h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The 90's was the age of political correctness when alot of our countries humour and thoughts were dispelled because it was not thought to be political correct. It was the age of alternative humour, which frankly alot of which I did not find funny.
This was the age when we were told we had to think about the children of our society and their rights. This has now come full circle where the children have all the rights and adults have none.
In all towns and cities children are running wild and there is nothing as adults we can do about it for the police, schools and parents are more concerned about the repercusions of disciplining children.
We also saw criminals beginning to assert their rights and gone were the days of them being punished for their crimes BUT being rehabilitated. This has now gone full circle where criminals are now sueing prisons for infringing their human rights, and remember these criminals thought nothing of infringing their victims human rights by burglary or murder.
The 90's was the era that the world went mad in my opinion and the thoughts of the "do-gooder" ruled.

there speaks 'Angry from Tunbridge Wells'
so Bernard Manning can't get tv spots and being racist and sexist aren't acceptable as comedy anymore, good
in the UK parents still have the right to use physical force to chastise their children, something I don't regard as good
if prisoners are able to sue prisons it is because that prison is being badly run, do you want that to continue?
prisoners are punished by being in prison, not by being abused (physically or otherwise) by prison guards
would you prefer having do-badders rather than do-gooders?

Who said anything about racist or sexist comedy? I didn't.

And no I don't like Bernard Manning.

Alot of comedy shows from that time were suddenly abolished for they were no longer politically correct (Did you see the documentary, I think it was on Channel 4, Who Killed Saturday Night Entertainment). Who could consider Cannon & Ball, Little & Large, etc as racist or sexist?

One of the "racist" shows everyone quotes was Love Thy Neighbour. Yes this in some respects was racist BUT it was always Eddie Booth, White character, that was shown to be the idiot, buffoon and complete clod.
Yet it was his neighbour, ethnic minority, who was always shown as the superior and intellectual person. Not your stereotypical racist comedy!

Now your second part of your response. Children: who said anything about smacking children. I was smacked as a child, usually I knew I had it coming and deserved it but it wasn't that often, but all discipline has now gone. Have you seen the newspaper reports where teachers have been attacked by kids or have you seen on the news where it is now a constant problem with these trouble making children where some estates are literally no go areas. And no I am not saying all children are bad but the bad ones are worse than has ever been in our history.
Gone is the respect to elder members of the population, and before you think I am that old I am 39.
This problem has even been raised in Parliment where Mr Blunket has admitted it has got out of hand.
What I am saying is that this can be directly traced to the changing attitudes in the 90's.

Lastly Prisons: First of all I agree no one should be physically, mentally or emotionly tortured or abused. But prisons are there to remove people who have committed crimes from the general population.
They are not holiday camps, they are there to punish and demoralise to show people that crime does not pay.
Yet some prisoners think they should still be entitled to luxuries and when they don't get them they sue the prison or riot.
But who foots the bills the tax payer.
There are prisoners doing education courses, eg Open University, payed for by you and me yet you try to take a course for free and you get no where.
Take this right away from them and they say you infringe their human rights.
And no I am not a let them hang person for I am totally against capital punishment.
What I am saying is that more thought is payed to a prisoner when they is in prison than their victims, ask any person that has been a victim of crime.

Some times I do think we need, if you like, do-badders who will say NO the system works and we are keeping it. What I mean by do-gooders are people that want to change the system because in their opinion it is wrong with out thinking What is it are we going to change it to? Will it work? What controls are we going to put in place? and finally if it does not work are we going to change it back?

You say at the beginning of your note Mr Angry and in some respects yes and this is because all the conventions I have been taught I see erroding away since the 90's and what stikes me is if it goes any further what state will our country be in by 2010.

I didn't see the documentary in question so I can't comment on that.
Cannon & Ball and Little & Large may not have been racist or sexist but I never found them all that funny either.
I think their replacement with the current dire Saturday night programming has more to do with programme economics than political correctness. Programs like Pop Idol are cheap to make.
You may not have mentioned smacking children but you did mention parents, teachers etc being afraid to discipline them.
"the bad ones are worse than has ever been in our history"
Really, worse than in the 19th century?
Ours is still a law-abiding and non-violent society compared to most periods in our history and most of the rest of the world. We have problems as a society but looking back to a Golden Age that never really existed won't help either. My father grew up on a council estate in the 1940s and from what he says it was a violent area that the police only visited in force then so perhaps not as much has changed as you think.

This really is a nonsense phrase. What does political correctness gone mad actually mean? What is your argument? Isn't this a bit of UKIP (UK Independance Party - The friendly/purple face of British hyperxenophobia) propaganda designed to get a certain kind of Daily Mail reading hypocrite to believe that all the country's ills are caused by some mystical liberal elite who want to abolish laughter and a sinister Frenchman in Brussels saying "Mwahaha, soon the Union flag and pints of beer will be gone!"

I agree with the thing about adults and disciplining children. I heard that someone once said (I can't remember who) something to the effect of: the the thing I admire about America is the way parents obey their children.

Is it better for the children to fear their parents? Discipline is strongest (albeit maybe a little more flexible ) when you understand the reasons behind the rules.

children don't necesarily need to fear their parents, but they need to learn discipline from them.

A lot of people can't seem to differentiate between child abuse and discipline. I wonder how many of these people have children themselves? To be honest, if you can't tell the difference between the two, it's questionable whether you should be allowed to be so critical of the latter. I'd say the same applies if you can't differentiate between racism and humour.

i heard of a man (in America, the political correctness capital of the world) who was on death row for a year or more, who was getting dialysis for his cancer at the expense of the taxpayers. That's a load of crap. I don't think that someone who is sentenced to death should be kept alive so they can be killed properly.

Political correctness has gone too far in most of America.
As a child I had many friends (and still do) that belonged to different races, religions, creeds, etc. We were never concerned about our differences, only about what happened on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the day before.
In school we were taught political correctness and respect for everyone. But as the years went by it became more and more extreme. Eventually I became afraid to speak to anyone who was black or Jewish or Indian out of fear that I might offend them. I have had to retrain my mind to relax and just be friendly and not worry about making someone angry just by saying, "Hey, what's up?" I work with a Jewish Canadian-American doctor and I have to force myself to ask him stuff about Judaism, which I am actually quite fascinated by.
Also, regarding children and discipline - WHAT discipline?! When I was a kid and did something wrong I received lectures from my mother - a woman who could lay guilt trips that would make the Mother Superior of a convent feel like a Madam in Satan's favorite brothel! My father had a more physical approach, which meant that he'd give us a good hard smack when we did something wrong or dumb. It made me and my brother learn from our mistakes and taught us to think twice before doing something stupid. It was not child abuse - it was receiving a consequence for our actions. These days I see kids killing other kids, talking back to their parents, running wild, and it p*sses me off royally. I work in a vet clinic and probably 95% of the kids who come with their parents are screaming, grabbing the animal during the exam, throwing stuff, making a huge mess, and I even saw one kid smear his own feces on the wall! Then he took a metal key and tried to stick it in the electric socket while his mother was telling the doctor about her sister's "rockwyler" who "had thuh mange" and wanted to know if she could get something for it while she was there with her cat. I wanted to scream, "LADY! What are you doing? Don't worry about the rottweiler - watch your son!!"
I'm sure this post will receive plenty of negative feedback, but I don't really care. It is only my opinion, to which everyone is entitled. As my dear mother would say, "Opinions are like butts; everyone has one, no one wants to hear anyone elses'." Just ignore me if you don't like what I've said...I'll just slink over to P.U.D.D.I.N.G. and grumble with the fellow portions.

What annoys me is parents who put their children in "time out" so they can think about what they did wrong (although I have to admit it's pretty funny when my brother and his wife do it to my nephew). Sometimes when we did something bad to another sibling, my parents would do it to us to let us know how bad it felt. Like the time when I was little and I bit my little brother, and my mom bit me. It's good when parents can teach their children empathy.

I have to disagree with some of the things said above. Being 21 now I was raised during a big part of the 90's, and although it is true that some kids have not been thought a lot of dicipline etc, I have. If I did something wrong I could get a smak from one of my parents or get the whole guilttrip thing. I don't think my upbringing has in that sense been very different from any of the ones mentioned above(except of course in the details...) So the 90s weren't all bad
Rod

I half agree on disaplining children, i mean if a child has been disaplined in any way, shape or form too much, so the child fears the disapliner then the punishment is pointless. However, if the disaplin is only occasional and well suted to the penson that is been disaplined then it works.

The first thing as the person who started this discussion. The insinuation, or should it be accusation, is that I may be a part of the UKIP. WRONG!. I am actually one of those people that would like to see a U.S.E. (United States of Europe). If each Europian country, including ours, could get their act together we could be one of the most powerfull countries in the world. Even, if I may say, rivaling America. Just look at the resources we would have. BUT then again it will never happen because each country has their own agenda and distrusts.

Next entertainment: To all out there I ask have you ever told an Irish joke or Scottish joke? if the answer is yes then under the true meaning of racism then you are a racist. Have you ever, if male, told a mother in law or "dumb blond" joke. Then in the true definition you are a sexist. Alot of the worlds humour in some way come from putting other people down, even the politically correct comedians put people down usually the goverment.

Next children: I made a statement that out of control children are worse then any time in our history. The answer I got was including the 19th century. Then my answer is yes. The reason I give for this answer is that in the 19th century children committed crime to live i.e. eat but in todays western society no child is that destitute they have to commit crime. Also in the 19th century children had one deterrent and that was the LAW. If a child was caught they would be tried and sentenced and treated as adults resulting in either imprisonment, deportation or even hanging (before we start I have already said I am against capital punishment). In todays society no such deterrents are available and power has been taken away from the institutes that can control children e.g. schools, police, courts and parents. The system has been changed to protect the child to such an extent that as a society we can no longer be protected against children e.g. under a certain age a child is classed as not being criminally responsible for their actions no matter what they do - this has been confirmed by the police by the way.

I have been asked what is the point. The point is this. In the 90's a lot of upheaval happened in the world. It became smaller through the use of technology. People suddenly sat up to see the injustices and horrors that could happen. And rightly said this should not and can not happen again.
But with these good causes a select few started to look at thing that were not horrors or injustices but have been established for years e.g. the way we treat children and cultural views on entertainment, and said that these were wrong also for they did not correspond to the worlds new view of political correctness. And instead of asking what was wrong and asking for public opinion suddenly decreed that they should be outlawed, or if not outlawed then deeply discourished.
The 90's I saw was the age of the, what I call, do-gooder ruled. They fought for injustices with out first asking if they were injustices and introduced systems, that in my opinion don't work, without first looking at the problems they would cause.

As a white, christian, working class, law abiding male I find that I have to be very careful what I say and do incase I am classed as a racist, sexist, homophobic, child hater, elderly hater, etc (Other people have written in to this forum saying they feel concerned about what they say just in case).
In this forum alone it has been insinuated I am talking about sexist and racist comedy, beating children, I am a member of UKIP, I am angry (which in some respect I am with the way I am expected to conform to some ones elses idea of correct behaivour).
Political correctness was supposed to be a liberation BUT for alot of people it has become a prison with no forseeable end.

In my opinion this is political correctness gone mad. If the system discriminates against people for being average then in itself the system if flawed and politically incorrect itself.

What we have to get back to is the old system of behavour. The system I was taught under was described in one simple word and that is RESPECT. Respect for yourself and others. And that also means respecting that not everyone will conform to your ideals.

Speaking as an actual child, I think I'm qualified to give my two cents. As for discipline, I haven't been spanked since I was three, put in time out since I was in second grade, and I haven't really been punished in years. What some adults don't seem to understand is that a child's parents are the most important people in their life for a very long time. If something is truly important and you give them a stern reprimand and tell them why they shouldn't do something, they will listen. They will listen because they want you to be happy with them. The only time an adult would have to resort to physical violence would be when their child does not recognise them as someone they want to please or obey.

After a child has reached a certain age, they will already have basic ideas of what is right and wrong. If they don't at this point, they never will. At this point it is too late to try to influence their actions by discipline because they will only become hostile and the relationship will be pushed apart.
The best way to try to help your child at this stage is to connect with them and treat them as your equal. At this stage, some children will have incredibly bad judgement and all you can do is try to show them why something is a bad idea, and later, perform damage control.

Some lessons are best learned by just doing something and learning from your mistakes. The hardest thing for a parent to do sometimes is to just let go and support their child. The best familial relationships are based on trust, respect, and equality.

I was born in 1989 and, having spent almost my entire life in the '90s, I think I have the authority to say that parenting has been doing fine.

well said
well at least Memnon isn't blaming the 1960s, the usual decade that gets blamed for everything
I'm sorry Memnon, I can't take you seriously on this
I've been hearing similar complaints my whole life and I'm the same age as you

To be honest, I don't think its an unreasonable assumption to suggest you support UKIP, seeing as they stand on a anti-political correctness platform. I can sympathise with a few of your points, the problem with this argument is it is dominated by the "I'm not racist, I'm anti-anti-racist" crowd to which I refered earlier and therefore it is always slightly dodgy argumentative ground, if you see what I mean?