ON KNIVES AND THE GANGS

random thoughts from my journal, scribbled on the bus and in the benjo at greyfriars bus station this morning.

What does a kid with no money do in a society whose central leisure activity is shopping?

Hang around.

What is the same kid's main concern going to be in a society whose guiding principle is competition?

Status.

The gangs are capitalism in miniature.

But what the capitalists don't like is that the gangs are honest.

It's okay to push a guy to the point where he has so little hope he hangs himself. Then you can blame it on his own lack of moral fibre. "It's survival of the fittest in business, you know."

A kid who stabs another kid is no different from a boardroom exec who pushes a man to the brink of death.

But the suburban, Waitrose-shopping, perfumed, elegant frumps who support the system say that the kid with a butcher knife is an animal.

Hypocrites.