Stop and Search

Dendrite, your answer I am afraid, only begs the question. Camilla, I am not sure who you are addressing. Also I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Could you clarify your position please?

"a society which does not screw them up?" I do not believe that society screws people up. It may contribute to people being screwed up. The first AA meeting I ever walked into in London, I was given by a dear old member, a copy of 'A Chart of Alcoholic Addiction and Recovery by Dr MM Glatt'. There were three words on that chart which describe exactly the point I had reached, "All Alibis Exhausted". And I have heard some terrible stories; people who grew up with fear, abuse, violence, in poverty and love-less children's homes. And I hear time and time again from these people that when they were able to see the contribution these terrible circumstances had made - but stop blaming them(society, the council, the schooling system, the Church, God, whoever) and look at their own part in their predicament. Well, that's when recovery truly began in earnest. But we are drifting off topic now! I think the various political persuasions have laid their cards on this thread and unsurprisingly resolution looks unlikely. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

Jude, we are all of us society and in that sense we all bear responsibility. Nevertheless some of us are more powerful than others, some of us never have the chance to reflect or the time and space to change. It seems a shame to me that you are willing to give up on finding some common ground at least in this thread. I can think of two important areas in which we just might find a surprising degree of room for accord: Camilla wants to find a way to ask more of youngsters than either exam success or indulgence and you seem to be suggesting that people need to take responsibility for their actions. If we are to raise young people to be citizens (by which I do not mean voters and consumers) then these things are essential. It's just that I fail to see how making people feel like they are under constant surveillance, making them feel as if their neighbourhoods are under occupation could possibly move us in a positive direction. If you want your own children to grow up you must begin to treat them like adults; if you want communities of people who behave like citizens they must have the means to be free citizens.

Carrot or stick... stick or carrot... It seems logical that a truly effective, peaceful, productive society needs both... but in what proportions? Therein, my fellow humans, lies the rub! Will we Homo sapiens ever get it right? Will we ever find a system which - in the very widest sense of the word - works? Will we ever, before the supernova-ing of our sun and the extinction of our very species, find the proverbial “right balance”? Given the utter inconceivable complexity of the issues, and the uppy-downy, lefty-righty nature of our political and social history, probably not. So what should we do? What should each individual sentient intelligent being’s response be to these seemingly unresolvable questions? Well I would say... Be happy!... Strive for the happiness of others... and never be content to wallow in the arrogance of certainty... pe ps oid What is "the art of tea"? And what does an "odd courgette" look like?

lol :~) Cottleston Pie! When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

Okay... Don't worry, be happy... You blokes are beginning to sound like Americans. Outta sight/Outta mind. But the crisis remains. The cops I know are just trying to make it home alive every night and I work with kids who have seen things that would make you hide under your bed for ten years.

Absolutely, Dend, these are real issues that need real solutions & all that... ...but as I don't have those solutions... Cottleston Pie! :) (isn't it always useful to step back and look at the Cottleston Pie-y-ness of it all?) pe ps oid What is "the art of tea"? And what does an "odd courgette" look like?

It’s always useful to to step back and look at the Cottleston Pie-y-ness of it all when looking for solutions. The forums aren’t about discussing solutions as much as causes. There isn’t much solution to entropy. The causes go to combinations of business, government, culture depending on perspective, it’s situational and interesting and better than tv.

"The forums aren’t about discussing solutions as much as causes." Really? :-/ When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

Hooray, I got Dendrite to say "Cottleston Pie-y-ness"...!! :-))) ;-) pe ps oid What is "the art of tea"? And what does an "odd courgette" look like?

"Policing is about feeling safe not only about cops and robbers." I agree that feeling safe and secure, in public, in your own country, is important, but I don't think that's what policing is about. I think policing is about stopping crime, enforcing laws. This in turn should lead to you feeling safe (if the laws have got it right in the first place). To say that you would like people searched to increase your feeling of safety, to me, seems to be a request for propoganda. Would you rather police follow actual leads, etc., or waste resources on a hit miss style search, which is rather flawed which ever way you look at it. "Carrot or stick... stick or carrot... It seems logical that a truly effective, peaceful, productive society needs both... but in what proportions?" People use a carrot and stick approach to make people conform? People don't like to be told to conform. I'm of the opinion that if people want to engage in an 'effective, peaceful, productive society' they should do so of their own free will. By which I mean, by all means set out the rules (in a constant way) and discipline people when they break them, lock them away if you need to, just don't expect that everyone should follow the rules. People have free will. An important thing, I've heard. If people come round to your rules, they come round and it's likely that they're fair and create a nice environment. If people rebel against your rules, you know somethings probably wrong. "ingest second hand booze" that sounds difficult.

"After wartime austerity and the freedoms of the 60s do as thou wilt has become a lot if not the whole of the law." Just to temporarily confound Jude's left/right thesis, I'd like to point out that I think the 60s were a pile of crap politically, too. Apart from Roy Jenkins and David Steel, who were both quite good, then.

And the Quote of the Forum Award goes to Bukh for... "...the 60s were a pile of crap..." ;-))) pe ps oid What is "the art of tea"? And what does an "odd courgette" look like?

To say that there are young men who cannot link the consequences of their actions to their own behaviour is, in my opinion, not quite correct. I think that they understand fully the consequences of their actions but just have a total disregard for other people. This is because they have been brought up in a culture where there is a lack of discipline and enforced social standards. But I also think it is unnecessary to try to analyse the motives of other people’s behaviour. It is enough to find that it is unacceptable and then stop it. If it is clear that some behaviour is unacceptable (to you, to the majority of people) and that there ARE clear cut, fair consequences for actions and that these consequences are consistently enforced then undesirable behaviour will cease. Society can only develop when there is no crime, and once you’ve got that cycle started it kind of perpetuates. There’s no point in giving an opera house to gangs with knives. I’m not saying that they’re anyway unworthy, blahblah, just that behaviour must be acceptable before the privileges- which Britain has in abundance- are offered. It’s not to condone just any behaviour, but you can’t change another person’s free will, so why try. It’s a fundamental right.