Welfare-state mobs

It’s a Theodore Dalrymple moment, I’m afraid. I’ve been watching the news from London and the UK with dismay–but not, altogether, with surprise. The cultural conditions for this orgy of criminality have long been apparent on the streets of many British town centres every Friday and Saturday night: areas simply given over to menacing gangs of feral teenagers roaming around as if they own the place, which they do.

My parents told me some years ago that they no longer dared to venture into their local town centre (Bolton) after dark. I was glad to hear it. For a while I had a flat near Piccadilly Circus in central London. The wall of a building nearby–two steps from the square, mind you, not in a back street–had been designated a late night urinal. To get to my front door late at night, I used to walk past a line of men pissing. Now and then a policeman would amble by this sight unperturbed–though to be fair I never saw an officer avail himself of the facility. Less common was the sight of a young woman squatting to relieve herself–something you would rarely see before midnight, at least on a main thoroughfare such as Haymarket, and probably no more than once a week. (“Couldn’t you at least use the gutter?” I used to think.)