* Tony bollocks Blair announced his solution to the gun culture which was to reduce the age you can be sentenced for carrying a gun to 17 yrs old. That'll do it Tony. How the nation laughed. He also announced that this was not a knee jerk reaction to recent killings but something that he had been thinking about for 2 weeks! Wow! This must be based on the 'a week is a long time in politics' adage and 2 weeks is obviously an age in politics. It wasn't a knee jerk reaction it was a reaction from a jerk.
I decided to go to the source of wisdom and rang up Uncle Dave after asking how his medicinal herb garden was doing, apparently flowering very nicely, I asked his thoughts on the latest american import 'gangsters with guns'.
Uncle Dave asked if I was familiar with the saying,'When the going gets tough the tough get going.' It rang a bell but I wasn't too sure where I heard it. Well says Dave that's just a nice sounding sticker slogan, the correct and truer slogan is
'When the going gets tough, everybody goes back to the tribe.' According to Uncle Dave the trouble started when Mrs Thatcher decided to create an disenfranchised underclass who everybody could forget about. This brought about the conditions that generated the current antisocial value system held by the underclass. In these conditions everbody goes back to the tribe. This descends as far as families but in current society this structure is being broken down. So who is my tribe well its my colour then its my area then its my friends or gang, families don't apply because they don't exist, that's the way to get along.
And the cure? I asked. Dave was pessimistic (isn't he always) once the value system is in place it is hard to change, once the tribe is identified no one thinks they're a whiteman with a heavy tan.