Hug a hoodie?

Dear Dave,

'Hug a hoodie' was an ill-conceived soundbite and boy, has it come back to bite you. As for the 'Big S' – less 'Big Society', more 'Big Shi2'. Your fingers are not so much on the pulse but in your ears.

An alien visiting Britain for the first time last week could be forgiven the confusion, given the bedlam that has taken place up and down the country. Yet in amongst the violence, the thuggery and the looting there was an oasis of calm that allowed a cricket match to take place in a city that had been besmirched by gangs of youths rampaging through the streets barely 24 hours before.

It reminded me of the scenes of the orchestra playing on while the Titanic was sinking.

Undoubtedly the aliens have as much understanding of the rules of cricket as anyone has as to why carnage should suddenly erupt on the streets.

It is gratifying to see the way in which some of the communities have responded, pulling together to clear up the wreckage and protect their community, but this in itself opens up another series of questions - how far does it go before it descends into vigilanteeism? So far no government has properly addressed the extent to which an individual can protect their own property. Equally, the police whose job it is to protect the public are increasingly being placed in positions where they are reluctant to carry out their duties for fear of prosecution for their own actions.

I would like to think that the majority of people living in this country are honest and law-abiding, if that is not the case then we may as well all pop off and join the aliens. Within any community there will always be a minority of individuals who are hell bent on mindless thuggery for any reason.

There have been as many reasons given for the disturbances as there have been solutions put forward. A lot of attention has been focused on the young, who make up the larger part of those who have been arrested for the various offences.

Undoubtedly there are issues that need to be addressed, and quickly, but this has nothing to do with protest and youth culture. I would not wish to be a teenager these days, with high youth unemployment, a high cost of living, intolerable peer pressure and poor prospects of getting onto the housing ladder. It is very difficult to accept having so many doors shut in your face at a time when most youngsters are trying to work out in their heads just what type of person they are or would like to be. It doesn't help when you see fat-cat bankers being rewarded for screwing up the economy and politicians fiddling their expenses.

Some of the excuses given by numerous perpetrators have been as disgusting as their actions. “We showed the rich and the police that we could do what we like;” “People should show us more respect”. When someone travels from Winchester to Manchester to go on a looting spree it doesn't sound like a cry for help from someone stuck in the poverty trap. So many excuses given to try and justify the mayhem; what I found particularly frustrating was that none of the interviewers ever asked any of the perpetrators how they would have felt if they had been the one who had been beaten up or had their property stolen.

One particularly smug looter claimed that they were not making a stand against society because 'they were only attacking the rich shops, they left the butchers and the grocers alone because they were needed by the people' – Sorry, they were pillaging PC World, Phones4U, JB Sports, Debenhams, the jewellers and the chemists because these places had high worth goods that were more desirable and easier to sell. If the market for fondant fancies was as large as it is for hookey Rolex then perhaps the bakers would have been ransacked.

It is not just the young who feel aggrieved, there are millions of people of all ages who are struggling to make ends meet. They too feel frustrated, they too have been promised things in life that have not materialised. Theft, vandalism, the wanton destruction of property or giving someone a beating solves nothing.

This is not a class struggle because there is no such thing. There will always be those 'who have' and those 'who have not'. In an utopian society everyone would be equal, though there would always be those who are more equal than others.

People talk about gang crime and gang culture – my dad was in a gang in his late teens. No one wanted to be in the gang and everyone tried to get out of it. He spent his formative years cooped up in a filthy room with a group of lads with no money, little food and very little to do. His incarceration was at the behest of Adolf Hitler and you could say he was slightly more than frustrated by his position.

Similarly, my grandfather never mentioned his youth, he did have a few books about the Great War, though they seldom came out and he never discussed any of his teenage years with anyone. Stories he recounted to me seemed to stop at around the age of 12 and pick up again when he was in his mid-20s.

Fortunately my own youth was not beset by global conflict, there were jobs but you always had to start at the bottom and it could take years to work your way up. By the time you reached your 20s you realised that the opportunities of advancement were largely reliant on someone leaving, retiring or dropping dead. It still wasn't easy to find your place in society, I guess we all strived to advance our position in life but we were not under the pressure that is ever present these days. The mantra of the day, if there was one, was 'if you worked hard, things would get better, eventually'. Nowadays from an early age kids are force-fed this ideal of 'get a degree and a £40K+ job is your for the taking'. Everything is geared towards instant gratification, immediate results, immediate reward – I want it, I need it, I must have it – NOW.

Perhaps the fact that there were no credit cards when I was growing up meant that there was less pressure on individuals. If you needed something you saved for it, bought it cash and savoured the experience. Today it is too easy to make impulse purchases, slap it on a credit card and grow bored with your purchase within days.

I struggle to comprehend how rioters/looters can claim that they acted the way they did out of boredom. I never had a computer, an ipod, a playstation, fancy clothes or my own TV when I was growing up. My first car was nearly 20 years old and I had to pay for my own driving lessons. What little money I could set aside was spent doing up the car. I never felt any compulsion to steal, to set fire to or destroy anything, nor beat some innocent bystander to a pulp for the hell of it. I was not bored, there was always something I could do – sport, read, listen to the radio or talk with friends.

Was I any different from anyone else of my age – I don't think so. We all have childhood dreams, I still do, but I recognise them as what they are – dreams. Dreams as large as our imaginations could take us. We all start out with dreams, in my case it was motor bikes and fast cars. My bedroom was bedecked with posters of massive amounts of chrome and metal yet I have never ventured beyond the realm of a sensible family car, and probably never will do. As I grew older so the realisation of my dreams drifted from aspirational towards achievable. No one starts out in life with posters of a rusting Ford Fiesta or The Red Lion Sunday League 4^th XI plastered on their wall.

Today the margins of reality and the virtual world seem all too often blurred. In my virtual world I was a sporting god, my Norton superbike drew admiring glances in the street and gorgeous women were constantly beating a path to my door, but there the fantasies ended. I was never destined for greatness in any category, though I still can dream of winning the Ashes with the last ball of the game turning at right-angles to remove a batsman's middle stump.

Sadly, using one's imagination has long since been dropped from the curriculum, we have computers to do that for us these days. If we were to harbour any grandiose ideas of becoming a professional sportsman / musician / investment banker or whatever others are obliged to accept this ideal without question, irrespective of the individual's aptitude or ability. I would not be so churlish as to knock a person for having a dream but there is a lot of effort that goes into every achievement before they reach the top; it seems to me that in this instant, consumer-driven, throw-away society that we live in there is an expectation that people can make the transition from novice to top of the tree without breaking stride. It seems to me that nowadays there are too many knockers, not enough people offering encouragement and fewer people prepared to put in the hard work necessary to achieve their goals.

When people are spoon-fed the belief that this is 'Easy Street' from an early age it is understandable that disillusionment and resentment will occur as reality kicks in and the realisation dawns that life is never that simple.

I would like to believe that all people are intrinsically good spirited; no one is born bad, though sometimes circumstances mean that individuals will stray. Most people go about their lives in a quiet and unassuming way. They will work hard and pursue their dreams, often subconsciously, in an orderly way. The human spirit is capable of great things, we all achieve some of our goals but few achieve all of their goals. The important thing is to recognise and celebrate our achievements no matter how small. If you set yourself a massive target then it may appear to be unachievable but if you then break that target into a series of stages then the task becomes a lot less daunting.

As far as I can make out man has remained pretty much the same since creation. The primary needs of food, sleep, somewhere to live, heat, love, communication and appreciation have not changed throughout history. That being the case then it must be something else that has changed which has fuelled the disrest that has led to this breakdown of law and order.

Growing up, food formed a high percentage of a family's expenditure, unemployment was low, housing affordable and transport relatively cheap. Only about 10% of school leavers went on to university and it was not that difficult for schoolleavers to find work. The country still had a manufacturing base and a vibrant engineering sector. There were apprenticeships and jobs in banking and the public sector were considered to be jobs for life. Vocational jobs in teaching, nursing and the police were highly respected and saught after. Today you would think twice before opting to enter any of these professions. Long hours, poor morale, lack of respect and unfathomable bureaucracy have seen a steady exodus of long serving staff frustrated at no longer being able to carry out the core work that first attracted them to the job.

The corporate view has changed dramatically over the years, privatisations have changed the perception of the way we do business. It used to be acceptable for companies to take 'the long view', not any more. You can't 'build' a business any more, everything is geared towards instant results. Shareholders expect to see healthy returns year on year – How can this be sustainable in an climate where there are finite resources and so many intangibles? Life is all about investing for the future, as individuals we do this by gaining an education, planning our lives and saving for the future. The rush to produce growth has seen not only employers but the country as a whole stop their investment in the future and we are now seeing the reaction to this shortsightedness. It is not by chance that fuel prices and transport costs have rocketed over the past few years, it is because the companies have failed to invest in maintaining the infrastructure that supports the network.The lack of investment in affordable housing has meant that property prices are now beyond the reach of so many.

What opportunities do schoolleavers have these days? Not a lot. The engineering and manufacturing skills base has gone, the public sector faces a massive reduction in staff in an effort to reduce costs, employers are no longer prepared to pay for training and the school system is not producing students with the qualifications needed by employers. Jobs have been moved overseas in an effort to reduce costs and some sectors have been decimated by foreign competition.

It is understandable that so many schoolleavers now want to go on to university because there is precious little else for them to do. To what extent tuition fees will reduce this number only time will tell. Even low skilled work is difficult to find since many employers now choose to employ part-time staff simply because the employee does not then have the same protection afforded to full-time employees. It is not unusual for someone to have 3 or 4 part-time jobs these days, but this is no way to build a career.

The country cannot afford to have 1 million+ unemployed people between the ages of 16 and 24, especially when we have an aging population and there will be an expectation of experienced people to replace these staff as and when they retire.

I can only speak for the short period time that I have inhabited this planet. Maybe my views have become jaded with age, maybe my expectations too have risen, though I concede that there have been many changes during my lifetime, some for the good, some for the bad. Perhaps this is the time for society to take stock of the situation and decide what type of society we want to be in the future.