Anti-social, and probably on the social
ON KCLR LIVE, I suspect we could fill the radio most mornings with people complaining about anti-social behaviour. Carlow and Kilkenny are no different from housing estates up and down the country. There is a disturbingly large number of people who do not have the slightest idea what being a responsible citizen means and could not care less. Some are teenagers who have no respect. Some are adults who you and I are paying to house. Rather than appreciate the leg up, they make life hell for everyone in the vicinity. Among the law-abiding citizens there is a growing belief that they just have to put up with this because nobody will do anything about it.
When you change from a dictatorship to a new order things seem to come asunder. Tito and Saddam were not nice guys, but you could say they kept a lid on things. Our version of dictatorship was the power of the Church. Nothing has replaced the fear it engendered. Send the parish priest to deal with any of these gurriers and they will laugh in his face. The community Garda probably has a track worn to the house.
I had the temerity to ask some teenagers to desist from littering and met a torrent of abuse. A friend of mine told some teenagers to stop damaging flower pots and was set upon violently. This incident was reported to the Gardai. Did anything happen? No.
We have created a victim culture where people think nothing of sponging on a State they do not respect. A friend of mine can open his bedroom window at 1 am and hear blaring music from a nearby estate. Imagine living beside a house with parties every night, rubbish all over the place, and no visible sign of income? You and I are paying for the booze as well as the house.
What can we do? The Church isn’t going to come back. It is only a matter of time before it loses the last vestiges of power from our Constitution (8th Amendment), laws (blasphemy) and schools (compulsory baptism). How can you tell a youngster that they are making a mess of their lives and they need to cop on? Education and jobs are vital, but what if they don’t go to school and might be the second generation to take pride in ignorance. To hell with cherish the family. If parents cannot control their children then take them away and put them somewhere where they can learn to be good citizens. It is time to stop feeling sorry for people who didn’t get the best start in life. Allowing them behave badly is not in anyone’s interests, including their own.The world is full of people who got a bad start in life and made something of themselves.