Our Sick Society

Tonight, things are fairly quiet on the streets of London's Boroughs and in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Gloucester. Over the last few days all of these places have had rioting, vandalism, violence and looting. Houses, shops, offices, restaurants and even a furniture shop in Croydon have been burned in an orgy of violence, and destruction. In Birmingham three men standing on the street to help protect their property were deliberately targeted, knocked down and killed by a car. The driver, I am glad to say, has been arrested and charged with murder. Throughout the length and breadth of England [so far nothing has happened in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland] there has been mass destruction and shops and other premises have been boarded up, locked and abandoned as decent people have tried to avoid this orgy of destruction. But throughout the nights of disorder, looting and mayhem, the most sickening image [see above] has been that of the Malaysian student in Croydon who was dragged from his bike, thrown to the ground, his jaw broken and who then crawled to the side of the pavement to escape. As he sat against the wall with blood running from his mouth and all over his hands, a man went to help him to his feet. But the man was no Good Samaritan. As he lifted the small student to his feet there were hands unzipping his rucksack and robbing him. It is an image that has gone around the world. It makes me ashamed of my country. That there are people who exist in our society who are scum of the lowest order who have no morals and not even a small spark of decency. There were others who boasted about their robbing the shops, of being free to do what they liked to spite the police and the "rich people." But it is not just rich people. They have taken and destroyed the lives and the belongings of ordinary people. David Cameron has said that there are pockets of our society that are sick and he is right.

But what can we do to put these problems right? It is not an easy question to answer. Some of the young men — and they are mainly men — who have appeared in court today were not from deprived backgrounds, living on the streets, unemployed, ill-educated and useless. One was a teaching assistant who works in a school giving children guidance on living in the modern world; some were university students; some were in well-paid jobs. There were, of course, many of the usual suspects — men who have been before the courts before for theft and GBH and often part of the gang culture. Why do such things happen?

I believe that there is a fundamental problem — or even a series of fundamental problems — that blights our society and it begins with parenting and primary schools. There are children who arrive at primary schools who have not even been toilet trained by their utterly useless parents. Those parents believe that society is responsible for doing everything. They take no responsibility for their kids but are every ready to object if anyone else tries to instill some discipline. Throughout our state schools there is often chaos. The children chat among themselves, use mobile phones sending text messages and so on. They have no educational targets and wallow arrogantly in their own monstrous ignorance. There is not the discipline necessary for ordered and constructive teaching. The standards of behaviours of many children — not all — is abysmal. They reach 16 hardly able to read, write or do sums and we massage the exam results to make it look as though they are properly trained for life. Their culture is one of instant gratification, to have without any labour; to achieve without any ability. Some of these feral youths complain that they cannot get jobs because of the immigration rate. I have grave reservations about our too high immigration rate but immigrants will come into this country to work. They are better qualified and certainly better educated in many cases. I have met many Polish immigrants who have come here to work. And work they do. And they are, almost without exception, very courteous. Many British born teenagers are little better than ignorant, work-shy, lazy, arrogant youths who are almost unemployable.

But the problem goes further. Throughout our society there is an atmosphere of violence in almost every aspect of our lives. We have people killed in road rage incidents; violence on football fields and rugby fields that goes lightly punished or in far too many cases unpunished; disputes between neighbours often lead to violence because far too many people take the attitude that they will do whatever they like, when they like and if you don't like it, then "F*** You!" We could go on and on about violent attacks on teachers by pupils and parents; about policemen taken to court and often losing their jobs because they clipped a young thug around the ear.

David Cameron is promising action. What will happen, I do not know, but what is essential is that the perpetrators of the criminality are caught, they are convicted and, without exception they are given prison sentences. If we have to build more prisons, let us build more prisons — at least it will create some more jobs via a dose of old fashioned keynesian economics. I tend to take the old Michael Howard attitude to prisons. "Prisons work!" They work because they take the rabble off the streets. It is time that ordinary people who have a more robust attitude to revenge and retribution were taken more seriously. A poll tonight has 68% of respondents saying that the problems of the last few days were caused by gang culture and criminality; only 8% blamed government cuts. Government cuts is the excuse of the Labour left and the beans and sandals brigade who got us into this mess through their sloppy liberalism over the last 50years.

There are many other things wrong with our society. There is a vast gulf between the standards of living of the rich and that of the huddled masses. I have said many times that it is wrong for bankers and their like to be paid annual salaries [with bonuses] that are more than 10x those of the average person. In some cases more than 100x as much. The education system does not work. Too many people go to university doing pointless subjects and landing themselves with debts of £25,000+ which they will never be able to pay off and which will stymie their chances of getting a mortgage or providing themselves with an adequate pension. These are all matters which the government must address. But at present there is precious little evidence that they will do so.

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