As Orwell warned, children now spy on adults

TDK

You don't need to clip them round the ear.

The best way to deprogramme a green child is to give them what they want. Give then organic fruit complete with blemishes. Reduce power consumption by removing the TV, computer and games console.

Seriously. It is ironic that the list of antisocial behaviours that you list like graffiti, littering and wrecking bus shelters are carried out either disproportionately or entirely by the young. Those that do will not be afraid of the younger kids who threaten to tell on them either.

Fergus Pickering

Well, all I can sayis thatchildren must have changed radically in the last fifteen years. My children and their riends were collectively born in fields, put on the heating gven half a chance, had the lights blazing like the Blackpool illuminations and watched television as if it were a new Olympic Sport. All the food they liked was rubbish (just like me forty years earlier) and as for social responsibility, that extended to saving the bleeding whales and nothing else. God bless them all. Oh, and they demanded to be taken to scholin the car because they didn't much like the class of children they came across on te bus. Neither did I, come to tnat.

Familiar Clown

Gosh, this gives a whole new meaning to the saying 'grow up!'

Wily Trout

Tell your kids that you think Green is 'cool' and they will never touch an organic fruit again.

Mark

It seems that at least some of the transgressions that children are being encouraged to report are those practised by teenagers and not adults.
“In 20 towns and cities, school kids were asked to design posters that challenge antisocial behavior. The winning designers were invited to sit in their local CCTV control rooms on the day that the truly Orwellian ‘talking cams’ were unveiled, from where they admonished citizens for littering, loitering, drinking and so on.”
The fast food litter, drunken rowdiness and even violence are behaviors that we could easily trade in exchange for nurturing a generation of stool pigeons.

euSSR GO HOME

"A writer for the Guardian celebrates eco-pester power on the basis that children make ‘natural campaigners — no shades of grey, no nuanced arguments, just loads of passion and clarity’." .....Which is all about the ones who are natural liars, then; isn't it? We all know them: The ones who accuse other people of their own misdemeanours; or who expect rewards for the tales they tell; or who just plain delight in viciousness; and who devise ways to get what they want regardless of anybody or anything else. In my day, nobody pretended that children couldn't sometimes be very bad indeed.

Seems to me Christianity discouraged that sort of thing, admittedly with the aid of an occasional 'clip.' So did love, explanation, and good example. In spite of all, a few of the more cunning remained incorrigible, sometimes fooling their parents completely. They'll be the ones who grew up to be nEU politicians, I guess.

So, what'll happen when this lot are all trying for the same few jobs? What'll happen when their own little monsters grow up to 'pester' the ruthless ones themselves?

No prizes for truthful answers!!!

Ray

Any chance of the Government channelling youth 'pester power' into encouraging their teenage peers to stop having sex and burdening the benefit system with under-age pregnancies?

Nope, thought not.

John Thomas

Ray - Whatever makes you think the (present) Government has any desire to limit people having sex, or prevent teenage pregnancies? What are the army of (Government-sponsored) sex-educators and abortionists for? Get real!

C Powell

Fergus: children are still like that, thank God. All this "green" nonsense is one big scam. If you really want to teach people to respect the environment and the wonders of nature, encourage them to garden. People will learn - all by themselves(!) - not to waste gas & electricity & petrol when they have to pay the bills. And that's it. No need for anything else.

But we all know that this is all about creating more non-jobs for people who get a kick about bossing others around.

john

One gets an image of these children's teachers. I love the expression 'Grolies': (Guardian Readers of Limited Intelligence in Ethnic Skirts). Now times are getting hard and we must account for ourselves. Perhaps evolution will one day breed these trolls' successors who will be able to think, spell, reason and understand their own culture. Future children may benefit and play at silly finger-wagging for no longer than they ever did,and with each other and in the corner of the playground.