The person who threw the chair said "it's not that deep, it did not hit no-one".
By what mechanism did these people end up in the country, out of interest? Why haven't his parents learned how to speak English yet so we not only have to pay for the court case but their translator? How is this cast as a problem of our court system that it isn't set up for this stupidity?
There are so many problems in this country that weren't an issue until 5 minutes ago and then everyone is shocked when we aren't set up for them. Cut back on trading standards officers? Well didn't need them because there wasn't rampant money laundering. No real punishment of fly tipping? Well it's only now I can guarantee every walk I go on i'll see a mattress or computer chair randomly thrown on the pavement.
We’ve always had money laundering and the need for trading standards btw. Taxi firms, strip clubs, pubs, tanning salons. The nature of the businesses have changed but it’s always been there. They weren’t cut back on because they weren’t needed, it was due to austerity (and in any case they aren’t the main body who investigate money laundering)
Because you are doing the far right thing of “it was the land of milk and honey and nothing bad ever happened until these people turned up”
Austerity has caused the issues. Services have been slashed.
Cash based money laundering is much less than it has been historically btw due to the declining amount of cash in the economy btw. It’s not high street money laundering that accounts for the majority of cases.
I don't think it was the land of milk and honey. Please stop interpolating and read what I wrote.
I said we have problems that we are not set up for because the problems have arisen recently. I am not saying the category of thing would otherwise have zero prevalence. I said 'cut back on trading standards officer' so I was aware they already existed. I said 'no real punishment of fly tipping' not that there was no fly tipping before.
The ruling assumptions and set up are broadly that we are a high trust, low crime society, and these assumptions are now wrong.
Trading standards history is because of people cutting flour and milk with all kinds of nasty stuff over 100 years ago. (Weights and Measures as it was then). The driver was capitalism.
Fly tipping penalties have been repeatedly increased (I’d say that landlords and trades are responsible for a large amount of it too).
Nothing has been set up based on us being a “high trust society”
The size of the problem is new. Or are my eyes deceiving me, and there was always towns in Wales with a dozen barber shops?
Austerity was a catalyst to making the cuts, but the decisions on what to cut were based on what would be expected to cause the fewest issues. This was based on an anticipation of people's behavior that was wrong.
Same with our welfare systems, which expect some level of honesty, but are now being gamed at much higher levels.
Was recently in an airport. Implausible number of flower lanyards around. Again, a system based on trust which has hit reality.
You’re the problem. Head in the sand. Poor parenting - could be indigenous but in this case migrants. Parents can’t speak English and don’t know where their kids are if how they behave. Kids are low intelligence with not enough guidance or control from them. Should know right from wrong, should know how to behave in their spare time. It isn’t rocket science and has nothing to do with austerity, gentrification, income or English culture.
The level of cope here is ridiculous. 'Kids have always been reckless and sought social approval'. And yet we have a person here who is basically incapable of reasoning about counterfactuals.
Never saw a child from Crouch End e.g. fire fireworks at people, but apparently it's just kids.
When I was a teacher if I had a pound for every parent that said "my kid would never..." before I showed that the video evidence of their kid doing exactly that I could buy dinner for two in a Michelin starred restaurant.
Look, most people manage to be good parents - it’s not complex. It denies people agency and means they can’t be held responsible if we simply say that being a good parent isn’t something we should expect of people. There is no inconsistency with saying we don’t also want to fund X, Y and Z.
I didn’t say it, I said it isn’t a natural thing. It’s learnt. Role modelled, taught. It’s not innate. 1/5 of all children have experienced severe maltreatment so the number experiencing some level of abuse will be much higher. And good parenting is about far more than not being abusive anyway.
No, not at all - we need to get these kids properly integrated, but if there was better parenting in the first place, the state wouldn’t have to step in. I’m tired of my taxes going to pick up after other people’s neglect and incompetence, but that’s not the same as saying money shouldn’t be spent
It’s part of why we pay tax. The closure of surestart centres hasn’t helped either. Good parenting isn’t a natural phenomenon, it’s a learnt behaviour. I’m much happier with my tax being spent on this than it going to private landlords, or to arms companies or to private equity owned social care organisations
I'm sympathetic, but sometimes early intervention doesn't work. This maybe one example.
It IS the case that most kids don't need this level of intervention, and one reason for that is good parenting. It is also true that not speaking the language makes it harder to be a good parent.
This is not an either/or. It is not racist simply to be upset that the state is a poor second to good parents. Al that can be true whilst accepting that the state is in some areas underfunded (I say "some" because the state now raises and spend more tax that ever before, so some state spending has increased a lot).
I only mention this because your insistence that this must be some kind of state failure, as opposed to a policy or personal one, means stretching your credibility to breaking point.
I'd also point out that serious as this could have been, crime in general is very much on a downward trend. Appeals to the "good old days" are naive, as there was a lot more crime overall then.
However, no one wants to see kids chucking furniture at unsuspecting shoppers or nicking phones or carrying drugs because the local dealer knows they won't get jail time. And hand-wringing that the state is to blame isn't really helping. Especially when (sadly) a sizeable minority of the population think the main state failure here was letting people migrate to the UK in the first place.
“Ashraf added that he’d been on repeated child protection plans, had witnessed domestic violence, and hadn’t committed any other offences. He also had “some significant learning needs”.
How were those needs met? What did the child protection plans actually mean? Also ABSOs aren’t any kind of meaningful state intervention.
Well, we don't know do we as it's not stated. Could have been really well met, could not have. The fact is, this kid was where he shouldn't have been, a place he'd actually been banned from, with an another child who was a very bad influence, at 10:30pm in the evening.
How can people effectively parent when they are working all hours of the day in multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Demonising the poor is not clever, a very tired tactic.
Do you know if this is the case here? As opposed to the reported domestic violence, etc? I would suggest that it is more likely that this family are not working.
I commend the reporting but why weren’t you able to report on the trial of the boy who actually threw the chair?
And one thought on the point about exclusionary and polarising regeneration. I understand when people who have lived in an area for a long time, who may have multi-generational ties there, feel a sense of injustice when they’re priced out of the area they grew up, but clearly this boy in question is the child of migrants (given the need for a translator at court). His parents may be upstanding and contributing members of their local communities, but I think both parents of second-generation immigrants and the government itself need to do a better job of explaining that the UK is not a horrendous country full of injustice. No, it isn’t perfect, and there are still many problems, but people come here for a reason because, comparatively, it’s a welcoming, generous and largely fair country. We need to instil that in children from a young age - and not just in the children of migrants, because the more we tell them the country is a systemically racist or corrupt place, the less reason they’ll have to not throw chairs down several flights of a shopping mall. I appreciate this is an over-simplification of a very complex issue, but I think it’s relevant.
These people live 20 minutes from two of the largest job markets in the country but only command Blackburn wages. This is treated as exogenous rather than endogenous.
You literally have people travelling in from Essex and Hertfordshire to do jobs they could easily do. You don't need to regenerate an area to learn a trade. The courses are free.
I am pointing out that there is actually a vast amount of opportunity close by. If you want to draw from that 'immigrants are lazy', that's up to you, but it isn't implied by what I am saying.
Ok. I disagree with you that there is a vast amount of opportunity - there are huge barriers to entry to well paying jobs in London: educational, cultural, social. To me it is starkly clear that it is not possible for many disenfranchised people to access these opportunities, which is why I felt you were being somewhat disingenuous. The existence of 'Blackburn wage' roles implies there are enough people desperate for a subsistence that they will take positions that don't pay enough to live well, which they wouldn't if there were a surplus of better options available.
Regardless of systemic racism, there is no doubt there is huge inequality and injustice here. Immigrants are sold a lie and then when they get here they realise this place does not hold the opportunities they were sold. We don’t have to tell them there’s systemic racism, they are witnessing the injustice and inequality for themselves.
Sold a lie? People who it's confirmed can't even speak English after God knows how many years have somehow managed to live in one of the most high cost cities on earth despite not being able to positively contribute in any way, and then in return their children have tried to kill people for fun.
Statistically they are almost certainly living in social housing and likely have never worked. They have won life's lottery - one that millions every year now flood over our borders to enjoy at the expense of the rapidly disappearing net positive tax contributers. You're certainly correct about there being "injustice" involved in all this.
How many languages are you fluent in Simon? Did you have to learn a new one to get employment here? Did you leave a country a much lower quality of life to improve your prospects? Or, were you lucky enough to be born in one of the richest countries on the planet and taught the lingua franca of business and wealth from birth?
Nearly half of adults with low English proficiency were born in or have been resident in the UK for over ten years. Why do you think you think this is?
I’ll tell you why: The demand for English lessons is being met with anti-immigrant rhetoric and therefore declining funding. There were 151,000 adult ESOL learners in England in 2022/23. This means that only 4 per cent of all adults in the UK who speak English as a second language are accessing ESOL classes.
Thanks for backing up my point - we can't possibly even begin to try to integrate these people so why are they here? To be fair most do not need to learn English as they live in growing parallel ethnic enclaves where English is irrelevant, and besides - the state always provides.
Way to ignore the majority of my comment. They are here because they provide low-wage labour, skilled labour or are fleeing persecution. And we are exploiting the first two without providing the means to integrate them. Where are these enclaves? Do you even live in London?
Growing up in a Glasgow chinese takeaway, our chairs had to be nailed to the floor. The previous ones all broke in a brawl one night soon after we started the business. Sectarian sides and football were the trigger of this fight. I remember the wooden chairs
While I agree that many who come to the UK have unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve, I know that others don't have the luxury of time to decide to come here. It's better than being tortured or killed. As the child of an immigrant I am also conscious that a large proportion who come to the UK want to make their money and go back home. Quite a few do that but it gets complicated for the ones who like it more than they thought they would and put down roots without meaning to. They can sometimes convey the belief, when they go back for holidays, that it is easier to do well in the UK than it really is, and they are believed by others who discover the reality and behave the same way.
Time to start charging parents with the offence of shit parenting in cases where they have completely abdicated all responsibility for their feral children.
How many of us, whatever our age and however well we've done in life, have moments when we wish we'd known then what we know now? The good thing, in this case, is that at least one young person has realised this very early on but has done so at the expense of the safety, peace of mind and financial cost of those around him. Some will wonder, what has happened to change the stereotype of the serious, hardworking immigrant with high expectations of their children (scary dad = doctor, accountant, lawyer, pharmacist), something I was conscious of growing up in London in the 70s and 80s. I realise now that this was only true in part, that there were so many working so hard that they were not always there to oversee their children's upbringing. I gave evidence in a case where a boy was in court for a stabbing, whose parents, both lawyers from different immigrant backgrounds, were familiar to the police officers dealing with the case through their own work. Their home is worth close to £1m. I was told recently by someone very successful that his parents had noted, on arrival in the UK, the wayward behaviour of a cousin's children, whose parents both worked all hours. Based on that they decided that mum would stay at home and be there when they got home from school rather than benefiting from two incomes. I imagine other factors have led to this being the right choice, location, positive peer groups, the timing of opportunities. Most parents, if they are reasonable people, hope for the best for their families, and do what they can to ensure it. It would be naive to deny that some immigrant communities bring their problems with them. I had a discussion with a Polish social worker about street drinking and observed that children were sometimes sent out to keep an eye on dad or bring him home. The problem (and blessing) is that not all of them have a child to do that for them. They did it for dad and expected it to be done for them. I was told by a woman who had worked with young arrivals from Somalia that we expect children, who have grown up seeing local issues settled with spears, sticks and guns, to become 21st century Londoners overnight and do things our way. Their way is probably best where they came from. The thing is, on good days these are all really nice, hardworking people, stumbling through modern parenting just like the average Londoner, but with massive baggage. Add in radicalisation (see Alan Malcher's book "Narratives: Pathways to Domestic Radicalisation and Martyrdom: International Terrorism"), influencers and bling. I believe I am fortunate to have read Jerry White's "London in the 20th Century" as I have a better understanding of the impact of migration on London, including criminal activity, as well as an insight into children's lives. Our beat copper was a favourite of my Portuguese mother. who had grown up around less kind police officers under Salazar. When he retired he gave me the metal rose off the top of his helmet.
Under-investment everywhere for years and years. From prevention to the court system. I don't think this article is solely casting as a problem of the court system. But it is right that it is no longer set up for this stupidity.
It's an interesting article in light of the Alan Milburn's report that is about to come out.
It strikes me the delays in the case may have actually been a good thing here? The stress of it hanging over his shoulder must have helped him allegedly turn his life around, more than a quick slap on the wrist would have.
Very curious as to what the community offer was when redeveloping the area. Where did those social vaule funds go? I know that V&A East and other institutions have a remit to cater to young people in the area however they are not really third spaces that they would be attracted to. It was interesting how unreflective the boy was and how these young people have no awareness of the consequences of their actions.
When I was 12, growing up in London, I engaged in some reckless and potentially lethal vandalism. The worst was arguably throwing stones at trains passing our playground, trying to break their windows. The train drivers were so concerned they asked the police to come to our school to address the assembly, and impress upon us the possible consequences.
I think there is a long history of older kids and teenagers doing stupid and reckless things. But in those days (1980s) only a handful of us knew about it, and any competitive or performative aspect was merely addressed to those present, and not a potential audience of millions
A quote attributed to Churchill, but for which no evidence exists, but does sound like him is: "The biggest argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter." Meaning politicians wrestle with serious complicated issues for which there are no simple solutions. Iwright, below, seems to be suggesting that the stupidity of these teenagers behaviour has something to do with their immigrant background which betrays his utter ignorance of the effects of austerity on adolescents and any sense of history. In Peaky Blinders: The Real Story, by Carl Chinn,there are detailed accounts of the gangs that plagued Birmingham from the 1870's to the Edwardian era using contemporary newspaper accounts and crime statistics. These gangs were brutally rough, and some were professional gangsters, but most were largely young men, in regular work, who had nothing to do in their spare time and nowhere to go. There were no parks or recreation grounds so they used to congregate on waste grounds for gambling games like pitch and toss, and in pubs. These gangs started to subside when a couple of church leaders started boxing clubs, then football teams, and finally the advent of cinema all had a massive impact on delinquency.
Research by the YMCA and Unison indicates that more than 760 publicly run youth centres shut their doors between 2010 and 2020. By 2023, that number had grown, with up to 1,200 publicly run centres shuttered across England and Wales. Over 4,500 youth work jobs have been lost since 2010. London lost approximately 30% of its youth clubs between 2010 and 2019, with closures contributing to an increase in youth offending. In England spending on youth services has been cut by 73% since 2010.
I'm not religious, in fact militantly atheistic, but the old proverb: "The Devil makes work for idle hands" could not be more apt in relation to adolescents today. In place of face to face congregation their lives are dominated by screens in their pockets and their communication is often mainly through their screens. This gives them simultaneously a detached and warped view of society. Witness the endless guffawing emanating from phones as teens watch endless, mindless, 'pranks' & 'challenges'. Then see their envy as they look at how many 'views' these morons have racked up, along with the attendant income. The reaction of some is going to be: "I want some of that." They don't even understand that these people they are watching are slick 'meedjah" professionals with proper 'crews' editors, etc, who are not only constantly online but are minutely planning everything they do.
It is a miracle nobody was seriously injured at Westfield and it appears that both miscreants are not hardened yobs but mindless idiots who now understand how stupid they have been. Whatever their crime it is not their fault that our criminal justice system has ground to a halt. For example, take the translation problems. Perhaps Londoncentric would like to revisit the 'privatisation' of translation services, to "save money", natch, which has been yet another horrendous failure which has enriched a small handful of people at public expense. Still, much easier to vent against a couple of stupid teenagers than and express racist stupidity than look at anything as dumb as facts. What I find genuinely astonishing is not how many crimes are committed by adolescents but how few.
I would hate being a teenager today, there are fewer prospects of employment that is not tantamount to slave labour; there are very few apprenticeships; further and higher education colleges have been starved of funding compared to universities, yet deal with more students and offer far more employment ready courses; there is nowhere to go for teens to socialise any more outside school; e.g. disco's (naff language these days) don't appear to exist; sports grounds have disappeared; ditto swimming pools; even playgrounds in parks. Most playgrounds in parks now are built for infants, there are no swings, roundabouts, slides, for 11-14 year old kids. Obviously children of 14 are way more sophisticated than I was in 1969, but the pleasure of swinging as high as you can go, or jumping on a rope swing over a stream was immense. Or take rowing boats, thousands of parks used to have lakes you could row on. In Dartmouth Park in West Bromwich we had a boating lake and used to collect empty coke bottles to get the 3d deposit and once we had 2s6d we could hire a boat for an hour. Where can you do that now? Dartmouth Park long ago lost its boating lake and the park became a haven for junkies.
My local park, Watling, in Burnt Oak, is a haven for drug dealers and junkies in the evenings. Even in the day drug dealers who should be in school ride around on bikes, faceless in balaclavas and hoodies, handing over 'packages'. Sometimes they disappear for a couple of days but soon return. They are criminals. But WHY? They are not breaking society, society is breaking them.
I find your reporting normally to be pretty balanced - but there are a number of slants in this report that are actually quite jarring. Given the current zeitgeist - mentioning translators was a dog whistle for racism (as now evidenced by the comments). And the continuing demonisation of both teenagers and by extension here social media (which I always find a bit rich, given substack really is just a gentrified version of the same - dog whistles galore just to get traction and likes, and yes) - which leads to the inevitable - it's all the fault of the parents.
So it is and so it ever has been that we blame all the ills of society on those out of control and unruly young and their reckless irresponsible parents - whilst the real villains of underfunding, lack of opportunity and a world in which they feel no agency or sense of a future spiral on regardless. They are victims of choices made by adults who were supposed to make the world better for them - and that's the fault of soceity - not the individual parent (or teen)
Maybe, as well as running journalism focused on this 'epidemic' of bad behaviour - you could also spend some time looking at how the same social media channels have been used by teenagers to spread social change. The free school meal movement was started/gained traction in response to teenagers posting about how awful the food they were being offered was, the UK student climate network coordinated the youth strikes/marches hat contributed to government declaring a climate emergency. Or the huge amounts of destigmitisation of mental health that is lead (and spread) by today's teenagers.
God almighty. Comes to sthg when going for a mooch around the shops could actually get you killed bc of inane actions by bored kids. These kids need healthy distractions from social media too
Listening to this from a Geography teaching perspective in the UK and the points about the dicotomy of wealth in Stratford is poignant and shows the legacy of gentrification on younger generations. But this also raises questions about the effeciacy and justice systems and the influence of multiculturalism albeit it's targeted on the perceived gain from successful media. I will be thinking about how to use this in teaching most certainly.
The person who threw the chair said "it's not that deep, it did not hit no-one".
By what mechanism did these people end up in the country, out of interest? Why haven't his parents learned how to speak English yet so we not only have to pay for the court case but their translator? How is this cast as a problem of our court system that it isn't set up for this stupidity?
There are so many problems in this country that weren't an issue until 5 minutes ago and then everyone is shocked when we aren't set up for them. Cut back on trading standards officers? Well didn't need them because there wasn't rampant money laundering. No real punishment of fly tipping? Well it's only now I can guarantee every walk I go on i'll see a mattress or computer chair randomly thrown on the pavement.
10 likes on this racist nonsense.
We’ve always had money laundering and the need for trading standards btw. Taxi firms, strip clubs, pubs, tanning salons. The nature of the businesses have changed but it’s always been there. They weren’t cut back on because they weren’t needed, it was due to austerity (and in any case they aren’t the main body who investigate money laundering)
There’s always been fly tipping too. Be serious
You'll have to explain to me how what I wrote is racist.
The rest of what you wrote: are you saying none of these problems aren't massively worse now? Unserious. You know, you can use the eyes in your head.
Because you are doing the far right thing of “it was the land of milk and honey and nothing bad ever happened until these people turned up”
Austerity has caused the issues. Services have been slashed.
Cash based money laundering is much less than it has been historically btw due to the declining amount of cash in the economy btw. It’s not high street money laundering that accounts for the majority of cases.
I don't think it was the land of milk and honey. Please stop interpolating and read what I wrote.
I said we have problems that we are not set up for because the problems have arisen recently. I am not saying the category of thing would otherwise have zero prevalence. I said 'cut back on trading standards officer' so I was aware they already existed. I said 'no real punishment of fly tipping' not that there was no fly tipping before.
The ruling assumptions and set up are broadly that we are a high trust, low crime society, and these assumptions are now wrong.
These are not new problems!
Trading standards history is because of people cutting flour and milk with all kinds of nasty stuff over 100 years ago. (Weights and Measures as it was then). The driver was capitalism.
Fly tipping penalties have been repeatedly increased (I’d say that landlords and trades are responsible for a large amount of it too).
Nothing has been set up based on us being a “high trust society”
Also austerity has led to ESOL classes being cut
The size of the problem is new. Or are my eyes deceiving me, and there was always towns in Wales with a dozen barber shops?
Austerity was a catalyst to making the cuts, but the decisions on what to cut were based on what would be expected to cause the fewest issues. This was based on an anticipation of people's behavior that was wrong.
Same with our welfare systems, which expect some level of honesty, but are now being gamed at much higher levels.
Was recently in an airport. Implausible number of flower lanyards around. Again, a system based on trust which has hit reality.
You’re the problem. Head in the sand. Poor parenting - could be indigenous but in this case migrants. Parents can’t speak English and don’t know where their kids are if how they behave. Kids are low intelligence with not enough guidance or control from them. Should know right from wrong, should know how to behave in their spare time. It isn’t rocket science and has nothing to do with austerity, gentrification, income or English culture.
The level of cope here is ridiculous. 'Kids have always been reckless and sought social approval'. And yet we have a person here who is basically incapable of reasoning about counterfactuals.
Never saw a child from Crouch End e.g. fire fireworks at people, but apparently it's just kids.
Walking home from school in Crouch End in the early 70s was a tad fraught. Bangers were still sold to
kids. 'Fun times'.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1974/nov/04/fireworks
🤡
Again, a story of failed parenting - if not outright neglect - and the public bearing the cost 🤦🏻♂️
But also a story of the state failing young people. It shouldn’t be getting to this stage
My kid won’t be chucking chairs over the rail at Westfield and that’s nothing to do with the state.
When I was a teacher if I had a pound for every parent that said "my kid would never..." before I showed that the video evidence of their kid doing exactly that I could buy dinner for two in a Michelin starred restaurant.
Look, most people manage to be good parents - it’s not complex. It denies people agency and means they can’t be held responsible if we simply say that being a good parent isn’t something we should expect of people. There is no inconsistency with saying we don’t also want to fund X, Y and Z.
I didn’t say it, I said it isn’t a natural thing. It’s learnt. Role modelled, taught. It’s not innate. 1/5 of all children have experienced severe maltreatment so the number experiencing some level of abuse will be much higher. And good parenting is about far more than not being abusive anyway.
And the kids who are failed by their parents? Do we just condemn them forever?
No, not at all - we need to get these kids properly integrated, but if there was better parenting in the first place, the state wouldn’t have to step in. I’m tired of my taxes going to pick up after other people’s neglect and incompetence, but that’s not the same as saying money shouldn’t be spent
It’s part of why we pay tax. The closure of surestart centres hasn’t helped either. Good parenting isn’t a natural phenomenon, it’s a learnt behaviour. I’m much happier with my tax being spent on this than it going to private landlords, or to arms companies or to private equity owned social care organisations
It’s not the state’s fault these children were roaming around Westfield at 10:30pm at night.
Read what I said again. It shouldn’t be getting to this stage
The implied point is what exactly could the state be doing to stop it getting to this stage
Early intervention.
Support for children in families where they are expecting/witnessing violence.
Funding youth services and youth workers who are from local communities
I don’t believe that violence is inevitable
I'm sympathetic, but sometimes early intervention doesn't work. This maybe one example.
It IS the case that most kids don't need this level of intervention, and one reason for that is good parenting. It is also true that not speaking the language makes it harder to be a good parent.
This is not an either/or. It is not racist simply to be upset that the state is a poor second to good parents. Al that can be true whilst accepting that the state is in some areas underfunded (I say "some" because the state now raises and spend more tax that ever before, so some state spending has increased a lot).
I only mention this because your insistence that this must be some kind of state failure, as opposed to a policy or personal one, means stretching your credibility to breaking point.
I'd also point out that serious as this could have been, crime in general is very much on a downward trend. Appeals to the "good old days" are naive, as there was a lot more crime overall then.
However, no one wants to see kids chucking furniture at unsuspecting shoppers or nicking phones or carrying drugs because the local dealer knows they won't get jail time. And hand-wringing that the state is to blame isn't really helping. Especially when (sadly) a sizeable minority of the population think the main state failure here was letting people migrate to the UK in the first place.
You are assuming these things are more effective than the are in practice
If you read the story- this kid had multiple state interventions.
“Ashraf added that he’d been on repeated child protection plans, had witnessed domestic violence, and hadn’t committed any other offences. He also had “some significant learning needs”.
How were those needs met? What did the child protection plans actually mean? Also ABSOs aren’t any kind of meaningful state intervention.
Well, we don't know do we as it's not stated. Could have been really well met, could not have. The fact is, this kid was where he shouldn't have been, a place he'd actually been banned from, with an another child who was a very bad influence, at 10:30pm in the evening.
It's not the state's job to look after your kids.
How can people effectively parent when they are working all hours of the day in multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Demonising the poor is not clever, a very tired tactic.
Do you know if this is the case here? As opposed to the reported domestic violence, etc? I would suggest that it is more likely that this family are not working.
I commend the reporting but why weren’t you able to report on the trial of the boy who actually threw the chair?
And one thought on the point about exclusionary and polarising regeneration. I understand when people who have lived in an area for a long time, who may have multi-generational ties there, feel a sense of injustice when they’re priced out of the area they grew up, but clearly this boy in question is the child of migrants (given the need for a translator at court). His parents may be upstanding and contributing members of their local communities, but I think both parents of second-generation immigrants and the government itself need to do a better job of explaining that the UK is not a horrendous country full of injustice. No, it isn’t perfect, and there are still many problems, but people come here for a reason because, comparatively, it’s a welcoming, generous and largely fair country. We need to instil that in children from a young age - and not just in the children of migrants, because the more we tell them the country is a systemically racist or corrupt place, the less reason they’ll have to not throw chairs down several flights of a shopping mall. I appreciate this is an over-simplification of a very complex issue, but I think it’s relevant.
Rant over.
These people live 20 minutes from two of the largest job markets in the country but only command Blackburn wages. This is treated as exogenous rather than endogenous.
You literally have people travelling in from Essex and Hertfordshire to do jobs they could easily do. You don't need to regenerate an area to learn a trade. The courses are free.
It seems like your argument boils down to 'immigrants are lazy', so why use so many words to say it if that's what you want to suggest?
Yes!!! Thank you Capitolhmr. You nailed it.
I am pointing out that there is actually a vast amount of opportunity close by. If you want to draw from that 'immigrants are lazy', that's up to you, but it isn't implied by what I am saying.
Why not engage on the substance, in any case?
Ok. I disagree with you that there is a vast amount of opportunity - there are huge barriers to entry to well paying jobs in London: educational, cultural, social. To me it is starkly clear that it is not possible for many disenfranchised people to access these opportunities, which is why I felt you were being somewhat disingenuous. The existence of 'Blackburn wage' roles implies there are enough people desperate for a subsistence that they will take positions that don't pay enough to live well, which they wouldn't if there were a surplus of better options available.
The majority of the jobs provided by Westfield itself will be low paid and low hours btw
Well it's lucky then that Stratford is a major transport hub with links all over London and without
Regardless of systemic racism, there is no doubt there is huge inequality and injustice here. Immigrants are sold a lie and then when they get here they realise this place does not hold the opportunities they were sold. We don’t have to tell them there’s systemic racism, they are witnessing the injustice and inequality for themselves.
Sold a lie? People who it's confirmed can't even speak English after God knows how many years have somehow managed to live in one of the most high cost cities on earth despite not being able to positively contribute in any way, and then in return their children have tried to kill people for fun.
Statistically they are almost certainly living in social housing and likely have never worked. They have won life's lottery - one that millions every year now flood over our borders to enjoy at the expense of the rapidly disappearing net positive tax contributers. You're certainly correct about there being "injustice" involved in all this.
How many languages are you fluent in Simon? Did you have to learn a new one to get employment here? Did you leave a country a much lower quality of life to improve your prospects? Or, were you lucky enough to be born in one of the richest countries on the planet and taught the lingua franca of business and wealth from birth?
Nearly half of adults with low English proficiency were born in or have been resident in the UK for over ten years. Why do you think you think this is?
I’ll tell you why: The demand for English lessons is being met with anti-immigrant rhetoric and therefore declining funding. There were 151,000 adult ESOL learners in England in 2022/23. This means that only 4 per cent of all adults in the UK who speak English as a second language are accessing ESOL classes.
Thanks for backing up my point - we can't possibly even begin to try to integrate these people so why are they here? To be fair most do not need to learn English as they live in growing parallel ethnic enclaves where English is irrelevant, and besides - the state always provides.
Way to ignore the majority of my comment. They are here because they provide low-wage labour, skilled labour or are fleeing persecution. And we are exploiting the first two without providing the means to integrate them. Where are these enclaves? Do you even live in London?
Growing up in a Glasgow chinese takeaway, our chairs had to be nailed to the floor. The previous ones all broke in a brawl one night soon after we started the business. Sectarian sides and football were the trigger of this fight. I remember the wooden chairs
While I agree that many who come to the UK have unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve, I know that others don't have the luxury of time to decide to come here. It's better than being tortured or killed. As the child of an immigrant I am also conscious that a large proportion who come to the UK want to make their money and go back home. Quite a few do that but it gets complicated for the ones who like it more than they thought they would and put down roots without meaning to. They can sometimes convey the belief, when they go back for holidays, that it is easier to do well in the UK than it really is, and they are believed by others who discover the reality and behave the same way.
Ugh! Has Substack turned into Twitter already. Some of these comments are so redundant.
Time to start charging parents with the offence of shit parenting in cases where they have completely abdicated all responsibility for their feral children.
How many of us, whatever our age and however well we've done in life, have moments when we wish we'd known then what we know now? The good thing, in this case, is that at least one young person has realised this very early on but has done so at the expense of the safety, peace of mind and financial cost of those around him. Some will wonder, what has happened to change the stereotype of the serious, hardworking immigrant with high expectations of their children (scary dad = doctor, accountant, lawyer, pharmacist), something I was conscious of growing up in London in the 70s and 80s. I realise now that this was only true in part, that there were so many working so hard that they were not always there to oversee their children's upbringing. I gave evidence in a case where a boy was in court for a stabbing, whose parents, both lawyers from different immigrant backgrounds, were familiar to the police officers dealing with the case through their own work. Their home is worth close to £1m. I was told recently by someone very successful that his parents had noted, on arrival in the UK, the wayward behaviour of a cousin's children, whose parents both worked all hours. Based on that they decided that mum would stay at home and be there when they got home from school rather than benefiting from two incomes. I imagine other factors have led to this being the right choice, location, positive peer groups, the timing of opportunities. Most parents, if they are reasonable people, hope for the best for their families, and do what they can to ensure it. It would be naive to deny that some immigrant communities bring their problems with them. I had a discussion with a Polish social worker about street drinking and observed that children were sometimes sent out to keep an eye on dad or bring him home. The problem (and blessing) is that not all of them have a child to do that for them. They did it for dad and expected it to be done for them. I was told by a woman who had worked with young arrivals from Somalia that we expect children, who have grown up seeing local issues settled with spears, sticks and guns, to become 21st century Londoners overnight and do things our way. Their way is probably best where they came from. The thing is, on good days these are all really nice, hardworking people, stumbling through modern parenting just like the average Londoner, but with massive baggage. Add in radicalisation (see Alan Malcher's book "Narratives: Pathways to Domestic Radicalisation and Martyrdom: International Terrorism"), influencers and bling. I believe I am fortunate to have read Jerry White's "London in the 20th Century" as I have a better understanding of the impact of migration on London, including criminal activity, as well as an insight into children's lives. Our beat copper was a favourite of my Portuguese mother. who had grown up around less kind police officers under Salazar. When he retired he gave me the metal rose off the top of his helmet.
Under-investment everywhere for years and years. From prevention to the court system. I don't think this article is solely casting as a problem of the court system. But it is right that it is no longer set up for this stupidity.
It's an interesting article in light of the Alan Milburn's report that is about to come out.
Surely it's the fault of Bath and Body Works.
It strikes me the delays in the case may have actually been a good thing here? The stress of it hanging over his shoulder must have helped him allegedly turn his life around, more than a quick slap on the wrist would have.
I think the evidence shows that very fast punishment is better. This is one reason anti-Semitism cases are being expedited
Very curious as to what the community offer was when redeveloping the area. Where did those social vaule funds go? I know that V&A East and other institutions have a remit to cater to young people in the area however they are not really third spaces that they would be attracted to. It was interesting how unreflective the boy was and how these young people have no awareness of the consequences of their actions.
When I was 12, growing up in London, I engaged in some reckless and potentially lethal vandalism. The worst was arguably throwing stones at trains passing our playground, trying to break their windows. The train drivers were so concerned they asked the police to come to our school to address the assembly, and impress upon us the possible consequences.
I think there is a long history of older kids and teenagers doing stupid and reckless things. But in those days (1980s) only a handful of us knew about it, and any competitive or performative aspect was merely addressed to those present, and not a potential audience of millions
A quote attributed to Churchill, but for which no evidence exists, but does sound like him is: "The biggest argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter." Meaning politicians wrestle with serious complicated issues for which there are no simple solutions. Iwright, below, seems to be suggesting that the stupidity of these teenagers behaviour has something to do with their immigrant background which betrays his utter ignorance of the effects of austerity on adolescents and any sense of history. In Peaky Blinders: The Real Story, by Carl Chinn,there are detailed accounts of the gangs that plagued Birmingham from the 1870's to the Edwardian era using contemporary newspaper accounts and crime statistics. These gangs were brutally rough, and some were professional gangsters, but most were largely young men, in regular work, who had nothing to do in their spare time and nowhere to go. There were no parks or recreation grounds so they used to congregate on waste grounds for gambling games like pitch and toss, and in pubs. These gangs started to subside when a couple of church leaders started boxing clubs, then football teams, and finally the advent of cinema all had a massive impact on delinquency.
Research by the YMCA and Unison indicates that more than 760 publicly run youth centres shut their doors between 2010 and 2020. By 2023, that number had grown, with up to 1,200 publicly run centres shuttered across England and Wales. Over 4,500 youth work jobs have been lost since 2010. London lost approximately 30% of its youth clubs between 2010 and 2019, with closures contributing to an increase in youth offending. In England spending on youth services has been cut by 73% since 2010.
I'm not religious, in fact militantly atheistic, but the old proverb: "The Devil makes work for idle hands" could not be more apt in relation to adolescents today. In place of face to face congregation their lives are dominated by screens in their pockets and their communication is often mainly through their screens. This gives them simultaneously a detached and warped view of society. Witness the endless guffawing emanating from phones as teens watch endless, mindless, 'pranks' & 'challenges'. Then see their envy as they look at how many 'views' these morons have racked up, along with the attendant income. The reaction of some is going to be: "I want some of that." They don't even understand that these people they are watching are slick 'meedjah" professionals with proper 'crews' editors, etc, who are not only constantly online but are minutely planning everything they do.
It is a miracle nobody was seriously injured at Westfield and it appears that both miscreants are not hardened yobs but mindless idiots who now understand how stupid they have been. Whatever their crime it is not their fault that our criminal justice system has ground to a halt. For example, take the translation problems. Perhaps Londoncentric would like to revisit the 'privatisation' of translation services, to "save money", natch, which has been yet another horrendous failure which has enriched a small handful of people at public expense. Still, much easier to vent against a couple of stupid teenagers than and express racist stupidity than look at anything as dumb as facts. What I find genuinely astonishing is not how many crimes are committed by adolescents but how few.
I would hate being a teenager today, there are fewer prospects of employment that is not tantamount to slave labour; there are very few apprenticeships; further and higher education colleges have been starved of funding compared to universities, yet deal with more students and offer far more employment ready courses; there is nowhere to go for teens to socialise any more outside school; e.g. disco's (naff language these days) don't appear to exist; sports grounds have disappeared; ditto swimming pools; even playgrounds in parks. Most playgrounds in parks now are built for infants, there are no swings, roundabouts, slides, for 11-14 year old kids. Obviously children of 14 are way more sophisticated than I was in 1969, but the pleasure of swinging as high as you can go, or jumping on a rope swing over a stream was immense. Or take rowing boats, thousands of parks used to have lakes you could row on. In Dartmouth Park in West Bromwich we had a boating lake and used to collect empty coke bottles to get the 3d deposit and once we had 2s6d we could hire a boat for an hour. Where can you do that now? Dartmouth Park long ago lost its boating lake and the park became a haven for junkies.
My local park, Watling, in Burnt Oak, is a haven for drug dealers and junkies in the evenings. Even in the day drug dealers who should be in school ride around on bikes, faceless in balaclavas and hoodies, handing over 'packages'. Sometimes they disappear for a couple of days but soon return. They are criminals. But WHY? They are not breaking society, society is breaking them.
I find your reporting normally to be pretty balanced - but there are a number of slants in this report that are actually quite jarring. Given the current zeitgeist - mentioning translators was a dog whistle for racism (as now evidenced by the comments). And the continuing demonisation of both teenagers and by extension here social media (which I always find a bit rich, given substack really is just a gentrified version of the same - dog whistles galore just to get traction and likes, and yes) - which leads to the inevitable - it's all the fault of the parents.
So it is and so it ever has been that we blame all the ills of society on those out of control and unruly young and their reckless irresponsible parents - whilst the real villains of underfunding, lack of opportunity and a world in which they feel no agency or sense of a future spiral on regardless. They are victims of choices made by adults who were supposed to make the world better for them - and that's the fault of soceity - not the individual parent (or teen)
Maybe, as well as running journalism focused on this 'epidemic' of bad behaviour - you could also spend some time looking at how the same social media channels have been used by teenagers to spread social change. The free school meal movement was started/gained traction in response to teenagers posting about how awful the food they were being offered was, the UK student climate network coordinated the youth strikes/marches hat contributed to government declaring a climate emergency. Or the huge amounts of destigmitisation of mental health that is lead (and spread) by today's teenagers.
God almighty. Comes to sthg when going for a mooch around the shops could actually get you killed bc of inane actions by bored kids. These kids need healthy distractions from social media too
Listening to this from a Geography teaching perspective in the UK and the points about the dicotomy of wealth in Stratford is poignant and shows the legacy of gentrification on younger generations. But this also raises questions about the effeciacy and justice systems and the influence of multiculturalism albeit it's targeted on the perceived gain from successful media. I will be thinking about how to use this in teaching most certainly.
My optimistic side hopes this teenager will have learned from this idiocy, and go on to do something useful in society.