Shame and Grace

I was watching BBC News the other morning while runnig late and struggling  into my cycling gear. It should really include body armour as I was almost knocked off my bike three times yesterday, including once by a yardie who jumped the lights (bombaraas). I thought I'd give Big Brother (the morning repeat) a break as my inner snob was berating me about the amount of trash/bollocks TV I'm currently consuming.

There was an item on a headteacher who has come up with the novel idea of going round to his pupils yards and confiscating their Playstations/Nintendo GameCubes/ or Xboxes, as he realised that some of them were turning up at school tired, lethargic and disinterested from staying up late playing computer games.

The headteacher was sat on the sofa with Exhibit Number 1: The Cheeky Looking Black Kid. Shame and Grace. Back in the day, we used to laugh about how slack white people were at parenting their kids. One of my white school friends Dawn used to tell her mum to shut-up. 'Try know', (as Wong says) I would not be here to tell the tale if I'd ever told my hair-trigger temper of a Mum to shut-up. Even now.

So this little 'butter wouldn't melt' (enjoying the cute phase before teenage spots land) yout' was telling Dermot Murnaghan how his teacher came to his house and took his games console. All THREE of them. Black parents hang your heads in SHAME! The yout' has THREE games console, which each cost around £200, not to mention the TV in his bedroom. He said: "I didn't think he had the right to do that." Well son, if you had a REAL parent instead of the spineless, non-boundary setting one that you live with, he wouldn't need to come to your yard and do that.

What a shameful day (among many) for black people. We are so lax with our youts' nowadays that a teacher can go on national TV and talk about his 'initiative' to go into people's houses and remove his pupils toys. The interview also revealed that this child was outside of mainstream schooling. So, even though the child is basically failing at school yet his parents/parent still felt it was okay for him to have THREE games consoles. No wonder my daughter hates me. Last week she was on a TV ban, before that a clothes shopping ban (one too many eediot detentions) and if she ain't acting right her FATHER removes the Playstation. And try know, an unexpected slap works wonders.

It's a state of affairs someone recently christened 'loving neglect'. A phenomena which affects all classes and creeds. We live in a society which is no longer afraid of debt, and has embraced the 'bling' mentality wholeheartedly, to some parents, saying no to their child is almost akin to being cruel. It's not just the single parents who try to make up for the absent one by buying lots of stuff, but as seen on the programme Don't Mess With Miss Beckles, some middle-class parents she encountered didn't agree with her strict boundaries, goal setting or making their children study when they didn't want to. They didn't agree with her 'methods' they said. Well at least she had some in comparison to their 'let's just let Little Johnny shit all over us and do what he wants when he wants to' approach! Dyam fools.

As Spike Lee said some years back, some parents need to: "WAKE UP!"