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WAR hero Malcolm Palin who offereds to protect the hospice from hooligans.
Cowardly imbeciles deserve rough justice
Vic Barlow14/ 6/2006
AS A KID I was well aware of the gangs of tearaways in our town. They'd attack another boy without any excuse and fight among themselves over girls, motorbikes and booze.
I gave them a wide berth, but my gran never bothered. To her they were politeness personified.
"How are you today Mrs Sample?" they'd ask if she met them while out shopping.
While these kids would fight without provocation they would never hurt an old lady. It was an unspoken rule.
Shoplifting was a natural pastime to these gangs, as was gate-crashing parties and dances with the sole intention of causing trouble, but vandalising a hospital was taboo. To do so would have ostracised them from the entire community.
Stealing cigarettes or fighting another kid may have carried some kudos, but terrorising the sick or elderly would be seen as a cowardly act and punished accordingly by their peers.
While parents may have turned a blind eye to their offsprings' unruly behaviour they too had limits and harassing the infirm would provoke parental wrath on an unprecedented scale.
Any kid committing such an act would be treated with utter contempt, which is why I am so incensed by the callous group of moronic kids who terrorised terminally ill-patients and their relatives inside the East Cheshire Hospice.
Having talked their way past reception on the pretence of needing to use the toilet, they proceeded to harass staff and relatives with loud and aggressive behaviour, refusing to leave the premises.
These kids have been hanging around the hospice for some time vandalising property and causing disturbance. In December the hospice had their Christmas lights smashed three times.
Personally, I'm sick of our pussyfooting around disrespectful kids and irresponsible parents. There are patients dying in this hospice, for God's sake.
If these cowardly imbeciles can't show some respect for the terminally ill then I suggest, friends, neighbours and schools express the revulsion felt by the community for their despicable behaviour.
Don't bother prevaricating over an appropriate punishment. For these kids - and their parents - anything that scares the living daylights out of them will suffice.
If we can't protect the terminally ill from harassment then our society has truly gone to hell.
- THE views expressed on this page are those of Vic Barlow and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Express.
Most recent 2 of 2 user comments
However, this is not an isolated incident, just another example of how our society has broken down.
My husband and I went to the restaurant Deckers, just off the M60 for a quiet lunch about a month ago. A noisy family were drinking in the bar with their equally noisy and unruly children ranging from about 6 to 14 years of age running around tables and throwing beer mats at each other. We took our seats at the table to eat and after about ten minutes the younger members of this family decided it would be fun to throw some beer mats over the top of a small balcony which landed on our table. As parents ourselves, we just ignored them, putting it down to high spirits, until our food arrived and a beer mat landed right in the middle of my meal. My husband quietly made his way towards the parents of these small children, and politely asked them to supervise their offspring in order that we could have our meal in peace. The "father" of this family, leapt out of his seat and in a torrent of foul language told my husband he was proud of his kids and if we "didn't like it we could f----- well move tables".
The two youngest children looked on with smug smiles on their faces, obviously loving every minute of their small triumph over an adult.
A friend of ours is a teacher and she frequently tells us of stories where she has had to reprimand a child in class and then has to deal with a raging parent.
Our two sons were brought up to respect teachers and the community in which they live. If there is no respect at home there certainly won't be outside of it.
17/06/2006 at 13:36
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21/06/2006 at 18:27