Sick Britain

[faith]

Quote by: Songbird Oh please, since when have 14 year olds play with baby dolls? Even playing with barbie dolls is uncool after about 9 or 10. No, I stick by what I first said(and what I believe others have said) Children are being forced to grow up too fast by tv, magazines, and pop culture.

i didnt say 14 year olds!! i said the first thing you would think to buy a little girl would be a doll of some sort, and why people are shocked when their daughter says she's pregnant when the first few years the most influential i think some say they spend it playing mummy and daddies..

i do agree about the influence tv,magazines ect have on children but its up to parents to show them there is more to life than what they see.

[orgaelin]

Quote by: faith in my opinion there are only 2 reasons why anyone would kill/harm a child first being mental illness which they maybe helped with but if not lock them up for the safety of other people, second plain and simple evilness which should as orgaelin said be punishable by death as they are no good nor use to anyone! amen

Faith, I so have to agree. Those are the only two possible reasons. Although one would have to ask if an evil person isn't just as insane as any other insane person. I mean, human beings are not naturally evil. Surely it is only a major physical or psychological disturbance or defect in a person that could really make them evil enough to murder a child?

Quote by: Scribbler1 It's a shame your children can't live in those days, but because they can't you are being a proper, concerned parent. There is nothing wrong with your actions.

Naturally, I agree!

There's a little more too it, though. I regularly converse with the local shopkeeper about how disgraced we are to see 3 year old kids coming into the shop with a piece of paper in their hands, listing items their parents have sent them to collect. It astounds me! I mean, we had two girls (Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman) abused and murdered not so long ago in this country... the very next day all the kids were out on the streets as though they lived in heaven and knew nothing bad would ever happen!

Happy new year btw, it just turned midnight as I was typing. Damn I have no life!!

As for the death penalty, I agree with Matt W, despite my earlier comments. It is no better for the state to murder than for anyone else. To take another person's life is simply inexcusable, no matter what the 'justification'. But I'm sure there's not a man alive who wouldn't have beaten the murderer to at least near-death if he'd caught him doing it.

The father of this girl is a good man. He's one of these guys that doesn't have a lot to say, but what he doesn't say speaks volumes. He's hurting bad. I don't know if he will find comfort in his wife's religious beliefs. She is a spiritualist, and believes she can speak with those who have passed over. I can imagine some very tense times in their household. I don't know if he is a believer or not.

His son was in the shop the yesterday. He's one of those kids that gets around, and everyone knows him and his family. He walked in and everybody started staring at him, wondering. He's 10. I asked him how he was, and he pointed to the newstand and said I'd probably seen the news. Yet he seemed happy, almost completely normal, and I couldn't help wondering if he had the vaguest comprehension of what has happened in his life. I think it's better for him that he hasn't.

OK, this is cheerful huh?! As for the dressing up and 'asking for it' idea, it's one of those things that gets thought by a lot of people but it's like a huge crime to say it.

I'll take the subject away from children, as that's a seperate issue. When it comes to women tarting themselves up, I have to say I don't understand it. I'm a guy, and I know that if I dress up and make myself as sexy as possible it's not "for myself" as women always say, it's so I can make women want me! But a woman will always swear till death that she tarts herself up to make *herself* feel good. Maybe this should be a seperate thread?! I just can't appreciate where woman are coming from on this one.

[faith]

Quote by: orgaelin I'll take the subject away from children, as that's a seperate issue. When it comes to women tarting themselves up, I have to say I don't understand it. I'm a guy, and I know that if I dress up and make myself as sexy as possible it's not "for myself" as women always say, it's so I can make women want me! But a woman will always swear till death that she tarts herself up to make *herself* feel good. Maybe this should be a seperate thread?! I just can't appreciate where woman are coming from on this one.

But what about the women who are already with the man they want. They still want to dress sexy but its not for anyother man (hopfully) it could also be that they like the style of what they are wearing and if its seems to be sexy to the opposite sex, oh well bonus lol

[Songbird]

Women don't only dress for men, but they dress for other women. Unlike men, women tend to judge each other's appearances. When a women walks into a party, she wants all the other women to remark/wonder at how drop-dead gorgeous she is, and envy her. Why do you think women are so intrested in what female celebrities wear? Women don't want to admit this, so they say they are "dressing for themselves."

[orgaelin]

Songbird is dead right!!

I have a book on the evolution of human instincts (Robert Winston) which says the very same thing - women are fiercly competetive for their chosen men! I just find it weird how in Human's it is the females that decorate themselves with bright colours, but in most other creatures it is the males.

[PatrickHenry]

Anybody hear of the Popsicle Index? http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00117.htm
Catherine Austin Fitts (one of my personal heroines)had a conversation about what constitutes a safe neighborhood:

What's the Popsicle Index? The Popsicle Index is the % of people in a community who believe that a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a Popsicle and come home alone safely. When I was a child growing up in West Philadelphia in the 1950's, the Popsicle Index was 100%. We were a modest neighborhood, even poor by some standards. But we were rich in safety. Today, after years of federal government supported drug trafficking and subsidy and loan programs, the moms in my old neighborhood probably feel the Popsicle Index is about 0%. Friends and family sometimes say to me, but the crime rate is dropping steadily. My response is that national averages have their place but they don't apply in specific cases. There are 73,000 neighborhoods in America and what counts is each one, one-by-one. Moreover, the Popsicle Index is not about statistics and it's about a lot more than crime. The Popsicle Index is about how people feel. Our feelings are real. Our feelings and our thoughts invent our world. Our feelings determine how we vote with our money in the marketplace with our purchases, bank deposits, media attention or investments or with our ballot at the polls. Crime may be down, but any mother or father knows it takes twenty years to raise a child and all it takes is one incident for a child to lose their life, their peace of mind or their soul.

[Nono]

Quote by: orgaelin As for the death penalty, I agree with Matt W, despite my earlier comments. It is no better for the state to murder than for anyone else. To take another person's life is simply inexcusable, no matter what the 'justification'. But I'm sure there's not a man alive who wouldn't have beaten the murderer to at least near-death if he'd caught him doing it.

Yes, and that's why we have public authorities who legislate and others who enforce that legislation, instead of all of us running around with clubs and settling everything through individual and mob "justice".

How many times has someone foamed at the mouth and asked me hotly how *I* would feel if someone *I* loved was murdered? The answer is that I'd feel like killing the person, that is, if I knew who he was, which we often don't, even when we think we do. Etc.
That's my point.

[Black Fox]

I'm not sure what is wrong in this country, but there seems to be a trend now where every few months there is a child abused and murdered. It seems to be happening more and more, to the point where it's almost expected, like turning on the news and knowing you're going to hear about Iraq.

Hello Orgaelin,

The thing to remember about stories of children going missing (in the UK, at least) is that they tend to be such headline grabbing stories that the actual magnitude of the problem is made to look much worse than it really is.

If I wanted to form an assessment as to how bad things were, I would look at police records nationwide. Also, I would look at historical figures over a significant period of time to see whether things had really got worse over a period of time.

I understand that as a parent, you would not want to take any chances with the safety of your children. But I do wonder when I hear of reactions similar to yours (which are quite common) whether the media is reporting these stories as responsibly as it should.

BF

[blibbka]

Quote by: jose look at the jail sentance for rape in UK compared to the sentance for murder and youll see why many rapes end in murder

What does this mean?

I don'r believe that there is more child-murder / abuse today than there was 20 years ago - I'd go along with the belief that it is reported more often to the authorities and also that it gets more media exposure.

The alternative, that people have become more likely to murder / abuse children sounds just too much like tabloid fantasy to me.

I'm basically against the death penalty. I think there are very very few cases where it can be justified, and too much potential for miscarriage of justice and reactionary stuff. I mean, that if say the death penalty had been around at the time of the Jamie Bulger case, instead of the then Home secretary Michael Howard sticking his nose into the judiciary to try and ge teh sentance pushed up to life (along with those pathetic tabloids again), he could have been calling for the death penalty. We don't need it. Most of out European neighbours manage to get by without a death penalty (and without breaking human rights) okay, why should we be any different? I don't believe the death penalty serves as a deterrent either. Again I am yet to see any facts demonstrating it's deterrent power.

[tinybear]

And there's none sicker than this: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005013091,00.html

It happened in Britain. Where else?

[blibbka]

Well, I don't think that really shows anything other than that there are some wierd people out there. I'm not aware of a spate of testical rippings taking place. But that's the kind of stuff that the Sun uses as filler.

[tinybear]

Only kidding. Of course it happens everywhere. Anyone still remember John Bobbitt?

[jose]

Buying into Sexy: The sexing up of tweens
http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/f...exy/index.html
snip
When you were nine, what did you want? A Barbie doll? A train set?

These days, young boys and girls are hungry for something else: padded bras and flirting tips, video games with bikini-clad babes and music videos that feature plenty of sexual innuendo.
It may be legal, but is it morale?