Teenagers conducting a “siege” at Greggs in Dundee’s High Street; the Overgate Centre manager complaining of £80,000 vandalism; the Kirkton riots. What is going on?
It is traditional once you reach a certain age, to start complaining about young people. I must have reached that age.
But even so I’ve got to ask again: what’s going on in our city?
I’m not talking about teenage high spirits, or the daft adventures we all had. I’m talking about crime here in Dundee.
Clearly, we need more policing, especially in the city centre.
We also need effective punishments.
Most of all, we need good parenting.
No matter if you are a product of a one-parent family, or blended family, no matter where you come from – you know what’s right and what’s wrong.
If you told your child that to touch an electric fire is wrong, or lean out a high window is wrong, then you should have told them mobbing Greggs to steal is wrong.
And this isn’t caused by deprivation.
The Kirkton riots were not caused by undefinable feelings of alienation.
Smashing up things is not a political statement.
That’s just making excuses for bad behaviour.
Dundee youth crime isn’t down to deprivation
A photo my father had from his days at Cowgate School in the 1920s showed roughly half the kids with bare feet.
That shows a deprivation worse than anywhere in Dundee these days.
My father had four brothers, and kept in touch with two school friends.
Would anyone care to guess how many convictions for vandalism, terrorising the city centre or theft these seven laddies had?
Poverty doesn’t make you a bad person.
Suggesting that is an insult to ordinary working-class people, an elitist slur thrown at anyone not born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Not having money doesn’t remove your ability to tell right from wrong.
My father grew up hungry. Everyone in their close in Gellatly street was hungry.
But he didn’t steal or threaten anyone.
His parents demanded he conduct himself in an honest, polite and respectful manner.
He knew the difference between right and wrong.
So don’t insult him, or anyone, with hand-wringing excuses for badly brought up children.
Dundee parents need to do better at clamping down on crime
Everyone could and should make something of themselves.
With some discipline, which instils self-discipline, they’d be able to do that.
The escape from a difficult beginning isn’t to act like a thug, it is to use it as a stiffener for your determination to make something of yourself.
My father and his brothers did.
So let’s stop telling thugs, vandals and bullies: there, there: it’s not your fault.
It is their fault.
Tell them they are wrong, their behaviour is unacceptable.
Tell their parents to do a better job.
Aye, maybe it’s not much. But it’s more honest than passing on the blame to the anonymous big bad world.
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