Trouble Down Under

leo · 2 January 2002, 02:17 AM

Our news networks have been paying considerable attention to the fires burning in the Sydney area. They are a little sketchy on the details. It must be Summer there now and i understand the weather tends to be dry. Is there any truth to the story that the fires were the result of teen aged arsonists? Pray or hope for rain and relief from from this tragedy.

Andrew_P · 2 January 2002, 05:22 PM

Apparently most of the fires have been lit by arsonists(at least according to the local media). Even after all the news about houses being burned down, the firefighters were still catching people lighting fires and putting people's lives at risk.

All I can say is that the firefighters are indeed a special breed. From what I understand some of these men & women have been fighting these fires since Christmas Day.

mike_baram · 3 January 2002, 04:54 AM

Latest news is that the arsonists were a bunch of bored kids.
My solution....if they're over 18, let them work to pay off the damage. If it means 20 years crushing rock, so be it.
As for the minors, have Mum and Dad pay the damage. Then, let Mum and Dad deal with Junior in any way they want.
All I can say is that if I had done something like this when I was a kid, my father would have guaranteed that my head would experience six degrees of separation from the rest of me.

45_Auto · 4 January 2002, 01:20 AM

Make that "total" in my case!

Kirby · 5 January 2002, 06:25 AM

Quote:

All I can say is that if I had done something like this when I was a kid, my father would have guaranteed that my head would experience six degrees of separation from the rest of me.

When I lived in Englewood there was a teen age punk living on the next street. He did the casing for a juvy burglary ring that hit homes while the adults were at work. The punk was 16 years old, stood about 6' tall and weighed about 180 lbs. When his father found out about it, he spanked the kid. Guess who went to jail.

My house was one of the homes this little bastard robbed. He stole two watches, two silver coin collections and three pistols. When we finally got punky boy into juvenile court, the juvy court referee wasted no time in letting me know that if I had not had those deadly HAND GUNS in my home, that poor misunderstood child would never have been led into the temptation of invading my home. She had no trouble ignoring the fact that my house was locked up and those pistols were locked up, out of sight, in a solid cabinet.

It seems that punky boy had sold those pistols to an adult for a ridiculously small sum of money. I wanted to press charges against the man who bought those pistols but was told I couldn't because it couldn't be proven that he knew they were stolen. Tell me, my fellow Forumites, am I missing something here? ???

mike_baram · 5 January 2002, 06:46 AM

Kirby,
You are missing something. It's called "liberalism", a philosophy which declares that if someone commits a crime, the victim is at fault.
In "The Gulag Archipelago" Solzhenitsyn points out that you were sent to the Gulag for a minimum of 12 years for nothing, just on the accusation of someone. But, if you were a thief you only got five years, because you were a "victim of the class struggle".
Any questions as to where these liberals get their ideas?
VBR,
Mike

leo · 5 January 2002, 01:44 PM

There you go again, Mike. The movement to mollycoddle kids goes back pretty far. And, it ain't liberalism, it's horse manure.

6 January 2002, 12:40 AM

Sorry folks but you cannot keep on blaming "liberalism" for all the worlds woes.[No I aren`t a liberal as such!! My politics tend to be a socialisticly liberal republicalism

]But sometimes it seems to me that the scales of justice become unbalanced.There can be no doubt that they are at the moment but I think the main problem is that there is a lack of responsiblity.By that I mean that there HAS to be a balance between the rights of the individual and the reponsiblity that the individual owes to society.At the moment there is no such thing.How many times have you heard someone say "I`m entitled to XYZ!" when they have done NOTHING to earn that entitlement!!Yes there needs to be a "rebalancing" but we must be carefull not to swing the pendulum too far!!

Baron_von_Tecumseh · 6 January 2002, 04:42 AM

Mike,that blaming everything on liberals
is so 80's.
I have not heard someone call themselves
a liberal in years
The cure is to have these young punk
theives,do some time with Big Bubba
as a cellmate

mike_baram · 6 January 2002, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Mike,that blaming everything on liberals
is so 80's.
I have not heard someone call themselves
a liberal in years
The cure is to have these young punk
theives,do some time with Big Bubba
as a cellmate

That's right. They call themselves "Progressives".
But who voted for laws that make it illegal to punish your own child? Who made this society so accepting of the concept of "lack of individual responsibility"?
All I know is that if I or my siblings had done anything like what's going on today with kids ("it's not my fault! Society made me do it"), Dad would have slapped us silly, or used his belt, and we had no recourse. Today, he'd be sent to prison.
In the seventies he, as a teacher, was suddenly forbidden to discipline his students. Soon the inmates were running the asylum.
Yes, kids have always been mollycoddled, but usually by parents, and in a minority of incidents. Today it's pandemic.