The way kids talk is fashion, it’s for young people not old bores like us. In fact it’s supposed to differentiate them from us. In other words (sic) it works perfectly.

Nope, just doing what we should all do and confronting racism and bigotry in when i encounter it, in a way which I can.
Brilliant! Do you get a costume and a mask with that?

Nope, but what do you get for ignoring it?

Exciting cyclic conversation for a Tuesday morning.

Mods – Is it possible to add a ‘scrawled in green ink’ option to the menu? For when it all starts getting particularly Daily Telegraph?

Seriously though – does anyone have any constructive suggestions as to how we (middle class, broadsheet-reading, mainstream society) engage with this ever increasing, hopeless underclass? It seems to me that unless we do something, then the next riots are already in the post really. I don’t think criminalising them is a long term solution, is it?

Seriously though – does anyone have any constructive suggestions as to how we (middle class, broadsheet-reading, mainstream society) engage with this ever increasing, hopeless underclass?

Your local youth club would probably be delighted to receive your application to volunteer with them. There may even be a Bike Club or similar, where you could share your passion for cycling with young people. Nothing beats getting involved to give you a healthy balanced perspective on young people, and to remind you that, for every “gangsta wannabe bell end” you come across (and there are a few!), there are umpteen kids who are brand new and great fun to be around. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing ‘your’ kids do well and thrive, and knowing that you’ve made a contribution to that process.

Picking out a good youth project to volunteer with isn’t that hard – you want one that has a clear sense of purpose, that has proper procedures and processes in place to safeguard the wellbeing of young people and staff, but who don’t allow themselves to be unhelpfully dominated by “health and safety”.

you’ll get a ban D-J; far too reasonable.

NZCol – Member
most of them want a job that pays loads for no real effort

Where do I sign up?

On the whole this thread is depressingly predictable.

On Sunday morning at 11.30 I saw a lad in his teens wearing those nike trainers come out of a Kebab shop (yep open at that time) eating a large kebab.

I once stayed at a friends house as a kid and all weekend I was fed deep fried food along with the rest of their family (of all ages). I remember being really ill for a few days afterwards!

Being a parent yourself shows you just how much every interaction, correction etc has an effect on your child. I wonder, how many give their kids McDonalds, fried food and don’t correct or say ‘no’ on behaviour…..

**** loads.

I wonder, how many give their kids McDonalds, fried food and don’t correct or say ‘no’ on behaviour…..

aaah well.. there’s the answer then.. obvious really

there is an element of truth in there though..

We can probably be pretty certain that an ever increasing number of kids are being purposely raised to have no respect for the state or law abiding society.. and that we already have a generation where a large proportion of the kids were raised with no hope by parents with no future.. and even more that were raised with either no concept of community or no concept of love in the home..

the problem will grow now that so many kids will be born to parents who have no hope of a future in their unloved and increasingly lawless communities..

binners – Member

Mods – Is it possible to add a ‘scrawled in green ink’ option to the menu? For when it all starts getting particularly Daily Telegraph?

Be honest now you’ve never read the Daily Telegraph, have you?

Yes, of course only these sort of negative stories get printed in the leftwing gutter press..

I work at a large FE college. A lot of the kids here talk the talk and actually when you listen to what they are saying it’s the same stuff as the kids using RP. it’s easy to pigeonhole and treat people on their speech, looks, upbringing, economic status and so on. Isn’t that what a lot of the kids involved in the riots were actually saying?

In my experience for every bad egg there’s 9 other good ones who look the same and talk the same, the trick is using your ears to decide who is who.

IMO it’s going to remain like this for another generation before we (as a nation) see the light. Haven’t hit the worst of the spiral yet. Give it a year or two.

Am seriously concerned about raising little monkey in the society we have today. If we can’t find what we feel is ‘right’ then I’d happily up sticks abroad should the combination of work/education be appropriate.

Maybe grabbing a pair of trainers through a broken shop window isn’t so far removed from consistently fiddling one’s books to claim for a non-existant mortgage.

Or smuggling a bike frame past customs…

cheese@4p….youth speak differentiates young people from us oldies….and you’re right, that has always been the intention….the problem young people have got (and it is their problem) is that the oldies who are in positions to hire and fire young people cant understand half of what is being said in the ridiculous urban patois….or understand it but feel it is too ridiculous to put out front as the contact point for a business.

That is not the fault of the older generation, kids who have decided to adopt a patois so far removed from how the rest of society speak that they make themselves unemployable need to rethink their ways not vice versa.

There was a documentary a few years back with John Prescott going into London tower block estates to find out about youth unemployment….he seemed genuinely shocked when a young British girl told him she wouldnt do a cleaning job because it would be too humiliating….he ventured that claiming benefits was surely more humiliating and now it was her turn to look completely shocked.

This is what needs to change, young British kids (for whatever reason) have decided that cleaning jobs and the like are somehow beneath them….but a life on benefits is socially acceptable!

All the lower paid jobs at my work are taken by older people or eastern european immirants, virtually no British youngsters….i asked why and was told in no uncertain terms that they dont want to work.
A previous poster hit the nail on the head when he said their attitude is to work as little as possible for as much as possible….while that sounds fantastic its just not going to happen, whoever is paying the wages wants a fair days work from an employee.
Much easier to just riot and blame the police, government etc etc (yawn)….

I think you speak a certain truth there deviant, even though you choose to go to another linguistic extreme in a weak attempt to demonstrate something, but that doesn’t excuse your earlier racism.

i agree with ditch_jockeys post above

volunteering for youth work is rewarding and is about the only thing anyone can do to show the ‘feral youth of today’ that work does infact pay

its basically big society in action

the trouble is ‘big society’ has been hijacked by a morally corrupt etonian who claimed tens of thousands of pounds on expenses for mortgage interest on a cottage in his Oxford constituency, after clearing the loan on his designated main London home.
whos government has slashed funding for social outreach, youth clubs, policing etc, etc

This is what needs to change, young British kids (for whatever reason) have decided that cleaning jobs and the like are somehow beneath them….but a life on benefits is socially acceptable!

The problem with this is that you’re extrapolating from one example to suggest that it’s universal phenomenon. Strangely enough,it’s as difficult to generalise about young people as it is about adults. During the course of a week, I’ll work with around 60-70 young people in one way or another and their attitude to work covers pretty much the same spectrum as adults I know; some of them are very focused and driven, others don’t seem to have very much of a work ethic at all. In many cases, the ones who tend towards the latter category haven’t taken a conscious decision to slack off, it’s more common to find they’re a bit lost and dislocated from what they want their lives to be about. The hard bit is trying to prevent them from slipping into a lifestyle that involves coping using drugs and alcohol – once that happens, it becomes massively more complicated to get them back into a constructive way of life they can sustain without lots of support.

We just raised benefits by 5.2% but cut tax allowances for the low paid poor. What kind of message does that send? And thats from a Tory led government! We’ve lost our marbles.

We’ve lost our marbles.

nail. on. head.

positive role models are useful…

the more adults you see spending time helping those less fortunate than themselves and working hard to better themselves the more likely a feral youth will entertain it as an option for a brighter future. most people i know between the ages of 25 and 40 are still spending their evenings shouting abuse at kids on their xbox’s, binge drinking on the weekends and outwardly appearing to value their bling more than their impact on society.

i’m not saying this is the answer… but when adults nowadays are more like teenagers with the odd bill to pay then what motivation is there for the feral youth to grow up and start acting like an adult?

don simon – Member
I think you speak a certain truth there deviant, even though you choose to go to another linguistic extreme in a weak attempt to demonstrate something, but that doesn’t excuse your earlier racism.

DS – which bit of deviant’s comments do you consider to be explicitly racist?

We just raised benefits by 5.2% but cut tax allowances for the low paid poor.

I’ve got to say, I found that absolutely incredible when I read it. Wasn’t IDS’s main goal to prevent this kind of anomaly? Obviously that’s going well

I have to say D-S. I think his earlier post was poorly worded rather than racist.

Edit; beaten to it.

I have to say D-S. I think his earlier post was poorly worded rather than racist.

Fair enough, I’ll go with misguided and clumsy rather than racist, I apologise deviant.
He is, however, no better than the people he calls cretins.

deviant – Member

This is what needs to change, young British kids (for whatever reason) have decided that cleaning jobs and the like are somehow beneath them….but a life on benefits is socially acceptable!

Some have. Well, for one thing, when you’re looking around at friends and family on benefits, you’ve pretty much got a choice between deciding it’s socially acceptable to be on benefits, or living in contempt of your friends and family.

But like I mentioned up the page- there are 1 million unemployed youths in this country. There aren’t 1 million cleaning jobs waiting to be filled. The problem isn’t that 1 million kids are unwilling to work.

When I was in joblesstrackworld at the start of the year, my job centre was in a pretty scabby area, lots of second-gen benefits claimants etc. And being a nosey get I couldn’t help but pick stuff up from conversations and interviews around me. Some of those kids were just on the road to nowhere but others were keen to work, and absolutely crushed about it. The back-to-work group sessions were an exercise in depression and broken hopes.

And then, there was a flipside, I was sat there with an honours degree and 10 years constant work experience, and the job centre kept trying to put me into entry-level jobs that in another time these kids would have been doing. What hope for them, if the jobs they could do are being pushed (and pushed hard) onto folks like me?

I have to say D-S. I think his earlier post was poorly worded rather than racist.

Poorly worded? Such that people had difficulty understanding him? Oh dear!

Racist bits?

Well, I think conflating the idea of Jamaican identity with negative stereotype or being a prick is pretty racist.

I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, when these retards talk like a bad impression of Ali-G nobody in their right mind is going to give them a job….it sounds particularly bad when the jamaican patois being spouted at you is coming from a white person

.you’ll find that blacks in the US that talk in hip-hop speak and act ‘gangsta’ also have a hard time getting work….its not about the colour of the skin, its about not acting and looking like a prick

.

there are plenty of blacks in this country and the US who dont feel the need to conform to negative racial stereotypes

if the accent they are using has Caribbean overtones when they have never been to those islands then it just becomes comical

Without of course mentioning the trend for Manchester accents or Mockney accents. Just as ridiculous surely? But it seems Jamaican is particularly bad. Why just Jamaican? Are you sure it is Jamaican or os that some general term for the West Indies or Caribbean?

Because inflation came in at 5.2% in September benefits automatically go up by that amount. That despite pterry much everyone expects inflation to drop pretty sharply next year.

I can only think they were spooked by what public opinion would say, or more specifically, Pensioners. I think they got this one wrong, no way should pensions and benefits be going up by this much when we’re cutting tax relief for the low paid and imposing 1% pay rise on the public sector.

It’s becoming a cliche but my Pret a Manger has not a single Brit working in it today. What on earth are we doing?

Charlie stop shouting racist. I might not have chosen the same words as Deviant but black culture isnt and shouldnt be above criticism. Ask David Lammy.

Racist comedy then?

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WfTpZWH4cU[/video]

if the accent they are using has Caribbean overtones when they have never been to those islands then it just becomes comical

hmm.. possibly..

but if most in your community.. many at your school.. all of your positive and negative role models.. all of your peer group and possibly your parents and siblings speak with a dialect.. wouldn’t it be even stranger for you to renounce that dialect.. because tubby insular cyclist number3 finds it difficult to relate to.. especially if you’re say.. 10 years old..?

what’s your accent and where did it come from and why..?

(I’m relating this conversation on dialect and accent to my experience growing up on a SW UK council estate)

dis thread is bare jokes fam!

DezB….’Phoneshop’ does a great job of lampooning the accent of choice for youngsters today….perhaps i should have used that as an example instead?….people get so touchy when they think race is being brought into….i’ll reiterate again for those that missed it the first time….speaking like either of the two nobbers in Phoneshop will not curry favour with a propsective middle aged employer sat the other side of the interview desk.

You get me brah?!

I knew what you meant.
Racist.

( 😉 )

deviant = twit

You really do have a costume and mask.

Without of course mentioning the trend for Manchester accents or Mockney accents. Just as ridiculous surely?

I took that as said, but then I wasn’t looking to fight racism everywhere I find it…sorry; and bigotry

Charlie stop shouting racist. I might not have chosen the same words as Deviant but black culture isnt and shouldnt be above criticism. Ask David Lammy

Of course not, nor should it be, by definition a bad thing. Such that a black stereotype is negative