My local train station is currently burning down

[thehardestpartis]

Reportedly due to children being on the station at 5:45 this morning and setting fire to an equipment cabinet.

AIBU to ask where the hell are the parents?! This will cause chaos in the town, reduce holiday maker visits and just generally worsen an already run down town.

The parents should be punished for arson with intent to endanger life, as should the children.

Phones have a lot to answer for IMO.

People would rather be scrolling on their phones than doing anything with their kids.

I saw a dad in costa coffee the other week. Had his 2 year old in a pushchair. He put some crisps in front the kid and spent the next 45 minutes on his phone completely ignoring him.

Phones also are a huge problem for the kids too of course.

Permissive parenting is to blame. Gentle parenting is completely different, and is also known as authoritative parenting. It just means you don't parent by using fear or violence.

Permissive parenting means you don't give consequences for anything.

Doesn’t the 12 bus go to brixham?

pretty sure it's more likely to be absent/indifferent/lazy parenting than engaged parents practicing gentle parenting.

and schools are so hamstrung by what they can do to punish bad behaviour (often because of parental complaints), consequences in or out of the home are minimal.

10+ years of austerity, and bad parents being glued to phones/social media are much more to blame than active (if misguided) parental techniques.

It's not that simple. I lived in Devon for a few years. D&C police are horrendously under staffed in "off season" as it is. And they don't get any extra officers or funding during tourist season despite getting hundreds of thousands of tourists every summer.

It's not just the police actually. It's all services. There's not enough to go around during emergencies in winter. Let alone just standing around waiting for youths in summer.

We need to start requiring a licence to breed, and thorough testing and assessment before a licence is issued. So many people have children but have no interest or aptitude in actually being parents.

So then the comparison to 40/50/60 years ago is irrelevant

I don't think 11-15 year olds are all that likely to be problem people bussed in from Birmingham. More likely bored local kids. I live not far from Paignton and I could suggest lots of more constructive things for them to do, but I suspect some parents just don't think of encouraging them towards constructive activities.

As if the local buses weren't messed up enough already with the unsafe building...

That's eugenics

Back then single parenthood and multiple fathers was pretty rare and parents were actually allowed to discipline their children. Also if your parents got wind that you had misbehaved at school, a thick ear would waiting for you.
The threat of the birch and Borstal probably helped a few youths to stay on the straight and narrow
I'll get my coat😉

Stops gangs of youths taking over it and causing trouble, and leaves it free for people who actually want to play basketball, presumably. The last thing anyone wants are areas for squads of ill-behaved youths to congregate.

@moonshinepoursthroughmywindow

I don't think 11-15 year olds are all that likely to be problem people bussed in from Birmingham.

They'll be the kids of the dregs bussed in from the cities. It's nothing new. Morecambe for example started doing it back in the 80s and 90s, so there'll be another generation or two of kids from "problem" people, who'll likely turn out to be problem people themselves due to poor parentage.

kids at 5:45 in the morning! Sounds unlikely. I expect blaming on yobs is the rumour mill in overdrive.

I was of the generation who had all of their services cut. Surestart etc were gone by the time I was a child. If I had set fire to a train station there wouldn’t be much of me left for the police to deal with!

Yup, our council built a skate board park for the local kids but it was just a magnet for anti social behaviour so they fenced it off. It was next to the town's small bus station which they burned down in several arson attacks! The last thing we need is the dross being grouped together as the bigger the group, the more trouble they cause.

People upthread have mentioned youth clubs etc. Our village church hall used to have a youth club, with table tennis tables and other activities such as a weekly "junior disco". It just caused youths to congregate and cause trouble - lots of them weren't remotely interested in the activities, they just wanted to smoke and drink. Eventually the church closed it down as it was sucking troublesome teens into the village from other areas.

Ah OK - I had the impression most, if not all, of the bussed-in people were single, homeless, maybe druggies. Not families. Maybe if there are families they're less visible because they're not actually sleeping on the streets. You do hear a lot of West Midlands accents down here but that's mostly older people on coach trips. There is, or used to be, a stereotype that the roughest people in the area were from Liverpool.

Parents can still discipline, just not a thick ear, ha!

But yes, parents would have standards to which they expected their children to adhere to, being good at school was one of those things. I don't think being a single parent is a reason to bring up feral children. Friend from my years at university had a couple of toddlers via 2 dads (who had no imput at all) and they've grown up to be amazing adults. She is really invested as a parent and guided them well throughout their lives.

My dad and a couple of friends set fire to a train station about 60 years ago, he claims they were messing about and the fire got out of hand. He was taken home by a policeman, his policeman dad was not very happy about it. He grew up into a well adjusted law-abiding adult. Kids have been idiots forever.

It’s heavily disrupted by the closure for the building that needs to come down!

Well yeah, maybe they are single when they first move, but as the years pass, they pair up, have children, etc. Like I say, it started in Morecambe in the 80s and 90s. At the start, mostly young and single, but they don't stay single forever! It's not like they're going to live a live of celibacy especially when popping out a sprog is the gateway to bigger home, better benefits, etc.

I’m confused- have you never heard of children committing arson before?

as I said above, when I was a child local kids burnt down a Tesco. In Cambridge

A club in our town had to close as it was running under 18’s events that were attracting the neighbouring dross too. Two stabbings later it lost its licence.

Groups of youths are never to be encouraged, the nice ones aren’t allowed to roam the streets, it’s only ever the disruptive ones with the parents who don’t care.

Yes but if the town centre is cut off then the 12 won't be going through there.

We had a few weeks of ne’er-do-well teens causing bother. Mainly damaging cars, breaking windows, breaking in.

Unfortunately for them and very fortunately for us, they chose to do it to the big boy ne’er-do-wells.

It stopped very quickly.

I am not sure why you are being so sharp with me.

I literally said I have never seen or experienced this kind of behaviour.

Hence asking more questions.