ISTBO-Children In Need Of Better Parents

This is what someone's precious little angel did at school last week.
No, not with scissors, not that one. This is another sweet innocent light of someone's life. She managed to do this damage with just her hands and the rings on them. Of course Danielle here did deserve it; she won two school awards for academic achievement. How dare she?

I think we need to face facts here. This country is facing a crisis. In a decade or two's time this is going to be an appalling place to live. Not because of terrorism, or some violent twisted ideology that certain people are trying to pass off as a religion, or pollution, or traffic, no, nor even because of the government. It's going to be appalling because of children.
Those who are children now, this generation where girls commit GBH in schools, will be adults then. So if someone pushes in front of you in a supermarket queue in ten years, don't say "Excuse me, there is a queue." or you will probably get stabbed to death. These children think it you can stab someone repeatedly in the head in a school in front of dozens of witnesses. They must know that you get in trouble for using physical violence against someone in a school. They must know that stabbing someone is something you get arrested and (hopefully) put in prison for. So why do they do it?
Let me float a suggestion. Perhaps whenever they've done something wrong at school before, their parents haven't cared. Perhaps they've sat there happy with the school dealing with the kid so they don't have to waste valuable shite microwaving and soap watching time talking to their kids. Perhaps the one time they bothered saying "That's quite a lot of detentions recently, isn't it?" (if they ever bothered) the kid claimed the school was picking on them, and the mother henceforth responded to the school with all the rage of chav. Perhaps the reason these parents respond like this is, rather than the way your parents or mine would have responded (starting with "I'm really ashamed of you" and not stopping til we were near suicidal), is the same reason their kids not only bully other children, but think they can stab them and get away with it: they have failed utterly to teach their children respect of any kind for anyone.
It starts tiny small. When they can't be bothered to teach their children that you don't climb on the seats on the bus because other people have to sit on those seats and don't want the grub off the bottom of someone's shoes all over their behinds. When they've failed so utterly to teach their children to behave at home that when they start making a bloody annoying loud noise in a public place it's too much effort to try to stop them, so they just let them carry on. When they haven't even managed to instill any respect for them, the parents, in the child, so that child doesn't care if they're embarrassing or upsetting mummy.
But the point at which it's really really set in stone, this lack of respect, is the first time anyone tuts or complains about the unacceptable behavior of the child, and the parent says "Oh shut up, he's only a child." This tells the child it can do what it likes, and far from there being any negative consequences for that behavior, that its parents will actually defend it. It's a very short step from that knowledge to having at someone's face with a pair of scissors because you enjoy hurting people.
Teaching your child that there are no consequences for anything is a pretty good way of ensuring they'll smoke, drink, hang out with inappropriate people in inappropriate places, have unprotected sex, take drugs, vandalize property and intimidate the public. (And we all know where that sort of behavior leads, don't we? That's right- becoming a Tory leadership candidate. And you thought you were ashamed when they fucked the postman on the front lawn in broad daylight. Ohhhhhh the shame.) The government tends to describe these kids as "vulnerable", and "disadvantaged". It might sound hard to believe when a fourteen year old in enough Burberry check to buy an MRI scanner for the local hospital is holding a knife to your throat and demanding your wallet, but it's true. They are disadvantaged because they had deficient parents. They are vulnerable because they have none of the necessary skills to get through life, becuase their parents don't really care about them enough.
What describing the kids as vulnerable or disadvantaged is is the government not saying 'Lousy Parents'. And it needs saying.
Liberal Democrat Peer Baroness Tonge on Any Questions last week responded to the question of whether parents should be told if children under sixteen get sex-related advice at the doctors (oh yeah, Sue Axon wants to make it impossible for some people to even get advice without their parents knowing, not just abortions) by saying basically what I did: if a parent has failed their child badly enough that they get pregnant under sixteen, we should provide the child with somewhere else to turn for help. It was the first time I've ever heard a politician cut to the chase on a subject and be honest like that. That's the advantage of peers, they don't have to worry about re-election. In the vain hopes that this may be the very early stages of the renaissance of common sense, siblings, let us unite!

Disrespectful/violent children= BAD PARENTS
Underage pregnancy= BAD PARENTS
Fat children= BAD PARENTS

Let us have a quiet revolution of decency. I do not like children, mainly because of the way they behave. I do not, however, wish harm upon children in general. To say that children need to learn respect and appropriate behavior, and need not to be overweight, is in fact to wish the best for children. It is not restricting their freedom or the development of their personality to say that they should think about others before they act, or to say that little girls (that's 0-16, in case you were wondering) should not dress and make themselves up like Kat Slater, should not be allowed 'out' to go where ever with whoever. At sixteen children should still be getting dropped off and picked up by their parents.
It is not wishing harm upon children to say they should be punished for their misdeeds. If you bully someone what you're effectively doing is submitting another human being to a long campaign of mental abuse, intimidation, and in a lot of cases violence. If you were to do that as an adult, you would go to prison. So it should be for children. If you commit an adult act, for example stab someone or have sex, you should have to deal with adult consequences, and take those consequences yourself. As a parent, you need to make sure your child is well enough bought up and well enough educated to know this. As a citizen, you need to demand your government does something about this situation. They're prepared to tell you how to academically educate your child from birth. It's time they admitted that it's not education where we need more of the three Rs, it's behavior. Education, education education, Tony? No, it's the other 'agenda' I think needs work: Respect, Respect, Respect.