Musings...

Or possibly, if you looked at it from another perspective, rantings...

Before you can own a dog in this country, you are extensively investigated - you have to fill out forms and answer all sorts of questions, officious (and official) people come home to check that you actually live at that address and that you are mentally and physically ready to own a dog. They also check that your house has enough room for a dog to live healthily and happily.

I have no objections in general to those in-depth checks. I love dogs and I would hate them to be abused or ill-treated.

But I quite like children too, and would hate just as much for them to be abused and ill-treated. Yet anybody - no matter how messed up they are, no matter what their track record in looking after their offspring - can have a child, and nobody checks to see if they are lunatics, addicts, or worse. There's no way of keeping track of such people, no way of following up on the children to see if they're being harmed. Mentally and emotionally, if not physically. There are people whose every child ends up in a home or being fostered - and if that is not a crying shame, I dont know what is.

There's no solution to this, I suppose, bar draconian measures which I'm sure would set all the human rights, pro-life and suchlike people frothing at the mouth.

********

It's only a small segue from there to why the UK has the most teenage pregnancies in Europe, why binge drinking is becoming rampant, why pre-teens are sexually active, why they're shying away from education, etc. Well, it seems pretty obvious (to me) that one of the reasons is that most of them dont have the right role models. It's a sadly vicious circle - or should I say a sadly vicious circle of indifference, unlikely sounding though that is.

When the parents are poorly educated, sexually promiscuous and heavy drinkers and smokers, what child will not see that as a normal existence? They dont know better - and even if they DO see better, they dont really have much chance of breaking through that circle. If they see their mother/father in unstable relationships with partners coming and going quicker than you can say "stability", if they see their parents coming home staggering drunk on weekends, and if they have siblings who have only the mother in common - arent the kids going to assume that it's the norm, the only way to be?

With what authority could the parents possibly tell their kids not to emulate their behaviour? In fact, how many parents would even see their own behaviour as undesirable? And if they dont realise that about themselves, how would they tell off their kids? "Do as I say, not as I do" is not the most convincing of arguments under any circumstance, and especially when trying to change behaviour patterns!

********

And what about this guy who, last year, killed his lover by stabbing her 145 times, at his home, with six different knives - and then mutilated her body further. Worst of all, her 10-year-old daughter was there while this was happening.

The man, of course, denies murder. Well, what else would you expect? Why would anyone call it murder? He only stabbed her with half a dozen knives, nearly 150 times, while suffering an "abnormality of mind which had reduced his mental responsibility". In English, it meant he was in a jealous rage.

This monster might just get off with a few years for "manslaughter", reduced still further by "good behaviour" while in prison. He'll be free to live the rest of his life. And in the meantime, one soul has been gruesomely taken and another young life very likely ruined by the trauma of witnessing such a brutal murder. It's a f*cked up world, I tell ya.