It has been shown in the past that if classical music is played at loud volume, the unruly youth disperse as it offends their hip-hop inflected ears. Pump out some Beethoven or Vivaldi (those in police helicopters could do Wagner) and watch the rioters flee. No doubt some lawyer will argue that increasing their cultural horizons is a breach of their human rights but that would get laughed out of court. Mind you, not all of the looters and rioters were NEET nitwits – of those arrested, included were a soldier who was soon to go off to Afghanistan, two policemen and many college students.
While people focus on ‘feral’ young people, it is all of a piece with the sense of entitlement that far too many of the population feel as this society becomes increasingly individualised. Look at the other end of the scale. Rapacious bankers, MPs who looted the expenses system, journalists who plumb ever deeper wells of depravity and footballers who pout and scream when they don’t get 90 minutes on the pitch or at least £90,000 a week. These are the people we are to look up to?
On Radio 4’s The World Tonight yesterday (which I listened to while missing Michael Gove’s and Harriet Harman’s bust-up on Newsnight) with Robin Lustig, Bonnie Greer came dangerously close to endorsing two parent families, before rowing back to align herself more with her liberal friends. Mr Lustig tried to introduce some balance, mentioning absence of responsible male role models or fathers but his other studio guest was even more of a bleeding heart liberal, a drama therapist no less, who insisted on the “empowerment of the individual” a minute or two after her and Greer had trashed the entitlement culture as thoroughly as some looters had electronics stores. It seems whatever evidence is provided, atomisation of society is progress.