Get... The Comfy Chair!

There have been calls to get the army and water cannon on the streets to quell the riots. I don't think that's such a great idea. The army are not trained in police work and these are, after all, children we are dealing with.

Okay, they are horrible, disgusting, feral, incomprehensible and illiterate, drunk and drugged to the eyeballs and have an attitude a mother wolverine would boot them out of the burrow for, but they are still children. None of them are mine, I am delighted to note, but then if they had been, they wouldn't have been out rioting.

What? Can't stop them? Where do they get their food, where do they get their washing and ironing done, and what would they do if they came home to find a shiny new kennel in the garden containing their bed and no dog? Yes, you can stop them. Wait until they're getting ready for Saturday night and they find their favourite white hoodie is still in the wash basket from last weekend and they have no clean underwear. They'll soon find time to consider your point of view.

My father very rarely raised a hand to me or my brother. I only recall one proper whacking and that was over forty years ago. I remember it well, and I'm still wary of arguing with him even though he's now very old indeed and much slower than he was. After that event, he never needed to hit us again. He just had to look as though he might.

My mother was, and remains, a very little woman but if you wanted to have your dinner without it being run under the cold tap first, you wouldn't mess with her either.

These things were not child abuse. Child abuse is where the child never knows if they'll be whacked just because Dad's in a bad mood or Mum's run out of gin. Child abuse is torment for the sake of torment, without reason. No, those things were not child abuse. They were discipline.

They never happened without good reason, and we often gave good reason because we were right little sods. However, we learned not to do it again (or not to get caught next time) and we never mugged anyone, never stole anything and never burned anything important.

It worked like this. We'd consider what happened when we were caught letting tyres down or putting an earwig in some kid's hair and telling them it would burrow into their ears and lay eggs in their brain. Then we'd extrapolate that to what was likely to happen if we did something much worse, such as stealing from a pensioner. The extrapolation soon began to look like it could involve some very unpleasant things and we decided against it. This only works if the punishment is always in proportion to the offence. Otherwise no extrapolation is possible and there's no difference between writing on a wall and setting fire to a cat. Which is what the legal system is now set up to achieve: no relationship between offence and punishment.

We learned something important. There were consequences to being a little sod and the consequence is not nearly as much fun as watching a kid who believes he'll wake up one night with a family of earwigs burrowing out through his eyes. Although that one was very nearly worth it. In fact, one day I hope to reprise it with one of the modern adult dopes. These days I won't even need a real earwig.

The tyres weren't worth it. When you're seven, pumping up a car tyre manually is seriously hard work.

It wasn't a hard childhood, nor was it a strict one. My explosives experiments in the garden were tolerated because I didn't blow up anyone or anything that mattered. Most were old plastic or wood models that I'd run out of room for. Somewhere I might still have photos. Picking off the slugs with pellets fired from an airgun brought no more than rolled eyes from my father, and no comment at all. I suspect because my version of slug pellets was more effective than his. Accidents were not punished, not even the infamous Nitromors incident, because I wasn't to know that it could do to clothing what it did to paint.

There was no abuse at all in my childhood. Sometimes I had to sit a little carefully, sometimes I had to go to bed while all the other kids were still outside, sometimes I had to eat cold wet food but all of those things happened because I caused them to happen. They were punishments for being a git. I understood that and became less of a git as a result, at least, if there was anyone watching.

Teachers could whack us but only with reason. It was a school covering a few mining towns and whacking a miner's child without good reason was not a good idea if you only had a teacher's physique. If you were whacked with good reason you never told your parents. You'd only risk another whacking.

In these enlightened times, of course, teachers are held responsible for a class full of gits but are not allowed to touch them at all, even in self defence. Parents are told that even raising their voices will make their children grow up odd and I've noticed some of them pointing at me when they say it. We had boundaries, and crossing those boundaries was unpleasant. There are no boundaries any more. No consequences.

Lefties are claiming it's all down to cuts. They are crowing that 'the people are rising up against the capitalist oppressor, innit?'. They insist that this is a reaction to the Tories or the police or deprivation or whatever bollocks they can think up. They've even tried to claim that the EDL and the BNP are actually setting the fires and doing the looting. So far they haven't claimed it's all down to far-right Norwegian snipers but there's still time.

Rubbish. These are children. Some as young as eleven, an age when I was making harmless little weedkiller bombs and putting wild lizards into girls' lunchboxes. There was a teacher-consequence for that one. I didn't do it again.

These children have no jobs, not because there are no jobs, but because many of them are too young to be legally employed. If they had jobs the Left would be screaming about child labour. These children neither know nor care about politics and imaginary cuts. Deprivation? They are wearing clothes that cost more than half my wardrobe. None look underfed and none are barefoot. If the lefties think the average fifteen-year-old even thinks about pensions, they are twice as deranged as I thought they were.

The Lefties think these are 'protests' but there are no protests. Nobody is demanding anything. Not one placard to be seen. No students, no union members, no long-term unemployed, nobody made redundant, nobody at risk of losing their home, nothing.

These are children brought up without boundaries. The Tories are not to blame. Creating this monster took many years. Labour years. Children start school at the age of five. By now, those who started when Tiny Blur took over would be around twenty. Coincidence?

Labour created the monster quite deliberately because they thought they could control it. The tragedy is that they still think they can. They think these riots are all Socialist riots against capitalism while the looters load up with all the capitalism they can get their hands on.

While I'd like to think that I would never have been part of any such thing, I have to wonder. What if I had been brought up with no discipline at all? What if my attempts to terrorise other children with mind games had not been stamped on, but had been encouraged as 'creativity'? What if the lizard episode, the ant hill escapade and the great grasshopper classroom escape had been seen not as behaviour to be corrected but as 'an interest in the environment'?

If that had happened, I would not have curtailed my nefarious childhood activities. I would, most likely, have extended them to the fullest of my ability. Like all children I would have been probing for the boundaries of acceptable behaviour and when I met no resistance, I would have assumed that I had not yet reached that boundary.

Yes, those children looting and burning are revolting, wretched, arrogant idiots but they didn't do that to themselves. Disgusting numbers of children leave school illiterate but they would find it hard to teach themselves. Children are starting school not toilet trained and unable to dress themselves. Not because they refuse to do it but because they have not been taught how.

Socialism created these children. They took away the boundaries and let the children think they were untouchable. Now those children are acting as though they are untouchable and doing as they were taught to do. Doing whatever they want. There are no consequences.

It's not too late. They can be given boundaries again, but will that happen? It doesn't look like it. Not when a Tory councillor in Birmingham suggests these rioters should not be punished. A Tory! The party of Laura Norda now contains men such as this? Meanwhile Labour's Tom Harris wants the death penalty for those same little scroats who stole his car radio. Something of a switch there?

Are the Tories going to make these rioters go to bed without supper or is that now classed as abuse? Will they be told to sit on the naughty step for ten minutes and poked with soft cushions until they cheer up? No, they will be rewarded with ASBOS and free iPods to add to the pile they've just picked up on a late-night shopping trip to Argos.

Yes, they robbed Argos. They robbed the cheapest shop on the high street. What do they teach the kids in school these days?

It was the culture of no-blame and no-consequence that led to these riots. Not cuts, not jobs, not race, not religion, not the banks, not this alleged 'deprivation', none of it. Socialism let these children believe they can do just as they please, and now they are doing just as they please. Where's the surprise?

The lefties created this juvenile monster. They still think it's theirs to control.

It recognises no control. It's been taught not to.

Oh, and the punishment they can expect is far worse than being made to sit in the comfy chair. They will exerience the horror of... this!

So it's not going to stop any time soon. The government, of any colour, won't let it. Why would they? They still have that civil contingencies act to play with.

There is no excuse for the behaviour of these Ferals. None. They made their choices and they committed the acts themselves. But they are not the only ones to blame here.