Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Enablers Of Thug Nation

Lest people accuse Call Me Dave of living in an ivory tower, for his big speech on crime he invited people who have actually played criminals in a movie. It could have been worse though – ‘Kidulthood’ writer Noel Clarke also starred in Dr Who, so we could have been exhorted to hug a Dalek.

Hey – not to go off at a tangent here, but if Cameron wants to explore root causes, might I suggest that one big one might be movies which depict violent, drug-sodden, sex obsessed savages as super cool, iconoclastic rebels ? Hey, if people want to produce this semi-literate garbage that’s their own problem, but why exactly public money should be used to propagandise social dysfunction beats me.

For all Cameron’s supposed modernity, his speech was just the same old 60s blather. Cameron is shocked – shocked! – that Joe Public could think badly of people who dress like thugs. Just wait until he finds out that people who wear dog collars are often called ‘Reverend’. I’m not sure that I see a huge distinction between being a thug and merely modelling your lifestyle on thugs, but that’s by the by. There was something far worse underlying this speech than the merely stupid idea that the public aren’t entitled to draw their own conclusions about someone who chooses to dress in scumbag chic.

Cameron’s speech was a perfect example of one of – perhaps the – pathology affecting modern Britain. Yes, the realisation that if you want to be taken seriously, you can’t stroll round in flip-flops, shorts and a footy shirt is a traumatic moment in everyone’s life. It’s also part of that weird and wonderful process known as growing the hell up, but for forty years Liberals have been waging war on the very concept of maturity.

The Left’s obsession with ‘yoof’ culture is the idiot half-brother of their multicultural monomania, with all the same pathologies. Kids are ike any other recent arrivals in this culture, they need to be encouraged to assimilate, but - as ever - Liberals do there best to keep them dysfunctional, dependent and in their ghettos. Who are we to say that dressing as a thug is ‘wrong’ ? Aren’t kids who behave obnoxiously just expressing their culture ? Why should employers disciminate against people with 84 facial piercings ? Yada, yada, yada.

What it’s about is what it’s always about: civilisational self-confidence. Multiculturalism is bad enough, but when it comes to the young, we actually spend billions per year on the whole freak show of education, social workers and other members of the salaried unemployed, yet their whole approach can be summed by the phrase ‘yeah, whatever’. They’ve given up even trying to civilise the kids and become active enablers of social dysfunction.

That’s the other irony, of course. The most high profile opposition to hoodies hasn’t come from anybody in government, far less our bloated ‘yoof’ sector. It’s come from Bluewater shopping centre, which famously banned hoodies. Consider their position: no access with a hoodie. It’s that simple, they’ve defined a standard and they’re keeping to it, irrespective of the girly whining from yoof workers and other members of the Enemy Within. So private business is doing the job the State has renounced – it’s enough to make you a Conservative.

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