RandomJottings.co.uk

I was shocked to hear this week that Greater Manchester Police has thrown all common sense out of the window and decided to class incidents of snowball throwing as “serious violent crime” even though none of the incidents led to injury.

As if their crime statistics weren’t bad enough to start with there seems to be a culture of over-egging the pudding, it doesn’t help that none of these miniature sub-zero terrorists has been traced, bumping up the unsolved-crime rate.

Granted, with the amount of bureaucracy policing involves these days writing a report on serious crime is probably a good way to stay inside during the cold spell we’ve been having, contributing to the 6 million hours a year lost to form filling.

There has been some criticism of whoever called the police when the kids started throwing snowballs, but to be fair, it’s got to the point where you daren’t challenge them.
 
Gone are the days that you could shout at the kids and they’d disappear off and keep their heads down for a bit, now you’ll get a torrent of abuse and a police officer at your doorstep (within 5 minutes) arresting you for hurting their feelings!!!

To stop the generational descent into barbarianism we need to take action quickly. The police need to be relieved of the red-tape that is hampering their efforts and have their common sense reinstated. Parents also need to be made responsible for their children’s behaviour so that police can go back to using the time honoured tradition of the “clip round the ear”

This “clip” in this day and age wouldn’t be physical chastisement, but it is wrong to either drag children through the courts for minor offences or let them off because it is a waste of resources to pursue it.

In this case the “clip” should be an order to make good any damage done (preferably with the child involved in the repair not just by the parent digging into their pocket) or it could be a small community punishment that once completed wipes the slate clean. Either way, the parent should be the one responsible for seeing that the task is carried out and could face further proceedings if not complied with.