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.

Looked after children aren’t prisoners, have you been a looked after child in a group homr where you feel unsafe?

In 1982 I had a broken window in my office in a police station. Two lucky things

1. The petrol bomb teenagers had thrown through the window fizzled out and didn't do much damage.
2. They did it when I wasn't at work.

Unfortunately police bureaucracy took ages to sort out a repair and I was very cold for sometime.

Actually when I moved into this area of London the firmest upholders of good manners and civilised behaviour were the older black generation. The gentlemen all used to lift their hats to the ladies they met on the way to church, the ladies would yell at the teens for not standing up on the tube if there was an elderly person or a pregnant lady and they all used to loudly challenge anyone who was trying to jump a queue. Standards of general public behaviour really tanked post Maastricht ..........

no idea how you justify that given you presumably don’t know who the perpetrators and their parents are. This smacks more of non-parenting tbh. Hands off to the point of neglect isn’t remotely ‘gentle’. (I do rather suspect some of the parents youngsters involved in the various ecological protests might fall into your stereotype but they wouldn’t be destroying public transport).

Same in my town. SO many appalling little shitheads with no respect for anyone or anything. So many of them are insanely violent too - one kid was filmed smashing up a beach shelter a few weeks ago: grunting and snarling like an animal while he did it.

I put quite a lot of blame of chemicals and shit additives in (junk and UP) food, energy drinks, violent video games, hardcore porn, shite parenting and lack of consequences when they’re actually caught doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

Lazy parents who won’t enforce consequences are just as bad - too many parents are scared of their own kids and didn’t get a handle on their behaviour when they had a chance.

Go on... get off the fence!

If it's "eugenics" is that bad... or is it good?

Sorry? Yes, eugenics is bad. I didn't realise that needed stating?

Yes. HTH

When people are suggesting eugenics, questioning whether eugenics is bad, and questioning whether it is fascist to support eugenics....we have bigger problems than gentle parenting

It doesn't usually need stating that eugenics is bad.

How odd.

They could prove in court they'd tried.

What’s being said isn’t eugenics though

Yes, PP suggested that parents need a licence to breed. That is eugenics.

Controlling fertility for the purposes of selective breeding is eugenics.

Some people are so far gone that they don't even realise that they are fascists, it's scary

Oh no, what a shame. I'm just back from a few days in Brixham and absolutely loved it. Seemed idyllic to me, I honestly thought nothing like this went on there. Absolutely beautiful place.

We had issues with teens earlier in the year. Just messing with footballs in the road (narrow roads) and not moving for cars. Our car got egged last year. Riding up and down the main road on the wrong side on scooters/e-bikes etc in large gang, doing wheelies and the like, throwing water at passers by from a low level cafe roof. Being pains in arse in the local supermarket in big numbers. We live in a nice area with a private school nearby. These kids are local ( you see them meeting up from local streets) . They have decent bikes and designer clothes they just don’t care who sees them. They aren’t balaclava wearing and are only 13/14.

We got the police involved after they were playing the kicking the door game of knock and run. Even tho it’s low level behaviour it was really affecting the streets nearby as it was constant and we worried about the holidays it becoming worse. They did up patrols and take names etc and the local police did say they can involve parents etc as needed.

They’ve moved on for now in this area but i’ve seen them elsewhere still doing it but generally some teen behaviour is a problem. A shopping centre in a local town has banned all teens because of it.

Is it really because they’ve nothing to do? we’ve two youth centres on a reasonable distance. Kids have way more than i ever had in tech like phones/consoles/pcs, l bikes/scooters, holidays and days out, money to spend in takeaways/shops. We have loads of open spaces in the locality of away from housing estates for them to ride and mess about away from people.

How old are you?? My eldest is 18 and I took him to SureStart centres!

I started teaching in the late 90s and left a couple of years ago - I assure you that the behaviour of young people is far far worse than it ever was. The reasons are complex and multi faceted but to deny it has happened is nonsense.

Arson is literally criminal

I'm really not seeking to defend the US or their systems at all. All I'm saying is that, if serious criminals are in prison, they can't commit crime in society; and if they are let out and commit more crimes, the answer would seem to be to send them back but for far, far longer.

How is that a worse situation than letting people freely commit serious crimes (including gross neglect of their children, leading to them choosing to commit serious crimes) and just shrugging our shoulders and saying "Well, prison isn't the answer - so I guess we just leave them to it, then"?

I assume there's actual evidence that it was "children" who caused this and not older teenage or 20 something yobs? My local Facebook group blames everything on kids and then it ends up being adults. Nearly always eg using those disposable BBQs.

But you can't blame parents for everything their kids do - we all have free will and I doubt any MNer did everything their parents wanted them to! Also, when it something no longer down to the parents? 10? 20? 35? 70? That said, it all starts with things like letting kids run around cafes or not wearing headphones to watch Peppa Pig or riding those infernal scooters in supermarkets or running around with trolleys.

Has this also affected the steam railway.

I'm not sure arson is normalised teen behaviour but playing around the railways certainly is and you can guarantee far more delays and cancellations to services in the school holidays. And yes, if it's raining, it's far less likely to happen.

Riots always happen in the summer too - when have we had riots in the winter?

People of all ages lose their heads in hot weather. And a fire will take hold much faster in hot weather, too. So I don't think asking for rain is actually a bad shout!

It's a horribly destructive mindset that many of these people clearly have - and I feel so sorry for the decent people who live amongst them and can't afford to move somewhere better.

I don't think a lot of them are bright enough to realise that they're also (longer term) seriously hurting themselves, along with everybody else in the community. If businesses and amenities abandon your neighbourhood, because there are too few customers and too many thieves, it's hardly going to end up enhancing the area, is it?

I wonder how many scenarios there are up and down the country of teenagers in run-down areas causing trouble 'because there's nothing to do' - when all of the fun things to do that were there previously were determinedly driven out by them and their previous generation counterparts?

I used to work in a juvenile detention centre. I can assure you that most had parents who were anything but gentle. I’m not saying permissive parenting isn’t a broader problem, but most repeat offenders have been on the receiving end of too much physical punishment rather than too many feelings talks!