Market keeping Model Railway Club

[Geoff_S]

What is the matter with these vandalising thugs?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-48332649

 

[Yojevol]

It's jealousy. They have nothing in their own lives, so they take it out on those who have.
Brian

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I expect the four boys who did it had a hard upbringing, and were probably given cornflakes instead of ricicles. They might even have had to make do with an out of date phone. It's the fault of the government/brexit/global warming/the parent/their school ...
If they are eighteen, they should be made to pay - even if it takes their working lives, if not their parent/s should.

 

[Garno]

Absolute scumbags, a total waste of oxygen.
No doubt they will come out with hundreds of excuses as to why they did it, one thing they will not be able to do is to tell us the REASON. It makes me so angry :evil:

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The big thing there isn't the money, it's the work. They're getting donations from here, there and everywhere - but one guy in particular had worked on his set up for twenty five years. He might not even have enough life left to do it all over again let alone the inclination.

 

[Garno]

I just read that Rod Stewart has donated £10,000 nice touch Rod well done.

 

[Trevanion]

I personally think National Service would help sort out a lot of the delinquents we have at the moment, It's usually all the same traits: Bored with nothing better to do than smash, burn and destroy stuff. (Locally we've had a spate of late teeners/early twenties boys smashing stuff up and generally being menaces, even pushing over headstones, Just WHY!? ](*,))They're not afraid of anything because they've never had proper discipline in their lives and have never had to conform to someone else's rules. They've also never worked towards anything so they don't have any true appreciation of hard work, and they don't feel like they should work towards anything because why should they? The government will give them money regardless. If they move onto harder stuff and end up robbing shops or dealing drugs, they end up in the clink where they just gain more dodgy contacts, get angrier and more worked up and respect hard work even less!

National service would sort them out with something to do, and if you don't do it there will be repercussions (Swagger stick across the back of the head :lol: ). They'll eventually understand the benefit of working hard towards something and will respect the notion of hard work, they'll get used to conforming to someone else's rules by having to wake up early and perform a routine every day, or else. They'll come to respect and work with the authority rather than always being against them and undermining them. In the end I reckon you'd end up with a lot of people coming out of the NS far better than they were going in.

Rant over

 

[Bm101]

That's not a rant, it makes a huge amount of sense in multiple ways.
But can you imagine in the era where Jamie Oliver tried to make kids healthier and their parents felt so outraged they handed their kids junk food through the school fences so they could continue with that, lets be overly generous for these bottom feeders and call it a lifestyle 'choice' that any Government would even begin to introduce the concept of National Service?
I wrote a lot more. Then I deleted it.
Driving home from London today. As I got near my area, this lad on a motorbike, no helmet, pulls a wheelie. He veers near my van.
Just for a moment there the thought flashed through my mind.
[youtube]QpMEXYGG3Dg[/youtube]


I actually checked my mirrors for witnesses before I heard my mum's voice in my head say, 'Nope. You have kids.'

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My cousin taught in the London school where J.O. did the healthy menus - she said they sent whole skips full of untouched food to landfill. No one would touch it.

 

[Bm101]

That's terrifying and also just so predictable.

 

[finneyb]

No problem with National Service but shouldn't we also be starting further back. Tony Blair said that you could spot the problem kids before they were born (somebody must have told him). We used to have Sure Start for the newly born to 5 years old not certain where it is now. Germany used to have, and may still have, a national service that included working in the Health Service, charities etc.

Brian

 

[AES]

I'm not sure about "Sure Start" (sorry! - it was after my time in UK) but I do believe that as well as National Service, it does start even earlier - it starts with parents making sure that their kids understand discipline, then self-discipline, the respect (for others and for themselves).

VERY old fashioned outlook I know, but IMHO you can't have any of the above without ALL of 'em. I see a lot of kids today who are simply not disciplined by their parents (and by "discipline" I don't mean caning, etc - though in some cases PERHAPS there are exceptions to be made to that rule)!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I don't go along with the argument that children don't or shouldn't know right from wrong - I see Scotland is trying to increase the age of criminal responsibility from ten to twelve.
I was walking down our avenue one sunny morning in October when we passed an old man leaning against a wall outside the old people's home. As we approached he unwrapped a Mars bar and threw the wrapper to the ground. My daughter fixed him with her steeliest glare and turning back to me said at the top of her voice Daddy, doesn't that old man KNOW that it it's wrong to throw litter? I felt embarrassed for a nanosecond ..... then thought good for you, kiddo. She was eighteen months old to the week. If children or youths don't know right from wrong it's their parents' fault, and their parents should pay for the damage.

 

[Droogs]

National sevice in the Armed Forces is the worst thing that could happen for the MOD in general. Personally I feel that we should have a modern day equivalent the the Todt Organisation . Run like the military but used purely for infrastructure/environmental projects nationally. Everyone on reaching 18 would need to join and complete 3 years service at a set wage and then as a reward would be passed into higher education free of charge or offered a proper apprenticeship in their chosen job.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I was walking down our avenue one sunny morning in October when we passed an old man leaning against a wall outside the old people's home. As we approached he unwrapped a Mars bar and threw the wrapper to the ground. My daughter fixed him with her steeliest glare and turning back to me said at the top of her voice Daddy, doesn't that old man KNOW that it it's wrong to throw litter? I felt embarrassed for a nanosecond ..... then thought good for you, kiddo. She was eighteen months old to the week. If children or youths don't know right from wrong it's their parents' fault, and their parents should pay for the damage.

You say an old man outside an old folks home. My parents brought us up to take our litter home with us. My mother started just dropping litter when the Alzheimers started to get the better of her. Sometimes things aren't as simple as they look.

Just because of a few yobs - who probably had no understanding of the invested effort in making what they were smashing up, please don't think the worst of young people. There's quite a bit of citizenship stuff going on in and around schools - NCS and the good old DofE etc. Don't punish them all with a 3 year delay in their career for the sake of a few. And as for military service - I suppose noone who has been in the military ever does any wrong, right ? I spent 1 weekend in a REME garrison and saw vandalism there.

 

[Garno]

I spent 1 weekend in a REME garrison and saw vandalism there.

Should of gone to a proper regiment like the RE (Royal Engineers)

 

[Mr_Pea]

Sadly the one size fits all policy rarely works.

2017 article
More than 2,500 former soldiers jailed last year
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... lth-issues

veterans represent between 4% and 5% of the UK prison population

 

[AES]

Droogs, I'm pretty sure you didn't really man the Todt Organisation, did you??? According to what I learnt about that "gang", not only does the word "todt" in German mean "dead", but the term "Todt Organisation" was synonymous with slave labour - literally, because they "employed" most of the adults rounded up and deported from the Nazi-occupied countries to be worked as slaves. In addition, the "TO" - again literally - worked thousands of that labour force to death, often in the most unhealthy of underground factories - it wasn't "just" the SS who were responsible for that.

So "attractive" as it may seem to work at least some of today's yobbos to death on short rations, I guess that goes a little beyond what you envisage! BUT the idea of a "team" of well-controlled yobs being employed to - for example - help householders clear up after a house fire, or carry out public road and parks maintenance DOES have its attractions. And it may well be that such a "proper organisation" - IF it could be arranged - would be preferable to National Service.

Personally I guess that Sheffield Tony's comment about "only a few" of today's youngsters are inclined to yobbish behaviour MAY be correct. Certainly it's clear that there are many young people who lead exemplary lives today. But if it's correct to describe the number of yobbos around today as being "only a few" I'm NOT so sure. Certainly not a majority, OK, but I'd venture to suggest that the reality is that it's more than just "a few" yobbos, vandals, and youngsters who generally have no respect whatever for the feelings and needs of others, both young and old.

Regarding vandalism in military barracks, that's by no means impossible, (as an ex-RAF bloke of course I'd add "especially in the Army"!!) but one thing the perpetrators can be 100% sure of is that the consequences of such behaviour will be FAR more punishing than what appears to be the norm for vandals brought before today's civilian courts.

Edit for a P.S. re Mr. Peas's point about jailed ex military people: I suggest that those statistics do not take account of ex soldiers who have served under live enemy fire in places such as Afghanistan (PTSD, amongst other problems) NOR does it account for the tremendous "jar" that changing from a military life to a civilian occupation creates for many ex-serviceman - ESPECIALLY those who have been serving in enemy-active environments, but who have (apparently) escaped unscathed. I guess would be the majority of all ex-servicemen (and women) in the last 20 years or so.

I can vouch for how difficult that transition can be, and I wasn't a soldier and never got fired at by anyone (thank goodness), and changed from mil to civ in 1969, when arguably, the world was a "quieter place" than today.

 

[Droogs]

AES, I meant purely in terms of it's pre-war origins as a national labour force used to provide the nation with the capacity to build such things as the autobahn etc and this was done people who indeed used the organisation to then advance onto their chosen careers pre '39. Yes it worked people to death once the war started but up to that point was a voluntary corps that a young german could join rather than be integrated to the Heer straight from school for national service as the Wehrmacht was expanded. Indeed the reason why young Germans have the option of doing national service in a non military way is because of the experience many had pre war and post war government's tendancy towards pacifistic views

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I worked in the hotel industry from 1970 - 2005. There was way, way more vandalism in the earlier years, so it does amuse when I hear people my age say it wasn't like it in their day.