Lucky you! We had heavy rain in the forecast for yesterday evening but only got light rain and drizzle, 1mm in the gauge when I checked. Better than nothing but I'm envious of everyone who's getting the proper stuff.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
It wasn't a kid who forced his way into the house, it was a career criminal who chose to carry a gun and to get involved with drug gangs. I save my sympathy for kids who get caught up in that 'lifestyle'.
Kids get caught up in that 'lifestyle' ......... then they have very little choice but to grow up into a .'career criminal'. The Kray twins were, once upon a time, just naughty lads who got into a situation way over their heads ... it has ever been thus.
Governments introduce initiatives ... the next government promises tax cuts and cost savings and the initiatives are handed over to charities to run (after all the situation has improved hasn't it?) ... governments then cap local authority spending and the funding that councils paid to charities to help them run the schemes is withdrawn because there's not a problem any more is there? ... then the sh*t hits the fan (like now) ... eventually another government will introduce another initiative and the circle with start again .............
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It wasn't a kid who forced his way into the house, it was a career criminal who chose to carry a gun and to get involved with drug gangs. I save my sympathy for kids who get caught up in that 'lifestyle'.
Is that true? Isn't the person who has been arrested the person who was running from the person with the gun - the gunman not having been caught yet?
Once caught up in that 'lifestyle' at a young age, what then stops you being a 'career criminal' - doesn't one, in some cases, follow the other? And if you're arguing that it's a choice - then why save your sympathy for the person who chooses that path at an early age? That's the bit they did wrong isn't it? - without that initial choice, their path would have been different anyway. Everything is a choice isn't it?
@steveTu and kids don't have to get caught up in that lifestyle and nor do they have to grow up into a career criminal.
I was born and grew up just after the war and my parents were poor despite being hard workers. However we were taught right from wrong, to stand on our own two feet and not expect something for nothing. They didn't expect that others should be responsible for our upbringing and if we did anything wrong they blamed themselves not others.
They taught us that stealing, telling lies and getting into trouble was wrong so my brother and I didn't do it. They taught us good manners and to respect other people and their property. If we wanted something we worked to earn pocket money and saved until we could buy it.
As I said, my parents were poor but they did a bloody good job of bringing us up, they didn't tell us they loved us but we knew they did.
I think the reason this instance has had such an impact is less the little girl's age and more the sheer randomness of it, shortly after an equally random killing a few days before. If you think that the only people who are shot dead are people mixed up in drug dealing or other crime, then you know how to avoid it (respecting all that's been said about that not necessarily being quite as simple as that - but in the minds of most people who are not in or close to that world). If you can be at home, totally innocent, and still be shot then it can be anyone, can't it?
Americans have lived with this idea for a while
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
@Uff -when we were young there was a make do and mend mentality as well as saving up to buy things. Then came the growth of advertising to create demand and desire and hire-purchase followed by credit cards and, in-between, the teenage revolution in a full jobs market where suddenly they could, and did, afford to spend money on fashionable new clothes and look nothing like their parents.
These days if you're a kid growing up poor the only chance you have of getting that pair of must-have trainers and progress to more clothes and a car or whatever is to go in with the drug gangs. They have no idea at the start of how dangerousit is nor of how bad it is for the idiots caught up in drug consumption.
As I've said elsewhere, the only way it can be fixed is by good education from teachers with aspirations for their students, good housing stock and good health care and health education. It won't have an immedate effect but long term it would improve the lives of many and give youngsters the chance to use their brains and talents for productive work and to contribute to the common weal - and yes, taxes need fixing so the wealthy contribute more and people like Blair, Cameron and co can't park it in tax havens.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
When I was born my mother gave birth in her parent's council house because the cottage she and dad lived in had no facilities, just a cold water tap. When I was 3 the cottage was condemned as not being fit to live in so they were moved to a complex of wooden huts that were used during the war as billets for the army, along with others in the same situation. That was one up from the old place as it had electricity. No bathroom and no hot water and an outside pan lavatory.
The NHS came into being and we really went up in the world when we were moved to a council house when I was 8 years old. My first schools were basic rooms with no heating. I won't bore anyone with more but just to say that I didn't have good health care, health education or particularly good teachers just my parents who instilled basic common sense, a good work ethic where I work hard to get what I want and respect for other people.
I grew up with a fierce determination to make to most of my life and I have done. I made my choices.
Yes @Uff but you didn't have TV and internet bombarding you with advertising for things you couldn't afford. In the 50s and 60s theer was a sense that you could do anything if you just worked hard but that upward mobility has largely gone and there is a wide ranging sense of hopelessness for many youngsters now.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I really don't follow this nature/nurture thing. Can't anyone of any level of education and knowledge (originally of religion, but now in general) be 'bad'? Didn't religion teach non-violence (all the 'thou shalt not...' rules) and then led crusades? Is there any person that honestly doesn't know that certain things are wrong? It is not the knowledge of right or wrong that matters is it - but what you do with that knowledge - and I would say the imagination. If you can't imagine that 'bad' thing happening to you and realising you wouldn't like it, you're more likely (IMO) to do that thing to someone else. How do you explain the lying, cheating and stealing then by people who you know will have been taught 'better'? Maybe the wrong doer does have an imagination, and can visualise how the action will affect others, but the benefit outweighs the risk of getting caught and any potential punishment. Maybe 'criminals' aren't as risk averse as me!
I worry about me doing my recycling, then my local water company pollutes rivers and seas - and can't always provide water. Do you think the directors (presumably educated people) aren't aware that those actions are wrong?What about the bankers in 2008 who were in effect effecting a massive fraud? Did they not know that what they did was wrong? Did they care? They had their bonus money. I would not murder, but my country can force me into it. How can that then be 'right'? I see a girl get murdered by accident - and then hits home - but I KNOW thousands a year die in worse circumstances because of greed and power (which is all drug dealing comes down to as well) and because it is not 'personal' to me, I can quite merrily ignore it. It is only personal to me because I see a photo..know a name - that one person becomes more real than an amorphous mass of other corpses that I'll never see. We've all seen this effect. The 'let's publish the photos and names of our heroes' in papers, that in the same edition tell you that 400 of the 'enemy' were killed in a bomb blast - who remembers the column of armoured vehicles blown to pieces by depleted uranium shells on the road back to wherever it was after the first Gulf war? What about those deaths? Less meaningful than our heroes? Less meaningful than a 9 year old girl? After the Gulf wars, virtually daily, in the turmoil that followed you'd hear on the radio ' and in Baghdad today, a roadside bomb killed 15 passers by...'. No names, no faces. Nothing personal.
I get affected the same as anyone else by senseless death - but isn't ALL senseless death just that - senseless? Isn't the personalisation the thing that has the effect - the difference between:
- A girl died
- A girl died in Liverpool
- A girl of 9 died in Liverpool
- A girl of 9 was murdered in Liverpool
- A girl,called blah blah, only 9 years old,was shot dead in Liverpool
..and the final one with a photo. The more detail, the more you can sympathise/empathise.
@Uff … if you were a 12 or 13 year old boy who was beaten up by a drugs gang for refusing to carry drugs for them … and then told that if you refused again your kid sister would be gang-raped … what would you do?
They have knives, they have guns … teenagers are being stabbed and worse on our streets (even in a sedate place like Norwich) for not cooperating … if you go to the police you’re putting your family in danger … what would be your choice at 13?
And once you’ve ‘carried’ once you’re a criminal .., they’ve got you … you believe that no one will understand …
I’m not exaggerating … it’s how the County Lines gangs work.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Posts
Governments introduce initiatives ... the next government promises tax cuts and cost savings and the initiatives are handed over to charities to run (after all the situation has improved hasn't it?) ... governments then cap local authority spending and the funding that councils paid to charities to help them run the schemes is withdrawn because there's not a problem any more is there? ... then the sh*t hits the fan (like now) ... eventually another government will introduce another initiative and the circle with start again .............
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I was born and grew up just after the war and my parents were poor despite being hard workers. However we were taught right from wrong, to stand on our own two feet and not expect something for nothing. They didn't expect that others should be responsible for our upbringing and if we did anything wrong they blamed themselves not others.
They taught us that stealing, telling lies and getting into trouble was wrong so my brother and I didn't do it. They taught us good manners and to respect other people and their property. If we wanted something we worked to earn pocket money and saved until we could buy it.
As I said, my parents were poor but they did a bloody good job of bringing us up, they didn't tell us they loved us but we knew they did.
Americans have lived with this idea for a while
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
These days if you're a kid growing up poor the only chance you have of getting that pair of must-have trainers and progress to more clothes and a car or whatever is to go in with the drug gangs. They have no idea at the start of how dangerousit is nor of how bad it is for the idiots caught up in drug consumption.
As I've said elsewhere, the only way it can be fixed is by good education from teachers with aspirations for their students, good housing stock and good health care and health education. It won't have an immedate effect but long term it would improve the lives of many and give youngsters the chance to use their brains and talents for productive work and to contribute to the common weal - and yes, taxes need fixing so the wealthy contribute more and people like Blair, Cameron and co can't park it in tax havens.
The NHS came into being and we really went up in the world when we were moved to a council house when I was 8 years old. My first schools were basic rooms with no heating. I won't bore anyone with more but just to say that I didn't have good health care, health education or particularly good teachers just my parents who instilled basic common sense, a good work ethic where I work hard to get what I want and respect for other people.
I grew up with a fierce determination to make to most of my life and I have done. I made my choices.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.