Family values

Joe Strummer

When we have a society devoid of any moral compass where supposed "adults" act like children with no responsibility and their legally underage offspring act like adults by smoking, drinking alcohol, taking drugs and having sexual partners, we cannot be shocked by sadly increasingly common incidents like these.

Lucyl

Yes. Allison Pearson wrote a very good column on Fiona McKeown's situation today in the Daily Mail. The refusal to enforce proper parameters on the behaviour and whereabouts of children comes from the 1960s' left's airy fairy posture of non-judgementalism. We mustn't judge good from bad any more - it's all relative, isn't it? Just think what Hitler could have achieved if he had attacked Britain after 1968. This dozy way of thinking has infected everything in Britain. With parenting, it means not keeping a close eye on children or saying 'no'. Once you can justify this sort of behaviour to yourself it absolves parents of feeling guilty for not putting the legwork in. The truth is, though, that if you don't have the strength to judge, you don't care. My criticism expands beyond these two cases, which obviously have their own circumstances, but they typify a laissez faire and lazy attitude that masquerades as liberal thinking. It is nothing of the kind. How the genie is put back in the bottle, I don't know. I doubt it can be. This lousy mindset has acted like acid throughout so many institutions and individuals in Britain I doubt we'll ever find a way out of the mess. Just swerve when you see the piles of sick on the way and hope you and your loved ones don't get assaulted - or worse.

gerry

Very true, Melanie, and Lucyl. These two so-called families are the dysfunctional type which would not have prospered prior to the Welfare State.

Frank Pulley

These examples, along with myriad others previously exposed by Melanie, illustrate the upshot of the Gramsci blueprint so exhaustively implemented by the counter culture warriors over the past five decades. As many of the the social engineers using the blueprint are now ensconced in No.10 Downing street, the adjacent Parliament of Mother...s, and the multitude of tack-on quangos, etc. extorting billions from the taxpayer, don't expect much to improve in the near future, but please remember it at the next General Election - bearing in mind, of course, that the two major alternative leaders may not have been be immune from the contagion of the Gramscian crypto-agitprop peddled around the halls of academe during their 'education'. We need a root 'n branch muck-out. It would be interesting to ask bloggers to nominate a new Hercules. Suggestions please? Our blog host is a given, of course, but I doubt we could persuade her - the stench of the NuLab Augean stables would be pretty overpowering.

alan stoddart

As Nick Cohen said, the Left won all their battles...pyrrhic though they are. Instead of some people being born with a silver spoon in their mouths we now have a new raft of people coming out clutching a ration book of rights and entitlements, the lack of deference and respect for authority means there is no authority. People being paid just to exist, education being destroyed for political ideals of equality of opportunity..which in reality means... if we can't get there you won't be allowed to either.

C.S. lewis understood such people well...in his book 'Screwtape Letters' one of the Devil's lines was: ‘I’m as good as you’ is a useful means for the destruction of democratic societies.

Unfortunately we can't all be film stars, the Prime Minister, surgeons or fighter pilots, either because of lack of aptitude or because of basic maths...ie there can only be so many of each. We also need dustmen, nurses, mechanics, factory workers and people who grind out the 9-5. The media has hyped people's expectations, the government has connived with that in providing a hope for a better future by promising a university education that will feather-bed their existence...but ends up with them on a course of dubious merit which they will probably not complete and end up in debt and in the same job they would have been in had they just left school and gone down the job centre...only now they are thousands of pounds in debt and a couple of years behind the recent school leavers. Expectations are unrealistic both in the public's minds and in politician's who conduct this charade. It is time some peolpe realised that there is no such thing as equality in life and there never will be. Accept it, strive to achieve and break out of your rut but don't expect it as a right handed to you on a plate.

Dave

Have you never read any Dickins, Mel?

Austin Barry

I don't think you can extrapolate from the breathtakingly dim members of the Matthews family anything about parental duty or civilised values: they simply wouldn't understand them to deny them. Less true of Fiona McKeown the superannuated hippie, but she would've been just as irresponsible in the sixties. Unhappily, the ignorant will always be with us. The big change over the past sixty years is that until the Butler Education reforms the working class was seeded with bright people who could not readily escape their circumstances. The unintended consequence of post-Butler bright-flight is that the very poor are now also likely to be the very dim. What to do? Well, negative eugenics are presumably out, unless at one remove by curtailing welfare payments, so we have to learn to live with the problem.

Rich

That's right Melanie, extrapolating from 2 cases to a population of 60 million is a totally valid research method. Keep up the good work!

Ian G

Rich, Melanie isn't extrapolating. She's been producing her evidence for some years now. All she has done here is to illustrate. Surely you don't expect her to give a full-blown academic essay complete with references and annotations? This is a blog!

Neil Saunders

Frank Pulley is right when he hints that NONE of the mainstream political parties (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat) is free of what he describes as the "Gramsci blueprint". These days the antithesis between left and right is an entirely spurious one. What has, in fact, happened is this: the free-market right has prevailed within the "right", while the "politically correct" (i.e. sociocultural Marxists) have prevailed within the "left". Having prevailed within their own movements, the free-market right and the politically-correct left have realised the radical compatibility of their programmes (economic and sociocultural deregulation, respectively) and have struck a devil's deal. Consequently, the free-market right has been quite happy to cede power to the politically-correct left in the realm of society and culture just so long as it controls the levers of the economy. Correspondingly, the politically-correct left has been quite happy to cede control over the economy to the free-market right, just so long as it can set the social and cultural agenda. As a result, the free-market right and the politically-correct left have essentially fused, to form what I call the Permanent Coalition (since it transcends party-political labels). Traditional supporters of the mainstream parties seem unaware that this fusion has occurred, which accounts for their continuing (if absurdly misplaced) party-political affiliations and loyalties.

PHIL

In a society that does not sit down together to eata family meal at least once a week -where a child can live in a home with children from multiple fathers-none of whom bothered to marry the mother and give the child a name ,when pride in ones family name is unimportant -when prisoners freely show their faces on tv and give interviews ,-yes i could go on -what do you expect -what the hell has happened to us ?answers on a postcard please .do you really wonder why so many are leaving our country -I AM A VERY PROUD AND PATRIOTIC bRIT WHO IS SICKENED BY WHAT I SEE .i do not want to make any comment on the two devestated families referred to in this article above apart from offering my sympathy .

J. Isaacs

Dave - who the Dickens have you been reading? Your spelling has not benefited from it.

London Calling

What about the irresponsibility of the parents of Madeleine McCann? both doctors and church followers, are they also guilty of not following 'British society and the most basic rules of nurture, parental duty and civilised values',or are Shannon,Scarlett and Madeline simply the victims of evil circumstance. We should not be quick to judge, stereotype and comment on people we know nothing about except through the media, who can cut and edit to create whatever view they feel like. Good parenting is open for debate, I don't know why fifteen year old Scarlett was left unsupervised and to get drunk in a notorious beach bar, or why Shannon run away or was abducted, or why Madeline was left alone in her families holiday apartment with her younger siblings, whilst both her parents merrily drank wine some distance away in the complex bar. All these cases are different and should not be bubble wrapped into society packaging. Parents make mistakes and sadly in all these cases ultimately the outcome has been tragic for the families concerned.

Frank Pulley

J Isaacs Dave/Dickins ... bwaahahahaha! No doubt he thinks you made a TV series entitled 'The World at Waugh'.

Geoff Miller

Fiona McKeown, if press reports are correct, lives in a caravan, on benefits, and doesnt send her kids to school. However she was able to afford 6 months in Goa. Nice for some. She left her 15 year old child in the care of a man who was having sex with her whilst she went off on a jaunt. The police say her body showed signs of her having consumed quantities of alchohol and drugs. This mother placed her own daughter in harms way in a foreign country and seems incapable of accepting any responsibility. As they say, if you drive too fast you WILL have an accident. God only knows what the family homelife is like.

J. Isaacs

Frank Pulley - sadly I am not that J. Isaacs, nor am I Jason Isaacs the famous actor. However, I am a fan of both Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson and would hate the two to be confused by Dave.

Water

The lack of national Identity ironically has many faces many of them not pretty, has this void been filled with bitterness? I think so... Righteous Children of tomorrow keep fighting let no one hold you down, but understand when you begin to achieve other will envy... Culture is liberation listen to no one get your education. The facts ultimately speak for themselves.

Water

The last comment is in ref to another comment of course, not the article.

field

Er - I think you left one off. The McCanns. Or are you also subject to the news blackout which has meant that there has been hardly any news on the forthcoming visit of the PJ to interview witnesses and eventually the suspects themselves? The McCanns were hardly a shining example of responsible parenting were they?

Michael H

The rapist who killed Scarlett Keeling must have had very bad parents indeed. Shame on them and shame on India for doing nothing about it.

Chris

One thing we can be certain of is that a degree in English from Oxford University evidently misses elementary basics such as sentence construction. 162 words in a single sentence - the reference to Charles Dickens in another comment is apposite in more ways than one!

Frank Pulley

J Isaacs "However, I am a fan of both Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson and would hate the two to be confused by Dave." Yes, we're all confused by Dave. He's a troll with many previous.

B

That was a long sentence.

Ernest Cam

Frank, are you THE Frank who drained the mangrove swamp? If so I'll have to put you up there with the equally fearless (fearsome?) Joan Rivers. PS. I'm not Dave.

field

London Calling - I'm glad you mention the McCanns but all three cases do have a common thread: parental selfishness of one sort or another.

Frances

I'm surpirsed Melanie hasn't taken a shot a Ulrika "4x4" Jonsson. Or perhaps, because she's a) Swedish b) rich, she's exempt from moral castigation

London Calling

yes Field,I agree 'all three cases do have a common thread: parental selfishness of one sort or another. As I mentioned in my post,Good parenting is open for debate. British 'society' on the whole is currently wallowing in Divine Decadence and not only do we have the audacity to expect immigrants to swear allegiance to it (via Queenie) then we proceed to tell them how we expect them to behave and integrate into our multicultural 'satanic mills'(William Blake - Jerusalem) and be grateful. Good parenting skills can only be learn t by the example of others, but where are these perfect role models?. Its not just about selfish parenting it's also about our selfish,greedy,money worshiping,me,me,me society that split the atom of common decency,morals and principles and it is this man made virus that is spreading throughout Great Britain regardless of,class,religion or ethnic background.

DavidH

References to the Gramscian corruption of our society ( Frank Pulley, Neil Saunders ) are well taken but surely there is a wider and more ominous development: the EU. Now that we have all but forfeited our sovereignty, we cannot even pin our hopes ( such as they are ) on a general election. See the EUReferendum site, passim.

Barry Larking

I can find no fault with the suggestion that parents should take their responsibilities seriously. This in own experience includes many levels in society and attempts to pin these recent events on the 'sixties' (actually rather a long time ago) are as unconvincing as free market enthusiasts declining to accept the social consequences of fiscal 'freedom'.

Some things are beyond party and this should be one area where sensible and thoughtful people come together. There are lives a stake.

Gordon Neil

"At a certain level in British Society" I wonder what you could possibly mean by that ! Hope your not joining the BBC in putting the boot into the Working Class. There are good and bad at every level. Rather disappointed...I'll put it down to an off day.

Frank Pulley

DavidH "...but surely there is a wider and more ominous development: the EU. Now that we have all but forfeited our sovereignty, we cannot even pin our hopes ( such as they are ) on a general election..." I would regard that as all part of the global Gramscian continuum. I wonder what Jeremy Lester is doing to these days? We know what the second generation of Milibands are up to, don't we? It's an inexorable process, I fear.

Water

British doesn't by any means have to be the current construal of British. But without a back bone things fall apart or assimilate. Welcome to the ubiquitous fungus.

Solange Miller

The demographic winter is coming to Europe. Aging workforce. geocities(dot)com/demographic_crash Good information on the subject. Welcome for a visit. Have a nice day. Sincerely, Solange Miller

robzrob

Re Rich & Chris. I wish my teachers had put me forward for Common Entrance. If I knew then what I know now (how easy it must be to get an Oxbridge (non-science) degree once you're in - just look at the people who've got them), well...

Nita Xerla

I am from India and would like to express my shock at this rape and murder of Scarlett. i hope the culprits are given the maximum punishment possible. The other side of the coin is the poor parenting and poor example offerred by Fiona Mckeown to her children. She herself smokes pot, does not put her kids in school, has nine children from 5 men (!!) and lives on government handouts. Hardly something that her kids can look up to. Unfortunately we see too many of these type of tourists, almost creating a stereotype. I am glad the gOA gOvernment is planning to tighten the Visa process to prevent such tourists from entering. We have enough problems in our own country. We dont need additional ones exported from the UK.

Nita Xerla

Sorry to post again so soon on your site which is obviously to discuss the problems in the UK. But I cant quite understand why your govt pays so much good money to people like Fiona to lead a work-free life ! Every child means she gets additional tax payer's money to use on her drugs, travels etc. She does not send her kids to school. It seems to encourage/reward a lazy/vagabond life. In India if you dont work, you starve. If you have additional children, you slog to feed them , or beg , or eat out of dustbins or STARVE. Or even put your kids to work (that's where child labor comes from). I am not saying I agree with all this, but it means that a lazy life has consequences. And consequences make people sit up and think. There are work schemes for the unemployed, the disadvantaged etc, which give them WORK e.g road building, farm work, social work etc for which they paid. No free handouts. If Feona MacKeown had been given WORK for PAY she may not have produced so many children, known the value of hard work, the consequences of laziness, and been a better example to her kids. Your tax payers are too benevolent.

amanda

Wow ...right wing stuff here . Shannon was clearly a sad child and her mother inadequate . As for Fiona ? she must be strong and intelliegent to get this far with the police in Goa , she has exposed rather of lot of corruption and lies (as any mother would do if their daughter died like that). It is a shame that because somebody lives differently (or with hardship) the middle class closes ranks and mitigates crimes against non-middle class families . There have been well educated people murdered in India and very often as Fiona has managed to expose indirectly and at her own cost . How might these commenter's be judged ? few manage the ceral packet family except you readership ....lucky old them hey ! enjoy the dinner party and church ...village fete highlight of the year ...not all of like that sort of life and choose wrongly or rightly to live another way (that is democracy for you!). Too much sanctimony esecailly when a young woman has been gang raped and murdered with police help ! focus on the crime and the victim every life has the same value and inadequate mothers still have emotion's . Wish I was born perfect but happily I wasn't .