Tough Love

Yesterday on BBC Radio Four’s Women’s Hour – yes, I know, but I was out for a walk and I can’t help but blunder into these things when I have my ear buds in; besides, you learn stuff about, y’know, women, and what they bang on about. Anyway there was a short piece about smacking, or rather not smacking; very definitely not smacking. Obviously they had the pro side and the con side of the argument presented. Not really – both sides were against – but the feature was really about the child-centric world you (not me) created. Anyway, you can listen to it here if you wish: 

Sweden made smacking illegal in 1979 and Swedish psychiatrist Dr David Eberhard has written a book about How Children Took Power. A brief precis appears here. Given that the good doctor has six of his own (and being a psychiatrist, to boot) you’d be forgiven for thinking that he was part of the problem. A few quotes illustrate the tone:

"In some ways Swedish kids are really ill-mannered. They shout if there are adults speaking at the dinner table, they interrupt you all the time and they demand the same space as adults."

"Of course you should listen to your children but in Sweden it's gone too far. They tend to decide everything in families: when to go to bed, what to eat, where to go on vacation, even what to watch on television."

“Young Swedes are ill-equipped for adulthood. Their expectations are too high and life is too hard for them. We see it with anxiety disorders and self-harming, which has risen dramatically.”

And we all know it’s so very true. In a recent episode of Have I Got News For You, comedienne Jo Brand told the story of a health visitor friend of hers who discovered one of her charges breast feeding a five-year old child. When she suggested that perhaps he was getting a little old for it the child unclamped his greasy lips, turned to the health visitor and snarled “Fuck off!” Apocryphal, or not, you can just imagine it.

But I note once again the way, on issue after issue, it only comes to prominence in any form of media many years after real people living ordinary lives have been observing it for many years. In 1987 corporal punishment was outlawed in state schools in the UK. I would just LOVE to hear from teachers with a properly balance view – i.e. not ideologically bound to a right-on mantra – how the withdrawal of that sanction has contributed to school indiscipline. I am very much aware how it is viewed in the nation as a whole, outside the politically correct set.

In 1662 Samuel Butler wrote Hudibras, which includes these wise words:

If matrimony and hanging go

By dest'ny, why not whipping too?

What med'cine else can cure the fits

Of lovers when they lose their wits?

Love is a boy by poets stil'd

Then spare the rod and spoil the child

There’s a bit of a fuss at the moment – you may have seen it in the news – with certain people trying to bend the will of law (and the truth) to meet their own small version of reality. This failure to accept the rules most of us live by, far from being a mere childhood problem, seems to have become endemic among people who believe the world belongs exclusively to them. Maybe most of Mark Duggan’s tribe would have benefited from a clip around the ear. 

Where's my homework you stupid old witch?

So today, when your kids are acting up and expecting your compliant accession to their demands, do yourself a favour and give them the gift of tough love. One day they will thank you for it… or kill you for your property... or put you in a home. But if you are up for it,if you dare, put your foot down. Oh and, give the little bastard a slap from me while you’re about it.

Black Bucks

Whenever I hear declared that there is ‘overwhelming evidence’ for or against anything whatsoever, I immediately consider backing the opposite side. In recent years there has been ‘overwhelming evidence’ for man-made climate warming, for man-made climate cooling, for mass unskilled immigration, against the return of the death penalty and for the economic benefits of the EU, among many others. All forms of excessive repetitive behaviour – eating, drinking, gambling, spending, drug taking, thieving and sex are no longer voluntary but as a result of severely debilitating medical conditions with names ending in ‘aholic’. The evidence is overwhelming and ‘surveys show’.

What all of them have in common – from a 20-a-day habit to cataclysmic global something -is money. The money it costs you and me – those who are not afflicted with faith or ‘addiction’ – who are still capable of functioning, working and hence paying tax. I couldn’t care less about those well-off individuals who seek out private quackery to pander to their delusions. If you want to buy a wind turbine and stick it on a hill you own and run in the ruinously expensive infrastructure to make it boil the kettle occasionally, then be my guest. If you regularly drink yourself into oblivion and later check yourself into The Priory at your own expense then bully for you. But why should I have to chip in?

There must also be overwhelming evidence that we need to protect us from ourselves and any kind of hurt is everybody’s public business. Our Father, who does art with Kevin, deliver us also from: racism, sexism, heightism, ageism, chronyism, intellectualism, anti-intellectualism, schism and schism-ism, for there is overwhelming evidence that each of these over-inflated and often fictional hate crimes alone is more deadly than a man with a gun. Oh and, bung in islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia and any others you think we’d like, there’s a good god. Amen.

Now, about that man with a gun.

“The one the police shot?”

“Yes. The evide…”

“Then he is an innocent victim.”

“But he was a gun-toting, drug-dealing, hoodlum. He actually had a gun with him. He was a lowlife, nasty muthafucka and proud of it. He probably liked gangsta music. The evidence against him was as long as your arm.”

The usual suspects, Diane Abbott, Laurie Penny, Owen Jones, Lee Jasper and their willing acolytes took up cudgels on behalf of the Duggan family and Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree. It was HILARIOUS. Just as with free speech, when you are agreeing with them, The Left are all for it but once they’ve made their up mind you can only ever be in the wrong and thus hateful for voicing your vicious, disgusting opinions. It’s the same thing with evidence. A long as it supports their world view then they will tax you to the grave to pursue their various agenda, but should the evidence – or even, god forbid, plain common sense - point to a contrary view it must be supressed and discredited at all costs.

The Accused (posed by a model)

And besides, there is another far more important piece of information to take into account. Had he been a former miner’s boy from Merthyr Tydfil or a Tyneside Stevedore’s lad out on the rob... had he been a Glaswegian docker’s teenage son going equipped, or a Cockney wide-boy Kray worshipper, the police’s actions would have been fully justified. But Duggan was a member of the untouchables and therefore bears an affliction that justifies every rabble-rousing word of the massive overreaction. Just like Laurie Penny, he was black.