Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

For those unfamiliar with the Dunblane massacre, it was a school shooting which occurred in Scotland about 13 years ago. Whereby a middle aged man entered a primary school and shot at many of the children before eventually committing suicide. The result was the banning of Handguns in the United Kingdom.

Anyway many of the survivors have recently turned 18 and as result are no longer under the protection of the law with regards to child privacy. The Sunday Express has taken the opportunity to gleefully have a good old rubberneck at the lives of the survivors.

Not by interviewing them, to ask them what its been like to grow into adulthood with the memory of such an experience forever present, no that would involve actually doing some work and getting the surviors permission. But instead by having a good old perv at their myspace/facebook/bebo profiles! Whats more they've found out that many of the teenagers are (shock horror) behaving like teenagers!

Drinking, fighting, getting tattoos, having sex! The disguising little ingrates! Don't the know that it's the duty of all survivors of massacres to live lives of flagellation and pious servitude?!

Never fear though, our wonderful moral guardians have done the decent thing and printed a cut down and one sided account of the survivors lives so they can be judged by the mob. Thank goodness for responsible journalism!

The article can be found here.

Jesse wept. Have the tabloids no shame?

Short answer?

No. They have no shame. I believe abandoning any positive human qualities is part and parcel of working for them.

Stupid, immoral, ignorant: Daily Express.

Rid me of this puerile dross.

Bloody lefts.

sA

Just passed the link on to my Mum and Dad. One of their Scouting Colleagues was in Dunblane to help not long after.

I feel an extremely stiff letter of complaint coming on.

That's a fething disgrace.

How can they be wrong?

Aren't they The World's Greatest Newspaper?

LuciusAR wrote:
Drinking, fighting, getting tattoos, having sex! The disguising little ingrates! Don't the know that it's the duty of all survivors of massacres to live lives of flagellation and pious servitude?!

That is your twist, not the articles.

This is a 'yet more' story about the decline of values in the youth of today. Even New Labour sees that something is wrong, Daily Express took the easy path and found an identifiable subset of youth society and wrote about what they do. Still it is alarming how quickly such things are forgotten, however I would have chosen a different example. Such as lost memory of WW1 and WW2. In Flanders the war graves are remembered and the veterans respected and a gratitude is felt even by the youth even now, over here the average 18 year old doesnt know or care.

once again, a journo pisses everyone off with thier biased bs.
another reason i dont bother reading papers.
if they can get a response from printing something, they will simply to try and bring up sales / ratings.

this may seem OTT, but having the journo shot a few times (not killed, just left handicapped and mentally unstable) and then having a report done on him should be in order.
maybe after a near death experience the dick head will see what he has done wrong.


and before anyone says it, yes, i am very extreme with my views

Orlanth wrote:

This is a 'yet more' story about the decline of values in the youth of today.

If they wish to make a point about a decline in general values then that's fine. I'll be happy to read it and digest it as long as its a)balanced
and and b) supported with plenty of evidence, as opposed to highlighting extremes exceptions as apparent 'proof' of the norm. Which is the tabloids standard tactic.

This article however was just deliberately singling out a group of individuals and passing judgment on them. I object to this strongly as all the behavior highlighted is perfectly normal in regards to most peoples adolescence and that they are being held to a unfair standard because they went through an horrific experience as a child.

That they did it based purely on a social network profile, which are intended for the eyes of friends and loved ones only, and made no effort to actually speak to them in person makes it even more despicable.

It is voyeuristic bullying. Nothing more.

Kilkrazy wrote:

We cannot blame children and teenagers for any lack of proper manners or behaviour since they were brought up to it by their parents.

Society is to blame!

Yes but the point is that non of the behavior being exhibited was anything other than normal teenage behavior. They weren't bringing shame on anyone. They were just being teenagers and teenagers occasionally do silly things and overindulge.

It's all part of growing up. To single them out in this manner is utterly uncalled for. Heck this article even has a go at one of them for using slang! What chance have they got?!

Orlanth wrote:

LuciusAR wrote:
Drinking, fighting, getting tattoos, having sex! The disguising little ingrates! Don't the know that it's the duty of all survivors of massacres to live lives of flagellation and pious servitude?!

That is your twist, not the articles.

This is a 'yet more' story about the decline of values in the youth of today. Even New Labour sees that something is wrong, Daily Express took the easy path and found an identifiable subset of youth society and wrote about what they do. Still it is alarming how quickly such things are forgotten, however I would have chosen a different example. Such as lost memory of WW1 and WW2. In Flanders the war graves are remembered and the veterans respected and a gratitude is felt even by the youth even now, over here the average 18 year old doesnt know or care.

We cannot blame children and teenagers for any lack of proper manners or behaviour since they were brought up to it by their parents.

Society is to blame!

But their parents were brought up by parents too.

Cavemen are to blame!

Those Poor Poor Cavemen!

Kilkrazy wrote:
We cannot blame children and teenagers for any lack of proper manners or behaviour since they were brought up to it by their parents.

Society is to blame!

Nature vs nurture. The blame deserves to be placed at several doors and is a combination of factors. Mentioned in no particular order.

1. Modern media doesnt help, no I am not joining in the 'pile on' on the Daily Express, I am talking about a social decline marked as socially acceptable in programs such as Skins. I mention only the one show, of course there are others.

If any wooly liberal doesnt beleive that youth can be influenced by this I give a one word defence: ADVERTISING.
Essentially if media influenced nothing, noone would pay for it.

2. Decline of family values. In particular the decline in the church, some churches are thriving, but the church of England is not. According to good sources it has to a large extent been set up to fail, lay investiture is rife and preisnts especially bishops must be New Labour first and Christians second if at all. To some extent this has always been the case with the CoE. The states idea of the state religion was very much secular, colloquially refered to as 'hatch, match and dispatch'. With just enough presence to show a moral example, but not enough for fundamentalism to creep in. However since 97 the church has been used as a mouthpiece for New Labour and thus reinforces the dogmas that undermine society (see below) and no voice in the opposite direction.

3. New dogma. I have first hand accounts of this from my time in the councils Youth Service. The watchword was 'empowerment' which while very trendy is flawed. The idea is that youth are empowered to be who they want to be, to be free citizens with equal respect and opoportunity. Sounds good yes. The trouble is that freedom to a child means the absense of responsibility, chidlren are not stupid, but like water they take the easy path unless taught responsibility. Empowerment is diametrically opposite to responsibility, especuially at that age group. A hard fact of human nature that is ultimately lost on the wooly liberal set. Simply spoken give kids a choice and they choose to misbehave, compounded by the hard truth that bad company corrupts good character once some do it they all do it. While this can be seen in easily read symptoms as sexuial conduct it is more poinient in the 'excuse culture'. kids todfay and as an extension young adults refuse to take responsibility more and more. Done something wrong, own up, no, make excuses, its someone elses fault, its society, its the parents, its the system. I remember a recent conversation with a mnager who hired a worker in his late thirties who made a mistake and when asked admitted it. The manager was taken aback, as it was the first time in years anyone admitted something was their fault, excuses always flowed.

This links to point 2 because past society in general, and church teach in particular, especially the book of Solomon warns about these aspects of human nature. While our society has long been secular the essential, truth of how the human being works and thinks was understood and accounted for. New Labour comes along with the trendy doctrines installs its own agenda and calls all else wrong or outdated. The united kingdom has an established culture that had an undertone of understanding the based human nature and accounted for it. Society used the Anglo Saxon legal system - based on common sense and the Judeo-Christian ethic, again based on common sense even though the society was long post Christian and post Saxon.

please, so many words involving religion tend to irritate the people who do not follow any religions.

yes, things these days are getting worse, but thats no reason for some journo dill weed to pull up the past from an event that had a severe impact on kids simply for something to write about.
if he wanted to do it, then maybe ask them 1st or interview them?
that may have helped, rather than throw out random slander.

LuciusAR wrote:

This article however was just deliberately singling out a group of individuals and passing judgment on them. I object to this strongly as all the behavior highlighted is perfectly normal in regards to most peoples adolescence and that they are being held to a unfair standard because they went through an horrific experience as a child.

Which was precisely my point.

JD21290 wrote:please, so many words involving religion tend to irritate the people who do not follow any religions.

Religion is a basis of society, religion includes atheism.

All societies, empasis on ALL use a philosophical/spiritual path to determine a context of social norms. whether the figure to look up to is a god or a man the principle remains. New Labour has abolished the moral compass in its attempts to create a new society, there are consequences to that, this is one of them.

The points stand because you dont actually need to be religious to understand how religion is used. The CoE was a tool of the civil service for a long time, though few understood how. ironically while ther application is entirely secular the understanding can be reached through poltical or theological study. My points were on topic and not actually religious per se, though as you may have guessed I do keep faith; nonetheless the head-in-sandism to religion is one of the reasons people have not understood changes that are entirely poltical and linked to religion only by observance of human nature.

orlanth, so far religion has caused the death of alot more lives than it has saved, has caused more arguments than it has prevented.

so i stand in my way of having nothing to do with them.


also, as with politics its all bs most of the time, they say one thing simply to do another.

Orlanth: While I definitely agree with many of your points, I still don't condone singling out these youngsters for scrutiny just because something crappy happened to them years ago. That is disgusting. The same goal could have been reached in numerous ways that didn't drag these kids into it.

JD21290 wrote:orlanth, so far religion has caused the death of alot more lives than it has saved, has caused more arguments than it has prevented.

Do you actually understand that comment?

It is often used, but so little understood. Communism for example is religion you just replace God with Marx or Stalin. Naziism is the same. Politics and religion are inseperable, it is inseperable in the Misddle East, it is inseperable in the USA it is inseperable in Europe. From religons wars to the simple phrase 'in god we trust' religion creeps in.

Now what you see happening plain and simple is a new form of 'religion' modern secularism. It has its doctrines, it causes its own wars, it has its heretics to denounce. if you look at the current Uk governemnt while Alasitair Darling said early on 'we dont do God' they certainly do do religon, because the froms that you see and hate still remain. They are just renamed.

JD21290 wrote:
so i stand in my way of having nothing to do with them.

This can only occur is you live alone on a little island by yourself. EVERY society has a 'faith', the current faith is New Labours 'New Britain'. Poliitical correctness is one of its many doctrines. Look at the patterns it is all there, go against the doctrines you are a 'heretic'. Civil servants, soldeirs and policemen lose their careers because they dont agree with the new doctrines. The only difference between this and a fundamentalist state is that ther scriptures used to determine who is faithful dont relate to a god and the guys in authority dont wear robes.

Please please open your eyes to human nature, on this issue ignorance isn't bliss. No matter what your personal faith is; Jew, Moslem, Chrisitan, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic, Pagan, Animist or Atheist the basic truth on human society remains the same and always has. Hitler, Lenin, Mao and the French Revolution used the same concepts in their non religious free society and became in real respects religions. Modern US and European secular governments are just the same, they either have to use a faith as a foundation, or a set of dogmas that mimic a faith in its application.

JD21290 wrote:
also, as with politics its all bs most of the time, they say one thing simply to do another.

One of many examples of the above.

Again do you understand what you wrote?
It is not just hypocrasy, all religions and the pseudo religous secular states offer a moral code and dont life by it. Why? Because the moral code is a constraint - and constraints are for people, not leaders. There is more to it than that, but it will do as a simple explanation for now, it should be enough for you to see there is far more conn ecting religon and society than at first appears. You could abolish every god forever, you would still not have a truly secular state, and never, ever will.

ill cut a long post short here, religion is not the be all and end all, if you cut religion out of life then people would still get by, they do not need it atall, but alot prefer to have a religion for many reasons.

without any religions it would kill off most points in arguments used.
even on car insurence theres "act of god"
i just find it as you say, religions comes into life alot, but not all like it, and its not needed by all either.

Da Boss wrote:Orlanth: While I definitely agree with many of your points, I still don't condone singling out these youngsters for scrutiny just because something crappy happened to them years ago. That is disgusting. The same goal could have been reached in numerous ways that didn't drag these kids into it.

I concur it was lazy journalism by the Express, and written up into a poor article. It does raise a good point, but it raises it in a very poor way, wehich is why I didnt challenge the basic premise of LuciusAR's original post.

The Daily Express follows the Daily Mail but doesnt wield the pen with the same level of skill. Despite many problems entailed with blazing a different doctrinal trail to the rest of the mainstream press the Daily Mail does its job well. The Daily Express does not and has to rely on cheap shots like this to put accross points the Daily Mail actually researches, even if with an particular slant at loggerheads with most of the press.

Orlanth wrote:

LuciusAR wrote:
Drinking, fighting, getting tattoos, having sex! The disguising little ingrates! Don't the know that it's the duty of all survivors of massacres to live lives of flagellation and pious servitude?!

That is your twist, not the articles.

This is a 'yet more' story about the decline of values in the youth of today. Even New Labour sees that something is wrong, Daily Express took the easy path and found an identifiable subset of youth society and wrote about what they do. Still it is alarming how quickly such things are forgotten, however I would have chosen a different example. Such as lost memory of WW1 and WW2. In Flanders the war graves are remembered and the veterans respected and a gratitude is felt even by the youth even now, over here the average 18 year old doesnt know or care.

"The mental disease of the present generation, is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition."

That was written by Samuel Johnson in the 1700s. There's another famous one that's pretty similar that comes from around 2500 years ago. Every generation thinks the next generation are a bunch of irresponsible louts that signal the end of civilisation. Sooner or later I guess one generation will be right, but just backing the odds I'd say it isn't this one, just like it wasn't Mr Johnson's.

Good call Sebster, it is a comparison of the values of youth and age as Dr Johnson undoubtably understood. To support points made in prior posts this point is also raised in the biblical Proverbs of Solomon - I will try and find the exact one later - which while scripture is not necessarily religous per se but a good example of how religion is a pointer to how human society reacts according to our base natures.

However politics flows in cycles and society with it, as youth decay accelerates control agendas to counter the 'rot' is imposed, as this causes stagnation youth clamours for more 'freedom' and the cylce is restarted.

A good example is to compare youth culture over roughly the 50's, 60's and 70's through to the 80's. The fifties was supposedly an ordered decade, at face value and on a large scale, the sixties were looser with the seventies seeing the consequernces of that and the return of cultural conservatism of the eighties. Note how marketing follows the cycling trend and not the other way around. Media companies exploited the hippy phenomena and the same organisations changed their tune through the punk years in time for Reaganomics. If you look how Richard Branson made his early fortune you will see someone who understands and knows how to flow with this trend.

The cycle continues as normal. The alarming trend for the present is that first with the Internet the chaotic libertarian nature is overfueled at a time when the moral 'trough' of the 90's 00's should be returing to a decade of conservatism. The internwet is not a problem per se, it is an unexpected obstacle that throws askew social rythmns and breaks down the order imposed above.

Second different conservatism counters are being used to those used before, old school moral values are being replaced by trendy PC moral values* which are less grounded in logic and fail to understand of the nature of the human animal. Thus the cycle is breaking down, instead of a moral 'rise' you are getting something else and its generally not good.

*Note flawed because they are based on new ideas at loggerheads to the centuries of experience in human nature prior social values had.

JD21290 wrote:
even on car insurence theres "act of god"

Can we not just have an "act of Heisenberg" instead?


Can't remember if it was in the Mail or the Express but i recall one of their editorials railing against racism and predjudice, whilst later on in their 'send us yr txts' section, they'd made the near-impossibly-stupid mistake of printing things along the lines of "I just can't trust these muslims' and 'How would the Czechs feel if we went over there and took their jobs?'.

The fact is that both papers are privately owned and hence geared more towards making money than actual reportage of events.

I did far worse things in my teens than what has been reported on by the OP, weird to find out that it's acceptable because a)I didn't have facebook back in them thare days and b) i didn't get shot in the pelvis by a gun toting psycho.


A bit like religion, the press provides things for people to get all worked up about and at the same time tells them that 'they'll' be all right as long as they keep believing the same faith/buying the same paper. Bunch of judgemental dog-touchers.

JD21290 wrote:ill cut a long post short here, religion is not the be all and end all, if you cut religion out of life then people would still get by, they do not need it atall, but alot prefer to have a religion for many reasons.
....

Fair enough, in other words you didn't understand.

JD21290 wrote:
without any religions it would kill off most points in arguments used.
even on car insurence theres "act of god"

I will make one last attempt to explain using your two statements above.

1. Without any religions the points of arguement would still exist and religion is a format of the social arguement, not the ultimate means. If for example I swore at you in German you would not be able to stop me hating you or swearing at you if you abolished German. This comes back to the most important point I tried to make clear earlier atheism is a religion. Mao, Stalin and Hitler used techniques to rouse hate and control identicle to those used in hardcore fundamentalism. The real danger, sir, is that in order for communist or fascist dictators to rise people must first say 'no more religion', this leads to the horrible irony in your logic. The worst human organisations known to man: communism and national socialism, stem from honest desires to reshape society on exactly the same grounds as you wish to do decades before the event. After all few would have supported the Revolution if communism was understood, no they wanted reasonable sounding freedom from medievalesque priests, businessmen and feudal overlords. What they got was a Party that is to all intent and purpose a religion, and a State which acts as a business and feudal overlord and oftimes far worse than the original.

2. "Act of God" is synonymous with hand of fate, all it measn is (for insurance purposes at least) randomness beyond predictability. Like every other example in society removing god or religion will not remove the religion, just the trappings. After all I am yet to meet a godly car insurance sales company, have you?

Orlanth wrote:
atheism is a religion. Mao, Stalin and Hitler used techniques to rouse hate and control identicle to those used in hardcore fundamentalism.

Stalin and Hitler were both also in the habit of wearing moustaches. Is that a religion? Does the fact that they were atheists have anything to do with their social policies? Should i be worried if Obama starts to experiment with facial hair?

I don't think that being an atheist is an 'extreme' or 'hardcore' stance. it's more a case of excluding faith-based view points from arguements. I'm not suggesting that if we all drop religion the world will suddenly start to overflow with stardust and chocolate overnight, ohno, that would be most in-human of us, we'll always find a good excuse to fly around blowing each other up; take the current worship of oil for example.

J.Black wrote:
I don't think that being an atheist is an 'extreme' or 'hardcore' stance. it's more a case of excluding faith-based view points from arguements.

No it is not, it is just like any other religion. there are peaceful ones and not so peaceful ones. However on the large scale an atheist society looks to the state to provide a god, the state provides this and would be dictators exploit this.

J.Black wrote:
I'm not suggesting that if we all drop religion the world will suddenly start to overflow with stardust and chocolate overnight, ohno, that would be most in-human of us, we'll always find a good excuse to fly around blowing each other up; take the current worship of oil for example.

Oil is a poor example to use, oil is useful and can be used in many ways and is a societal lifeblood as it fuels our technology.

Gold is a good example. Excepting some uses in electronics and instrumentation gold is rather useless. It is valueable and coveted because people have faith in its value. I remember learning this truth and being much suprised at the Bank of England museum as a child. The question read why is gold valuable, two of the four answers looked very out of place and I dont remember them. I went for something along the lines of gold being a rare commodity. It was incorrect, the answer was "Because people like gold'.

Humanity as an elemental force is subtle, predicable and terrifying and too few people understand how the human works on a large scale. Honestly regardles of what you choose to beleive as a faith, if any; if you want to understand humanity study theology, preferably from multiple viewpoints.

Orlanth wrote:I will make one last attempt to explain using your two statements above.

1. Without any religions the points of arguement would still exist and religion is a format of the social arguement, not the ultimate means. If for example I swore at you in German you would not be able to stop me hating you or swearing at you if you abolished German. This comes back to the most important point I tried to make clear earlier atheism is a religion. Mao, Stalin and Hitler used techniques to rouse hate and control identicle to those used in hardcore fundamentalism. The real danger, sir, is that in order for communist or fascist dictators to rise people must first say 'no more religion', this leads to the horrible irony in your logic. The worst human organisations known to man: communism and national socialism, stem from honest desires to reshape society on exactly the same grounds as you wish to do decades before the event.

You've lumped National Socialism in with atheism, and that's a wrong thing to do. Hitler wasn't an atheist, but believed in a bizarre variant on Christianity called Positive Christianity, in which Jesus was an Aryan that opposed the Jews. Yes, it was crazy, but well, Hitler was crazy.

And no, there is nothing magical in religion that stops bad governments. Mussolini was a Catholic, as was Franco. Franco even made Catholicism the national religion.

Orlanth wrote:Good call Sebster, it is a comparison of the values of youth and age as Dr Johnson undoubtably understood. To support points made in prior posts this point is also raised in the biblical Proverbs of Solomon - I will try and find the exact one later - which while scripture is not necessarily religous per se but a good example of how religion is a pointer to how human society reacts according to our base natures.

However politics flows in cycles and society with it, as youth decay accelerates control agendas to counter the 'rot' is imposed, as this causes stagnation youth clamours for more 'freedom' and the cylce is restarted.

A good example is to compare youth culture over roughly the 50's, 60's and 70's through to the 80's. The fifties was supposedly an ordered decade, at face value and on a large scale, the sixties were looser with the seventies seeing the consequernces of that and the return of cultural conservatism of the eighties. Note how marketing follows the cycling trend and not the other way around. Media companies exploited the hippy phenomena and the same organisations changed their tune through the punk years in time for Reaganomics. If you look how Richard Branson made his early fortune you will see someone who understands and knows how to flow with this trend.

The cycle continues as normal. The alarming trend for the present is that first with the Internet the chaotic libertarian nature is overfueled at a time when the moral 'trough' of the 90's 00's should be returing to a decade of conservatism. The internwet is not a problem per se, it is an unexpected obstacle that throws askew social rythmns and breaks down the order imposed above.

Second different conservatism counters are being used to those used before, old school moral values are being replaced by trendy PC moral values* which are less grounded in logic and fail to understand of the nature of the human animal. Thus the cycle is breaking down, instead of a moral 'rise' you are getting something else and its generally not good.

*Note flawed because they are based on new ideas at loggerheads to the centuries of experience in human nature prior social values had.

No, what I'm saying is that every generation looks at the undisciplined louts of the next generation and thinks they're the worst ever. Then that mob grows up, looks at the next mob and thinks they're the worst ever.

Your model of waxing and waning conservatism has a problem in that it's only seen one iteration. That can't be reasonably relied on as a pattern.

sebster wrote:
You've lumped National Socialism in with atheism, and that's a wrong thing to do. Hitler wasn't an atheist, but believed in a bizarre variant on Christianity called Positive Christianity, in which Jesus was an Aryan that opposed the Jews. Yes, it was crazy, but well, Hitler was crazy.

And Stalin was an oblate (priest in training). This is not relevant what any individuals beleived on the inside, the face and doctrine of Naziism and Soviet communism was atheism.

sebster wrote:
And no, there is nothing magical in religion that stops bad governments. Mussolini was a Catholic, as was Franco.

Neither Mussolini nor Franco rose on the same ideas as Hitler and the Soviets, Mussolini took a different path on a different ideological ticket. After all they never abolished religion and so never had to make the state replace it. Furthermore Mussolini was a better leader than given credit for in the big scheme, he just chose to back the wrong side and ended up riding Hitlers coat tails because he had no choice. If Mussolini had any say on the matter the war and its attendent horrors would never had happened. Franco obviously thought the same and was able to distance himself from Hitler enough that his government, and that in Portugal survived until the 1970's.