The organiser of the ‘Last round on the underground!’ protest apparently regrets launching the Facebook based campaign due to his reputation being tarnished by a few drunken louts that ruined the peaceful ‘protest’. Well lets be honest, it wasn’t really organised to protest Boris J’s sincere, yet naïve and far from encompassing, efforts to curb alcohol fueled hooliganism on the underground, rather, it was an opportunistic attempt to get with ladies or lads (whatever way he is inclined) and have a good night out.
A clearer indication of the campaigns intention was in the style of the protest – getting drunk! So let me get this right, you want to protest against the alcohol ban on the tube- as a measure to combat vandalism and violence on the underground fuelled by alcohol, by getting pissed! which evidently ended up in more vandalism and more violence!?
Put it this way I can see why he fears for his reputation at work. That would be an automatic dismissal if he was in my team, first, for failure of seeing the link between his task objective and his implementation plan, secondly, for organising it on the Circle Line which is not showing any strategic thinking whatsoever. The district line is in dire need of revamp, you could have given the TFL a reason to clear up the vandalism and consider some refurbishment!
Stepping away from the light humour, there has been something playing on mind after I read a side report in connection with the above. I have been debating the role of collective social responsibility when it comes to social discrepancies that one cant generally avoid living in this society. In the middle of all that delinquency was a story that many may you may have overlooked, in fact probably written off, but symbolised a deep and engrained attitude that is slowly decaying the moral foundations of this society. What was this story I hear you ask? This story was of a woman who saw her frozen dinner shopping go to waste as she traveled the underground to get home that May 31st night to feed the family. What an anticlimax I here you say. Far from it is what I say!
And your reaction may probably be symptomatic of this deep and engrained attitude that I speak of. As the woman tried to pass through the drunken circus with a bag full of shopping, dropping it, being trod on and so on and so forth, none of the ‘protesters’ or even bystanders even stopped to think about protecting the honour of this woman. No one even considered the perspective of putting their own mother in her shoes which would undoubtedly have spurred a less passive response!
This example is a testament to the degree of social decay that has tarnished this nation. Cast your mind back to the time in history when the woman was honoured and common decency was a social requirement rather than a novelty and then you begin to understand my concern. A woman couldn’t pass anywhere without the man doffing his hat, an elder would not enter a room without people standing to attention and at least lowering their tone of speech out of respect.
Now let me give this discussion a context that is close to the nations heart. Knife crime among the youth has spiraled exponentially these past years with measures upon measures, investments upon investments being thrown at this problem to show some form of diligence. We’ve had proposals to introduce metal detectors on the underground, random bag searches at schools, lowering the age where a youth can be prosecuted from 18-16. Even a £15m advertising campaign showing the horrors of stab wounds and other graphic images to act as a shock tactic!
With the recent news of the 28th youth to be stabbed to death in the city this year, let alone the day to day stabbings that luckily don’t result in fatalities, the nation is in a fix as to how to deter our kids falling into not just delinquency but this rampant knife culture.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that social delinquency is nurtured through its environment. Signs of delinquency starts in the private sphere and then moves out to the public sphere which inevitably leads to crime. This is reflected in the Governments demand for parents to shape up or face being prosecuted for directly or indirectly allowing their kids to commit such crimes. So much so for the private sphere, but what of the public sphere? Enter the debate of collective social responsibility.
Collective social responsibility entails the responsibility of the society to unite on the thresholds of social perceptions of vice and then collectively acting against any delinquency that passes this threshold. This social responsibility once existed in this nation where a child would be verbally reprimanded in public if displaying even a degree of what is defined as delinquency in today’s society. You hear it all the time from senior citizens who have seen social attitudes and behaviours change before their very eyes.
Only and until this nation starts acting responsibly collectively and the government instils an attitude of individual accountability will we then start rooting out these social discrepancies. Only and until this nation rids itself of the ugly behaviour of individualism that a united front will arise and combat social decay in the vain of the greater good for all including the next generation. Only and until we stand up for the poor woman who saw herself humiliated as she tried to make a simple journey to the shops and back that this social degradation will soon overcome us and a fatal knife attack will be seen as something of the past, something overlooked, something written off.
So, to the organiser of the ‘Last round on the underground’ campaign- Yes, you should worry about your reputation but not more so at the workplace, but your socially responsible reputation that left a woman- no, a mother, a sister or a daughter- humiliated as she watched her frozen dinner waste away as you protested in the name of protecting civil liberty! I can smell irony here somewhere…
June 6th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Wow… So Gordon Brown has asked parents to tell their kids not to use violent weapons to solve their problems. Surely, even if just for a minute, he had to realise the hypocrisy in that statement when contrasted with his invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan?
This story reflects two ideas that are central to British culture: (1) that we cannot trust the government, leaving kids to conclude that they must resort to using weapons to resolve an argument over a packet of crisps, and (2) that people are willing to say one thing and do another.
Indeed you do find elders - including Muslim parents - who claim that it was “different in their day”, and that they don’t know where this cancer comes from. Surely a moments contemplation on their own example would suffice as explanation.
For years their children have been witnessing that their parents are willing to decide for themselves what is good and bad.
Isn’t Britain famed for football hooligans and drunken yobs on a Friday night and slutty trips to Ibiza and Prague? If this is the example we set for our kids, what else would we expect…
June 6th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Two reports i want to post as a comment:
Report 1: ‘Hit-run victim left in street’ London Lite 06/06/08.
A pensioner was mowed down by a hit an run and left lying on the groun with nobody around to help him. CCTV footage was caught of the 78 year old walking across the road and a car slamming into lifting the pensioner up in the air, flipping over to land on the curb.The car drove off leaving the man for dead. Also caught on CCTV was a man walking pass taking a photo of the critically injured body untill some time later a member of the public calls the ambulance.
It is important to add that this report was on page 14 of the paper ( Big Brother had front page spread)
Report 2: ‘Only 10 London MPs out of 74 at knife debate’ London Lite 06/06/08. The title is self explanatory
Fancy a serving of social decay, anyone?
June 8th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
“for organising it on the Circle Line which is not showing any strategic thinking whatsoever”… LOL!!