It was interesting listening to the sound bites surrounding this poor Garry Newlove fellow from Cheshire who was battered to death for daring to ask feral teenagers to stop wrecking a mechanical digger outside his house. The windows of his car had already been broken, and for his crime of popping out of his front door and asking them to stop, around 15 teenagers laughed and joked as they battered him to death.
Horrible, and intolerable. Yet, becoming the norm. How much punishment will those who murdered him get? A few years inside and then they can get on with their lives, no problem. Meanwhile, his family have had the rest of their lives destroyed.
But, that’s not what prompted my commentary. It was a sound bite I heard on the radio. A woman’s voice. Obviously from the same street, saying of the kids smashing car windscreens and wrecking stuff, “Yes, but they’re kids and they’re just larking about, that’s what they do”.
It’s the blind acceptance that kids will destroy property, and “that’s what they do” that is wrong, but shows us all how this activity is going unchallenged and unchecked. Lordy, we need to reclaim our streets.
England's England 