'Super nannies' for ASBO kids?

Let's not forget that there is a real problem with criminality and so-called "anti-social behaviour" that's a real blight on people's lives.

My own parents were driven to the verge of a nervous breakdown back in the 80s by a "problem family" that lived next door. Relief finally came when one of our beloved neigbours friends turned against them and burned their house down, almost taking ours with it.

Another relative also just moved because the housing association estate she was living on has begun to collapse. Her neighbours were more and more retreating into a continual orgy of alcohol and drugs, encouraging the children to join in (we're talking about kids the age of 10 being encouraged by adults to drink until they throw up and use drugs of every description). She's had her own issues but this was too much even for her.

There's no doubt that the bourgeoisie is using this general social breakdown to manipulate us into turning to the state for protection. Nor is there any doubt that much of the "problem behaviour" is the product of the naked horror of dying capitalism: whole communities without jobs, living in grinding poverty, with absolutely no hope for a better future. There's surely a connection between the facts that Britain works the longest hours in Europe, spends the least time with its children, has the greatest fear of intervening to prevent crime, and has the worst behaved children.

The solution, of course, isn't "super nannies" although its true the breakdown of social networks, the transformation of the elderly into "unpeople" has made the transmission of basic life skills such as the ability to raise children more and more problematic. The only real way to resolve these issues is for the working class to begin to move on a massive scale and rebuild the social ties of basic human solidarity that capitalism is corroding.

This, of course, is what the bourgeoisie fears above all things. That's why it does everything it can to reinforce the idea that the working class is nothing but a collection of "chavs" that only care about sex, football, drinking and fighting on a Saturday night. Even when the working class begins to assert itself as a class, the bourgeoisie focusses attention on the most negative aspects as it did in the recent struggles in France: senseless riots, vandalism, car burning, etc.

Hmmm.... I would tend to see it as the death of "the political" rather than of politics -- something summed up for me by one of Nu Labour's first acts in government: giving the Bank of England free reign to set interest rates.

This raises a very interesting (well, to me anyway ) about what politics actually is. Maybe things are so fucked at the moment, that what we need to be struggling for is for politics itself -- i.e. the crazy notion that actually things needn't be the way they are.

if only they knew it....

touch wood!

*Cough*

...oh shit

back to the original point, i think this is part of a general clamp down on misdirected disobedience in general. For a while weve had threats of eviction for council tenants whose kids vandalise CCTV cameras, weve had the proposal that child care staff root out kids with poor attention spans and disobedient attitudes, weve had every kid who gets bored being given a years supply of ritalin, this just seems to be the latest in a long line of measures that will have little or no affect in combatting anti-social behaviour, either in the governments sense of kids, well, being kids or on the more damaging level of whole families purposefully disrupting other peoples lives in their communities.

twice the length of the centre to the end.

there are more tactful ways of discussing your tapeworms.

Firstly, I'm a "he"!

Secondly, many scientists are being far more apocalyptic than I am:

In what sense do you think we're not in crisis? Ecologically? Economically? Generally?

Joseph, I haven't attempted yet to prove any assertion, I'm asking John. specifically what he meant by his comment that we're "not in crisis" i.e. what part of my post he disagreed with. If he means ecologically, then he's just plain wrong as my link showed.

I can obviously launch into a whole exposition about the general disintegration of social bonds, the escalating spiral of wars in Africa especially East Africa, the tidal wave of drug abuse affecting every layer of society, the underlying economic crisis, the war in Iraq which will continue for at least another generation and threatens to drag in the whole of the Middle East, the similar situation now developing in Afghanistan which is increasingly pulling in Pakistan, India and China (all nuclear powers), but rather than firing shots in the dark I thought I'd just ask him.

If you want me to quote Revelation 6, I can, but there's nothing supernatural about the problem. It's human action that's causing the problem and human action that will solve it.

It's also a "bourgeois academic norm" to respond to proofs (however inadequate you think they are) that you have requested rather than just saying you don't want to play anymore

More seriously, you raised the point about nihilism. Unless we are to think ideas simply drift out of the ether and lodge in our minds ala Terry Pratchett, they must have an origin in the social reality of humanity.

Why was bourgeois ideology in the 19th century a generally outward looking force, with faith in human rationality and agency, a confidence that they were civilising the world in Africa and all those great "meta-narratives" that are now treated with such disdain. There was an explosion in science and a desire to understand the world - and a belief that it was understandable. Religion increasingly retreated in the face of rationalism.

Today the opposite is the case. Science is increasingly taking a back seat and when it is refered to its either to mock its confusion or to deify it without understanding what it is. Outside the hard sciences, post-modernism and related ideologies dominate thought: there is no social reality, just different points of view with no objective means to measure their validity. Occultism, astrology, religious fundamentalism etc. now dominates our society to the point that whole governments rely on it to manage aspects of their activity (e.g. Reagan always used to release bad news on a "void moon" because astrologically this meant people would quickly forget it). Hilary Clinton, a future presidential candidate spends half her time in the 90s talking to dead people but not Jesus because this would be "too personal". Not to mention the Blair's obsession with Christianity, aura cleansing and crystals...

Doesn't this change demand some kind of explanation?

The second BBC article about the Q camp was very interesting indeed, there are some good ideas despite the liberal-hippyish stuff. Much better ideas in this than that authoritarian boot camp (Bad lads army) crap. As for the super nannies, i do not see this as any solution, i don't trust the state so i will not trust its nannies, or any nanny for that matter. It is very easy for the media to direct us towards the state or to authority for some solution which i do not believe it can solve. A solution to this is quite hard for me to think of, i have some vague ideas, not enough to write down though. But what i know is that it does not lie in authority. And lastly, the world in a crisis? Perhaps the enviroment i would agree on, as for the social and political situations, i am leaning towards that way when i see the situations of afghanistan, somalia, iraq, it is a crisis, i do not know if i would go as far as apocalyptic.

Firstly, I propose an admin split to the Thought section ... tentative title Nihilism and Class Struggle?

Joseph, it's not simply the presence of religion its the quality of it. There's a vast difference between the rise of Protestantism with its critique of corruption in the Catholic Church, its work ethic which had obvious implications for capitalism, etc. and the Christian Fundamentalism began to appear in the late 19th Century (around the time of the first Great Depression incidentally) and that first came into its own in the 1920s.

In the 80s, it first began to appear as a force in politics as Reagan mobilised conservative Christians behind his reform agenda. Today it's an immense political force, dominating American politics - Bush's administration has a number of people who genuinely believe that Armageddon is approaching and are wanting to use American foreign policy to bring about the conditions supposedly necessary to bring about the Second Coming!

This kind of apocalyptic millenarianism was completely marginal in the 19th century. Today it practically mainstream and is the only form of Christianity in the West that is showing real growth. Nearly all debates in the protestant churches are orientated around its increasing spread, either in support or in reaction to it.

The last time Christianity took such openly reactionary and irrational forms was the time of the Great Witchhunts in the 15th, 16th centuries - precisely the time when decomposing feudalism was in retreat before capitalism.

Similarly, Nazism, with its profound irrationality and wet dreams about the Herrenvolk, while drawing on definite traditions of German nationalism took them to a whole new level and synthesised them with bizarre neo-pagan beliefs that were, previously, completely marginal. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has been documented elsewhere but is nonetheless situated in a general themes.

We can also point to the massive growth in openly irrational ideologies such as the New Age movement, ritual magic, witchcraft, etc. While precursors of these undoubtedly existed in the 19th century they were the preserve of a minority of bored aristocrats while today their followings are massive.

This is where the real impact must be measured. What has happened to increase religiosity in a working class for whom Marx once claimed religion was a dead issue?

I'm not convinced that this is happening. Sure there are major problems within capitalist society - but this is neither new, nor in my opinion bringing capitalism to the verge of its own collapse. In fact, it seems to me rather the opposite - that capitalism is particularly secure at the moment, in part because its ruling elite has managed so well to convince us of the breakdown of society and its own necessary role in securing us (the isolated individual) from the dangers of the hooligans and 'anti-socials' that threaten our everyday existence. I'm not sure this threat exists to such an extent, and I'm certainly not convinced that we should reproduce their own hyperbole, even if it is in the name of the furthering of the solidarity of the working class.

both - it's typical new labour, in that it's the sinister pathologisation of dissent.