My local train station is currently burning down

There's more info here: https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/paignton-fire-what-means-gwr-11069269?

(I think it's one of those awful REACH websites with loads of cookies, sorry)

Rude

They were seen by multiple people running away from the station around 10 seconds before the smoke was visible, they were shouting to each other to run away quickly. They had also been seen earlier on in the morning, approx 2 hours before the fire was started, banging metal loudly from one end of the bus station to the other, shouting continually to each other with enthusiasm and destructive language, verbally and bodily. There is also full cctv coverage of them so it is definitely not just a rumour unfortunately. Without knowing who they are or who their parents are, it is not possible to have an informed opinion on the circumstances leading up to the incident. Any uninformed opinions stated can be based on speculation purely and take away from factual discussions that are productive and positive towards the progress of the investigation

You won't find a single research article or piece of evidence to back this up. You are talking unfounded rubbish.

Totally agree with this. ‘Gentle parents’ are often a certain type (sorry) choosing to never raise their voices at their kids or whatever and yes those kids might turn into little shits but the type of child out setting fires early morning is most likely from a completely different type of family - lazy parenting probably isn’t even the right word for that one.

Phew! I have been scrolling this thread searching for just that. We are due to travel on the steam train from Torquay to Paignton next month

I haven't said nothings changed but kids weren't all angels for any part of my life.

The failed petrol bomb wasn't part of the riots but it wasn't long after they ended and I would imagine what they'd seen might have given them ideas. Basically a mate got arrested and they didn't like it. We had a similar incident a couple of years later where we were sort of trapped in a police station (it wasn't the same one) for hours with a huge crowd outside as they wanted a prisoner released.

I left school in 1970. Nice girls grammar school. The year after I left a girl in the year below me stabbed a boy from the boys school. I can't remember figures for the twenty years I worked for the police.

More than 40 firefighters needed and four shops lost. This is just horrific. Even the combined financial cost alone must have been millions and millions.

The naughty kids in my area when I was young got their giggles from knocking on doors and running away, and that was frowned on enough as being antisocial.

It would probably work out cheaper to offer all of these problem families a lovely free house on a deserted island, so they could establish a community of like-minded people there.

I'm not talking a prison or oppressive place; we could build them somewhere really, genuinely nice and beautiful... but no doubt they would still trash it and burn it down before long, and establish their own criminal, antisocial sub-culture, as that seems to be the way they genuinely prefer to live.

I'm only half-joking - we could ALL then live in our preferred way, so everybody would presumably be happy.

1982, was that part of the riots? To explain what happened. Teenagers set a flat on fire, after attempting to set a few on fire. The police and firebrigade turned up and were attacked. They left, people are on their own when it comes to youth crime. In the 80s the police would throw them in the back of a van and do them in, which would calm some behaviour down. How many children were stabbed and shot, or shot/stabbed adults to death, during your time in the police, in just your area?
We are being gaslighted that nothing has changed.

I'm glad it's not just me 😳

It reads like someone threw a load of words up in the air.

Is it a fact? Where did you get this fact?

The children I've worked with with serious behaviour issues did not have parents who practiced gentle parenting. They had families with serious, chronic, generational social issues or trauma and / or they had significant neurodevelopmental disabilities or mental illness.

What on earth does this mean?

We've lost a small block of shops nearby - a hairdresser, a cafe/takeaway and a small convenience store. All busy shops with a good amount of customers using them. Youths set one of those huge industrial bins on fire behind the shops which spread to the main building.

Thats three local families who've lost their livelihood, the people who worked for them are out of jobs and the customers are inconvenienced as we no longer have those shops within walking distance.

They just don't get the wider impact when they think it's funny to set a bin on fire.

Children in care, parents punished.
Won't happen because Paignton isn't within twenty miles of Manchester.
South of Coventry people, get some NHS glasses and a cardigan if you want to be heard in the next fifteen years.

We had part of one of our local shopping centers burnt down by two 13 year old boys at about 4.00 am a few weeks ago
It has had to be knocked down

The difference is, even in the 90's when I was a teenager, if an adult told us to move along or quieten down - we'd listen and do it(often muttering under our breath). Nowadays teenagers just tell adults to fuck off or laugh at them and smash their windows. There really is a massive change in society and I don't know what it's going to take to change it.

I saw this just before I left for work. Traffic is already a nightmare with the building that needs to come down opposite the station. Occombe Farm had a blaze a few days ago and I've just seen that there's one at Cockington too. The latter 2 incidents (I think) are due to the dry grass and heat though.

I've seen on Facebook there's a fire at Cockington too (that is pretty close to Paignton for those who don't live locally). That one is a house fire though. Hard work for the local fire brigade.

Yes let's blame the weather. Not the feral children.

What does it matter?

Massive difference between gentle parenting and letting your children run feral.

We have dreadful problems with teenagers on our estate here in Norwich. When we moved here a decade ago, totally unaffected by any youths causing trouble.

Now they've all grown up, they hang around the local Co-op on bikes, doing wheelies in the roads, taking books from our community library and burning them in the woods and behind houses... it's endless.

One of them even accused a dad in the park of being a pa--d- after he told them off, he wasn't doing anything wrong. The police came, and he was told he could press charges but didn't.

Last weekend we had 5 police cars and a van, taking away a teenage girl who'd shoplifted from the Co-op.

They've all been doing so much awful stuff, it's making people here move away. And the estate itself is generally a good one, and I've loved being here. Not much any more 😞

The parents obviously are crap and don't care. It makes me cross.

Yes, I know what recidivism is.

Of course I would far prefer people to be helped and guided into making good and responsible decisions - but I think the state can only go so far when you get multiple generations of people who do not want to be helped. The way they want to live their lives is feral and full of hate and disdain for everybody, including themselves.

Expensive, nice community amenities are established to guide them and give them purpose, and they come along and trash them and burn them down, because they do not want nice, orderly things.

I'm not saying to throw the parents in prison and ignore them until they get out - far from it. I know very little about the US prison system - I stated my (hardly original or controversial, you would think) opinion on how to deal with this problem; and then people responded that this is something that's done in the USA (I'm guessing far from exclusively) and somehow made a reach to assume that I was saying "We need to copy the US criminal justice system"! If they do do this in US prisons, Maybe that's the reason for their high rates of recidivism?

Compulsory parenting classes, in basic concrete facilities that they cannot destroy - and then, once they have learned a better way to live in society, they get a second chance. If they fight against it and don't want that, then what alternative is there but to end up back where they can't harm others and drag down communities to their own chosen level? Forcibly take their kids and put them with adoptive parents? Even then, the damage and destructive mindset would often already be ingrained.

I'm not saying that it's an easy problem to solve; or even possible. I just believe that the needs of the decent people who do want to live in a nice society should take priority over the rights of others to do hurt, harm and kill those people. Yes, rehabilitation is essential wherever possible; but ultimately, if somebody is determined to choose this way of living, and will never change, we need to protect everybody else from them, so they can only hurt themselves.

Torquay. My parents live nearby 😲