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It’s all very well claiming in retrospect that it really isn’t in your name, but you try explaining that to a fatherless family in Baghdad. If our political overlords really care that much about fatherless families, why are they so actively ensuring that there should be so many in Iraq or, come to that, in the ever-mounting number within the ranks of the British Army? And why are we expected to support them in this delusion? In Blair’s grinning granny State the henchmen are armed to the teeth, while we, the possible victims of their oft-times conspiratorial fantasies, are expected to suck on our gums, and woe betide anyone who wants to play the game on their terms. It’s okay for Blair to declare an illegal war against Iraq, but when the inevitable suicide-bombing kick-back occurs he’s got the cheek to come on all indignant. Likewise, if he’s endorsing violence and killing, how can he expect otherwise from the kids on the street? What kind of role model is that? If he is half the Christian he claims to be, how can he reconcile ‘thou shalt not kill’ with mowing down innocent people in their thousands? In this respect his criticisms of the kids are merely a case of the pot calling the kettle black (and never mind the racist inferences). If Blair or his cohorts in Westminster are examples of good fathers, no wonder the kids are confused. Oh yes, it’s cool to rule, Tony, but just count yourself lucky that in response to your unutterable arrogance you’ve not been gunned-down from your cosy roost. In America you probably would have been.
Guns and drugs are intrinsically linked. Now don’t tell me that the authorities aren’t totally aware of the main dealers in this game. They know all too well who they are, but they’re also aware that if any of the most powerful were removed there’d be nasty gaps left which inevitably would lead to the mayhem of a major battle for supremacy: better, then, the devil you know. While the kids so vicariously vilified in the daily press might be playing a very dangerous game (which, if they survive, most will grow out of), for the hardened men on the street it’s deadly serious, it’s for real. After all, they’ve got their families to look after. But herein lies a problem. We all know who the main suppliers of hard drugs are and we all know that they are a very different mob to those who supply the handguns. We also know that the authorities are perfectly aware of this and, apart from blaming fathers, haven’t got a clue as to what to do about it. But then, it has to be said, neither have I. So, through the carefully considered inactivity of the authorities, all-out organised-crime war is avoided and the hard drugs and handgun trades carry on unabated. Meanwhile, the underprivileged inner-city youth suffer the horrible consequences. But it’s here that the picture changes, because here I do have an answer. Show the kids some genuine understanding, offer them something other than endless verbal, get Mammon’s monsters (the Murdochs, Blairs and Camerons) off their backs, offer them some kind of worthwhile future where now they have little alternative to crime, give them some kind of hope and dignity rather than the despair of economic and social deprivation, show them respect rather than ill-informed criticism, in short, look for the good rather than the bad, and maybe they won’t need to be gunned down attempting to prove to themselves that they’re the men they inwardly know they’re not. Bugger Blair’s boot camps, these are our kids and it’s their future we should be fighting for. Rather than condemning them to the manacles of poverty and its backlash of class and race hatred, better we work hand in hand to change things. So let’s trash our four-wheeler mentality, bin our own petty prejudices and get on with it. Let’s truly make ‘Hackney a safer place’. |
