There’s always mayhem when youth runs riot

HEAR that noise? It’s the sound of a million chickens coming home to roost…

For years now, children have been told they are special, important, the future.

I blame Whitney Houston, myself. Newspapers, the TV, advertisers, voluntary organisations – they have all been led by calls of “How do we attract more young people?”

Never mind that it has been older people who’ve been doing the reading, watching, buying and volunteering.

No, f** k the old timers – “we must attract more young people”.

Honestly, it sounds like the chairman’s speech at the National Society of Noncery AGM and Dinner Dance.

And where has it got us? Where has all this “tell the young people they are super- special and their opinions count”?

A statue lobbed into Bristol docks and yobs twatting police horses with bicycles outside Downing Street.

That’s where it’s got us.

Those of us with a few years under our belts look back at the 17, 18, 19-year-old versions of ourselves.

What do we see? If you’re anything like me, you cringe and think: “What a f** king TWAT I was back then.”

Because we were. When you’re in your late teens and early 20s, you know it all and you’re not afraid to tell all and sundry that you know it all.

Age, experience, mistakes and disappointments knock the most twattish corners off most people.

The older you get, the more corners are knocked off.

Wisdom

That’s why decent societies treasure and defer to older people – and listen to their wisdom.

And it’s why a sane society keeps youngsters, with their boundless energy and infinite capacity for twattery firmly in their boxes.

A society that lets youngsters loose in the public forum is heaping up its own funeral pyre.

You eventually get China’s Red Guard or Cambodia’s Year Zero.

We’re not there yet but we’re on our way when yobs can riot in Whitehall, firmly believing their own self- righteousness justifies their savagery.

And this savagery is fed by the cancer of social media where these young barbarians can echo and amplify each other’s mania.

From the child soldiers of central Africa to The Lord of the Flies, we’ve had plenty of dire warnings about the perils of youth run riot.

We didn’t heed the warnings. We just gave them BBC f** king Three.