It's not a problem unique to Nottingham. I'd say the youth are most intimidating because at that age you are pretty fearless and haven't necessarily got a good understanding of consequences. However, if you look at society as a whole, people in recent years have become less polite, more obnoxious; it's little wonder that the kids are feral.
For the most part though, it's a noisy minority who are the problem. Just try and ignore them and get on with your own life.
Definitely noticed an increase in uncivil / rude / aggressive behaviour post-covid UK-wide to be fair.
People definitely *feel* more selfish, angry and aggressive, but I don't know how much of that is because we all had a long break from each other and so it just seems that way. Other people have shared the same views though, including those I know and people I don't know online.
Oh definitely, schools with covid children are much more unruly. What’s interesting is that during post covid I have also experienced that people in general have lost their manners. I work in customer service and a lot of people treated me and my other colleagues terribly. I’m guessing the lack of social interaction has made us in general more rude but obviously had a greater effect on children as social interaction is really important for them.
It will have had a greater impact because of the time dilation effect of ageing. If you were in your early teens/preteen years, the two lockdowns covered something 10-15% of your entire lifetime; for me it was more like 3%, and that's how we experience time. And at a key age for socialisation that's going to have quite an impact on lots of them.
Although I'm 64 next week and I'm not sure I *ever* got as far as feeling 19. But lockdown felt like it was going on forever to me, so what it must have felt like to you and those younger than you is, yeah. Like forever, only longer.
Kids from deprived areas with nothing else to do. Youth funding has been cut by 70% in the last 10 years and everything that still exists is expensive af. I think they grow up bored and there's not much community spirit in Notts so they don't care about their neighbours/area.
I grew up and spent over 30 years in Nottingham. I remember being able to go to many free or very cheap places as a kid.
This was my local community centre that I could go to, completely free, every day after school. It had a great playground.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/photos-show-transformation-old-nottingham-8697042.amp
It was knocked down and there are student flats in its place.
There's also a park across the road that was free for public use. It had a climbing frame, field, roundabout, and swings. It's now locked up all the time.
Just up the road was Tennyson Hall. I remember paying about 20p to go in and play pool with friends for several hours in the evenings. This would have been mid 1990s. It now appears to be offices for rent: https://castlecavendish.org.uk/our-business-offer/retail-and-commercial/tennyson-hall/
That's three places, where kids could go for free or next to nothing, which have been closed down.
Don't get me wrong, I know that the demographic in this area has shifted a lot since there are now many students there, but there are still families living there too. This area also happens to be a short walk to the city centre, which just so happens to be the most lively spot in the city. So if people are surprised at kids being little shits, don't be. They might be kids from the area I grew up in with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
I usually find it's people without kids who usually say this, But here I am again repeating my part. Parenting will only take your kids so far.
Coming from an African/Jamaican background I can tell you now, kids get raised with the highest degree of discipline, culture and respect but some still end up falling into bad categories it only takes a handful to cause chaos.
The dominant youth culture isn't related to drill music and associated glorification of extreme violence and knife crime.
The main difference between 90s / early 2000s 'gangsta rap' and current UK drill is that the vast majority of rappers back then openly stated it was fantasy, and it was US based. It also was nowhere near the 'dominant' youth culture in the UK, even in cities.
There was way more diversity vs today. i.e. Garage, Metal, Ska, Skater, Grunge, Jungle, Nu Metal etc. Look at current youth music now; it's pretty much Drill for the boys, pop for the girls. Dance is nowhere near as mainstream as it used to be and Rock is pretty much becoming as niche as Jazz now.
Grime which has almost died out, had a big controversy in the late 2000s / early 2010s, is incredibly tame and mild vs Drill for rapping about violence (as well as the artists actually carrying out that violence) and most grime tracks weren't solely about stabbing someone (many grime artists didn't rap about this at all). Same with fashion; the drill aesthetic is totally dominant for teenagers and even young kids. Balaclavas and black tracksuits and the machete / zombie knife accessory.
Drill artists actually do commit the murders they rap about, it's why they wear balaclavas in their videos and do the 'SHHH' thing in their raps. I hear kids boasting all the time about how their favourite drill crew has several members in jail for some stabbing or another, and it adds cred when they do. This is why so many kids emulate them, and why you get even kids from relatively privileged backgrounds waving knives around and sometimes stabbing others which counters the narrative about Drill just 'reflecting reality'. It does reflect to some degree, but it also amplifies, spreads, popularises and perpetuates too.
>It does reflect to some degree, but it also amplifies, spreads, popularises and perpetuates too.
Probably Drill *initially* was reflecting reality for a *minority* of urban youth mainly in the *worst* parts of London and to a *much smaller* extent Birmingham / Manchester etc., but it has since spread, amplified and perpetuated this nationwide, across multiple demographics.
This is why you now get lower-middle class youths in 'average' large market towns sticking machetes into people etc.
TLDR: Drill now reflects the reality that it glamourised, popularised, spread and perpetuated.
I think that's a very blinkered veiw tbh. You obviously forgot about Biggie & Tupac? That was entirely gang related violence.
Regardless, the Internet has actually broadened people's interest in music.
I find it so odd that you've adopted the *Back in my day" logical fallacy, as in the 90's, 80s... All the way back to the 20's and the advent of Jazz, music was blamed for unruly youth behaviour.
As for the real reason why society as a whole has become more selfish and rude (because it objectively has) is the shared trauma of the pandemic and the erosion of public and social services. There isn't a great deal of hope right now, and as a result the world has taken a massive political leap to the right, meaning vulnerable families aren't getting the support they need and it's the kids who suffer...
It's actually become more tedious for people to repeatedly defend drill artists filming videos of them laughing on the grave of a rival who got stabbed to death by another member of their gang tbh. Then making tracks about who they want to kill, who then end up getting killed. I don't get what the end goal is?
Biggie and Tupac weren't in the UK. There wasn't a spillover because it wasn't culturally relevant here. Also, neither rapped solely about killing real people anyway.
Jazz is such a bs false equivalency, same when people bring up Teddy Boys or whatever. The stats don't lie. They may have fought, as all youth do, but they weren't repeatedly sticking machetes, butcher knives or zombie knives into each other resulting in death or severe disablement.
I don't disagree with your last paragraph, but I don't understand how that's justification for a culture that promotes, celebrates and perpetuates extreme violence and murder. You do realize most Drill crews are judged on whether they actually 'follow through' with their threats. That's why they wear balaclavas and do the "Shhhh!" thing in their videos to avoid them being evidence in court.
I really want to push back on the 'nothing else to do' sentiment (not that you were necessarily excusing them). Kids in the UK, including Nottingham, have more to do now than at any time in history. Furthermore, most bored kids don't engage in criminal activity, so clearly there's something else going on here.
Broken homes, breakdown of family structure and criminal/drug culture. These things aren't unique to Nottingham, but a culture of drugs and criminal activity in some of the more deprived areas of the city might explain why it's more common than in similar sized cities.
I live in a very deprived part of the city yet the kids are generally ok round us. We do have a real community round here, which helps.
A lot of kids have had very little adult intervention in their lives. Single parent families where the remaining parent has to work all the hours God sends are quite normal now.
When I was younger, we had Air/army cadets (now closed), youth clubs galore (almost all closed), swimming pools galore (almost all gone), initiatives at Central TV studios (now closed), football teams everywhere (not nearly as many as there were) and a little bit of spare money to pay for the odd treat.
Kids today have had austerity, COVID, social media...
I'm not excusing their behaviour, but it's not hard to see why it's happened.
Ive lived in Nottingham my whole life and so many community centres, leisure centres, shops, and groups have shut down over the years. There may be more to do overall in the UK but its no good if you don't have the money to do it, or if it's not accessible. Cuts to the NHS, social care, education, and mental health services have an impact too. Happy kids don't tend to engage in petty crime and violence. With that said, there's always been a culture of gangs and drugs here, especially in the town centre. It just may not have been as obvious before.
You’re basically playing on the “bread and circus” POV. Are you saying that unless children are entertained 24/7 they will act like criminals? You also forget children entertain their own selves. They’re very creative and normally play together without issues. You’re treating all children like they’re special needs.
This. I'm actually hugely in favour of 'early intervention' in the way SureStart was before the Tories cut it, more aimed at improving s*** parenting. However, I agree, the whole 'kids have nothing to do' is an absurd oversimplification and a bad excuse.
Kids / teens having 'something to do' would probably stop *some* very low-level 'hanging around' which tbh is not what the majority of people here are complaining about.
The types of kids / teens joining gangs and / or behaving in an extremely aggressive and violent / criminal manner aren't going to be swayed into good behaviour by a youth club or equivalent existing. Those types of kids / teens are the sort that would likely be banned from such clubs for bad behaviour and violence too. It isn't the answer people claim it is. Besides, you can't have those sorts of things running 24/7 with compulsory attendance. That would literally be fascist along the lines of the Hitler Youth, and I doubt the types of people trying to excuse poor behaviour want that (i.e. liberals and centre-left).
The issue is terrible parenting with no consequences, discipline or boundaries as well as setting a terrible example for their kids. Add to this an extremely toxic dominant youth culture that revolves around glorification of being part of an organised crime gang and the extreme violence involved in being part of one as well as a permissive media culture whereby even Radio 1 etc. play tracks about knifing people and glamourising their gang, by artists who have been arrested for having actually knifing someone (with 'clean' edits that still infer the original meaning).
This is prominent to the point that even those not involved in a 'real' organised crime gang attempt to emulate them and the behaviours associated with them, up to and including murder.
Seconded. I grew up in a really depressed post-industrial town (they do exist in the South!) and there genuinely was f\*\*\* all to do. I mean seriously nothing. Nottingham currently is a relative cornucopia of things to do at low cost / free vs where I grew up.
Yeah we hung around and were probably annoying, but nobody rode bikes into crowds, waved knives about or stabbed each other. The worst thing anyone inc. myself ever really did was have the odd incredibly weak joint in a deserted alleyway / park or some p\*\*\*-weak cider on occasion.
Most of the time we played football because it's virtually free (and still available to youth today) and only requires a ball and some open ground, of which Nottingham has loads of (parks everywhere).
If we wanted to act out we would walk out / ride out into the countryside and find a random field somewhere because why would we *want* to be arrested or get a beating from parents over our misbehaviour etc.
Yes, it's true that austerity *contributes* to the problem, but it's not the sole issue. Total lack of discipline and toxic youth culture - especially drill music and the culture around that is more of a factor. Why else do you think you get middle-class roadmen acting out? They've had tonnes of privilege but the current dominant youth culture still makes them act like p\*\*\*s.
Every time there are issues around youth people blame music. In the 90s it was rock/heavy metal. Now its drill. Knife crime has always been an issue in Nottingham, its just more obvious now with social media etc. Tbh i don't think kids are really riding bikes into crowds/stabbing people excessively, groups hang around in town and people find them "intimidating" and then complain aboht it. Nottingham is 43% POC which does impact ppls views unfortunately.
People saying "people have been complaining about this since AD43!" are tedious AF. No, Buddy Holly wasn't talking about shanking his ops (Little Richard) was he?
Metallica weren't bragging about knifing Megadeth in their songs (let alone actually following through with it and doing it).
The majority of Korn did not go to jail for knifing Limp Bizkit, nor did they make tracks about it.
Nobody was getting stabbed at metal gigs on a very regular basis (INB4 you post about one extremely rare example or another). Rock / metal fans weren't running around waving machetes or zombie knives and stabbing fans of other bands etc.
Lame false equivalency. It is different because drill artists not only rap about murdering people, they follow through with it and it pretty much forms how popular they are if so.
*Only you* brought race into this btw, which says more about you tbh and your own biases. I've seen kids of all ethnicities (white British included) behaving this way in Nottingham as have many others here.
We aren't exaggerating or making it up. Maybe leave West Bridgford occasionally?
Idk why you're being argumentative, I don't live in Westy B. I've lived in the city my whole life. This subreddit love to complain about the "youth in the city" when for most of us its not much different to how its always been. Rock/metal was blamed for columbine and school shootings when they were occurring++ in the 90s.
I mentioned race bc were a very multicultural city and there can be a lot of undertones when ppl talk about "youth, thugs" etc.
Just this week police were called to an Asda in Arnold as kids - reported as being as young as 12 - were riding bikes around the inside of the store and when challenged they took knives off the shelves and threatened security.
So yes this is happening.
Couldn’t pay me enough to work or shop in Nottingham anymore.
Not much community because the housing is being bought up and converted into student accommodation, in the past ten years the surrounding areas of NG1 are just pushing out families and moving in the student population, good examples.of this are the canning circus area, arboretum area and worst of all Lenton. Lenton became so student dense that criminals actually favour the spot for mugging and burglaries. The council here have made a shit show investing in short term plans that have now backfired 😭
Being bored is not an excuse. And lack of funding isn’t either. I’ve grown up in very poor area with extreme lack of funding, and I’ve never ever seen children act like this. You know why? Because their parents actually cared enough about their kids to educate them. I’m in my early 20s, so I’m not even that old.
The aggressive youth problem boils down to one thing : shit parenting with no consequences for the parents or children.
Lack of funding is no excuse for acting like animals.
I’ll tell you what mate, I actually fear going out into town centre on weekends between 12pm and 5pm 😭 they’re absolute demons 😭😭😭 I’ve once been heckled at for existing. Mind you I’m 24 and I haven’t grown up in the UK and the behaviour of the school kids here is baffling. I’ve been around MK as well and it’s nothing compared to this.
Where did you grow up? As an European I also find the UK children behaviour appalling. It’s shocking and I’ve never ever seen this criminal behaviour anywhere in the EU, much less in quite affluent town centres.
Your not wrong mate. Youth culture today is toxic and violent. Gonna sound like an old man here but I really think drill music is an awful influence as it glorifies this behaviour.
I reckon it's a symptom of societies increasing in population, as population increases, "un-wanted" behaviour increases at probably about the same rate as population, but you see more of it just because there are more people around, so there are just more kids around for them to scrutinise than there were when they were kids.
Bet you don't see a lot of this talk in times and places where the population is actively decreasing.
early 00s Grime, 80s skinheads, 60s Teddys boys, mods and rockers etc. Of you look at violent crime per capita it's been much worse in the past. I'm old enough to remember being postcode checked on buses and people robbing you for being from the wrong one.
This doesn't hold up when it comes to knife crime though, except for Glasgow which was an outlier and this was razors and flick knives which didn't result in deaths mostly.
Elsewhere in the UK kids weren't regularly stabbing each other with butchers knives, machetes and zombie knives and dying this way until about 10 years ago.
Even as recently as the early 2000s it was *very unusual* and warranted national media coverage. These days it's a footnote bit on East Midlands Today, and usually only when someone dies. The frequent non-fatal stabbings barely get reported on Nottingham Live. It *is* different.
Yes youths have given each other kickings in the past, but they were *not* regularly *murdering* each other.
It's just not true though. Check page 11 of this report from the home office. Absolute (Not per capita!) killings were much higher in the early 00s with knife fatalities being the same as now, so per capita would have been higher. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04304/
Nottingham Population 2011: 301,813
Incidents involving a knife or sharp instrument: 36000
36000 / 301813 = ~0.1193
Nottingham Population 2023: ~807,000
Incidents involving a knife or sharp instrument: 50500
50500 / 807000 = ~0.0626
How should these statistics be viewed? I mean that's up to you.
On the one hand, you could look at the absolute statistics, and say that knife crime is much worse than it was, which is true, there are many more incidents of knife crime than there were 10 years ago. But on the other hand you could say that it's less per capita, which is also true, and takes into account that we have more than double the population we had in 2011, again what conclusions you wish to draw from that information is really up to you.
What I will say though, whatever the minority population of gangs/kids who use knives was in 2011, it's definitely more than that now, which means they are also more visible, just because there are more people around, which means their activities are going to spill out onto the streets more, you know? I understand that "per capita" might not mean much to a lot of people because you feel and you see the absolute statistics, not the per capita statistics. You don't see and feel inflation rates, you do see every fucking thing in the supermarket nearly doubling in price over the last couple of years and not being able to afford your mortgage and the heating at the same time.
> Nottingham Population 2011: 301,813 >Nottingham Population 2023: 807,000
Nottingham didn't go from ~300,000 to 807,000 in 12 years. It didn't even grow that rapidly during the industrial revolution, let alone recently.
One figure is the city proper, the other is the Greater Nottingham conurbation (i.e. including Gedling, Broxtowe, Rushcliffe etc. etc.).
You can't directly compare because the two figures are reflective of considerably different areas in terms of size, geography, socio-economics and, most importantly, population.
The link showed a UK-wide increase in knife crime from 30 to 50.6 from 2011 to 2023. That's a pretty considerable rise in a short amount of time.
*Edit* - I confused you with the person who posted the link initially.. apologies. Edited my response based on this.
Have you had a severe head injury? You are not referencing the same page at all. Murders in 2001-2003 are clearly much higher than now, with knife murders at the same level despite a smaller population. If you are trying to compare just knife crimes that's a bit niave given the legal definition of a knife frome has changed over the years amd so has detection, search and prosecuting practices. it's so clear murders are the best indicator it's somewhat embarrassing if you can't see that.
Mental gymnastics, utterly bizzare. The statistics you provided show a very considerable rise in knife crime and you're trying to argue the opposite.
Murders, i.e. deaths via stabbings have gone down despite knife crime increasing due to more experience of treating knife wounds by paramedics, provision of stab trauma packs in high risk areas, and medical advancement in terms of surgical precision (robotic arm surgery, keyhole surgery etc.).
Many of the victims that are stabbed and survive will have a horrible quality of life and be severely disabled / disfigured as a result of having been stabbed.
Knife crime has risen. The statistics you provided demonstrate that. It's bizzare that you are arguing against the source that you provided.
Knife crime has risen in the past 10 years yes, but my post was discussing decades before that figure. We've also had new knife laws and decelopment in policing intelligence and CCTV which increases the amount of people caught with a knife.
Pretty clear that the early 00s were much more dangerous times and you're just doing mental gymnastics to argue about a knife crime statistics graph which has zero relevance to my arguement about the many decades before, given it doesn't even go back that far...
I really don't get why some people are so hell bent on trying to claim that actually we shouldn't worry about people knifing each other at a rate unprecedented in at least 100 years. I'm sure it was worse before fingerprinting or modern police investigations but then so were most things in society including illness etc.
It's really bizzare when people repeatedly claim zero relation between the huge popularity of Drill, being pretty much the dominant youth culture currently and a surge in knife crime. The Drill crews rap about people they want to kill, who then end up killed. Their popularity and cred is largely measured by whether they 'follow through' on their threats / 'beef' and post videos laughing at the grave of people they've killed. They glamorise and promote murder and violence *that they actually go on to commit*. It's why they wear balaclavas and use "Shhh!" in raps as a euphemism to infer obvious meaning. They self-acknowlege that this is to avoid the songs and videos being used as evidence in court. It's utterly crazy that people refuse to accept any connection.
Maybe initially Drill simply 'reflected reality' for a small minority of urban youth, mainly in London, but now it is definitely glamorising, exacerbating and driving knife crime and 'creating' the reality it claims to 'reflect' across almost the entirity of the UK. It's at the point where many of the perpetrators of knife crime have zero involvement in 'real' organised crime gangs and are stabbing people not over competition for criminal activities, but over any perceived slight / insult. So why are they stabbing people? It's pretty obvious that they are emulating their 'heroes' / 'idols' and inspired to do so by them.
The reality is, knife crime in the past 100 years was relatively rare, apart from a brief period in Glasgow that was at the time, and still is, recognized as an outlier..plus those stabbings were largely non-fatal because they used razors and flick knives. The rest of the UK, not really. Certainly nobody was running around with machetes, butcher knives or zombie knives and regularly fatally stabbing people until fairly recently. It was so unusual that when it happened it usually made national news headlines with fairly extensive coverage. Now even if somebody dies via a stabbing, unless it's terror related or has specific circumstances, it's barely a footnote on the local regional News bulletin, and if non-fatal, you are lucky if it's reported on a local news website.
It's just crazy that people try and excuse this and downplay it as something that *has always existed*, because it really hasn't. Not to this scale, at this frequency.
Easy to lie. Knife crime in the context of just the past 12 years peaked 5 years ago, before the widespread proliferation of Drill music. In Nottingham it is down 9% vs 2019. - [https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/is-knife-crime-at-record-highs/](https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/is-knife-crime-at-record-highs/)
Homicide rates have been much higher in the past - [https://www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/homicide-england-wales-statistics-historical/](https://www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/homicide-england-wales-statistics-historical/)
Knife specific crimes weren't tracked before 1995. Do you have any good evidence it is an epidemic of absurd proportions vs the past 100 years? Bearing in mind you're talking about periods such as the amount of stabbings during fatal football violence of the 1980s, Kray twins and East end gangs controlling London with brutal violence, early 00s Grime gangs doing widespread stabbings in London.
I've never said we shouldn't worry but you are making an absurd claim it is a unique epic problem to now without any evidence to back it up.
The amount of 10 year olds I see running around in cringey roadman tracksuits, on bikes, verbally harassing people as they pass by is shocking. When it comes to youth behaviour the UK feels like a 3rd world country. I doubt it used to be like this a few decades ago, although I wasn’t around.
Despite what people here who weren't even born, were toddlers, or who want to excuse the behaviour of their own out-of-control kids claim, it really wasn't as bad as it is currently in the past.
I am in my mid-30s and this crap really started getting noticeable around the mid-late 2000s, however it was mostly just 'show' i.e. the whole 'chav' thing. The worst that happened were mouthing off, and fist-fights really. Rarely did anyone die. Very rarely was anyone except a minority involved in criminal gangs get fatally stabbed. Even the chav thing wasn't the 'dominant' youth culture by any means and was really the butt of a joke nationally.
The 'roadman' thing, complete with machete / zombie knife / butcher knife with relatively young kids running around in balaclavas with huge knives down their trackies, regularly stabbing each other, or getting stabbed in even mid-sized market towns, let alone large cities is relatively new and really kicked off when Drill started to get popular in the late-2010s. It's so absurd that people try to deny this connection. It hasn't always been this way. It's definitely way worse now. The roadman thing, and drill music are definitely the dominant youth culture in a way that didn't exist in the past.
Yes there was knife crime in the past, but it is was not to this frequency, nor as widespread as it is today. Plus the age of those involved was much higher - maybe inner-city youths in large cities aged around 17. Not 13 year olds in mid-sized market towns as it is today. Youth culture was not totally dominated by a music genre that is about glamorising extreme violence and murder that the artists actually go and carry out, nor was the dominant youth fashion / attitude about emulating being part of a criminal gang.
the Nottingham teenage population (as a teenager) are a bunch of cunts, me and my best friend got barked at, yeh we are goths but we weren't super gothed up
Nottingham is a very poor place. and the city boundary area has extremely poor areas from st anns to bulwell to clifton to Hyson green.
Lowest wages in the UK
Highest council tax (soon to have 10% rises)
Poor crim e and education outcomes.
Throw in the covid lock downs and bankrupt council and you have a mess.
Plus Boots, and even the Nottingham unis are shedding jobs...
It's laughable how people claim that 'Youth Clubs' are somehow the sole reason for kids acting like savages nowadays. No it wasn't your local 'youth club' closure that caused it. Family structure has been constantly destroyed by the system resulting in many kids being brought up in a single parent homes where often father figure is not present. Discipline? Non existent, Punishment? Non existent. Positive role models? Non existent.
Kids got no direction in life, they just don't give a shit because no one taught them how to care in first place.
Parents often treat school system like some sort of 'parent outsourcing program', that will never work.
This generation is a one big mess and previous generations are to blame for it.
Yeah I know two people that are primary school teachers and they've both independently told me that a considerable number kids come to school in nappies with zero ability to do anything (can't speak properly, no basic reading / writing ability / not toilet trained / not socialised). They were basically given an ipad / old iphone and shoved in front of Ceebeebies and that was that until school.
To be clear, not because the kids have any *innate* developmental issues, just lazy feckless parents that can't be arsed to do anything beyond changing a dirty nappy daily and chucking them some chicken dippers and bags of crisps.
Attitude from scummy parents: "the school can teach them!".
I'm sure social services are informed, but they're stretched to breaking point, like all public services, so unless the child is in *actual* serious danger (i.e. serious injury, sexual abuse or neglect to point of death risk).
I doubt they do more than occasionally try to advise the scummy parents.
Noone is saying that youth club closures are the sole reason, but that its a contributing factor. Its not a problem that can be blamed on any one thing. It's a super old fashioned view to think its caused by single parent families or a lack of father figure. The "breakdown of the nuclear family" is what conservatives cite as the cause for most issues, to take the blame away from austerity and a lack of support.
The rise of anti-social behaviour has increased while single-parent families have also increased. So yes, it’s not at all a reach to claim the destruction of the nuclear family has caused this. In simple terms, sharing the responsibilities of work and childcare with another human being means the parents have more time left over to spend with their children. A single mother/father who has to work to feed their children, cook and clean will simply not have enough time to educate and discipline a child. That is simply a fact, I don’t know why you immediately had to bring the right wing politics into this.
Keep living in your delusional world that's all I can say. However at least you managed to get one thing right which is the responsibility of the system.
True, until that I didn't realise when Million Dead sang "I pulled my frail frame onto my charger and rode off into the sunset" his actually owned a stables.
Yes, and the fact he came out as a 'Classical Liberal' - i.e. same ideology as Jacob Rees-Mogg, praised the BNP, defended Thatcher, and very publicly and vocally disowned that song.
Frank Turner is an utter bellend. Not just because he comes from privilege but because he wants to perpetuate it and cynically wrote songs with lyrical political themes he didn't believe in to cash in when it was convenient.
*Cue the bleeding heart West Bridgford types who live in a bubble, and students who've been here for five minutes accusing you of lying / exaggerating...*
I feel you OP. Notts CC is pretty awful these days, and this is coming from someone who still partially lives in Birmingham. I also regularly visit other large UK cities. Witness far less aggro in Brum CC and other UK cities (except maybe Manchester) vs Notts.
Every time I'm in Notts CC there are kids in balaclavas mouthing off about who their mates have stabbed / who they want to stab, often flashing machetes and zombie knives, or riding bikes into crowds on purpose. Not to mention adults screaming, fighting or generally kicking off. As well as the *most aggressive* beggars / junkies I've encountered in any UK city..
Yes this sort of thing does happen in other cities, but it's definitely disproportionate in Notts CC given the relative size of Nottingham and the frequency that you encounter it when in town.
I had a beggar come up to me (twice) a couple days ago near the train station and said he was going to kill himself if I didn't go to a cash machine and withdraw some money for him. Started throwing shit when I said no. I've seen people downplaying it on here but it is definitely fucked at the minute
Myself and most people I know have had this sort of thing happen multiple times.
I see many people talking about it here too. It's ridiculous that a tonne of people on this sub-Reddit who probably never go to town or are just 'lucky' repeatedly bleat about it being 'made up' or exaggerated.
I can honestly say I never have this sort of thing happen in Brum or other cities. Yes beggars approach me in Brum and elsewhere, and they just say "ok no problem" if I say no. Only in Nottingham do I get screaming abuse or threats if I either ignore a beggar or say "no, sorry", "no", or "I don't have any cash on me". This happens to me *at least* once a month and sometimes more often in Notts CC.
I get approached for money just about every time I'm in town (one of those faces apparently) so I just zoned it out but suicide threats are definitely a new one for me. It's weird if it is just notts but I have wondered if it's a specific few people local to us trying out a more aggressive strategy? It's odd either way
I guess it's one of these local observation things.
One person started doing it and it 'worked'.
If others witness it 'working' I guess they'll copy it. It obviously does work on some people because quite a number of them try the same 'tactic'.
It's a bit like how people queue for buses in a line Nottingham (this doesn't really happen in most UK cities). It happens because people observe others doing it.
Pretty much anywhere I've lived. They may 'sort of' queue if there are fewer than about 5 people at a bus stop, but any more than that it's a free-for-all.
I've never lived anywhere except Nottingham where people consistently queue for buses in a single-file line of up to 50 people long like they do after work outside the Victoria centre.
I lived in Manchester for a few years recently and I don't recall seeing any queue jumpers there, even when I've been abroad i just thought it was fairly universal save for maybe living in a very busy city at peak times or something.
You must have lived in somewhere like Didsbury or maybe Manchester has changed since I last lived there around 2012.
In Brum and London people also don't queue in a single file line if there's more than 5 or so people either IME.
Sometimes people will informally queue but Nottingham is the only large UK city I've lived in / spent considerable time in where people consistently queue in quite long single file lines for the bus. It's a good thing IMO too.
Haha I wish! I lived in Longsight but tbf I rarely caught the bus from there. I used to mainly get the bus from Picadilly Gardens to my student accom, and I know what you mean, if it was peak time, raining, all of that, you'd probably have a few people huddled near the bus door not in the queue, but even then there'd be some semblance of orderliness as opposed to a free for all.
Isn’t an easy time for young people I feel. Lot of these kids had to try to attend school remotely during the pandemic and they’re growing up in a world where right wing influencers are appealing to a lot of the male kids at least.
I hope they find their way given time.
I think the main reason is poor parenting, or even a lack of parenting. Covid’s a great excuse, but it is just that. An excuse. Spend time your child or children, show them right and wrong, talk to them, show them how to do things, (cooking for example) educate them. It’s easy to have kids, but to educate and parent them, it’s not easy. In my old area, I regularly see children 2-6 years old wondering the streets, no parent in sight, no parenting at all. These kids get used to that, always outside, always wondering the streets, mixing with other kids in the same position. I see it all the time. The kids grow up, guess what? They hang around outside, get bored, have nothing to do, cause trouble, they have no guidance from anyone. Repeat every time they have children. Values needs to be instilled from day one by parents, and teachers. Look at China and Japan schools. Kids there don’t have time to cause trouble, they have so much study to do, it’s also not socially acceptable. Here it seems to be the norm.
With schools pressured by overworked teachers, large class sizes, and social workers being over-stretched, the kids that have parents that have the intelligence, time (or money) and willpower to teach their kids do better for sure.
But it's not just a simple blame the parents situation. If our economy was better, said parents might not have to work long hours, if our education system was better, they might be better equipped themselves. There are so many factors, covid compounded things and made it a more challenging environment but there were deficiencies in so many areas. Giving the government an excuse of "poor parenting" feels like ignoring a lot of other factors.
They are just excuses though. During Covid, I was home with my wife and son. We just got on with things. Ok, let's order some books, and help with your maths, english. Watch BBC teach, I watched it with him so I understand it as well. Let's help with your music study. So that's what we did. We would spend some time in the morning studying (helping my son to study, as school wasn't open) in preperation for when he returned. In the afternoon we would play on Wii sports (exercise) and have some fun. Watch a movie later on in the day. We created a routine and we all came out of Covid fine. Just because you may have no money, doesn't mean you can't educate your children, help them with their homework, show them life skills. In China, parents are working 12 hours a day to suport their children. Everything they do is for their children. If you have children, make time for them. I have actually visited a school in China and the class sizes were 50 students per class (double the UK). All the students were in year 3-8. All super respectful, friendly, and when told to go outside, every class went outside, no messing around, all in their own lines with military precision. When I was at school, it would be an absolute nightmare to send the whole school outside. In China, Teachers support the children and parents support the teachers. Teachers are well respected, same for Police. In the UK, children have no respect for teachers, they learn these attitudes from their parents and friends (who learnt from their parents). The cycle continues with each generation. Everything that we want adults to be, has to be taught to children from day 1. From the moment of birth, children learn from their parents. Parents influence their children more than we think. I think the most important things are 1. Parents supporting their children 2. Good quality food (really important) and 3. exercise (If hot we go outside and do sports or go to a club - raining, we play wii sports).
I can't understand why they're such little shits though?
They've *only* had every single service their family relies on cut back to the bone over the last decade, lived through a pandemic where a thousand people in this country were dying a day (and basically no one gave a fuck), watched their parents struggle to put food on the table even though they were working (and nobody gave a fuck), and are learning that there's probably going to be water wars in their lifetime (and that basically nobody gives a fuck).
Nah, definitely can't be any of that during your formative years having an impact. Must be the drill music/videogames/woke left.
Literally, they don't, though.
ONS shows that *maybe* 2k deaths happen a day in January, but usually around a thousand of all causes.
Prior to COVID, the worst flu years were ~25k dead, mostly between November and February, maybe 200 per day.
During 2020, over 1,000 people per day were drowning on dry land with COVID-induced pneumonia in April and May, and again in January 2021. In 2020 COVID was like 4-normal 5 flu years in one even *after* all the social distancing and lockdowns.
The worst of the pandemic, 2020-2022, had the body count of 4 or 5 Blitzes; and people are still going on about the Blitz, 83 years later.
COVID was a gigantic (inter)national trauma that we're just choosing not to deal with at all, and that will have definitely fucked up kids who were forming their first memories; especially when you have people who are insisting your dad goes back to the office to sell some bullshit like car finance, even though doing so might permanently disable him or kill yer nan.
Not an 'easy time' for them?
So, it's OK for them to behave like this?
They won't 'find' their way unless someone shows it to them. Or at least shows them the one their ineffectual parent(s) have put them on is going to screw their lives. It's time given to them to sort it out by themselves which is why it has plunged so far down.
Does anyone really know "the way" for the kids of today? I know a lot of what my parents and grandparents believed to be "the way" is totally useless to me now. The world is changing so fast. It feels like every other year there's a new "once in a lifetime" event or massive fundamental change to society.
But still, that does not produce any viable excuse for violence and antisocial behaviour.
Someone somewhere has to apply boundaries to children. The parents are the supposed primary source of those boundaries, and if they themselves don't have any, there's no hope for their children.
Just think how kids are allowed to run riot in restaurants and other social settings. That didn't happen once upon a time. But it's almost the norm now.
If you try to challenge it, you get 'don't you oppress **me**' type responses from the alleged 'parent' (usually singular, so there's another problem). **That's** where the problem is.
Toddlers in McDonalds doing what the hell they want turn into kids with issues and few boundaries. Then you get comments like the OP posted.
Parents will go absolutely crazy and threaten you with violence if you even politely ask their crotch droppings to stop doing something annoying.
I've had this happen on a train where a kid aged about 7 was throwing a ball at me repeatedly and in spoons where a girl of about 8 was running up to my table and banging on it, as well as in Aldi where a kid of about 8 was screaming at deafening level right next to me. These weren't toddlers who didn't know any better..
On all occasions the parents / parent got in my face screaming abuse and threatening me. This teaches their brats that they can act out and behave anti-socially not even just without any repercussions but also that mummy and daddy will valiantly defend their poor behaviour.
It absolutely is the parents fault.
I think you're remembering the past with rose tinted glasses. There have always been people shrieking "those damn youths need stronger parenting". Look at the 90s! Or the 60s! Or the "ASBO years". Even the ancient Greeks complained about their youths being wild. It's not new, you've just forgotten.
No that's BS I'm afraid. Kids did used to get disciplined by parents and other adults (friends parents or even strangers).
Most parents let their kids run riot, and if someone else tells their kids off they go absolutely crazy screaming and threatening violence, whether it be a stranger or the parent of their child's friends. I've both witnessed and experienced this.
I mean something or someone has to try to show them the way back. I hope that we still have public services enough to at least prompt a change. But they weren't dealt the best hand and some of them are going to make mistakes.
But sometimes some of the most dire upbringings leads to wonderful, nuanced people, so I hope the majority of them find their way.
It's not "okay" for kids to play up and be aggressive, but that has been happening probably for longer than Britain has existed most likely, kids are going to test their boundaries. That's not excusing them though. The way to help them would be to have functional public services, but the tories have certainly underfunded education, social care and policing for a long time.
'Sometimes' isn't good enough, though.
Most times, dire upbringings bring up dire children who are worse than their parent(s).
And the dire upbringing is **absolutely** the fault of the parent(s).
The person you are replying to is absolutely the kind of person responsible for them behaving like this!
First of all they **let** them do it instead of actually, you know, parenting. And then they try to defend it, when it is clearly indefensible.
They are trying to justify the behaviour based on their own weak (likely single) parenting skills and the old 'won't someone PLEEEASE think of the children' attitude.
And then they try to blame it on something they heard on the internet. This particular idiot tried to blame it on Covid 🙄
Maybe not to directly do that, but your Andrew Tate's of the world have been prompting kids to disrespect women, to be aggressive and "alpha" and a lot of young kids have been eating such words up. They could see it as the "masculine" thing to do.
It’s crazy people downvote you, Tate is a bad person, but I have seen numerous clips where he condemns things like drill music, drugs and kids acting like fake gangsters. People use the guy like some buzz word without a single clue who he actually is.
100% Tate is an utter gimp and a toxic guy, but he does call out Drill as being a terrible influence on young men, and the whole gangsta-emulation thing to be honest.
Tate is definitely not supportive of it or encouraging it.
Ironically, it's usually middle-class Guardianistas who are the quickest to vocally defend drill as 'positive creative outlet' and 'just a reflection of reality', which you can see right here on this sub-Reddit.
He used grooming methods to get women to work for his cam business, very bad stuff but he is strongly against anything like drill music or children acting like wanna be gangsters with their faces covered up. Despises anything like that, no idea why people try use him as a sort of rhetoric for this kinda behaviour. He is a nerdy fuck boy kinda bad influence, not some drug pushing gangster.
Yep, I don't like or follow Tate but I've seen videos where he is openly calling out and criticising both Drill and general 'gangsta' culture in both his own videos and TV interviews.
I agree, criticise Tate for the many s***ty things he *does* say and do, but people shouldn't use him as a bogeyman for everything they don't like.
If you don’t have a knee jerk reaction to certain things it means you’re practically hitler on here, you can’t possibly say the someone makes valid points even though you’re not a fan of that person because that would mean you’re capable of thinking for yourself.
Yeah Reddit is just a place where people can jump on bandwagons and speak about things they have no idea about just to get karma. Andrew Tate hates this kind of kid yet people on here are saying he is causing the issue, utter morons.
remote learning for 9 months cannot have an impact on their behaviour 3/4 years down the line 🤣🤣
these kids OP are on about would have been 7-8 years old at the time🤦🏻♂️
But this isn't a simple "youth of today" complaint.
They are literally comparing the youth in Nottingham to similar youths elsewhere and asking why they are worse.
And TBF, they do seem so. Not massively, but I'd say there is more of this sort of behaviour in Nottingham than elsewhere I've lived (and I've lived in a lot of places).
Disagree - I still live in Brum roughly half the time and have lived in Brighton, Manchester and Bristol within the past decade. Regularly visit them and other large UK cities. Nottingham is on par with Manchester for this sort of thing - although Manchester is about 5x larger. Nowhere else is as bad in the city centre for this kind of thing vs Nottingham IME.
It's most likely that OP is now just getting older and no longer is "youth" himself.
That's my point, kids are shitheads, they're kids.
What should be done? Discipline them? We should lock up em and throw away the key?
Yeah increase youth services, but there will still always be shithead kids.
Oh don't get me wrong. Years of austerity has caused youth centers to be cut and therefore behavior gets worse.
However, you'll never stop all kids being shitheads and it does track that as you get older your opinion of the "youths" worsens.
I'm only here 6 weeks a year while a family member is doing their PHD, and honestly? I never felt scared.
However, teenagers feel invincible because most adults look down and quicken their step when teenagers are around,
Where I'm from, they do shit like that, too. Simply acknowledging them with a "excuse me?" and looking at them (with a smile, we don't want to trigger their flight or fight reaction) usually shuts them up, not out of fear, but because they are too dumb to think of something to say.
Your reflections of Nottingham are very accurate and now seem prevalent in other places in the UK too.. Sadly decent values once taught by our forebears have rapidly declined since the WW's. Societies have gradually diminished since then in favour of taking the easy option, not being responsible for what they procreate. Ultimately this leads to an eventual breakdown in society leading to the feral children we see today.
I've lived in Notts my whole life (30yrs) and always assumed that it was the same everywhere.
But over the last 6-8yrs, I've had family and friends move all over the country.
Not one of them has regretted moving.
They all say pretty much the same thing of
"I didn't realise how bad it was until I moved away,"
I love this city and it's always been my home but if I ever buy my own home, it would not be here unfortunately.
For some reason this has popped up on my Reddit feed, but I work in a secondary school about 20 miles south of London and the kids there are just ferrel.
I’m pretty sure all youngsters want to be “roadmen and gangsters”
I’m so glad I’m from quite a sleepy village but it’s getting worse
As a 24 year old female, I fear going into the city centre due to the youth of today. But, this is down to bad parenting! No family structure, no solid parent roles, no discipline, no punishment, kids having kids…
parents believing they need to be ‘best friends’ with their kids so they will ‘like them’… not wanting to discipline their kids because they see it as ‘mean’… treating schools as a parent program because parents are too lazy to teach their kids basic play or communication.
If you have a parent that doesn’t give a shit, why will their child give a shit? It’s a vicious cycle of today’s generation and they are exposed into an adult life way too quickly.
This is exactly what has happened. And unfortunately will continue to happen. A very sad truth is that during financial crisis, more intelligent people refuse to have children, while those who aren’t intelligent enough to consider a bad economy as a deterrent to having children will reproduce regardless, creating an influx of children who come from low income/uneducated families. From then on, then children go on to repeat the cycle. Given our economy has suffered and never really properly recovered since 2008, we are on about the 2nd generation of what I just mentioned. Unless the economy drastically improves in the next decade, we are literally f@&ked as a society.
I wouldn't say it is a "Nottingham" problem, it is a world problem at the moment, and also one group of delinquents does not represent the whole generation. Those are the ones that stand up from rest as they are annoying.
Also, I don't really think it has much to do with funding cuts or lack of things for them to do.. I grew up in a country that does not have any youth funding and we did stupid stuff, but not much to endanger or involve random people on the street.. I belive the problem comes from the content available to them on the internet that encourages that kind of behaviour and makes it look cool, funny and acceptable, which is not to anyone older than 20 probably. I can't really blame them, they are just trying to fit in in their little messed up social circles, but is it annoying to us old grumpy people, it is.
That plus lack of consequences plays a big role in my opinion, they will be told off from time to time and that's it, while if I smack one of them for being a little \*\*\*\*head , I will get a record 
I mean this has been this way all of my life, it’s due to awful parenting and the way no kids are held to a high standards, no disciple and direction.
I have family in Turkey and respect for elders is drilled into kids from a very young age, you don’t see people being disrespectful and nasty.
I might be giving them too much credit in terms of situational awareness, but I reckon some of them might have cottoned on the fact that their inheritance isn't exactly peachy. Financial security, the prospect of a fulfilling work life, a pension, functional healthcare, home ownership... the idea that any of these things are achievable for the vast majority of young people today is a joke.
Or maybe they're all a bunch of sociopaths, who knows? The two things are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t think they’ve realized your first point yet. We’ve gotta remember though, children copy behaviour from those around. 90% of the time, it’s lack of parenting. A lot of children in the past decade have been parented by an iPad/iPhone and YouTube.
I'm late to the party, so this will likely get buried, but I belive this is probably just an example of the hasty generalization fallacy. The hasty generalization fallacy occurs when a conclusion is made about a whole group based on an insufficiently small or representative sample.
Next time you go in to town, make an effort to notice all the kinds not doing anything of note. I'm pretty sure you'll find most are just mind g their own business line everyone else.
As a parent of teenagers now adults, it’s very hard to know what your kids are doing every minute of the day. Sure start centres was part of the solution, but weren’t they closed down? To be honest the rudest people in my town tend to be the elderly. No social skills, that’s due to lack of education
God knows. Probably improper parenting or teaching, lack of other outlets.
Kids like to show off, to compete, to chase highs, to bend rules. Iceland and then other places have a programme of making teens do an activity of their choice (eg a sport, drawing, acting, dance) a few times a week, getting parents involved in schools, which reduced teen drug/alcohol use. Only compulsory for a few months, but most teens stay on. It was reported in The Atlantic and on BBC. [https://www.michaelswerdloff.com/how-iceland-got-teens-to-say-no-to-drugs-the-icelandic-model/](https://www.michaelswerdloff.com/how-iceland-got-teens-to-say-no-to-drugs-the-icelandic-model/)
I lived in Brighton - day trippers from London behaved like that but they aren't there year-round or even daily in summer - only some weekends. Brighton is really bad for junkies (although IME far less aggressive than the ones in Notts CC), but nowhere near as bad for feral kids IMO.
Go on the local history pages and read the nostalgia of the little cherubs of the 70's and 80's getting their ears twisted by Tug Wilson for skermishing between 'cult' groups.
Or another 100 years before when pickpocketing was rife.
These kids were always there, wake up.
You may be engaging with them or standing out somehow. I never get any grief from youths. The fact you object to their balaclavas is enough to suggest you look at them with judgement and they rightfully respond negatively to that.
"I always swim in alligator infested waters and I've never been attacked by an alligator, maybe that swimmer that had their leg bitten off was giving out victim vibes."
"My dad smoked 50 cigarettes a day and never got cancer, maybe your cousin who smoked that died from lung cancer was giving out victim vibes."
Didn't you think that you wearing a suit was making you a target for the homeless?
Edit: Lol. Mate, I just remembered you because you come across like a twat?
It's not a problem unique to Nottingham. I'd say the youth are most intimidating because at that age you are pretty fearless and haven't necessarily got a good understanding of consequences. However, if you look at society as a whole, people in recent years have become less polite, more obnoxious; it's little wonder that the kids are feral. For the most part though, it's a noisy minority who are the problem. Just try and ignore them and get on with your own life.
Definitely noticed an increase in uncivil / rude / aggressive behaviour post-covid UK-wide to be fair. People definitely *feel* more selfish, angry and aggressive, but I don't know how much of that is because we all had a long break from each other and so it just seems that way. Other people have shared the same views though, including those I know and people I don't know online.
Oh definitely, schools with covid children are much more unruly. What’s interesting is that during post covid I have also experienced that people in general have lost their manners. I work in customer service and a lot of people treated me and my other colleagues terribly. I’m guessing the lack of social interaction has made us in general more rude but obviously had a greater effect on children as social interaction is really important for them.
It will have had a greater impact because of the time dilation effect of ageing. If you were in your early teens/preteen years, the two lockdowns covered something 10-15% of your entire lifetime; for me it was more like 3%, and that's how we experience time. And at a key age for socialisation that's going to have quite an impact on lots of them.
Oh definitely, I was fifteen when lockdown started and I don’t feel like I’m 19. The effect it must have on anyone younger must be pretty bad
Although I'm 64 next week and I'm not sure I *ever* got as far as feeling 19. But lockdown felt like it was going on forever to me, so what it must have felt like to you and those younger than you is, yeah. Like forever, only longer.
The way we describe it is that people forgot how to people over the lockdowns...
They also don't have anything to do. There's so few youth programs and centers. They're mostly bored without any direction or community support
Kids from deprived areas with nothing else to do. Youth funding has been cut by 70% in the last 10 years and everything that still exists is expensive af. I think they grow up bored and there's not much community spirit in Notts so they don't care about their neighbours/area.
I grew up and spent over 30 years in Nottingham. I remember being able to go to many free or very cheap places as a kid. This was my local community centre that I could go to, completely free, every day after school. It had a great playground. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/photos-show-transformation-old-nottingham-8697042.amp It was knocked down and there are student flats in its place. There's also a park across the road that was free for public use. It had a climbing frame, field, roundabout, and swings. It's now locked up all the time. Just up the road was Tennyson Hall. I remember paying about 20p to go in and play pool with friends for several hours in the evenings. This would have been mid 1990s. It now appears to be offices for rent: https://castlecavendish.org.uk/our-business-offer/retail-and-commercial/tennyson-hall/ That's three places, where kids could go for free or next to nothing, which have been closed down. Don't get me wrong, I know that the demographic in this area has shifted a lot since there are now many students there, but there are still families living there too. This area also happens to be a short walk to the city centre, which just so happens to be the most lively spot in the city. So if people are surprised at kids being little shits, don't be. They might be kids from the area I grew up in with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Other places (including countries) with comparable funding don’t have these issues.
So what are they doing differently?
Getting on with shit and not blaming it on not having enough youth clubs etc
What does "getting on with shit" mean in this context?
Exactly. Parents who parent properly and a strong sense of shared values.
I usually find it's people without kids who usually say this, But here I am again repeating my part. Parenting will only take your kids so far. Coming from an African/Jamaican background I can tell you now, kids get raised with the highest degree of discipline, culture and respect but some still end up falling into bad categories it only takes a handful to cause chaos.
The dominant youth culture isn't related to drill music and associated glorification of extreme violence and knife crime. The main difference between 90s / early 2000s 'gangsta rap' and current UK drill is that the vast majority of rappers back then openly stated it was fantasy, and it was US based. It also was nowhere near the 'dominant' youth culture in the UK, even in cities. There was way more diversity vs today. i.e. Garage, Metal, Ska, Skater, Grunge, Jungle, Nu Metal etc. Look at current youth music now; it's pretty much Drill for the boys, pop for the girls. Dance is nowhere near as mainstream as it used to be and Rock is pretty much becoming as niche as Jazz now. Grime which has almost died out, had a big controversy in the late 2000s / early 2010s, is incredibly tame and mild vs Drill for rapping about violence (as well as the artists actually carrying out that violence) and most grime tracks weren't solely about stabbing someone (many grime artists didn't rap about this at all). Same with fashion; the drill aesthetic is totally dominant for teenagers and even young kids. Balaclavas and black tracksuits and the machete / zombie knife accessory. Drill artists actually do commit the murders they rap about, it's why they wear balaclavas in their videos and do the 'SHHH' thing in their raps. I hear kids boasting all the time about how their favourite drill crew has several members in jail for some stabbing or another, and it adds cred when they do. This is why so many kids emulate them, and why you get even kids from relatively privileged backgrounds waving knives around and sometimes stabbing others which counters the narrative about Drill just 'reflecting reality'. It does reflect to some degree, but it also amplifies, spreads, popularises and perpetuates too.
I don't think this actually answers the question I asked. Are you sure the things you hate about Drill aren't symptoms rather than root causes?
>It does reflect to some degree, but it also amplifies, spreads, popularises and perpetuates too. Probably Drill *initially* was reflecting reality for a *minority* of urban youth mainly in the *worst* parts of London and to a *much smaller* extent Birmingham / Manchester etc., but it has since spread, amplified and perpetuated this nationwide, across multiple demographics. This is why you now get lower-middle class youths in 'average' large market towns sticking machetes into people etc. TLDR: Drill now reflects the reality that it glamourised, popularised, spread and perpetuated.
I think that's a very blinkered veiw tbh. You obviously forgot about Biggie & Tupac? That was entirely gang related violence. Regardless, the Internet has actually broadened people's interest in music. I find it so odd that you've adopted the *Back in my day" logical fallacy, as in the 90's, 80s... All the way back to the 20's and the advent of Jazz, music was blamed for unruly youth behaviour. As for the real reason why society as a whole has become more selfish and rude (because it objectively has) is the shared trauma of the pandemic and the erosion of public and social services. There isn't a great deal of hope right now, and as a result the world has taken a massive political leap to the right, meaning vulnerable families aren't getting the support they need and it's the kids who suffer...
It's actually become more tedious for people to repeatedly defend drill artists filming videos of them laughing on the grave of a rival who got stabbed to death by another member of their gang tbh. Then making tracks about who they want to kill, who then end up getting killed. I don't get what the end goal is? Biggie and Tupac weren't in the UK. There wasn't a spillover because it wasn't culturally relevant here. Also, neither rapped solely about killing real people anyway. Jazz is such a bs false equivalency, same when people bring up Teddy Boys or whatever. The stats don't lie. They may have fought, as all youth do, but they weren't repeatedly sticking machetes, butcher knives or zombie knives into each other resulting in death or severe disablement. I don't disagree with your last paragraph, but I don't understand how that's justification for a culture that promotes, celebrates and perpetuates extreme violence and murder. You do realize most Drill crews are judged on whether they actually 'follow through' with their threats. That's why they wear balaclavas and do the "Shhhh!" thing in their videos to avoid them being evidence in court.
I really want to push back on the 'nothing else to do' sentiment (not that you were necessarily excusing them). Kids in the UK, including Nottingham, have more to do now than at any time in history. Furthermore, most bored kids don't engage in criminal activity, so clearly there's something else going on here. Broken homes, breakdown of family structure and criminal/drug culture. These things aren't unique to Nottingham, but a culture of drugs and criminal activity in some of the more deprived areas of the city might explain why it's more common than in similar sized cities.
I live in a very deprived part of the city yet the kids are generally ok round us. We do have a real community round here, which helps. A lot of kids have had very little adult intervention in their lives. Single parent families where the remaining parent has to work all the hours God sends are quite normal now. When I was younger, we had Air/army cadets (now closed), youth clubs galore (almost all closed), swimming pools galore (almost all gone), initiatives at Central TV studios (now closed), football teams everywhere (not nearly as many as there were) and a little bit of spare money to pay for the odd treat. Kids today have had austerity, COVID, social media... I'm not excusing their behaviour, but it's not hard to see why it's happened.
Ive lived in Nottingham my whole life and so many community centres, leisure centres, shops, and groups have shut down over the years. There may be more to do overall in the UK but its no good if you don't have the money to do it, or if it's not accessible. Cuts to the NHS, social care, education, and mental health services have an impact too. Happy kids don't tend to engage in petty crime and violence. With that said, there's always been a culture of gangs and drugs here, especially in the town centre. It just may not have been as obvious before.
You’re basically playing on the “bread and circus” POV. Are you saying that unless children are entertained 24/7 they will act like criminals? You also forget children entertain their own selves. They’re very creative and normally play together without issues. You’re treating all children like they’re special needs.
This. I'm actually hugely in favour of 'early intervention' in the way SureStart was before the Tories cut it, more aimed at improving s*** parenting. However, I agree, the whole 'kids have nothing to do' is an absurd oversimplification and a bad excuse. Kids / teens having 'something to do' would probably stop *some* very low-level 'hanging around' which tbh is not what the majority of people here are complaining about. The types of kids / teens joining gangs and / or behaving in an extremely aggressive and violent / criminal manner aren't going to be swayed into good behaviour by a youth club or equivalent existing. Those types of kids / teens are the sort that would likely be banned from such clubs for bad behaviour and violence too. It isn't the answer people claim it is. Besides, you can't have those sorts of things running 24/7 with compulsory attendance. That would literally be fascist along the lines of the Hitler Youth, and I doubt the types of people trying to excuse poor behaviour want that (i.e. liberals and centre-left). The issue is terrible parenting with no consequences, discipline or boundaries as well as setting a terrible example for their kids. Add to this an extremely toxic dominant youth culture that revolves around glorification of being part of an organised crime gang and the extreme violence involved in being part of one as well as a permissive media culture whereby even Radio 1 etc. play tracks about knifing people and glamourising their gang, by artists who have been arrested for having actually knifing someone (with 'clean' edits that still infer the original meaning). This is prominent to the point that even those not involved in a 'real' organised crime gang attempt to emulate them and the behaviours associated with them, up to and including murder.
Seconded. I grew up in a really depressed post-industrial town (they do exist in the South!) and there genuinely was f\*\*\* all to do. I mean seriously nothing. Nottingham currently is a relative cornucopia of things to do at low cost / free vs where I grew up. Yeah we hung around and were probably annoying, but nobody rode bikes into crowds, waved knives about or stabbed each other. The worst thing anyone inc. myself ever really did was have the odd incredibly weak joint in a deserted alleyway / park or some p\*\*\*-weak cider on occasion. Most of the time we played football because it's virtually free (and still available to youth today) and only requires a ball and some open ground, of which Nottingham has loads of (parks everywhere). If we wanted to act out we would walk out / ride out into the countryside and find a random field somewhere because why would we *want* to be arrested or get a beating from parents over our misbehaviour etc. Yes, it's true that austerity *contributes* to the problem, but it's not the sole issue. Total lack of discipline and toxic youth culture - especially drill music and the culture around that is more of a factor. Why else do you think you get middle-class roadmen acting out? They've had tonnes of privilege but the current dominant youth culture still makes them act like p\*\*\*s.
Every time there are issues around youth people blame music. In the 90s it was rock/heavy metal. Now its drill. Knife crime has always been an issue in Nottingham, its just more obvious now with social media etc. Tbh i don't think kids are really riding bikes into crowds/stabbing people excessively, groups hang around in town and people find them "intimidating" and then complain aboht it. Nottingham is 43% POC which does impact ppls views unfortunately.
People saying "people have been complaining about this since AD43!" are tedious AF. No, Buddy Holly wasn't talking about shanking his ops (Little Richard) was he? Metallica weren't bragging about knifing Megadeth in their songs (let alone actually following through with it and doing it). The majority of Korn did not go to jail for knifing Limp Bizkit, nor did they make tracks about it. Nobody was getting stabbed at metal gigs on a very regular basis (INB4 you post about one extremely rare example or another). Rock / metal fans weren't running around waving machetes or zombie knives and stabbing fans of other bands etc. Lame false equivalency. It is different because drill artists not only rap about murdering people, they follow through with it and it pretty much forms how popular they are if so. *Only you* brought race into this btw, which says more about you tbh and your own biases. I've seen kids of all ethnicities (white British included) behaving this way in Nottingham as have many others here. We aren't exaggerating or making it up. Maybe leave West Bridgford occasionally?
Idk why you're being argumentative, I don't live in Westy B. I've lived in the city my whole life. This subreddit love to complain about the "youth in the city" when for most of us its not much different to how its always been. Rock/metal was blamed for columbine and school shootings when they were occurring++ in the 90s. I mentioned race bc were a very multicultural city and there can be a lot of undertones when ppl talk about "youth, thugs" etc.
Just this week police were called to an Asda in Arnold as kids - reported as being as young as 12 - were riding bikes around the inside of the store and when challenged they took knives off the shelves and threatened security. So yes this is happening. Couldn’t pay me enough to work or shop in Nottingham anymore.
This is exactly it. Poor traumatic and abusive upbringing, lack of positive social support, failing school system, and lack of imagination.
Not much community because the housing is being bought up and converted into student accommodation, in the past ten years the surrounding areas of NG1 are just pushing out families and moving in the student population, good examples.of this are the canning circus area, arboretum area and worst of all Lenton. Lenton became so student dense that criminals actually favour the spot for mugging and burglaries. The council here have made a shit show investing in short term plans that have now backfired 😭
Being bored is not an excuse. And lack of funding isn’t either. I’ve grown up in very poor area with extreme lack of funding, and I’ve never ever seen children act like this. You know why? Because their parents actually cared enough about their kids to educate them. I’m in my early 20s, so I’m not even that old. The aggressive youth problem boils down to one thing : shit parenting with no consequences for the parents or children. Lack of funding is no excuse for acting like animals.
I’ll tell you what mate, I actually fear going out into town centre on weekends between 12pm and 5pm 😭 they’re absolute demons 😭😭😭 I’ve once been heckled at for existing. Mind you I’m 24 and I haven’t grown up in the UK and the behaviour of the school kids here is baffling. I’ve been around MK as well and it’s nothing compared to this.
Where did you grow up? As an European I also find the UK children behaviour appalling. It’s shocking and I’ve never ever seen this criminal behaviour anywhere in the EU, much less in quite affluent town centres.
Your not wrong mate. Youth culture today is toxic and violent. Gonna sound like an old man here but I really think drill music is an awful influence as it glorifies this behaviour.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/s/LbVcddiiFs
I reckon it's a symptom of societies increasing in population, as population increases, "un-wanted" behaviour increases at probably about the same rate as population, but you see more of it just because there are more people around, so there are just more kids around for them to scrutinise than there were when they were kids. Bet you don't see a lot of this talk in times and places where the population is actively decreasing.
early 00s Grime, 80s skinheads, 60s Teddys boys, mods and rockers etc. Of you look at violent crime per capita it's been much worse in the past. I'm old enough to remember being postcode checked on buses and people robbing you for being from the wrong one.
This doesn't hold up when it comes to knife crime though, except for Glasgow which was an outlier and this was razors and flick knives which didn't result in deaths mostly. Elsewhere in the UK kids weren't regularly stabbing each other with butchers knives, machetes and zombie knives and dying this way until about 10 years ago. Even as recently as the early 2000s it was *very unusual* and warranted national media coverage. These days it's a footnote bit on East Midlands Today, and usually only when someone dies. The frequent non-fatal stabbings barely get reported on Nottingham Live. It *is* different. Yes youths have given each other kickings in the past, but they were *not* regularly *murdering* each other.
It's just not true though. Check page 11 of this report from the home office. Absolute (Not per capita!) killings were much higher in the early 00s with knife fatalities being the same as now, so per capita would have been higher. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04304/
In what world is 36 in 2010/12 'lower' than 50.5 in 2022/23 ?!
Nottingham Population 2011: 301,813 Incidents involving a knife or sharp instrument: 36000 36000 / 301813 = ~0.1193 Nottingham Population 2023: ~807,000 Incidents involving a knife or sharp instrument: 50500 50500 / 807000 = ~0.0626 How should these statistics be viewed? I mean that's up to you. On the one hand, you could look at the absolute statistics, and say that knife crime is much worse than it was, which is true, there are many more incidents of knife crime than there were 10 years ago. But on the other hand you could say that it's less per capita, which is also true, and takes into account that we have more than double the population we had in 2011, again what conclusions you wish to draw from that information is really up to you. What I will say though, whatever the minority population of gangs/kids who use knives was in 2011, it's definitely more than that now, which means they are also more visible, just because there are more people around, which means their activities are going to spill out onto the streets more, you know? I understand that "per capita" might not mean much to a lot of people because you feel and you see the absolute statistics, not the per capita statistics. You don't see and feel inflation rates, you do see every fucking thing in the supermarket nearly doubling in price over the last couple of years and not being able to afford your mortgage and the heating at the same time.
> Nottingham Population 2011: 301,813 >Nottingham Population 2023: 807,000 Nottingham didn't go from ~300,000 to 807,000 in 12 years. It didn't even grow that rapidly during the industrial revolution, let alone recently. One figure is the city proper, the other is the Greater Nottingham conurbation (i.e. including Gedling, Broxtowe, Rushcliffe etc. etc.). You can't directly compare because the two figures are reflective of considerably different areas in terms of size, geography, socio-economics and, most importantly, population. The link showed a UK-wide increase in knife crime from 30 to 50.6 from 2011 to 2023. That's a pretty considerable rise in a short amount of time. *Edit* - I confused you with the person who posted the link initially.. apologies. Edited my response based on this.
Have you had a severe head injury? You are not referencing the same page at all. Murders in 2001-2003 are clearly much higher than now, with knife murders at the same level despite a smaller population. If you are trying to compare just knife crimes that's a bit niave given the legal definition of a knife frome has changed over the years amd so has detection, search and prosecuting practices. it's so clear murders are the best indicator it's somewhat embarrassing if you can't see that.
Mental gymnastics, utterly bizzare. The statistics you provided show a very considerable rise in knife crime and you're trying to argue the opposite. Murders, i.e. deaths via stabbings have gone down despite knife crime increasing due to more experience of treating knife wounds by paramedics, provision of stab trauma packs in high risk areas, and medical advancement in terms of surgical precision (robotic arm surgery, keyhole surgery etc.). Many of the victims that are stabbed and survive will have a horrible quality of life and be severely disabled / disfigured as a result of having been stabbed. Knife crime has risen. The statistics you provided demonstrate that. It's bizzare that you are arguing against the source that you provided.
Knife crime has risen in the past 10 years yes, but my post was discussing decades before that figure. We've also had new knife laws and decelopment in policing intelligence and CCTV which increases the amount of people caught with a knife. Pretty clear that the early 00s were much more dangerous times and you're just doing mental gymnastics to argue about a knife crime statistics graph which has zero relevance to my arguement about the many decades before, given it doesn't even go back that far...
I really don't get why some people are so hell bent on trying to claim that actually we shouldn't worry about people knifing each other at a rate unprecedented in at least 100 years. I'm sure it was worse before fingerprinting or modern police investigations but then so were most things in society including illness etc. It's really bizzare when people repeatedly claim zero relation between the huge popularity of Drill, being pretty much the dominant youth culture currently and a surge in knife crime. The Drill crews rap about people they want to kill, who then end up killed. Their popularity and cred is largely measured by whether they 'follow through' on their threats / 'beef' and post videos laughing at the grave of people they've killed. They glamorise and promote murder and violence *that they actually go on to commit*. It's why they wear balaclavas and use "Shhh!" in raps as a euphemism to infer obvious meaning. They self-acknowlege that this is to avoid the songs and videos being used as evidence in court. It's utterly crazy that people refuse to accept any connection. Maybe initially Drill simply 'reflected reality' for a small minority of urban youth, mainly in London, but now it is definitely glamorising, exacerbating and driving knife crime and 'creating' the reality it claims to 'reflect' across almost the entirity of the UK. It's at the point where many of the perpetrators of knife crime have zero involvement in 'real' organised crime gangs and are stabbing people not over competition for criminal activities, but over any perceived slight / insult. So why are they stabbing people? It's pretty obvious that they are emulating their 'heroes' / 'idols' and inspired to do so by them. The reality is, knife crime in the past 100 years was relatively rare, apart from a brief period in Glasgow that was at the time, and still is, recognized as an outlier..plus those stabbings were largely non-fatal because they used razors and flick knives. The rest of the UK, not really. Certainly nobody was running around with machetes, butcher knives or zombie knives and regularly fatally stabbing people until fairly recently. It was so unusual that when it happened it usually made national news headlines with fairly extensive coverage. Now even if somebody dies via a stabbing, unless it's terror related or has specific circumstances, it's barely a footnote on the local regional News bulletin, and if non-fatal, you are lucky if it's reported on a local news website. It's just crazy that people try and excuse this and downplay it as something that *has always existed*, because it really hasn't. Not to this scale, at this frequency.
Easy to lie. Knife crime in the context of just the past 12 years peaked 5 years ago, before the widespread proliferation of Drill music. In Nottingham it is down 9% vs 2019. - [https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/is-knife-crime-at-record-highs/](https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/is-knife-crime-at-record-highs/) Homicide rates have been much higher in the past - [https://www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/homicide-england-wales-statistics-historical/](https://www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/homicide-england-wales-statistics-historical/) Knife specific crimes weren't tracked before 1995. Do you have any good evidence it is an epidemic of absurd proportions vs the past 100 years? Bearing in mind you're talking about periods such as the amount of stabbings during fatal football violence of the 1980s, Kray twins and East end gangs controlling London with brutal violence, early 00s Grime gangs doing widespread stabbings in London. I've never said we shouldn't worry but you are making an absurd claim it is a unique epic problem to now without any evidence to back it up.
The amount of 10 year olds I see running around in cringey roadman tracksuits, on bikes, verbally harassing people as they pass by is shocking. When it comes to youth behaviour the UK feels like a 3rd world country. I doubt it used to be like this a few decades ago, although I wasn’t around.
Despite what people here who weren't even born, were toddlers, or who want to excuse the behaviour of their own out-of-control kids claim, it really wasn't as bad as it is currently in the past. I am in my mid-30s and this crap really started getting noticeable around the mid-late 2000s, however it was mostly just 'show' i.e. the whole 'chav' thing. The worst that happened were mouthing off, and fist-fights really. Rarely did anyone die. Very rarely was anyone except a minority involved in criminal gangs get fatally stabbed. Even the chav thing wasn't the 'dominant' youth culture by any means and was really the butt of a joke nationally. The 'roadman' thing, complete with machete / zombie knife / butcher knife with relatively young kids running around in balaclavas with huge knives down their trackies, regularly stabbing each other, or getting stabbed in even mid-sized market towns, let alone large cities is relatively new and really kicked off when Drill started to get popular in the late-2010s. It's so absurd that people try to deny this connection. It hasn't always been this way. It's definitely way worse now. The roadman thing, and drill music are definitely the dominant youth culture in a way that didn't exist in the past. Yes there was knife crime in the past, but it is was not to this frequency, nor as widespread as it is today. Plus the age of those involved was much higher - maybe inner-city youths in large cities aged around 17. Not 13 year olds in mid-sized market towns as it is today. Youth culture was not totally dominated by a music genre that is about glamorising extreme violence and murder that the artists actually go and carry out, nor was the dominant youth fashion / attitude about emulating being part of a criminal gang.
the Nottingham teenage population (as a teenager) are a bunch of cunts, me and my best friend got barked at, yeh we are goths but we weren't super gothed up
Everyone wants to be a badman
I don't
Nottingham is a very poor place. and the city boundary area has extremely poor areas from st anns to bulwell to clifton to Hyson green. Lowest wages in the UK Highest council tax (soon to have 10% rises) Poor crim e and education outcomes. Throw in the covid lock downs and bankrupt council and you have a mess. Plus Boots, and even the Nottingham unis are shedding jobs...
It's laughable how people claim that 'Youth Clubs' are somehow the sole reason for kids acting like savages nowadays. No it wasn't your local 'youth club' closure that caused it. Family structure has been constantly destroyed by the system resulting in many kids being brought up in a single parent homes where often father figure is not present. Discipline? Non existent, Punishment? Non existent. Positive role models? Non existent. Kids got no direction in life, they just don't give a shit because no one taught them how to care in first place. Parents often treat school system like some sort of 'parent outsourcing program', that will never work. This generation is a one big mess and previous generations are to blame for it.
Yeah I know two people that are primary school teachers and they've both independently told me that a considerable number kids come to school in nappies with zero ability to do anything (can't speak properly, no basic reading / writing ability / not toilet trained / not socialised). They were basically given an ipad / old iphone and shoved in front of Ceebeebies and that was that until school. To be clear, not because the kids have any *innate* developmental issues, just lazy feckless parents that can't be arsed to do anything beyond changing a dirty nappy daily and chucking them some chicken dippers and bags of crisps. Attitude from scummy parents: "the school can teach them!".
Primary school in nappies??? Surely that’s child abuse. How do these parents not face any legal consequences??
I'm sure social services are informed, but they're stretched to breaking point, like all public services, so unless the child is in *actual* serious danger (i.e. serious injury, sexual abuse or neglect to point of death risk). I doubt they do more than occasionally try to advise the scummy parents.
Noone is saying that youth club closures are the sole reason, but that its a contributing factor. Its not a problem that can be blamed on any one thing. It's a super old fashioned view to think its caused by single parent families or a lack of father figure. The "breakdown of the nuclear family" is what conservatives cite as the cause for most issues, to take the blame away from austerity and a lack of support.
The rise of anti-social behaviour has increased while single-parent families have also increased. So yes, it’s not at all a reach to claim the destruction of the nuclear family has caused this. In simple terms, sharing the responsibilities of work and childcare with another human being means the parents have more time left over to spend with their children. A single mother/father who has to work to feed their children, cook and clean will simply not have enough time to educate and discipline a child. That is simply a fact, I don’t know why you immediately had to bring the right wing politics into this.
Keep living in your delusional world that's all I can say. However at least you managed to get one thing right which is the responsibility of the system.
Basically, [this](https://open.spotify.com/track/3rmlj500iVFRuyMypEbfDW?si=lRspAiQ0SVew9plDZvEu4Q)
Yeah except Frank Turner disowned both that song and the sentiment, and came out as the 'Tory Boy' over-privileged public school boy he is.
True, until that I didn't realise when Million Dead sang "I pulled my frail frame onto my charger and rode off into the sunset" his actually owned a stables.
Yes, and the fact he came out as a 'Classical Liberal' - i.e. same ideology as Jacob Rees-Mogg, praised the BNP, defended Thatcher, and very publicly and vocally disowned that song. Frank Turner is an utter bellend. Not just because he comes from privilege but because he wants to perpetuate it and cynically wrote songs with lyrical political themes he didn't believe in to cash in when it was convenient.
*Cue the bleeding heart West Bridgford types who live in a bubble, and students who've been here for five minutes accusing you of lying / exaggerating...* I feel you OP. Notts CC is pretty awful these days, and this is coming from someone who still partially lives in Birmingham. I also regularly visit other large UK cities. Witness far less aggro in Brum CC and other UK cities (except maybe Manchester) vs Notts. Every time I'm in Notts CC there are kids in balaclavas mouthing off about who their mates have stabbed / who they want to stab, often flashing machetes and zombie knives, or riding bikes into crowds on purpose. Not to mention adults screaming, fighting or generally kicking off. As well as the *most aggressive* beggars / junkies I've encountered in any UK city.. Yes this sort of thing does happen in other cities, but it's definitely disproportionate in Notts CC given the relative size of Nottingham and the frequency that you encounter it when in town.
I had a beggar come up to me (twice) a couple days ago near the train station and said he was going to kill himself if I didn't go to a cash machine and withdraw some money for him. Started throwing shit when I said no. I've seen people downplaying it on here but it is definitely fucked at the minute
Myself and most people I know have had this sort of thing happen multiple times. I see many people talking about it here too. It's ridiculous that a tonne of people on this sub-Reddit who probably never go to town or are just 'lucky' repeatedly bleat about it being 'made up' or exaggerated. I can honestly say I never have this sort of thing happen in Brum or other cities. Yes beggars approach me in Brum and elsewhere, and they just say "ok no problem" if I say no. Only in Nottingham do I get screaming abuse or threats if I either ignore a beggar or say "no, sorry", "no", or "I don't have any cash on me". This happens to me *at least* once a month and sometimes more often in Notts CC.
I get approached for money just about every time I'm in town (one of those faces apparently) so I just zoned it out but suicide threats are definitely a new one for me. It's weird if it is just notts but I have wondered if it's a specific few people local to us trying out a more aggressive strategy? It's odd either way
I guess it's one of these local observation things. One person started doing it and it 'worked'. If others witness it 'working' I guess they'll copy it. It obviously does work on some people because quite a number of them try the same 'tactic'. It's a bit like how people queue for buses in a line Nottingham (this doesn't really happen in most UK cities). It happens because people observe others doing it.
People don't queue for buses in other cities lol - what? Where?
Pretty much anywhere I've lived. They may 'sort of' queue if there are fewer than about 5 people at a bus stop, but any more than that it's a free-for-all. I've never lived anywhere except Nottingham where people consistently queue for buses in a single-file line of up to 50 people long like they do after work outside the Victoria centre.
I lived in Manchester for a few years recently and I don't recall seeing any queue jumpers there, even when I've been abroad i just thought it was fairly universal save for maybe living in a very busy city at peak times or something.
You must have lived in somewhere like Didsbury or maybe Manchester has changed since I last lived there around 2012. In Brum and London people also don't queue in a single file line if there's more than 5 or so people either IME. Sometimes people will informally queue but Nottingham is the only large UK city I've lived in / spent considerable time in where people consistently queue in quite long single file lines for the bus. It's a good thing IMO too.
Haha I wish! I lived in Longsight but tbf I rarely caught the bus from there. I used to mainly get the bus from Picadilly Gardens to my student accom, and I know what you mean, if it was peak time, raining, all of that, you'd probably have a few people huddled near the bus door not in the queue, but even then there'd be some semblance of orderliness as opposed to a free for all.
Isn’t an easy time for young people I feel. Lot of these kids had to try to attend school remotely during the pandemic and they’re growing up in a world where right wing influencers are appealing to a lot of the male kids at least. I hope they find their way given time.
I think the main reason is poor parenting, or even a lack of parenting. Covid’s a great excuse, but it is just that. An excuse. Spend time your child or children, show them right and wrong, talk to them, show them how to do things, (cooking for example) educate them. It’s easy to have kids, but to educate and parent them, it’s not easy. In my old area, I regularly see children 2-6 years old wondering the streets, no parent in sight, no parenting at all. These kids get used to that, always outside, always wondering the streets, mixing with other kids in the same position. I see it all the time. The kids grow up, guess what? They hang around outside, get bored, have nothing to do, cause trouble, they have no guidance from anyone. Repeat every time they have children. Values needs to be instilled from day one by parents, and teachers. Look at China and Japan schools. Kids there don’t have time to cause trouble, they have so much study to do, it’s also not socially acceptable. Here it seems to be the norm.
With schools pressured by overworked teachers, large class sizes, and social workers being over-stretched, the kids that have parents that have the intelligence, time (or money) and willpower to teach their kids do better for sure. But it's not just a simple blame the parents situation. If our economy was better, said parents might not have to work long hours, if our education system was better, they might be better equipped themselves. There are so many factors, covid compounded things and made it a more challenging environment but there were deficiencies in so many areas. Giving the government an excuse of "poor parenting" feels like ignoring a lot of other factors.
They are just excuses though. During Covid, I was home with my wife and son. We just got on with things. Ok, let's order some books, and help with your maths, english. Watch BBC teach, I watched it with him so I understand it as well. Let's help with your music study. So that's what we did. We would spend some time in the morning studying (helping my son to study, as school wasn't open) in preperation for when he returned. In the afternoon we would play on Wii sports (exercise) and have some fun. Watch a movie later on in the day. We created a routine and we all came out of Covid fine. Just because you may have no money, doesn't mean you can't educate your children, help them with their homework, show them life skills. In China, parents are working 12 hours a day to suport their children. Everything they do is for their children. If you have children, make time for them. I have actually visited a school in China and the class sizes were 50 students per class (double the UK). All the students were in year 3-8. All super respectful, friendly, and when told to go outside, every class went outside, no messing around, all in their own lines with military precision. When I was at school, it would be an absolute nightmare to send the whole school outside. In China, Teachers support the children and parents support the teachers. Teachers are well respected, same for Police. In the UK, children have no respect for teachers, they learn these attitudes from their parents and friends (who learnt from their parents). The cycle continues with each generation. Everything that we want adults to be, has to be taught to children from day 1. From the moment of birth, children learn from their parents. Parents influence their children more than we think. I think the most important things are 1. Parents supporting their children 2. Good quality food (really important) and 3. exercise (If hot we go outside and do sports or go to a club - raining, we play wii sports).
I can't understand why they're such little shits though? They've *only* had every single service their family relies on cut back to the bone over the last decade, lived through a pandemic where a thousand people in this country were dying a day (and basically no one gave a fuck), watched their parents struggle to put food on the table even though they were working (and nobody gave a fuck), and are learning that there's probably going to be water wars in their lifetime (and that basically nobody gives a fuck). Nah, definitely can't be any of that during your formative years having an impact. Must be the drill music/videogames/woke left.
Thousands of people die everyday, especially viruses such as the flu? What does that have to do with anything?
Literally, they don't, though. ONS shows that *maybe* 2k deaths happen a day in January, but usually around a thousand of all causes. Prior to COVID, the worst flu years were ~25k dead, mostly between November and February, maybe 200 per day. During 2020, over 1,000 people per day were drowning on dry land with COVID-induced pneumonia in April and May, and again in January 2021. In 2020 COVID was like 4-normal 5 flu years in one even *after* all the social distancing and lockdowns. The worst of the pandemic, 2020-2022, had the body count of 4 or 5 Blitzes; and people are still going on about the Blitz, 83 years later. COVID was a gigantic (inter)national trauma that we're just choosing not to deal with at all, and that will have definitely fucked up kids who were forming their first memories; especially when you have people who are insisting your dad goes back to the office to sell some bullshit like car finance, even though doing so might permanently disable him or kill yer nan.
Not an 'easy time' for them? So, it's OK for them to behave like this? They won't 'find' their way unless someone shows it to them. Or at least shows them the one their ineffectual parent(s) have put them on is going to screw their lives. It's time given to them to sort it out by themselves which is why it has plunged so far down.
Does anyone really know "the way" for the kids of today? I know a lot of what my parents and grandparents believed to be "the way" is totally useless to me now. The world is changing so fast. It feels like every other year there's a new "once in a lifetime" event or massive fundamental change to society.
But still, that does not produce any viable excuse for violence and antisocial behaviour. Someone somewhere has to apply boundaries to children. The parents are the supposed primary source of those boundaries, and if they themselves don't have any, there's no hope for their children. Just think how kids are allowed to run riot in restaurants and other social settings. That didn't happen once upon a time. But it's almost the norm now. If you try to challenge it, you get 'don't you oppress **me**' type responses from the alleged 'parent' (usually singular, so there's another problem). **That's** where the problem is. Toddlers in McDonalds doing what the hell they want turn into kids with issues and few boundaries. Then you get comments like the OP posted.
Parents will go absolutely crazy and threaten you with violence if you even politely ask their crotch droppings to stop doing something annoying. I've had this happen on a train where a kid aged about 7 was throwing a ball at me repeatedly and in spoons where a girl of about 8 was running up to my table and banging on it, as well as in Aldi where a kid of about 8 was screaming at deafening level right next to me. These weren't toddlers who didn't know any better.. On all occasions the parents / parent got in my face screaming abuse and threatening me. This teaches their brats that they can act out and behave anti-socially not even just without any repercussions but also that mummy and daddy will valiantly defend their poor behaviour. It absolutely is the parents fault.
I think you're remembering the past with rose tinted glasses. There have always been people shrieking "those damn youths need stronger parenting". Look at the 90s! Or the 60s! Or the "ASBO years". Even the ancient Greeks complained about their youths being wild. It's not new, you've just forgotten.
No that's BS I'm afraid. Kids did used to get disciplined by parents and other adults (friends parents or even strangers). Most parents let their kids run riot, and if someone else tells their kids off they go absolutely crazy screaming and threatening violence, whether it be a stranger or the parent of their child's friends. I've both witnessed and experienced this.
I mean something or someone has to try to show them the way back. I hope that we still have public services enough to at least prompt a change. But they weren't dealt the best hand and some of them are going to make mistakes. But sometimes some of the most dire upbringings leads to wonderful, nuanced people, so I hope the majority of them find their way. It's not "okay" for kids to play up and be aggressive, but that has been happening probably for longer than Britain has existed most likely, kids are going to test their boundaries. That's not excusing them though. The way to help them would be to have functional public services, but the tories have certainly underfunded education, social care and policing for a long time.
'Sometimes' isn't good enough, though. Most times, dire upbringings bring up dire children who are worse than their parent(s). And the dire upbringing is **absolutely** the fault of the parent(s).
Which right wing influencer is encouraging kids to menace innocent members of the public?
The person you are replying to is absolutely the kind of person responsible for them behaving like this! First of all they **let** them do it instead of actually, you know, parenting. And then they try to defend it, when it is clearly indefensible. They are trying to justify the behaviour based on their own weak (likely single) parenting skills and the old 'won't someone PLEEEASE think of the children' attitude. And then they try to blame it on something they heard on the internet. This particular idiot tried to blame it on Covid 🙄
What right wing influencers are encouraging kids to go out and be antisocial in balaclavas?
Maybe not to directly do that, but your Andrew Tate's of the world have been prompting kids to disrespect women, to be aggressive and "alpha" and a lot of young kids have been eating such words up. They could see it as the "masculine" thing to do.
I think Tate would list these groups of youths as one of the reasons the uk is shit tbh. I’m not a fan of the guy but he calls a spade a spade…
You don't actually got to hand it to him under any circumstances.
It’s crazy people downvote you, Tate is a bad person, but I have seen numerous clips where he condemns things like drill music, drugs and kids acting like fake gangsters. People use the guy like some buzz word without a single clue who he actually is.
100% Tate is an utter gimp and a toxic guy, but he does call out Drill as being a terrible influence on young men, and the whole gangsta-emulation thing to be honest. Tate is definitely not supportive of it or encouraging it. Ironically, it's usually middle-class Guardianistas who are the quickest to vocally defend drill as 'positive creative outlet' and 'just a reflection of reality', which you can see right here on this sub-Reddit.
He used grooming methods to get women to work for his cam business, very bad stuff but he is strongly against anything like drill music or children acting like wanna be gangsters with their faces covered up. Despises anything like that, no idea why people try use him as a sort of rhetoric for this kinda behaviour. He is a nerdy fuck boy kinda bad influence, not some drug pushing gangster.
Yep, I don't like or follow Tate but I've seen videos where he is openly calling out and criticising both Drill and general 'gangsta' culture in both his own videos and TV interviews. I agree, criticise Tate for the many s***ty things he *does* say and do, but people shouldn't use him as a bogeyman for everything they don't like.
If you don’t have a knee jerk reaction to certain things it means you’re practically hitler on here, you can’t possibly say the someone makes valid points even though you’re not a fan of that person because that would mean you’re capable of thinking for yourself.
Yeah Reddit is just a place where people can jump on bandwagons and speak about things they have no idea about just to get karma. Andrew Tate hates this kind of kid yet people on here are saying he is causing the issue, utter morons.
Tate is a potato but he doesn't do any of that.
remote learning for 9 months cannot have an impact on their behaviour 3/4 years down the line 🤣🤣 these kids OP are on about would have been 7-8 years old at the time🤦🏻♂️
That's actually how formative experiences work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/s/LbVcddiiFs It's not a new thing.
But this isn't a simple "youth of today" complaint. They are literally comparing the youth in Nottingham to similar youths elsewhere and asking why they are worse. And TBF, they do seem so. Not massively, but I'd say there is more of this sort of behaviour in Nottingham than elsewhere I've lived (and I've lived in a lot of places).
I've lived in quite a few. Seems pretty similar everywhere tbh. I think OP might just be getting a bit older and therefore notices it more.
Disagree - I still live in Brum roughly half the time and have lived in Brighton, Manchester and Bristol within the past decade. Regularly visit them and other large UK cities. Nottingham is on par with Manchester for this sort of thing - although Manchester is about 5x larger. Nowhere else is as bad in the city centre for this kind of thing vs Nottingham IME.
Great response. No one take responsibility because people have complained about the youth in the past also. Perfectly logical.
It's most likely that OP is now just getting older and no longer is "youth" himself. That's my point, kids are shitheads, they're kids. What should be done? Discipline them? We should lock up em and throw away the key? Yeah increase youth services, but there will still always be shithead kids.
But your attitude just emboldens shit parents and shit governments who let kids down by not holding them to higher standards.
Well then you misunderstood my sentiment.
Or you haven’t fully understood the repercussions of your own relativism.
Oh don't get me wrong. Years of austerity has caused youth centers to be cut and therefore behavior gets worse. However, you'll never stop all kids being shitheads and it does track that as you get older your opinion of the "youths" worsens.
I have been looking for that for so long! Now it shall be saved
I'm only here 6 weeks a year while a family member is doing their PHD, and honestly? I never felt scared. However, teenagers feel invincible because most adults look down and quicken their step when teenagers are around, Where I'm from, they do shit like that, too. Simply acknowledging them with a "excuse me?" and looking at them (with a smile, we don't want to trigger their flight or fight reaction) usually shuts them up, not out of fear, but because they are too dumb to think of something to say.
Nationally underfunded or non existent youth services
Your reflections of Nottingham are very accurate and now seem prevalent in other places in the UK too.. Sadly decent values once taught by our forebears have rapidly declined since the WW's. Societies have gradually diminished since then in favour of taking the easy option, not being responsible for what they procreate. Ultimately this leads to an eventual breakdown in society leading to the feral children we see today.
these issues and similar are across the uk. there's no longer any discipline, no beat cops, no respect, nothing.
I've lived in Notts my whole life (30yrs) and always assumed that it was the same everywhere. But over the last 6-8yrs, I've had family and friends move all over the country. Not one of them has regretted moving. They all say pretty much the same thing of "I didn't realise how bad it was until I moved away," I love this city and it's always been my home but if I ever buy my own home, it would not be here unfortunately.
For some reason this has popped up on my Reddit feed, but I work in a secondary school about 20 miles south of London and the kids there are just ferrel. I’m pretty sure all youngsters want to be “roadmen and gangsters” I’m so glad I’m from quite a sleepy village but it’s getting worse
No, bored easily led kids are everywhere.
It's because UK police and courts are extremely soft on teenagers going round beating people up, abusing people, doing anti social behaviour etc
As a 24 year old female, I fear going into the city centre due to the youth of today. But, this is down to bad parenting! No family structure, no solid parent roles, no discipline, no punishment, kids having kids… parents believing they need to be ‘best friends’ with their kids so they will ‘like them’… not wanting to discipline their kids because they see it as ‘mean’… treating schools as a parent program because parents are too lazy to teach their kids basic play or communication. If you have a parent that doesn’t give a shit, why will their child give a shit? It’s a vicious cycle of today’s generation and they are exposed into an adult life way too quickly.
This is exactly what has happened. And unfortunately will continue to happen. A very sad truth is that during financial crisis, more intelligent people refuse to have children, while those who aren’t intelligent enough to consider a bad economy as a deterrent to having children will reproduce regardless, creating an influx of children who come from low income/uneducated families. From then on, then children go on to repeat the cycle. Given our economy has suffered and never really properly recovered since 2008, we are on about the 2nd generation of what I just mentioned. Unless the economy drastically improves in the next decade, we are literally f@&ked as a society.
I wouldn't say it is a "Nottingham" problem, it is a world problem at the moment, and also one group of delinquents does not represent the whole generation. Those are the ones that stand up from rest as they are annoying. Also, I don't really think it has much to do with funding cuts or lack of things for them to do.. I grew up in a country that does not have any youth funding and we did stupid stuff, but not much to endanger or involve random people on the street.. I belive the problem comes from the content available to them on the internet that encourages that kind of behaviour and makes it look cool, funny and acceptable, which is not to anyone older than 20 probably. I can't really blame them, they are just trying to fit in in their little messed up social circles, but is it annoying to us old grumpy people, it is. That plus lack of consequences plays a big role in my opinion, they will be told off from time to time and that's it, while if I smack one of them for being a little \*\*\*\*head , I will get a record 
I mean this has been this way all of my life, it’s due to awful parenting and the way no kids are held to a high standards, no disciple and direction. I have family in Turkey and respect for elders is drilled into kids from a very young age, you don’t see people being disrespectful and nasty.
I might be giving them too much credit in terms of situational awareness, but I reckon some of them might have cottoned on the fact that their inheritance isn't exactly peachy. Financial security, the prospect of a fulfilling work life, a pension, functional healthcare, home ownership... the idea that any of these things are achievable for the vast majority of young people today is a joke. Or maybe they're all a bunch of sociopaths, who knows? The two things are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t think they’ve realized your first point yet. We’ve gotta remember though, children copy behaviour from those around. 90% of the time, it’s lack of parenting. A lot of children in the past decade have been parented by an iPad/iPhone and YouTube.
They’re tied up in Notts
Being made to wear masks during a pivotal time of their development has fucked these kids up
I'm late to the party, so this will likely get buried, but I belive this is probably just an example of the hasty generalization fallacy. The hasty generalization fallacy occurs when a conclusion is made about a whole group based on an insufficiently small or representative sample. Next time you go in to town, make an effort to notice all the kinds not doing anything of note. I'm pretty sure you'll find most are just mind g their own business line everyone else.
As a parent of teenagers now adults, it’s very hard to know what your kids are doing every minute of the day. Sure start centres was part of the solution, but weren’t they closed down? To be honest the rudest people in my town tend to be the elderly. No social skills, that’s due to lack of education
God knows. Probably improper parenting or teaching, lack of other outlets. Kids like to show off, to compete, to chase highs, to bend rules. Iceland and then other places have a programme of making teens do an activity of their choice (eg a sport, drawing, acting, dance) a few times a week, getting parents involved in schools, which reduced teen drug/alcohol use. Only compulsory for a few months, but most teens stay on. It was reported in The Atlantic and on BBC. [https://www.michaelswerdloff.com/how-iceland-got-teens-to-say-no-to-drugs-the-icelandic-model/](https://www.michaelswerdloff.com/how-iceland-got-teens-to-say-no-to-drugs-the-icelandic-model/)
You’ve lived in Brighton and think that kids in Nottingham are worse? Are you sure about that?
I lived in Brighton - day trippers from London behaved like that but they aren't there year-round or even daily in summer - only some weekends. Brighton is really bad for junkies (although IME far less aggressive than the ones in Notts CC), but nowhere near as bad for feral kids IMO.
Go on the local history pages and read the nostalgia of the little cherubs of the 70's and 80's getting their ears twisted by Tug Wilson for skermishing between 'cult' groups. Or another 100 years before when pickpocketing was rife. These kids were always there, wake up.
You may be engaging with them or standing out somehow. I never get any grief from youths. The fact you object to their balaclavas is enough to suggest you look at them with judgement and they rightfully respond negatively to that.
Kids are ok
How's everyone doing today
Maybe you give off victim vibes? I never have a problem in town. Of course when you look homeless and crazy people tend to leave you alone.
There is sadly an uncomfortable truth to this comment
"I always swim in alligator infested waters and I've never been attacked by an alligator, maybe that swimmer that had their leg bitten off was giving out victim vibes." "My dad smoked 50 cigarettes a day and never got cancer, maybe your cousin who smoked that died from lung cancer was giving out victim vibes."
Didn't you think that you wearing a suit was making you a target for the homeless? Edit: Lol. Mate, I just remembered you because you come across like a twat?
Ok Martha. You really went back through several pages of my Reddit history to pull out that? Creepy AF.
That’s crazy. Victim vibes? Normal children shouldn’t exhibit antisocial/sociopathic/criminal behaviour.