After Hearing About The Latest Kid Being Killed On Our Streets

I was listening to an "expert" on the radio this morning, and mulling over Tory leader David Cameron's claim yesterday that the streets of Britain had been lost to lawlessness and youth violence, and in a blue fit, drinking strong black coffee, I wrote this in my journal. Thought I'd share.

*"Facilities" & "things to do" wd. stop kids from stabbing & shooting each other on the streets? BULLSHIT! Stop taking all the classical spiritual-philosophical-existential elements out of education & replacing them w/ vocational courses. The man is MORE than what he does or will do for a living. Wd. you drive a car over the river before you'd built the bridge? The anti-intellectual attitude of mainstream adult society, from government down, is causing kids to hate everything in them that is vulnerable & tender & compassionate & imaginative & creative. It allows them nothing except the aspiration to be bigger & better than their contemporaries--because competition & elevating yr. ego while doing down yr. neighbour is all capitalism really has to offer. (Which is why it is so unsatisfying to people of intelligence.) & if the kids don't have any prospect of elevating their egos w/ money, they'll do it w/ violence because violence is the reductio ad absurdum of competition*

I had to take a piss break at that point, so I couldn't continue. But I'd like to add, a few hours later, that this paranoia about the younger generation and the level of violence in the streets is probably bullshit anyway. I know a lot of younger people and they actually see things with greater clarity than most of us crusty old folk. They watch what people of my age are doing and wonder how on earth we could get so lost, so cynical, so compromised.

At the bus stop the other night with kids swarming everywhere, shouting, swearing, laughing at passers-by I suddenly heard this beautiful music coming from somewhere. Lazy rhythmic strings in the darkness. I peered around to see where it was coming from and there's a long-haired kid sitting on a fence a few feet away playing a fucking dobro while another kid recounts an ecstatic experience at a concert a few nights before. While a scarlet-faced old man looks on with his face contorted by violent disapproval.

Nothing is the way it seems, ever. But if Tory politicians and the newspapers are telling you Britain is on a fast road to Hell it almost HAS to be a lie.