YOUTH MATTERS Emily Hennings...Should children be seen and not heard?

More than a century later and today young people are definitely heard (they make sure of that); they also crave to be seen.

Now of course I am not talking about all young people, just the small majority who think they warrant new-formed respect from adults in the arrogant way they pursue these ideas.

It is the small majority that have produced unnecessary change, change that will be long-forgotten by the people who forced these rules.

This leaves the rest of us to clear up a mess that could have been prevented but, due to human rights, has been let free.

In war-time Britain, society wasn’t so rights-orientated; people had actual issues to worry about rather than knife crime by ten-year-old boys in broad daylight, and as a result of that, we were a country that proudly pulled together.

But now with the government making sure everyone is happy, they are trying to make us all equal, making themselves look feeble as they step back and let children (which I think is the only name they deserve to be called) take precedence over those in society who actually need support.

Now, I am not saying bring back the Victorian ideas. I think as a society we are past the stage where we can make decisions like this because it has gone too far.

As it won’t be children who make the first move towards change, it will have to be the rest of us.

How? I don’t know, but I do know the cowardly weakness we have taken towards teens needs to stop.

I am 18 and I know that if I walk into a shop with a friend the shop assistant will nine times out of ten be staring, willing us to steal something because that is ‘obviously’ what we do.

It’s not. Upbringing, education, motivation...The people who steal have obviously had none of these at a particularly high level and if they have, the arrogance they would need to possess to still commit a crime is laughable.

We obviously need to have a jolly good think about how we can force some change.

Little and often and we might be on to something.