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Operation New Life

Charity begins at home. This is not an ode to selfishness, it is a cry for help on behalf of the children of the UK . Step aside starving third-world countries and failed dictatorships, our young people are experiencing problems too. Their lives are not decadent enough, they are faced with the prospect of working for a living, possibly without ever owning a swimming pool or a mansion, and as such they are struggling to cope.

Joking aside, I am genuinely concerned that children in the UK are force-fed so much brand advertising and celebrity culture that it makes their lives feel insignificant unless they can afford to look/live like the people they idolise. We are creating a generation of people who will do whatever they can to get rich, regardless of the consequences. I think the blame lies in three key areas: our celebrity-obsessed media; the value we place on personal wealth as a whole in society; and the attitude of rich young adults (specifically footballers and pop stars) who exacerbate the problem through their irresponsible activities.

The media is riddled with twenty-something millionaire footballers who have more money than sense (an easy ratio to achieve in some cases), and who live their lives like a child in a toy shop. They race around in flash cars with puppet bimbos at their side, buy their way out of trouble when it comes their way, and generally fail to take their responsibility as role models seriously. They are false heroes who make being rich seem like the answer to all of life's problems, and the result is that young people will stop at nothing to become richer, especially if it's a quick fix that doesn't involve hard graft.

Take for example the twins who were recently convicted of killing their own grandmother in a botched attempt to steal her life savings. At one time the phrase 'to step on your own gran' was a joke reference which implied that one would stop at nothing to reach a goal; now it has new connotations in the literal sense, whereby you stand on granny's corpse to reach her savings tin from the top shelf in the kitchen.

I recently read the tale of a young man who was so desperate to get rich that he devised a plan called Operation New Life. This wasn't the ambitious business plan of a typical boy with dreams of Wall Street, it was a cruel and callous scheme which hurt the people closest to him most of all. The plan was as follows: 'kill family; lose memory; get adopted by rich couple; it all starts'.

After writing the plan out on note paper, the boy then proceeded to kill his sister, burn the family home, and attack his brother with an axe blow to the head. His brother was lucky enough to survive the attack (not without injury), and the rest of the family were unharmed, however the fact that he could even dream up such a plan is a major concern. Amazingly his parents and surviving siblings supported him throughout the ensuing court case, and have shown him the kind of loyalty that money can't buy.

In typically modern fashion the defence for his actions was that he suffered from a medical condition, in this case autism. From the evidence I have read his behaviour is not typical of an autism sufferer in that he excelled at English, and according to his father "did well academically". It seems to me that rather than try to solve the root cause of behavioural problems in young people, we simply diagnose them and put them into a category which says it is ok to misbehave. ADHD is always a popular favourite for anybody who doesn't like to be told what to do, can't sit still unless they are facing a television, or is too busy swearing to listen to instructions. Perhaps Autism will become the new buzz-word for adolescents who think its ok to kill people.

Speaking of buzz-words, the term chav has become popular in recent years, and has come to mean an ignorant aggressive young person, often wearing sports clothing, who has little or no regard for others. These young offenders steal things that they can't afford or aren't prepared to work for, and society currently has no effective way of dealing with them. The average young offender is not deterred by prison as he/she is aware that prison is a good opportunity to hook up with a few old chums, play some pool, work out in the gym and while away the evenings in front of the complementary colour television.

We need a hard-line government policy which revolves around the following mantra: Give a chav an ASBO and he/she will behave for a day. Threaten to amputate his/her legs at the next offence and they will behave for life. Alas such a policy is never going to sneak past the sleeping Lords, and perhaps the answer is a little more humane. I propose that our misbehaving freeloaders be sent as volunteer labourers to African countries in need of help. A few weeks hard work in the baking sun might help them see the error of their ways and repent. It would be called Operation New Life.

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