Modern England; my opinion!!

The situation in Ealing, west London.

What a title aye? Bit pretentious perhaps but my opinion is just that – my opinion.

People who read this blog on a regular basis will know one thing about me; I am not an expert on anything. That has never stopped me giving an opinion, of course; I know a bit about acting, a little bit about directing and I used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music – I could tell you the songs on the 'b' side of a hit record from the 50s and 60s but all that has gone now.

Sometimes I hear an old song on the radio and immediately I can tell you that A One Way Ticket to the Blues by Neil Sedaka is on the 'b' side of Oh Carol. - let's hope I'm right!!!

I used to be quite an expert on military side/snare drumming in fact I used to teach it many many years ago, I was a solo drummer, and I also taught map reading.

I taught those 2 things in the Army Cadets; this was not the private schools' version which was the Combined Cadet Force (CCF); we were attached to a regiment and in our case The Royal Artillery.

At one time I was even in a gun team; those are the big guns which took (I think) 8 of us to operate. I think it was called the L70 – I may be wrong there too and I think I was number six which meant I was behind the big gun and had to run around if the aim was changed drastically.

Here's a picture of an Israeli L70.

Yes Number Six – maybe I should have gone into the TV series The Prisoner (in joke there for Prisoner fans)..

I think the army cadets attracted a lot of inner city kids who didn't want to join The Boy Scouts and who kind of thought they were going to have to do 2 years national service and it gave a lot of us the chance to get rid of the jingoistic and militaristic feelings men get when they are youths; but the camaraderie you get with a military organisation is life lasting; you learn how to get on with people and learn self discipline.

Watch that word camaraderie as I think I will be using it later.

I am not going to advocate the return of national service – the draft as they call it in America – because I saw what the end of it brought; it brought us artistic freedom, it enabled the youth of the day to develop a taste for something and anger against the establishment and it brought us The Beatles!! who nearly ended the class system; before The Beatles all the people on TV spoke with plummy accents; another one of my pet projects.

The parents of The Beatles generation have been described by Tom Brokaw, amongst others, as the greatest generation – the greatest generation produced the 'baby boomers' who still rule the roost; make no mistake about it; Steven Spielberg, Paul McCartney et al are still with us and still call the shots no matter who Justin Beaver is.

So where am I going with this?

We have returned to the UK after spending 16 years in Los Angeles; we spent two and a half weeks in England and then left for Edinburgh and since we have been up here all hell broke loose in England with the riots.

Who are those kids? Those kids in the riots aged between 11 and 17? Forget about the one or two middle aged professional idiots who were found looting and the gang members in Birmingham who fired guns at the police, concentrate on those kids; who are they?

Those kids weren't here when we left for the USA 16 years ago but they are the children of the greediest generation of them all. Thatcher's Britain with the 'loads a money' mentality; the Keith Joseph, via Milton Friedman, economic policy which seemed to be a miss interpretation of Adam Smith's classic economics.

Before then John Maynard Keynes economic policies were used but when stagflation came along the economists didn't understand how that could happen – high unemployment and high inflation?Couldn't happen, the Keynesians said.

According to the preaching of Keynes that couldn't happen but maybe they forgot that 60 years after the lost generation the 2,000,000 people, that died in world war one, who didn't retire in 1976 and leave 2,000,000 vacancies for the school leavers.

In the early 70s inflation seemed to be a hobby and when those 2,000,000 jobs suddenly didn't become available for school- leavers unemployment increased!!!! They couldn't retire in their masses because they didn't live!!

The greedy generation, who have produced these kids, are around 40-45 now and their kids are the children who have been forgotten; so what did you expect?

We hear the opinions of the so called pundits as to why these kids were so unruly but a lot of them belong nowhere.

Their parents spent all their loads a money and left their kids to fend for themselves and those who didn't spend it just threw money at the children with no love.

Since we have been in America something strange happened in English schools; some politically correct teachers or parents or both got rid of team sport; so where do boys get to play football and cricket?

Where do the girls get to play netball and hockey?

Where do they all experience the camaraderie of belonging to some kind of organisation?

Nearly everybody likes to belong to something – look at the camaraderie (that word again) amongst the homeless. They have moved the homeless out from their tent city (more like blanket city) in London and I have read interviews with some of the homeless saying that the thing they say they miss most is the camaraderie.

The kids who used to play team sports at school left school and joined football teams at youth clubs or sports and leisure centres; a lot of kids actually returned to school just to play the team sports if they couldn't find a team out of school.

Boys could play football and cricket at all levels right up to the millionaire professional; I mean I even played and I was terrible.

There were always opportunities, and always will be, for people who wanted to play middle class games like tennis or track and field sports – those people will always find a way and it's a bit of a waste of time introducing things like fencing or other minority sports to state schools.

That's not the whole reason they are rioting and looting; one of the reason they do that is because it's fun. It's great fun to smash a window; if ever I have worked on a movie or TV show and a window needs breaking people seem to line up to do it.

If they had other things to do which were as much fun they would be doing it and not rioting; it doesn't have to be sport; if they were all geniuses they would be holed up in their bedrooms, contemplating their navels, inventing or discovering things by themselves – that's okay and that's what the geniuses are doing.

A good upbringing and a good education cannot be taken away afterwards so, for arguments sake, the private school cannot take the education back if the parents don't pay the school fees!

By the same token a bad upbringing and the lack of education has a permanent impact and it could be too late for all of those kids; they truly are the lost generation.

If you are unfortunate enough to live in a place which has been a victim of the riots ask yourself what you have done in the past for the youth of your neighbourhood and what you are going to do about them in the future.

It's no good turning a fire hose onto them or putting them in gaol – I don't have the solution I am not an expert.