Rain stopped play

I must admit that I was a little bit apprehensive about taking Raggs out for her evening walks these last few nights. Although Coventry seems to have escaped the rioting and looting as such, the speed with which it had spread had taken everyone I think by surprise.

Tuesday night, the local Police were out and about visibly in force in their patrol cars, evidently taking no chances. They'd advised parents to keep their kids indoors and off the streets, and I certainly didn't see as many as I'd have expected to on a pleasant summer evening during the school holidays. Last night there seemed to be somewhat fewer Police around, but it was just as quiet - almost spookily so as darkness fell and it started raining around 8.30. I came across a couple of groups of local people clearing up litter in their streets - not vandalism debris, just ordinary stuff - but an example perhaps of how the tide of public opinion is turning against the mindless destruction and how people are determined to 'do their bit' to counteract it? Maybe.

Undoubtedly, the rioters and looters had been on a roll everywhere: they must've thought they were unstoppable. That's largely fizzled out: now heavily outnumbered by the Police on the streets, rained on, and with most of the public against them, I can't see enough momentum building up again to cause anything like as much trouble as we saw on the news at the weekend.

We can't of course all protect our homes and businesses like the magnificent way in which the Sikhs in Southall did it: you don't mess with those guys! We rely on the Police, and then the Courts to do their bit. Following the Prime Minister's declaration that those responsible should go to jail, it was interesting that some Magistrates took him at his word and referred defendants to the Crown Court for sentencing. It was also interesting that many of those defendants didn't fit the stereotypical image of a disaffected alienated youth: a primary school mentor, postman, charity worker, lifeguard, scaffolder - some in their 20s and 30s. I did wonder about the 11-year old boy, though, complete with two mobile phones and a recent conviction and referral order for a previous but apparently unrelated offence. Why on earth we cling to this outmoded idea that "children" must be afforded the automatic protection of anonymity in Court for violent offences like these is beyond me. Hopefully some of the more hardcore offenders who have yet to be identified and traced will duly get their day in Court too.

The Prime Minister gave a 'tell it like it is' speech in Parliament: "... We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you" Almost Churchillian in tone, I thought: "... we will fight you on the beaches, we will fight you in the streets, we will never surrender" The rest of us can only hope that the actions match the words and that the message finally starts to sink in.

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime

This one caught my eye earlier in the week. Leaving aside the implications of the "crackdown" element, the list of transgressions - complete with sock inspections - is very similar to the school rules which prevailed when I was a schoolboy - with the exception of mobile phones, which hadn't of course been invented then. Depending on the circumstances, some of the infringements might've been punished by lines (or 'pages' as we had them) rather than a detention - but at the other end of the scale, rudeness towards the staff was likely to have earned you a caning.

It's not entirely clear whether the school *oops, sorry, "community college"* didn't previously have the rules or just wasn't enforcing them. But it's hard to actually find fault with a clear basic framework of what is regarded as acceptable standards of behaviour, and my mother certainly never showed any sympathy if I was punished for doing something I knew I'd been told not to.

Spare the rod.... 2

My heart goes out to the teacher cleared yesterday of the attempted murder of a pupil in his science class. From what's been reported (which may or may not be the full extent of the story) he just snapped under the pressure of taunting and disobedience from an apparently persistent troublemaker, goaded on by classmate(s) trying to video the whole thing.

Although in my day there were some Masters whom we simply daren't play up for fear of the consequences, there were others who were regarded as a soft touch and who were noted for being unable to keep a firm grip on classroom discipline - and I guess that's still just as much a facet of teaching now as it was then and probably always had been. However, what's different is that in my day there were repercussions. Being sent to see the Headmaster was known to have unpleasant results - and refusing to go wasn't an option. I don't know what the standard of discipline generally is like in the school at which this incident took place, but I can't help feeling that the abolition of caning has contributed an awful lot to the deterioration in standards of pupil behaviour of which this sad incident is a perhaps rather extreme example.

Spare the rod?

I've come across a couple of interesting discussions this week on the theme of corporal punishment. It's now virtually illegal in the UK apart from a concept termed "reasonable chastisement", introduced in response to public demand, allowing parents to adminster it to their offspring to a mild degree. I certainly got my fair share as a boy in the form of smacks and spankings, not to mention a damn good hiding or two, and including at least one occasion when I was spanked with a gym plimsoll at primary school. While I was still in short trousers, my mother had a nice line in yanking up my trouser leg and giving me a couple of hard whacks across the back of my bare thigh in public if I misbehaved while we were out anywhere. By and large I didn't think anything much of it: it was just a normal part of growing up, and it certainly never did me any harm. It was simple, but effective. I knew where I stood. I knew what I was and wasn't allowed to do, what I could or couldn't get away with, and what the consequences were if I did something I'd been told not to. There was no "discussion" about it, and I was well into my teens, I think, before I successfully challenged the basic rules.

I didn't ever get strapped or caned, although both were still very much in vogue as punishments during my schooldays. I did get a couple of detentions at secondary school. They weren't much more than a waste of time: they had precious little deterrent value apart from spurring me on to take slightly more care in future to avoid being caught. My main concern in fact was preventing my parents from finding out in case I then got punished for getting into trouble at school! Certainly none of us ever dared show the level of open defiance (and the lack of any real fear of consequences) that I found exhibited by pupils at a large comprehensive school when I was on a six-month job secondment there in the late 1990s.

But then I didn't as a boy want to get strapped or caned, either. If I had been, I imagine I'd have accepted it with my customary timidity rather than rebelling angrily against it. But quite apart from anything else, having a reputation for being exceptionally well-behaved meant - a) that I was never suspected of anything, so I could (and occasionally did) get away with all manner of assorted misdeeds, - and b) that I got all sorts of extra privileges and rewards because I supposedly could be trusted. The carrot vs stick psychology certainly worked better than anything else for me.

In the light of all this, I must admit I've become rather fascinated by some of the psychology behind consensual cp. A decreasing number of adults are going to have had any first-hand experience of the real thing as kids, but despite that, the time-honoured "six of the best" is an enduring British tradition which still seems to live on in guys' minds, and apparently in quite a number of cases on their backsides as well! The purely masochistic element I can relate to easily as I have a very submissive side to my nature. The whole "one sir, two sir, three bags full sir" role-play scene on the other hand does very little for me at all. Like most things, it's all a matter of taste and whichever way you slice it, submitting voluntarily to a painful beating has got to be something of an acquired taste. I do think my life would be very bland and dull, however, if I didn't sample the occasional new taste every now and again!