WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS A LINK TO VIDEO FOOTAGE SHOWING CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR AND YOUNG CHILDREN JUMPING AROUND, AND SHIT.
Al-Beeb reports that Children in a Nottinghamshite town will be fined £100 for playing football on the street. Watch the video on the article, we're talking kids here, not gangs of hairy arsed teenagers.
LOOK! Look at those girls, they're playing with a skipping rope! In the street! I bet the residents of the street (and I'm assuming that the majority of these kids are also residents, I doubt they get bussed in) are quaking in their boots, they could be terrorists or anything.
According to the reporter, some residents feel threatened by kids playing on the street.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Do these same people hide under the table during thunderstorms and call the police if they're watching TV and a scary bit comes on? What we have here is one miserable bastard who can't stand people being young and doing what kids do best and so he's complained. The council will of course act and infer that this detestable old cock-knocker represents the majority view.
What a crock of shit.
The usual platitudes are wheeled out by the council, they are not killjoys apparently, £100 fines would only be levied if children were playing 'inappropriately'. Now who decides what is appropriate? How the hell do you judge that? Fear not, there'll be some grey little arsehole, or even better, a committee, who will draw up a sliding scale of play related high-jinks and they'll send their inspector around to watch these kids playing. Behaviour that would get you or me arrested.
How do you fine a child £100 anyhow? Take it out of his pocket money for the next 10 years? I can confidently predict the course of this story; a nine year old girl will be arrested for criminal damage after chalking a hopscotch grid on the pavement, and all the games will be stopped because they aren't wearing hi-viz jackets, safety goggles and hardhats.
This flies right in the face of government policy about getting kids out to play. But of course that flies in the face of government policy of selling off playing fields and open public spaces at every available opportunity. Yes they want kids to go out and play, but they want it to be done in a structured fashion.
Welcome to 21st Century Britain, a country where the government even want to control what, and how, your children play.
1 comment:
It is an interesting topic. Being somewhat older I tended to get out and about a lot as a child. We would walk all over the "sceptered Isle of Thanet". Nowadays paranoia about kiddy fiddlers seems to keep children penned into a 50yd radius. Yet government reassurance that crime is down does nothing to alleviate the fears of parents.
I am of two minds on this. We used to kick a football about in the street on a council estate when we were kids. I'm sure it irritated the people who's cars were parked in the street. Now I am an adult I am the one being irritated by kids kicking footballs in the street. What goes around comes around I suppose! Fortunately I now live in an apartment and such activity is not allowed. You get what you pay for perhaps? Where I do have an issue is with the socialist creed of putting welfare claimants, or deadbeats as I call them in properties where the neighbours have had to purchase their property. The idle and feckless should be herded together in my world.
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