Britain is Fucked

I’ve been watching this series recently on BBC iPlayer called “World’s Strictest Parents.”

I generally avoid watching television programmes altogether (I don’t even have a working TV) and always steer clear of that dreaded superlative:

“World’s Wildest Police Chases”

“100 Fattest Children”

“Britain’s Deadliest Hedgehogs” –the list goes on.

But in this instance, the programme is pretty good.

Two unruly British teenagers from two different families (who spoil them rotten and have no discipline) are sent every week to live with another strict, traditional family in a foreign country. Invariably they arrive and are shocked by the “strict” routine of their new parents. (–Is forbidding alcohol to under-18s “strict”? How about refusing to allow sluttish/debauched behaviour?)

The programme should actually be called either “World’s Most Disgusting Teenagers” or “Britain: World’s Shittest and Least Civilised Country”, because the programme isn’t about strictness, per se, but more about how badly most children are raised in the UK. The overwhelming message of the programme is that if you give your children lots of expensive stuff, establish low expectations of them and allow them to behave like wankers/sluts/knobends then you’re probably in for a rough time.

Every family in WSP, without exception, has been loving, encouraging and proud of their children. In every instance the teenagers have left humbled and changed (though the BBC probably achieves this deliberately by engaging in a degree of editing, or even scripting, of the programme for the purposes of that dreadful expression: Good TV) and with a healthier life view.

Grotty British teens have been shipped off to Alabama, Ghana, Jamaica and India so far. The parents in these places have been strict, sure, but they’ve also been good parents. For my part, I couldn’t get through a week with most of these kids without flipping out and mangling their limbs in a lawnmower, so credit to them.

What’s really impressive is how good the schools have been, particularly in Jamaica and India. The teachers are inspiring and human; their lessons are not patronizing and more reminiscent of University lectures than classrooms in the UK. There’s an overall air of warmth and dignity in these schools and I find myself being rather envious when I watch this show that I didn’t have the opportunity to go to one of them myself.

Ultimately, Britain is fucked. That’s the message I get, not just watching World’s Strictest Parents, but just walking around the streets of this island, looking at them in their jewellery and their makeup and their “I don’t give a fuck” attitude and their belly-fat and all the other telltale signs of a failing race.

I gazed with admiration and awe at the diligence and intelligence of the Indian kids, hard at work in their school (well dressed, respectful, attentive, articulate) and thought to myself that it’s no wonder that country’s booming at the moment and surely they deserve a shot at the kind of wealth we’ve had in the UK (and taken for granted) for over a century? They deserve it, man.

The really sad thing is that some of the British teens sent overseas appear to have real potential, but they’ve been let down by their own society, families and educational establishments. I don’t see it getting better, either. I think in 100 years time we’ll all be sliding around in the mud with too many mouths to feed and zero literacy whilst the Indians and Chinese rule the world.

And I say: let them do it, I’m convinced they’d do a better job than we, The West, ever did. And the "World's Strictest Parents" is just another reminder in an ever-increasing list of quite how badly we fucked up.

FG