I can’t make shit up this good…

Some Baptist Church thought it was an a-okay and solid-Christian plan to give guns to kids. I swear to God (of all people) that you just can’t make this shit up… turns out they won’t be doing it this year, they’re saving it for next year. Woohooo! I’m gonna get me some guns for Jeeesuss!

Makes the knife-crime problem in the UK pale by comparison doesn’t it? However, the fact that a church saw fit to pass out semi-auto assault rifles to teens just tells you how crazy the world, and how far institutes are willing to go to recruit the young to their ranks.

It also worries me, if that’s what happening in a church in the US, what’s going to happen over here? Its knives now, but is it just a matter of time before that problem escalates? We now have 20 teens dead this year so far from stab wounds in London, and we’re only half way through the year.

I have to laugh, because if I didn’t, I’d cry. These teens are out of control, or scared of the ones who are out of control. Target parents. Parents should control their kids, if they don’t, they should be penalised. I’m saying telling them to just ‘get on with it’, but providing them with parental classes, enforcing them if necessary.

I also agree with Sheldon Thomas who appeared on the BBC News recently. They need jobs, they need prospects. But something realistic! The government is shoving it on to youngsters that everyone can have a degree and be a high earner.

No! Dammit NO!

Society needs people at all levels. Sales assistants and cleaners may not earn what I do, they don’t handle hazardous materials and they haven’t had to study as much as I have. But that doesn’t mean they’re not just as damn well important!

If you’re a sales assistant you help me buy the stuff I need for my family. In fact all of the following industries do: power, agriculture, sales, cleaning, food production, packaging production, fuel, furniture, metal working, driving…  If you work here, you’re important. If you didn’t sweep the streets, I’d be forever stepping in garbage and dog poo. If you didn’t change the street light lightbulbs, I wouldn’t go out in the evening. If you didn’t serve behind a bar, I wouldn’t be able to go out and relax for a drink with my friends.

Everybody contributes. As a child I was taught that, and the government are taking it away. They’re making young people feel as if they aren’t worth something unless they have a degree.

It’s an old story, but the old guy who needs a bed pan in the hospital is more grateful to the unqualified cleaner running in with it than the degree-proud qualified nurse who disdains such filthy duties and leaves him in pain; or shame when the inevitable happens. You can say its not true but my mother-in-law found her father that way when she visited him.

And then there’s my own example. I grew up in a one parent family that much later became a two parent one. I was poor, one of the ‘deprived’ but my mother made it quite clear that were I to turn to unsavoury occupations, it wasn’t the police I had to fear, it was her.

Quite right too.

I’ve been a waitress, a sales assistant, a till monkey, a cleaner, an agency grunt, and many other things. Now I’m a lab tech, I’m qualified to handle all sorts of dangerous things, maintain delicate equipment and instruct classes in practical experiments. That doesn’t mean I get out of the dirty jobs, I can spend hours a week simply cleaning.

A degree does not make your life better, it may bring you more money, but I’ve been just as happy skint as I have only half-skint. I’ve never been rich, doubt I ever will be. We have debts but we get by, and I’d rather do that than have a high flying corporate job and no life.

And that’s what we need to teach our kids. Look for what makes you happy, not what makes you ’successful’, teach them, because no one else is. Maybe then they’d need less knives and guns.