One of the greatest challenges we have had is public attitudes to children.

This country is one of the most child unfriendly countries in the world. Just in terms of how we value children one of the most powerful examples is the Mosquito device – an ultrasonic weapon designed to stop kids gathering.

When I have been to Norway, Canada and Australia people say to me “What’s wrong with your country why do you hate children so much? You are employing an ultrasonic weapon against them. And why has your government been so spineless in not trying to stop it.

This is a very powerful symbol of what I see as a deep malaise in our society and our views towards children and especially young people. We care about kids in our own families but do we care about the kids of other people – especially those who might be disadvantaged or who might be causing trouble?

Well spotted that man, give him a prize, give him two prizes! Why do we hate other’s children but not our own though, what are the reasons for that?

The one major reason I can think of is fear.

We are afraid of being branded a paedophile if we take an interest in a child’s welfare. Not only that but we are afraid of the children themselves. What will they say? Will they hurt us? It’s not malaise that stops us caring, it’s fear.

At what point did this happen, when did we become afraid of the youth?

To answer my own question, I believe it was at the point that we started to be told that we couldn’t tell a child it was wrong. It’s all pervasive and nowhere is it stronger than in schools. The absurd lengths that teachers have to go to in order to prevent the precious cherubs from becoming unmotivated or feeling got at is astonishing!

Teachers are discouraged from marking in red for fear of upsetting the sensibilities of a twelve year old! Save their feelings from being hurt when they see a page swathed in red pen. Not that this is likely to happen of course, as teachers are also discouraged from correcting more than three or four spelling errors anyway!

This is counter productive surely? What possible good can it do a child to imagine it is performing better than it actually is? If this were to be the case in professions where would we be?

If a trainee doctor were to be told he was doing a Great Job!™ regardless of the errors he’d made in prescriptions to patients?

If a train driver who’d passed three red signals only had one pointed out to him and be told hey Great Job!™ but let’s watch those signals!

Where would we be?

If a teacher is threatened by a child, hit by a child, spat at by a child or even raped by a child, what could they have done to stop it before it happened? Nothing. If they did do anything, if they acted before any of those things actually happened they’d be running the risk of a prison sentence and a life on a register.

Given that they are so protected and that all they seem to ever get is praise it’s little wonder children grow up feeling that they are invulnerable. As I was told recently by a child on a bus.

Fuck you, you can’t tell me what to do.

How right he was, I couldn’t. Even as he sat there with sexually explicit rap pumping out of his phone’s speakers, at full volume, there was nothing I could do. I’d asked him to turn it down but his response was right on the money.

He could of course tell me what to do; I had to listen to his music. That was his right! Naturally I pointed this out to him, hoping to appeal to his sense of balance. His response?

Fuck you, you can’t tell me what to do.

Followed with.

If you don’t like it move somewhere else.

I’m not quite certain where I was supposed to move to – we were after all on a bus – but his point was clear; I’m playing this music and there’s not a single thing you can do about it.

What was more interesting than this youth’s lack of any social grace though, was the reaction of all the other passengers on the bus, of which there were quite a few. They all stood up, started walking towards the youth and one after an other they berated him for his rudeness towards me.

They all took it in turns to harangue him for his dress sense (ill fitting sweatpants and a grey hoodie), his disgusting choice in music (sweary, misogynistic rap) and his morbid obesity (he was a chunky young fellow).

After this he turned off his phone, apologised to me and then sat quietly – thoroughly humiliated – for the remainder of the journey. Amazing isn’t it?

Well, it would have been, had it actually happened.

Naturally nothing like that happened. Instead the entire bus full of people all stopped talking and sat in silence, no one looking at anyone else, no one even turning around to see what was going on at the back of the bus.

The lesson that young man took away from our conversation was that he could do what he liked, when he liked. How depressing.

The worship that has put children on such a pedestal as to be untouchable, has lead us to the a nation of indolent, insolent and aggressive youths that that young man exemplifies.

The root of all this is unclear but I suspect it has something to do with the notion that became popular a few decades ago, that children must be free to express themselves. We are told this still and yes, it’s all very well but we too must be free to express ourselves with them.

Children may be born perfect but without careful steering they become imperfect and the longer they are without direction the further they veer off course. Parenting – in certain circles – has become the art of reproduction. To some, the very thought that they should be responsible for their own children is astonishing. That’s not my job, it’s the school’s surely?

Even given the state of our youth and the decline in behaviour across the nation, there still exists reluctance to tell children that they are doing wrong. There is nothing damaging in telling a child they are doing something wrong.

That’s what education is. If you’ve done something that isn’t correct, you work on it together to get it right. You are educated.

Which brings me around to another disappearing form of education; smacking.

Smacking is not abuse. There is a vast, vast difference between a parent who puts cigarettes out on a child’s arms and a parent that smacks a child on the back of the legs for running away. These are not the two ends of the same spectrum as some would have you believe.

The parent that abuses a child does so in order to try – however misguidedly – to regain control of their lives. Control that was undoubtedly stripped from them when they themselves were a child.

The parent that slaps the back of a child’s legs for running away is doing it because they love their child. One day their child could run away into traffic.

Some of you will disagree with that statement, so I’ll clarify for the hard of understanding.

Smacking should not be a punishment – if a child accidentally knocks over a glass of orange juice smacking them is a disproportionate response and utterly wrong – it is a way of demonstrating cause and effect and should be used to steer a child.

Imagine you’re at a friend’s house with your two year old child; your friends have a coal fire. You don’t have a coal fire, your child’s never seen one before, they’re curious, so they stretch out their hand towards it. What do you do? As I see it you have two options, stop them or let them carry on.

If you let them carry on they will burn their hand. This will no doubt be painful and would most likely discourage that child from putting their hand in a fire again. I’m not particularly for that though, it would be immensely painful and could permanently damage my child’s hand. I don’t want my children getting hurt.

The alternative is to smack their wrists sharply and firmly. Enough to shock them but not damage them. Thereby demonstrating cause and effect, if you put your hands out towards a fire it hurts and mummy and daddy won’t be happy with you.

Of course there is – as my liberal friends will, I’m sure point out – a third way. Reason with the child, explain the danger of fires and point out that they’d had a lucky escape. That, of course, is bollocks. You cannot reason with a two year old. You have no common point of experience! How can they assess what you’re telling them? Do they even care?

What’s worse – and I’ve seen this a number of times – is that in the process of reasoning with the child, they’re getting attention. This is almost positive reinforcement. Put your hand in the fire and mummy and daddy will pay you lots of attention and talk to you.

However much people might think they can, you cannot remove every danger – or everything that is perceived as being a danger – from the path of a child. At some point they’ll be flying solo and you’re not going to be there to protect them.

No, the job of a parent isn’t just to protect your child – although naturally, that is important – it’s to equip them with the tools to be able to assess situations and judge for themselves the risks.

So in conclusion, what are we left with?

A nation of children who have been raised never knowing right from wrong, never being exposed to the consequences of their actions and who have only every been praised. This to me does not sound like a recipe for a decent society.

To me it would seem to be a recipe for disaster and would generate a society where badly behaved children would appear so intimidating to adults as not to be challenged, regardless of how badly behaved they were.

A society where educational standards have declined to such a point that major employers have had to pick up the slack.

This isn’t what I want. What about you?

There will be no swearing for the entire 28 days. No fuck, no piss, no shit, not even a bollocks. Nada.

For four weeks I will be clean, what’s more I’m going to go cold turkey. On Sunday the 31st of January I will have a good old swear – stopping of course at midnight – then when I wake on the Monday morning that’ll be it, no naughty words.

Of course I’m going to find this insanely difficult, I’ve kind of built up a trusted vocabulary of swear words and quite honestly they work really well for me. I don’t know what I’m going to replace them with but I’m ready to find out.

Fuck yeah!

My excitement at being invited to a party lead to my hasty – and in hindsight, rash – offer to wear a kilt.

Now, I love my kilts and I’ll wear them at the drop of a hat, everyone knows this. However women – for some crazy unknown reason – go a bit funny when they see a man in a kilt. I’ve experienced this before many, many times. I’ve gotten used to it.

You know the sort of thing, questions about what’s underneath it – which for the record is nothing – and such. Although I have often wondered what would happen to me if I approached a girl at a party, complimented her on her dress and then followed it up by asking if she was wearing any knickers.

I can’t imagine it would be a positive outcome.

My point is that I’ve heard every question that’s going and had much negative attention. Admittedly this is normally only limited to one rather obvious question and hey, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of negative attention. Attention’s attention right?

Given all of this though, all the years of constant sexual harassment and drunken gropes, none of it – not a bit – prepared me for the near raping that I got that night.

The young lady in question – the would be perpetrator of said sex crime – made herself known to me about a quarter of a second after I arrived. She greeted me at the door and no sooner had I plonked the booze down in the kitchen than she was offering me and the small band with me, a tour of the house.

Bear in mind this wasn’t her house, no, no, no. This didn’t stop her, she still showed us around. Bedrooms, bathrooms, bedrooms, the living room, the lounge, another bedroom, the list felt practically endless and not a little biased towards bedrooms.

Eventually we settled in what must have – at one point – been the attic. It was nice enough, a couple of sofas and soft lighting. I wasn’t alone with her. I felt safe.

It was pretty clear, pretty quickly, that she was bat shit crazy. So I hastily made my excuses and went back downstairs to socialise with the rest of the party goers.

All was, seemingly, well.

For the purposes of illustration of just how freaky the next bit is I’m going to have to call upon you to recall – if you can – the scene from Bram Stoker’s Dracula where Gary Oldman (Dracula) is chatting up Winona Ryder (Mina) on a Victorian street.

You know the bit, Dracula’s pulling all his best moves and Mina’s getting all flustered and flounces off down the street, turns the corner and bumps straight into Dracula again? Yeah? Remember that?

Well that’s what this was like. No sooner had I made it back downstairs to the kitchen and there she was, standing in front of me, ready to engage in some lightly sexualised conversation again.

Now my problem is that I’m too nice, or at least I was at this point.

I stood there pouring myself a nice big drink and chatting to her, trying to avoid the obvious innuendo that littered her dialogue. After a few minutes of this I excused myself and made a move towards the living room. I left her there chatting to some rugby playing boys.

At least I thought I had.

I don’t what had happened between my leaving the kitchen and getting to the living room but by the time I got there, she was there. Now I’m not sure whether she was teleporting or calling upon the dark arts or what but whatever it was she was doing it had gotten her drunk.

And when I say she was drunk, I mean she was battered. She was slurring and looking at me the way only horny, drunk women can. Scarily. Maybe that’s what dematerialisation/materialisation process does to you, who knows all I know is I wanted to get away.

No chance.

Out of the nowhere she then progressed onto – what must I now assume to be – stage two and asked if I’d like to go somewhere more private for some fun.

Being the gentleman I am I politely declined and tried to move the subject around to something a little less charged. Quiche for example. She wasn’t having it.

I stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by people, telling her that I wasn’t interested but still she kept on trying. She cajoled, tried to kiss me and then resorted to – what can only be described as – begging.

It was shameful.

When I sat down on the sofa, she tried to sit on my knee. If I got up to peruse the buffet, she’d follow me and try and grope my arse. She just would not fuck off. Flattering as it was, it was also very, very creepy.

In the end she only left the room after demanding to sit next to me and plonking her entire body weight onto a foam foot stool that promptly collapsed, sending her flying into the speakers in the corner of the room.

Her cries of distress being easily heard, given the lack of music her tumble had brought about, she realised everyone was watching so at this point fled the scene.

Huzzah!

She later reappeared at the door – so I am told – and attempted to beckon the back of my head with a sexy come hither finger wave. Needless to say it fell on deaf, er, ears, or eyes or whatever.

Did I mention she looked a bit like Dennis Waterman? Well, she did.

I’m sure she’s a lovely girl really.

I know she’s got issues and that she a bit too keen on the drugs but hey, she’s got a fantastic musical ability and she’s as hot as you like.

Well, she was.

Having done a quick Google search I discovered two images of Amy, a kind of before and after. It’s not pretty.

Bloody hell, what happened? Well, clearly a crazy amount of booze, jazz talc and crack happened but I mean why did it happen?

I wish I knew.

For the record though the image in the left? I would.

This is the result!

[No MP3s Through RSS!]

I quite like it, not sure about the battle axe malarkey but fuck it, it sounds good and not a little Scott Weilandy. So it’s fine by me.

Isn’t it fantastic that a small body of people can cause such a huge upset? What hope it gives us to know that a brave cadre can march victorious, safe in the knowledge that they’ve fought the good fight. That they’ve stopped the evil record industry from winning with their fakery. That they’ve really stuck it to The Man! Isn’t it great?

In a word. No.

Rage Against The Machine and Joe McElderry are both signed to Sony. Sorry to burst your bubble folks but all you’ve managed to do is give The Man a little bit more money.

So you see the whole premise is flawed. This, ahem, battle has only served to earn Sony £197,000 for doing absolutely nothing.

It’s not caused an upset! To have had it cause an upset, Sony would have had to care about Joe getting a number one in the first place and if you think for one minute that anyone within the recording industry actually gives a shit about Joe then you’re deluded.

All of this nonsense was only ever going to work in the recording industry’s favour, they don’t give two shits about Joe or his number two hit.

Right now he’s a money machine, they’ll wring him for every penny for his alloted year of fame, then they’ll bin him. If he doesn’t make them enough money quickly enough then they’ll bin him early. Only if he’s very successful will they keep him and let him make any real money.

Sorry Joe but you’re salaried son and when the day comes that your popularity wanes – May 2010 is my guess by the way – they’ll make you redundant. Not even Cheryl Cole and her northern solidarity shtick will be able to save you then.

Back to the good fight though.

I’ve heard it said that it doesn’t matter that Sony have made loads of money off all this silliness because Rage Against The Machine have donated all their proceeds to Shelter.

Wow! That’s got to be a good thing, right?

Not really no, it’s only their proceeds and you’re probably only talking about a few thousand pounds. It’s the label that makes the big money and I don’t think Sony will be all that keen on giving up a penny of their windfall bonus.

Besides if all these idiots were so concerned about Shelter and the homeless they shouldn’t have bought Killing In The Name in the first place, they should just have donated their 79p straight to Shelter.

Shelter would now have had £395,000 in the bank if they’d done that.

Better yet they could all just get off their fat arses and offer to help out at the nearest homeless shelter over Christmas. There are many ways to help out the homeless, sadly buying an MP3 is not at the top of that list.

At the end of it all, after the self congratulatory horse shit is over, who really cares who’s number one? Really, who? Does it make any difference in the world, no. Does it make anyone’s life better, no.

All these pompous overblown fuckwits have done is shown how monumentally stupid, self centred and pointless they are.

Well done to them all.