc.) which suggests that the publics "fear of crime" is rather a constant, which gets transfered from A to B once the real risk of A actually starts to fall.
Peter, they also amusing point out that while women fear being mugged much more than men, it’s actually men (of, I *think* here, John’s rough age) who face (statistically) the greatest risk.
Yep, one generation of self-centred wankers begat a new generation of self-centred wankers. Not much of a surprise when you look at it that way, is it?
Who was it on here that suggested we send ’em all to Guantanamo Bay? I’m all for that kind of thing. Flush the little bastard’s mobile phones down the bog while we’re at it – that’d really get to them.
I’m out of the most likely victim group (16-24yo males) by a couple of years.
This makes sense, in that the only times mugging or serious violence have happened to me were when I was in that age group…
I’ve visited Prague, the boot, regarding fears for safty, is on the other foot there.
People like john (note gratuitous ill informed stereotyping – that’s the best sort. If you’re going to do a thing, do it properly – that’s what I say) will continue to live in the city and sneer at Daily Mail readers.
Till they have kids. Then you get :
JOHN AND DAVINA ARE MOVING !
As of last week we’ve left Forest Hill, SE24, and are now in Princes Risborough !
I resent the implication that I’d consider having children with anyone named Davina…
Especially with the Davinia I know, euew!!
I think I should point out the fact that young males aged 16-24 encounter violence on the streets has a rather high correlation with the fact that the same group also tend to be pissed on same said streets, whilst experiencing the violence.
Mugging drunk people, so easy it’s not even a challlenge; similarly setting fire to tramps….
Since I moved out of London three years ago with the specific intention of starting a family, one might think I fall into the same category that Laban is outlining…
…only in my case I moved for the rather more practical reason that I didn’t stand a hope in hell of being able to afford anything bigger than a shoebox in London, and I quite fancied a decent-sized house with a garden.
The fact that I ended up moving to a place with a much lower crime rate than Sydenham was a welcome bonus – but an entirely incidental one.
Peter: Frankly, liberalism on crime, like communist politics and economics, is the result of a misunderstanding of human nature that the man in the street can see through instantly, but an intellectual can convince himself of with enough effort and convulsions.
What balls. Carry on banging on like that about how you’re standing up to the intellectual elite on behalf of the man in the street, and you’ll start sounding like Robert Kilroy-Silk.
The man in the street is equally capable of seeing through right-wing attempts to dress up vindictiveness and revenge as "justice".
If it was your grandfather or teenage daughter who lived as you do, I don’t think you’d be as happy about letting hooligans out to terrorise them.
Peter, have you been a teenage girl in the past few years? I quite like my woolly liberal views. (Except in the matter of those "how would you feel if a bloke on early release attacked your daughter?" posters, where I wanted the writers hung, boiled alive, etc. How dare they try and terrify me into voting for them with stuff that’s statistically never gonna happen?) They survive shit like getting kerb-crawled, because hey, I recognise that opinions formed in fear and adrenaline are generally stupid ones. I might want to, say, slash tires and go on a castrating spree. But I recognise that that’s a really stupid, unjustifiable, knee-jerk reaction to an unpleasant experience. I suggest the makers of crappy policy reach a similar conclusion.