An excellent article bringing the voice of the youth to the scene. It is a shame that it took one of the UK’s worst civil disturbances to bring the youth voice into the spotlight. This should be a regular occurrence.

I’m sorry to days youth are happy to have a job, so long as it’s real and not one of the New labour jobs I have seen.

Most of our youth do not want to be a Ronaldo or a Rooney no more then I wanted to be a Best or Moore, and I played football.

What i wanted was a game of football and a decent job with decent wages, of course some of our youth want to be rich and so did kids in my day, but we also knew our limitations.

I think looking at this like the X factor well we had the same in my day.

But something else is wrong the world has gone wrong banking and finacial sector, greedy politicians who think they are above the law, people making billions off the back of hard working people like the Lord Pauls of this world coming to the UK to be made a lord, thats what’s gone wrong, not some youth who wants to be Rooney

Ella Im not sure I agree entirely with your post. My youngest son had many trials at premier league clubs but did not quite make it and he had to reassess his future.He has now enrolled on an apprentiship. I think there is a role for parents to manage the expectations of their children.

I do agree though that there are very limited opportunities for young people today and I worry for all my lads that they will be a lost generation, having said that they hold the key to their destiny themselves to a degree in so much that they should not have an expectation that everything will be handed to them on a plate. They have to apply themselves and work hard to achieve things in life in whatever path they take.

I do also think there is a “must have” society with too many negetive role models both in the media and on local estates.

I don’t think that it’s a tragedy that class structures have weakened to the degree that if you’re in the lower classes you have to be set on being a “humble” trade worker (though I think more realistically a shop/factory worker or cleaning staff might be more appropriate). The problem with the way the “consumerist greed” angle is being approached is that it seems to shadow a mood that these people should just shut up and not rise above their station.

Aspiration is good, and it’s not a problem to want to get to the top of whatever it is you want to be the top of. What’s a problem is a lack of structure in the way we approach the act of growing up and maturing, that doesn’t bed in some backup skills and knowledge that can be used on the way to the top, if that route is ever started.

Greed *is* good, it drives us forward….though obviously only under the guise of “bettering one’s self”, it’s when there is no sustainability to the greed that’s the problem…so we need to solve that, the unsustainability of aspirations, rather than tell people that their desires aren’t appropriate.

Rioters cover their faces with masks to hide their identity when doing their dodgy dealings. Murdoch slips in the back door of number 10 Downing street to meet the Prime Minister without being seen.

I see little difference.

@3. skooter: “My youngest son had many trials at premier league clubs but did not quite make it and he had to reassess his future.He has now enrolled on an apprentiship.”

If it’s any consolation, a mate of mine went through the same process forty years ago. In the end, he played in minor leagues for a couple of years but at least during the trials he had the chance to play at his beloved ground, Highbury. Another mate played in minor leagues and (profitably) in US leagues. It was never about the money for them, and both flourished in conventional careers afterwards.

—
Hopefully one of the changes that arise will be a rethink of post 16 year education. Current levels of university participation raise false expectations (there aren’t as many jobs that require a degree as graduates) and impose artificial limits for those who do not enter HE at 18. The opportunity to work your way up, pursuing vocational qualifications and continuing education, needs to be restored.

On a positive note, one of the local lads left school at 16 and acquired a City & Guilds as an electrician. The job didn’t suit him, so whilst reflecting he took a job as a children’s holiday rep, which further led him to train as a clown. After some time in a circus, he returned to working with children in hospices as a clown. Now he is training as a nurse. That’s a cracking CV for somebody who hasn’t reached 30.

I wanted to be an astronaut, or, the next best thing, a hovercraft pilot.

Well, I tried, and fell short, through no fault of my own.

And that’s where references to ‘Get rich or die trying’ fall down. Are the rioters on even the first part of the path to football stardom, for instance: do they have a kick around with their mates or are they too busy hanging out on street corners snearing at the efforts of their school mates? Show me those who have tried and had their ambitions frustrated and I might accept that the media obsession with professional football has something to do with this.

Likewise, does their wish to be the next Hip Hop star involve writing lyrics, investing in equipment and performing for friends, or is it just about dressing the part and calling girls bitches? Again, I’d like to see proof that the rioters contained a large number of musicians who can’t get a professional contract rather than people entirely uninterested in honing their musical talents.

Sport and music (to take the rather narrow range of possibilities critics are focusing on, Left or Right) aren’t pointless if – like most people who participate in -you don’t make it to the top, or even make a living out of: they are rich and rewarding in themselves.

@6 Charlieman

Thanks for the reply. Luckily money was not the driving factor behind my lad playing football he just loves it. He continues to play and is enjoying his apprenticeship so can’t complain really.

There really does have to be investment in youth jobs though or I can see these riots becoming more frequent. I am glad I am not starting out in life in these tough times.

The culture of professional football has pernicious effects.

It promotes a fantasy of getting paid £1m a year for just playing a sport when few lads will ever make it but think that is good enough reason to forget about school work:
http://www.1000goals.com/top-50-highest-football-salaries

A local social housing estate has notices banning ball games but features a football academy with starting classes for 6 year-olds.

@ 9 Bob B

“It promotes a fantasy of getting paid £1m a year for just playing a sport when few lads will ever make it but think that is good enough reason to forget about school work”

A problem, agreed, but do we know how many people this affects, and how many are geniunely giving up on realistic opportunities to pursue the fame dream? I suspect we tend to exaggerate it.

“A local social housing estate has notices banning ball games but features a football academy with starting classes for 6 year-olds.”

I have to wonder whether the people putting these notices actually have the right to outlaw football.

@ 9 Bob B

“It promotes a fantasy of getting paid £1m a year for just playing a sport when few lads will ever make it but think that is good enough reason to forget about school work”

As Chaise commented, fame/wealth from sports achievement is exaggerated. Young people who pursue a sport as a career do so because they love the sport. UK youngsters who play badminton and hockey for England will not get rich directly from the sport and the country where they are most likely to be photographed in a news story is Pakistan.

@7. Shatterface

How many people held a commercial hovercraft pilot licence when you were growing up? When I was ten or so, a commercial (tourist) service operated between St Annes and Southport over the Ribble. And a few other places. Have more people travelled in the Space Shuttle than owned commercial hovercraft pilot licences?

@10: “A problem, agreed, but do we know how many people this affects, and how many are geniunely giving up on realistic opportunities to pursue the fame dream? I suspect we tend to exaggerate it.”

Social enclaves with working class mono-cultures, regardless of ethnicity, tend to succumb to the footbal fantasy – football is promoted as “our national game” and playing it professionally offers the only credible prospect for local residents of earning a fortune legitimately. Just look at numbers of St George’s flags displayed at times of the world cup tournaments.

“I have to wonder whether the people putting these notices actually have the right to outlaw football.”

In the case of the local social housing estate, the banning of ball games is enforced through byelaws and by tenancy agreements. The bans will often have the vocal support of a minority of tenants whose lives can be rendered miserable by ball games – eg the end bungalow or house in a terrace where the outer wall is used as a makeshift goal so the incumbent tenant is plagued every fine evening by the thump-thump of a ball hitting the wall. The potential problem can be reduced by estate design but many estates pre-date the escalation of the problems generated by the high pay of premier league footballers.

@11: “As Chaise commented, fame/wealth from sports achievement is exaggerated. Young people who pursue a sport as a career do so because they love the sport. UK youngsters who play badminton and hockey for England will not get rich directly from the sport and the country where they are most likely to be photographed in a news story is Pakistan.”

In the run-up to the 1997 election, Blunkett famously put up the idea of running “home-work clubs” at football stadiums. Some football clubs and professional footballers signed up for the idea.

It was a daft idea:
1) it was unlikely to apply or appeal to girls whose home-work issues are as important as those of boys
2) many parents would have serious reservations for many reasons about their young-teen siblings going off to football stadiums on dark evenings.

Despite that, the idea was applauded in many places.

On social housing estates, badmington and hockey are often regarded as irredeemably middle-class or girlish.

Admittedly many decades ago, I used to represent a very large council estate on local councils and canvassed widely to learn about local needs and sentiments. I subsequently became a senior official for a distant local authority. FWIW my perceptions are not uninformed and I’ve retained those atuned bureaucratic antennae.

‘Get rich or die tryin’

Was that not the battle cry of the folks who set up the British Empire?

Plunder of other peoples stuff was just fine with right wingers then and now.

@13. Bob B: “In the run-up to the 1997 election, Blunkett famously put up the idea of running “home-work clubs” at football stadiums. Some football clubs and professional footballers signed up for the idea.

It was a daft idea:
1) it was unlikely to apply or appeal to girls whose home-work issues are as important as those of boys”

I reckon that idea was kicked into touch ‘cos it was daft to introduce girls who wanted to get close with footballers to footballers. It was a recipe for moral fuck up.

“On social housing estates, badmington and hockey are often regarded as irredeemably middle-class or girlish.”

Not in Pakistan. And not if you have ever caught a hockey ball in the most uncomfortable capture point.

“FWIW my perceptions are not uninformed and I’ve retained those atuned bureaucratic antennae.”

We know that you aren’t daft, Bob. But that last clause will generate some ribaldry. Endure it and come back.

@15: “We know that you aren’t daft, Bob. But that last clause will generate some ribaldry. Endure it and come back.”

Do we often see St George’s flags flying for world badmington and hockey tournaments on social housing estates?

There are no badmington and hockey academies, starting for 6 year-olds, on the local social housing estate but, for obscure reasons, some houses and flats are still flying St George’s flags since the last World Cup tournament.

Blunkett didn’t call for home-work clubs at the grounds of local badmington and hockey clubs.

@ 12 Bob B

“Social enclaves with working class mono-cultures, regardless of ethnicity, tend to succumb to the footbal fantasy – football is promoted as “our national game” and playing it professionally offers the only credible prospect for local residents of earning a fortune legitimately.”

Exactly: “tends to”. I’m sure we can all agree that the lie that anyone can become a famous football player, actor or singer is potentially damaging to young people, but do we have any idea how many youths are actually damaged by it? How many people follow this dream to the point that they seriously neglect their realistic chances of happiness?

“Just look at numbers of St George’s flags displayed at times of the world cup tournaments.”

Meh. That’s just patriotism, and it happens to be one of the few occasions when excessive patriotism doesn’t freak me out. If I saw St George’s Crosses flying from every other car even when there wasn’t a major international event on, that’s when I’d consider moving house.

“In the case of the local social housing estate, the banning of ball games is enforced through byelaws and by tenancy agreements. ”

Sure, and you’re right about people complaining for a reason (quite apart from balls thudding on walls, windows can get smashed). I’m just wondering whether, when someone hangs up a sign in a local estate saying BALL PLAYING STRICTLY PROHIBITED, whether anyone can actually enforce that in a meaningful way. To me it seems like NIMBYs pushing their luck.

@17: “Exactly: ‘tends to’. . . How many people follow this dream to the point that they seriously neglect their realistic chances of happiness?”

Most associations in the “social sciences” are tendencies so the extent of the tendencies and the statistical significance are important.

Believe me, in working-class mono-cultures, football can be absolutely obsessional – which is why Blunkett had that supposedly “bright” idea of proposing school homework clubs attached to football stadiums.

The phenomenon of unrealistic career aspirations is not exclusive to football. Hence the old Noel Coward song: Don’t put you daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkJSOBmhdGM

“That’s just patriotism”

Some on the local social housing estate still display St George’s flags and have been doing so since the last World Cup tournament. They are not flying the Union Jack.

“I’m just wondering whether, when someone hangs up a sign in a local estate saying BALL PLAYING STRICTLY PROHIBITED . . . ”

I periodically need to go to a NHS clinic located on my local social housing estate. I have never seen anyone playing ball games there out in the open, possibly because there is a convenient local authority purpose-built leisure centre and library on the estate as well as the bans on ball games in byelaws and tenancy agreements. The leisure centre has posters claiming discussion groups and adult education classes but whenever I’ve asked about them, it turns out that there aren’t any.

Last month we ran a football club for two days so we could pick the best kids to play in our local grass roots football team, under eleven/ twelves. fourteen and sixteens.
Dozens turned up for trials and the vast majority we turned away as being not meeting our requirements. The club which is grass roots then voted to employ part time a person to get sponsorship so we can afford to pay for the rent of our three fields, we already had grants from the Lottery but will need this year an extra £5000 for each field as rental for the council.

As the council has stopped all grants and have stated the full cost of all fields and the park keeper must be paid by the teams.

That has seen nine teams drop out of the league or caused the amalagmation of teams so they can pay the massive increase in the costs.

But I watched mothers cry as sons and daughter were turned away from local grass root football and I can state now the vast majority of kids will not come back.

In my day we had two teams one was the first team and then you had what we called the stiffs people who wanted to have a game for the sake of it, now they are called the reserves , today clubs cannot afford to have these second teams so we have no second string players.

Everything is about money.

And playing for your local grass roots football team is never ever going to mean people earning millions and people who think better look again at how many forgien players are in the UK and the reasons.

It can cost millions to train a child who will be on £1000 a week from the age of sixteen, Manchester United have just spent a million on an eight years old, the child does not get the money the parents do, a million for a child who perhaps is to young to tie his own boots. and some of you see these people as getting what a break.

What voice do any of us have , we vote once every five years most of our MP’s are blind and deaf to what ever we ask or say because they have been dropped into a safe seat by some leader, give me a break

Local football clubs may be keeping the lads away from the gangs and other mischief but is it doing anything more?

The educational attainment of black youth is lower than that of other ethnic minorities.

For years, the government and the pundits have been warning us that unskilled jobs are becoming increasingly scarce and will become even more so in future.

New jobs have mainly gone to immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe, because employers value their skills and work ethic.

Or of course people who employ Asian are Asian employers, in my area we have 48 Asian restaurants not one of them has anyone else working for them except Asians.

Only a year ago a large employers of Asians had his local restaurants raided and they found all of his staff were illegal he did not employ even legal Asians of course he is now enjoying the pleasure of HMP after he was found to also have paid them £2 a hour and fiddling his taxes, his wife stated she was going home to Asia as you cannot work here paying wages like this.

Sorry but the idea that people are being employed because they work better or harder is rubbish, I worked for most of my life in the Building trade and I can state now some of the hardest working people are British people black white or Asian they all work hard for a decent wage.

This idea that you can somehow employ an Asian immgrant and he will work harder may be more to do with them accepting shitty employers in their own country and expect the same here.

Fair diagnosis Ella what would you suggest as the medicine?

I found this debate on the street in Clapham hope it helps

http://youtu.be/jqA9-QGhvZs

@ 18 Bob B

“Most associations in the “social sciences” are tendencies so the extent of the tendencies and the statistical significance are important.”

Absolutely – but, as I said, do we know the extent?

“Believe me, in working-class mono-cultures, football can be absolutely obsessional – which is why Blunkett had that supposedly “bright” idea of proposing school homework clubs attached to football stadiums.”

What’s a working-class mono-culture?

“Some on the local social housing estate still display St George’s flags and have been doing so since the last World Cup tournament. They are not flying the Union Jack.”

Sure, that happens. Sometimes it’s still just patriotism (albeit a rather weird version of it that apparently deems the UK too big to be proud of, or something), sometimes it’s a sign of something darker. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t go seeing National Front members in the woodwork just because there tend to be a lot of England flags out during major sporting events.

“I periodically need to go to a NHS clinic located on my local social housing estate. I have never seen anyone playing ball games there out in the open, possibly because there is a convenient local authority purpose-built leisure centre and library on the estate as well as the bans on ball games in byelaws and tenancy agreements. The leisure centre has posters claiming discussion groups and adult education classes but whenever I’ve asked about them, it turns out that there aren’t any.”

Well yeah, that’s fairly rubbish. Hard to say why nobody plays football on the estate, although I doubt it’s because they’re all at the leisure centre. Is there a park nearby? It’s entirely possible that the local authorities do come down hard on kids kicking a ball about.

Not only do youth have the right to complain, they have a duty, as do we all. However being heard is a different thing altogether.
We have all heard a tv presenter, earning a salary well in excess of £300K interviewing a politician in receipt of a not disimilar annual sum, discussing poverty of means, of opportunity and employment that might affect the rest of us, but obviously not them.

I once heard an ex-Labour MP being interviewed on Radio 4, where he said that a petition of a million signature would not change his mind if Labour Whips told him to vote otherwise – that is the democracy we enjoy today.

‘If the people are turbulent and riotous, nothing is to be done for them on account of their evil disposition.
If they are obedient and loyal, nothing is to be done for them because their being quiet and contented is a proof that they feel no grievance.’
Edmund Burke 1797.

Politicians care only for what will keep them in power, with power comes privilege and with privilege comes wealth.

As a senior citizen who has voted all his life they utterly disgust me.

@20. Bob B: “Local football clubs may be keeping the lads away from the gangs and other mischief but is it doing anything more?”

Yes. I don’t need to go into detail about the benefits: social mixing, team skills training, learning that there is more to authority than power.

And whilst football may be our national game, young people get involved in other sports. The car park at my local cricket academy is usually full of hackney cabs so it’s fair to guess that the sons of Asian taxi drivers are as keen about cricket as their dads.

@23: “What’s a working-class mono-culture?”

Try chp. 7 of George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), especially this part:

“The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly.”
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

In places, social values haven’t changed much since Orwell wrote that despite the raising of the school leaving age from 14, to 15, to 16. Notice that Orwell was commenting about “lads”, not girls. In the 1990s, the educational attainment of girls overtook that of boys. The majority of undergraduates in British universities are now young women – sadly, it wasn’t like that in my day at uni.

Canvassing in the early 1970s when I really believed in comprehensive schools, on a council estate I came across a Labour stalwart who stoutly defended grammar schools because they were the only way his grandson could escape entrapment by the neighbourhood culture. It took me a while and the experience of my own children to recognise the wisdom of his insight.

26
You have to understand that Orwell came from a privileged middle-class background and was able to benefit from privately paid education. The views expressed, in the the extract you quote, are clearly heavily influenced by his own experiences which were not typical of any working-class boy of that era. His reflection that ‘it would be unmanly to stay-on at school until you are nearly grown-up’ are Orwell’s own views being projected onto those he observed, for no working-class boy would have the opportunity continue into further or higher education.. Unlike Orwell, their wages would be crucial to the survival of the family.
Orwell was a great writer, but the quoted extract has little relevance or usefulness as an explanation for why white working-class boys are, educationally, doing badly.

22 – Fair diagnosis Ella what would you suggest as the medicine?

Good parenting, always was always will be

@ 26 Bob B

Yeah, but Orwell was writing at a time when upwardly mobile working-class people were seen as something of an oddity – and he still comes off as a bit of a snob spreading lazy generalisations around. Also, I still don’t know what you mean by “mono-culture”.

@27: “You have to understand that Orwell came from a privileged middle-class background and was able to benefit from privately paid education.”

Orwell’s “mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family was not wealthy enough to afford the fees, making it necessary for him to obtain a scholarship.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

He didn’t go to uni and on leaving Eton lived on the proceeds of his journalism and books. His lifestyle as a writer was hardly affluent – he died in 1950 at the age of 46 from TB.

“The views expressed, in the the extract you quote, are clearly heavily influenced by his own experiences which were not typical of any working-class boy of that era.”

He was writing as an roving reporter on a commission from the Left Book Club. Most critics thought he wrote sympathetically of the plight of working people in the depression years but I’ve long been aware of the hostility towards him in South Yorkshire. On completing the manuscript of The Road to Wigan Pier in 1936, he went off to fight in the Spanish Civl War for the International Brigade.

“Orwell was a great writer, but the quoted extract has little relevance or usefulness as an explanation for why white working-class boys are, educationally, doing badly.”

The Labour stalwart, nearly of pensionable age and living on a council estate, that I mentioned @26 was a defender of (threatened) grammar schools because he saw those as the one opportunity that his grandson had to escape being trapped in the neighbourhood culture. I came to recognise that as an important insight.

Are you sure that the attitude towards education among working class boys (and boys who aspire to working class cultural norms), is not a significant issue today?

Because from what I remember of school, it was the anti-education lot who were busy disrupting lessons, bullying kids who tried hard and generally making the place unpleasant to be in.

If you want to know why inner city schools struggle, it’s because lessons are disrupted by little shits who hate learning, and hate anyone who does want to learn. They don’t want to be there, they dick about and they make it difficult/impossible for others to learn.

There is a strong streak of working class culture which regards intellectual achievement as suspicious and un-manly, as a betrayal of ‘working class culture and identity, and as a ‘soft’ middle class past-time. And as a result, they are right, because in perpetuating that culture, they effectively ‘expel’ from working class culture, anyone who succeeds in a ‘middle class’ way.

@30 A minor, and slightly pedantic, correction to a post I otherwise wholeheartedly agree with:

” he went off to fight in the Spanish Civl War for the International Brigade.”

He fought in the POUM Militia, not one of the International Brigades. The Militia, and the party, were supressed in a purge instigated by Communist Party in 1937.

30
Speaking as an ex-grammar schoolboy from a council estate, I have also encountered the perception that grammar schools enabled poor working-class kids to become socially mobile. Indeed, it was pretty much taken as read in my own neighbourhood. I have never had that perception myself and, in fact, recent research (Guardian 2nd March), shows that grammar schools did not create social mobility for the working-class.
I cannot think of any greater privilege than attending Eton, whoever/whatever financed Orwell, it’s from this life experience and values of which he interprets what he sees, and from the extract you quote, it isn’t surprising that the need to survive wasn’t mentioned.
31
The extract to which we are referring was written by Orwell in 1937, a period of economic depression, perhaps you can let us know which period you observed this anti-education culture? Although I don’t necessarily dispute that there has been such a culture, I dispute that this extract from Orwell is enlightening in any way.

@33: “Although I don’t necessarily dispute that there has been such a culture, I dispute that this extract from Orwell is enlightening in any way.”

From the post @31 here, occasional pieces in the press and personal experience of the education of my children when I lived up north, there are certainly pockets of anti-learning, of the bullying of kids who want to learn and of teachers who dumb down leaving brighter kids isolated and bored.

The relevance of that quote from Orwell is that it still relates and it has resonance. Orwell was writing about a “lad” culture, which still prevails in places, and we have seen how girls have overtaken boys in the school-leaving exams to the extent where the majority of undergraduates in British universities are now young women.

RT @TopsyRT: 'Get rich or die tryin' – do youths have the right to complain? http://t.co/VKWJkkS

In the news on Sunday:

A shortage of engineering skills in the UK could hamper growth at BP’s North Sea operations, an executive has said.

In July, BP announced plans to invest £3bn in redeveloping two oil fields in the North Sea, a move that was expected to create hundreds of new jobs.

But Trevor Garlick, head of BP’s North Sea operations, said the company could struggle to fill the available roles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14521890

Good article but there is more to the picture. For me it was a combination of things that lead me to living the get rich or die trying lifestyle. Started out i was pissed at the world because i was always a good selfless person but people would take advantage of me being trusting and giving. Then i fell into drug addiction which left me working hard(legally) to keep up with it all. Then someone who must have been close to me stole a few hundred dollars from me so i was in a deep hole. I was just numb and depressed from seeing too much evil too fast so i gave up on the fucked up world we live in. I was at the point where i didnt care at all if i died. Ran out of pills so i went out robbin which all these rappers glorify. Thats one of the bad things, todays music makes young people in competition of whos the bigger thug. Im done with this shit though my drug addiction is over and now im only mildly depressed. Looking back im ashamed but whatever, the past is the past.