Easton on Teenagers

Or rather, Easton on all those awful people who don't like teenagers hanging around telling people to fuck off and shouting with barely repressed rage:

Perhaps the Home Office might like to do a youth survey asking how worried people are about the anti-social problem of adults treating teenagers like vermin.


That's the best he can do - no analysis, no evidence, no attempt to empathise with people, no criticism of youth at all - just a sneer at the adults.

Modern liberal insouciance, with no attempt at impartiality at all - what we expect from the publicly funded broadcaster, of course.

But the problem is this. The behaviour he does not even address is not recorded in crime figures. It doesn't get written down. It just gets listened to and put up with every day of the year by thousands of people. It has happened to me, out here in the bloody back of beyond, several times recently: teenagers who refuse to move, who barge you, who shout at you, swear at you, jump into you - they just don't care and you don't really dare respond.

Behaviour that Easton and his tired, clapped out, in denial ideology just will never recognise. It's a rigorous appeal to the ethics of victimhood against the assumed foamings of middle England (or whatever the "bourgeoisie" are labelled from Islington these days). It's based on the two key words of "perception" and "prejudice" (which are essentials of Easton's argument, in meaning if not actually mentioned).

Key NuLab buzzwords both, applied to the streets, to prevent an immature subset of society recognising the rights of everyone else to live in peace. More than that - worshipping the immaturity and elevating it above the real struggles of life that the swearing and aggression is directed against.