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Boys And The Hoodie
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i'm with you on the headscarves issue yoti
guys, we can try and stay in topic with the hood here,
i would avoid starting a headscarf topic though cause i know it will get uber heated
and i'm one of those who would do the 'heating up' so.. lets stay cool and avoid this issue cause its mainly political (same as the hood issue actually)
appreciated staying on topic
guys, we can try and stay in topic with the hood here,
i would avoid starting a headscarf topic though cause i know it will get uber heated
and i'm one of those who would do the 'heating up' so.. lets stay cool and avoid this issue cause its mainly political (same as the hood issue actually)
appreciated staying on topic
Some people don't seem to entirely understand what's banned. Its not hoodies specifically, its anything that obscures the face. You can wear hoodies in Bluewater, so long as the hood is down.
It just means people can't commit a crime, or shoplift without being caught on CCTV, to make catching them easier, and to discourage it in the first place.
It just means people can't commit a crime, or shoplift without being caught on CCTV, to make catching them easier, and to discourage it in the first place.
^ So allowing one to wear a hooded top but NOT to pull the hood up...... What's the difference btwn that and not allowing one to wear a hoodie?
Then what's the point of wearing a hooded top then!!!!!?
This is SO stupid.
Then what's the point of wearing a hooded top then!!!!!?
This is SO stupid.
this attitude will only create more reaction, what we call counter-reaction
see, seriously, someone like me who doesn't usually hear hoods but inside the house or on summer vacations.. now this attitude has made me want to wear my hoods outside the house/vacations, plus with the hood UP
see, seriously, someone like me who doesn't usually hear hoods but inside the house or on summer vacations.. now this attitude has made me want to wear my hoods outside the house/vacations, plus with the hood UP
Kimkhuu said:^ So allowing one to wear a hooded top but NOT to pull the hood up...... What's the difference btwn that and not allowing one to wear a hoodie?
Then what's the point of wearing a hooded top then!!!!!?
This is SO stupid.
Well the majority of people in hoodies don't wear the hood up most of the time anyway. Also, it's an indoor shopping centre, why do you even need your hood up?
More B)
Focus: The deference debate
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]It was key word of the civil rights movement, but then it fell into disuse for decades. Now it's back and everyone, from ministers to street gangs, is demanding some...[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Rafael Behr
Sunday May 22, 2005
The Observer
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]If you grew up in London in the Eighties you probably picked up the habit of saying 'wicked!' a lot. You probably also picked up 'respect!' - as greeting, as farewell, as the word to describe the ultimate virtue in human relations.
'Wicked' had a short reign and is now pretty much obsolete. But 'respect' hit the big time. It rose to the very top, turning up last week in Parliament, in the Queen's speech, as the buzzword for Labour's third term. 'My government is committed to creating safe and secure communities, and fostering a culture of respect,' she said. It should have sounded majestic but it sounded like parody. Ali G in ermine. That is how far those two syllables have come since their school days.
When Tony Blair uses the R-word there is clearly some intent to mobilise its street credentials. This is the man who drops his aitches at the first sight of a chat-show sofa. The Prime Minister has the finely tuned ear for urban vernacular of a middle-class dad showing off to his kids, d'ya know wha' I mean?
But the government co-opts 'respect' at its peril.
The word was once defined from the top down, by the deference-demanding classes for whom respectfulness was important for its surface manifestations of reverence, courtesy and good manners. It was something that was bred into people. But in its new guise 'respect' fought its way up from the bottom. It is earned and fought over. For black culture in particular it has profound connotations, reaching back to the civil rights movement in Sixties America.
The respect that Martin Luther King demanded, the one that Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin sang about, was not the mannered cap-doffing of social protocol. It was an inalienable right. All people born equal are entitled to it, but a minority were denied their share. So they marched to get it back.
Thus was the word 'respect' reborn as a totem of empowerment, of assertiveness against oppression. From then on it belonged to the people, passed around in the knuckle-to-knuckle salute that became an alternative handshake. It was a powerful and important call to arms.
Then, in the Eighties and Nineties, the word was picked up by the playground, from where it entered the middle class. Then it sold out. Ali G, Sacha Baron-Cohen's parody of the white wannabe gangster, sent 'r-r-r-r-respect!' mainstream and bastardised it in the process, binding it into the culture of pseudo-empowerment that is expressed through ostentatious wealth. Respect went bling.
And what is the logical step for the self-respecting word that has slugged its way up from the bottom, graduated from the school of hard knocks, made a packet and gone legit? Why, of course! It enters politics.
The Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, talking about a new task force of headteachers to tackle ill-discipline in schools on Friday, used the formula 'create a culture of respect' three times in 10 minutes on the Today programme. The former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, periodically blamed 'a lack of respect' for everything from shootings to antisocial behaviour - that abstract set of activities ranging from petty crime (graffiti, drunken loutishness) to more general things we don't like the look of but are not actually against the law (standing around in a hooded top looking surly).
But such usage harks back to the ancien régime of respect. The moment when new-style respect! (with an exclamation mark) broke through into the political mainstream was when George Galloway, Labour expellee and anti-Iraq war firebrand, named his party after it.
Galloway is a consummate populist. His target voter demographic is the alienated and disenfranchised poor who would once have been a natural constituency for Labour. But Labour's working-class solidarity credentials have been diluted by the compromises necessary for a prolonged stint in power.
'The party that gives you RESPECT,' says one of Galloway's slogans. The word leaps into upper case like a raised fist. It is a shrewd piece of rhetoric. Galloway's politics are typically anti-politics - the art of maintaining an aura of us-against-the-system even when you come from the system and play it like a virtuoso.
Tony Blair must be kicking himself that he didn't think of it first. Respect! It is just the word you need to mobilise a bit of old-school class solidarity while also smoothing the ruffled feathers of Colonel Outraged of Tunbridge Wells. It is a red flag and a nice cup of tea all bundled up together in seven letters.
At first sight, the government's current high-profile celebration of respect looks opportunistic after an election campaign in which the Tories filled their manifesto with school discipline and antisocial behaviour. But in fact it comes from a longer-standing strand of New Labour ideology - the alignment of small 'c' conservative-sounding 'basic' values, such as discipline, respect, courtesy, with the progressive movement.
There is a school of New Labour thought, best represented by new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Blunkett, and the Home Office minister, Hazel Blears, that hates 'middle-class liberalism' and wants the state to intervene robustly to correct errant behaviour. Its critics call it authoritarian; its advocates call it common sense.
Second only to respect in this agenda, comes decency, a word that needs to be reclaimed for the left, according to Blears. 'Decency', she writes in a pamphlet published last year, 'is one of those words which has liberals squirming in their armchairs. For some, it may conjure up images of curtain-twitching, nosey neighbours, or a repressive bourgeois morality, or a stifling Victorian code of rules and etiquette designed to keep us in our place.'
Whereas it should, she says, belong to the socialist tradition as the under pinning of healthy communities sharing public spaces in a civilised manner. Citing the example of campaigns against smoking and drink-driving and laws promoting the wearing of seat belts, Blears argues that government can change not only the way people behave but the very culture that informs their behaviour. The Queen's speech, with its pledges to ban smoking in public places and give greater powers to the police, shows that the 'whip 'em into shape party' within New Labour is in the ascendant.
But the idea that it is possible to legislate changes in a culture is disputed. A good argument against this is made by Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and author of Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality.
Sennett say the disrespectful behaviour reviled by the government comes from feelings of alienation and disempowerment. Legislating against it will not make the excluded feel included. Quite the contrary.
But then, as Sennett also argues, when government talks about a 'culture of respect' it really wants to say 'respect for authority', which means it is talking a different language from that of the poor, excluded people who demand respect on the streets. They want respect from authority.
Therein lies the heart of Blair's problem. He heard a lot about disrespect on the doorstep before the election. But he was subjected to a fair amount of it himself thanks to the 'masochism strategy'. This was the campaign ploy that saw him berated by TV-studio guests in the hope that, once people's frustrations with the government had been taken out on a penitent leader, they would feel better and vote him back into office.
It must have been a dispiriting experience. On Question Time, a few days before polling day, Blair was harangued by a young student. 'Where is the legislation, Tony?' he sneered in relation to a 2001 manifesto pledge on university top-up fees. 'Uh...' started the Prime Minister. 'It doesn't exist!' triumphantly interrupted the student.
And on it went. It may have been a sort of television democracy at work, but Blair might have been forgiven for thinking: 'Hang on. Who is this pimply oik calling me "Tony"? I'm the Prime Minister. Show some bloody respect.'
He can't admit it, of course. But Blair is tired of lèse-majesté. He was 44 in 1997 when he took office and famously invited his cabinet to use his Christian name freely. By leaking that invitation in the media he implicitly extended it to the rest of the country. Now he is 52. His hair is grey. His back hurts. He is older and he wants some respect, dammit.
But it is too late. Things started to go wrong back in 2000, when the Prime Minister delivered a speech to the Women's Institute. The good women of Middle England did not want to be lectured on politics. They started a slow handclap. It was the first sign of a ***** in Tony's armour. Some commentators likened it to the pivotal moment when Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was booed on TV, shortly before being hounded to his death. The comparison was, to say the least, premature. But something had happened. The deference-deficit was born.
Blair's speech that day was about core values: 'respect for others, honour, self-discipline, duty, obligation, the essential decency of the British character.' But that message never got out. Respect is fickle, easily lost, very difficult to recover. If it is not conferred by birth or high office, it has to be earned. And what if it cannot be earned, or is squandered, or frittered away? That is where the two Schools of Respect - the street version and the Establishment version - have something in common: when they can't earn tribute by merit they earn it by fear.
There is a moment in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II when the young Vito Corleone starts making a name for himself. The local boss, Don Danucci, confronts him: 'Young man, I hear you and your friends are stealing goods. But you don't even send a dress to my house. No respect! This is my neighbourhood. You and your friends should show me some respect.' Vito shows his respect by killing Danucci, seizing this crime empire and becoming Don Corleone. Then he starts to command respect of his own. If you can't earn it, take it by force. People who feel disrespected, who feel unable to express themselves and who feel that they have no power to change their lives often turn to intimidation and bullying. Instilling fear is a way of feeling in control.
It is not too far-fetched to see that psychological process working in Downing Street. After 10 years Blair still complains he cannot get his message across. His room for manoeuvre in the Commons is now curtailed by a reduced majority. Much of the media, including the BBC, has turned against him. Gordon Brown is waiting in the wings. And then there are the people, who once loved him so much. Now they show him nothing but sullen abuse. No wonder he wants to foster a culture of respect.
As the levers of power slip from the Prime Minister's hands, his authoritarian impulses get stronger. Blair has more in common than he thinks with the hooded yobs whose antics he wants to ban. The message to Britain in the Queen's speech is pretty much the same one that angry youths and gangsters deliver to each other daily up and down the country: 'Stop dissing me, man.'
It is a legitimate request. But it is hardly a programme for government.
Only seven letters, but a thousand different meanings.
5th century BC
'A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present?'
Confucius
1st century BC
'He removes the greatest ornament of friendship, who takes away from it respect.'
Cicero
16th century AD
'That title of respect which the proud soul ne'er pays but to the proud.'
Shakespeare
20th century AD
'There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age. I missed it coming and going.'
JB Priestley
1960s
'The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are restored.'
Malcolm X
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means to me, R-E-S-P-E-C-T Take care, T-C-B.'
Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin
1980s 'What religion or reason could drive a man to forsake his lover. Don't you tell me no, don't you tell me no, don't you tell me no, don't you tell me no soooooul, I hear you calling, oh baby pleeeease, give a little respeeeect toooo me.'
Erasure [/font]
Focus: The deference debate
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]It was key word of the civil rights movement, but then it fell into disuse for decades. Now it's back and everyone, from ministers to street gangs, is demanding some...[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Rafael Behr
Sunday May 22, 2005
The Observer
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]If you grew up in London in the Eighties you probably picked up the habit of saying 'wicked!' a lot. You probably also picked up 'respect!' - as greeting, as farewell, as the word to describe the ultimate virtue in human relations.
'Wicked' had a short reign and is now pretty much obsolete. But 'respect' hit the big time. It rose to the very top, turning up last week in Parliament, in the Queen's speech, as the buzzword for Labour's third term. 'My government is committed to creating safe and secure communities, and fostering a culture of respect,' she said. It should have sounded majestic but it sounded like parody. Ali G in ermine. That is how far those two syllables have come since their school days.
When Tony Blair uses the R-word there is clearly some intent to mobilise its street credentials. This is the man who drops his aitches at the first sight of a chat-show sofa. The Prime Minister has the finely tuned ear for urban vernacular of a middle-class dad showing off to his kids, d'ya know wha' I mean?
But the government co-opts 'respect' at its peril.
The word was once defined from the top down, by the deference-demanding classes for whom respectfulness was important for its surface manifestations of reverence, courtesy and good manners. It was something that was bred into people. But in its new guise 'respect' fought its way up from the bottom. It is earned and fought over. For black culture in particular it has profound connotations, reaching back to the civil rights movement in Sixties America.
The respect that Martin Luther King demanded, the one that Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin sang about, was not the mannered cap-doffing of social protocol. It was an inalienable right. All people born equal are entitled to it, but a minority were denied their share. So they marched to get it back.
Thus was the word 'respect' reborn as a totem of empowerment, of assertiveness against oppression. From then on it belonged to the people, passed around in the knuckle-to-knuckle salute that became an alternative handshake. It was a powerful and important call to arms.
Then, in the Eighties and Nineties, the word was picked up by the playground, from where it entered the middle class. Then it sold out. Ali G, Sacha Baron-Cohen's parody of the white wannabe gangster, sent 'r-r-r-r-respect!' mainstream and bastardised it in the process, binding it into the culture of pseudo-empowerment that is expressed through ostentatious wealth. Respect went bling.
And what is the logical step for the self-respecting word that has slugged its way up from the bottom, graduated from the school of hard knocks, made a packet and gone legit? Why, of course! It enters politics.
The Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, talking about a new task force of headteachers to tackle ill-discipline in schools on Friday, used the formula 'create a culture of respect' three times in 10 minutes on the Today programme. The former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, periodically blamed 'a lack of respect' for everything from shootings to antisocial behaviour - that abstract set of activities ranging from petty crime (graffiti, drunken loutishness) to more general things we don't like the look of but are not actually against the law (standing around in a hooded top looking surly).
But such usage harks back to the ancien régime of respect. The moment when new-style respect! (with an exclamation mark) broke through into the political mainstream was when George Galloway, Labour expellee and anti-Iraq war firebrand, named his party after it.
Galloway is a consummate populist. His target voter demographic is the alienated and disenfranchised poor who would once have been a natural constituency for Labour. But Labour's working-class solidarity credentials have been diluted by the compromises necessary for a prolonged stint in power.
'The party that gives you RESPECT,' says one of Galloway's slogans. The word leaps into upper case like a raised fist. It is a shrewd piece of rhetoric. Galloway's politics are typically anti-politics - the art of maintaining an aura of us-against-the-system even when you come from the system and play it like a virtuoso.
Tony Blair must be kicking himself that he didn't think of it first. Respect! It is just the word you need to mobilise a bit of old-school class solidarity while also smoothing the ruffled feathers of Colonel Outraged of Tunbridge Wells. It is a red flag and a nice cup of tea all bundled up together in seven letters.
At first sight, the government's current high-profile celebration of respect looks opportunistic after an election campaign in which the Tories filled their manifesto with school discipline and antisocial behaviour. But in fact it comes from a longer-standing strand of New Labour ideology - the alignment of small 'c' conservative-sounding 'basic' values, such as discipline, respect, courtesy, with the progressive movement.
There is a school of New Labour thought, best represented by new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Blunkett, and the Home Office minister, Hazel Blears, that hates 'middle-class liberalism' and wants the state to intervene robustly to correct errant behaviour. Its critics call it authoritarian; its advocates call it common sense.
Second only to respect in this agenda, comes decency, a word that needs to be reclaimed for the left, according to Blears. 'Decency', she writes in a pamphlet published last year, 'is one of those words which has liberals squirming in their armchairs. For some, it may conjure up images of curtain-twitching, nosey neighbours, or a repressive bourgeois morality, or a stifling Victorian code of rules and etiquette designed to keep us in our place.'
Whereas it should, she says, belong to the socialist tradition as the under pinning of healthy communities sharing public spaces in a civilised manner. Citing the example of campaigns against smoking and drink-driving and laws promoting the wearing of seat belts, Blears argues that government can change not only the way people behave but the very culture that informs their behaviour. The Queen's speech, with its pledges to ban smoking in public places and give greater powers to the police, shows that the 'whip 'em into shape party' within New Labour is in the ascendant.
But the idea that it is possible to legislate changes in a culture is disputed. A good argument against this is made by Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and author of Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality.
Sennett say the disrespectful behaviour reviled by the government comes from feelings of alienation and disempowerment. Legislating against it will not make the excluded feel included. Quite the contrary.
But then, as Sennett also argues, when government talks about a 'culture of respect' it really wants to say 'respect for authority', which means it is talking a different language from that of the poor, excluded people who demand respect on the streets. They want respect from authority.
Therein lies the heart of Blair's problem. He heard a lot about disrespect on the doorstep before the election. But he was subjected to a fair amount of it himself thanks to the 'masochism strategy'. This was the campaign ploy that saw him berated by TV-studio guests in the hope that, once people's frustrations with the government had been taken out on a penitent leader, they would feel better and vote him back into office.
It must have been a dispiriting experience. On Question Time, a few days before polling day, Blair was harangued by a young student. 'Where is the legislation, Tony?' he sneered in relation to a 2001 manifesto pledge on university top-up fees. 'Uh...' started the Prime Minister. 'It doesn't exist!' triumphantly interrupted the student.
And on it went. It may have been a sort of television democracy at work, but Blair might have been forgiven for thinking: 'Hang on. Who is this pimply oik calling me "Tony"? I'm the Prime Minister. Show some bloody respect.'
He can't admit it, of course. But Blair is tired of lèse-majesté. He was 44 in 1997 when he took office and famously invited his cabinet to use his Christian name freely. By leaking that invitation in the media he implicitly extended it to the rest of the country. Now he is 52. His hair is grey. His back hurts. He is older and he wants some respect, dammit.
But it is too late. Things started to go wrong back in 2000, when the Prime Minister delivered a speech to the Women's Institute. The good women of Middle England did not want to be lectured on politics. They started a slow handclap. It was the first sign of a ***** in Tony's armour. Some commentators likened it to the pivotal moment when Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was booed on TV, shortly before being hounded to his death. The comparison was, to say the least, premature. But something had happened. The deference-deficit was born.
Blair's speech that day was about core values: 'respect for others, honour, self-discipline, duty, obligation, the essential decency of the British character.' But that message never got out. Respect is fickle, easily lost, very difficult to recover. If it is not conferred by birth or high office, it has to be earned. And what if it cannot be earned, or is squandered, or frittered away? That is where the two Schools of Respect - the street version and the Establishment version - have something in common: when they can't earn tribute by merit they earn it by fear.
There is a moment in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II when the young Vito Corleone starts making a name for himself. The local boss, Don Danucci, confronts him: 'Young man, I hear you and your friends are stealing goods. But you don't even send a dress to my house. No respect! This is my neighbourhood. You and your friends should show me some respect.' Vito shows his respect by killing Danucci, seizing this crime empire and becoming Don Corleone. Then he starts to command respect of his own. If you can't earn it, take it by force. People who feel disrespected, who feel unable to express themselves and who feel that they have no power to change their lives often turn to intimidation and bullying. Instilling fear is a way of feeling in control.
It is not too far-fetched to see that psychological process working in Downing Street. After 10 years Blair still complains he cannot get his message across. His room for manoeuvre in the Commons is now curtailed by a reduced majority. Much of the media, including the BBC, has turned against him. Gordon Brown is waiting in the wings. And then there are the people, who once loved him so much. Now they show him nothing but sullen abuse. No wonder he wants to foster a culture of respect.
As the levers of power slip from the Prime Minister's hands, his authoritarian impulses get stronger. Blair has more in common than he thinks with the hooded yobs whose antics he wants to ban. The message to Britain in the Queen's speech is pretty much the same one that angry youths and gangsters deliver to each other daily up and down the country: 'Stop dissing me, man.'
It is a legitimate request. But it is hardly a programme for government.
Only seven letters, but a thousand different meanings.
5th century BC
'A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present?'
Confucius
1st century BC
'He removes the greatest ornament of friendship, who takes away from it respect.'
Cicero
16th century AD
'That title of respect which the proud soul ne'er pays but to the proud.'
Shakespeare
20th century AD
'There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age. I missed it coming and going.'
JB Priestley
1960s
'The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are restored.'
Malcolm X
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means to me, R-E-S-P-E-C-T Take care, T-C-B.'
Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin
1980s 'What religion or reason could drive a man to forsake his lover. Don't you tell me no, don't you tell me no, don't you tell me no, don't you tell me no soooooul, I hear you calling, oh baby pleeeease, give a little respeeeect toooo me.'
Erasure [/font]
i_<3_chanel
elementary.
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2004
- Messages
- 4,134
- Reaction score
- 4
Last edited by a moderator:
SiennaInLondon
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2004
- Messages
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- 1
Blair needs a serious kicking out of the country. His recent targeting of yob culture is absurd, simplistic and people-pleasing. I would be very worried about a government that needs to create scapegoats but I suppose that is why I am not a Labour voter and am amazed that people are idiotic enough to be fooled by their ploys.
As for Bluewater -they have the right to impose clothing bans especially if they have justification for thinking that people dressed in chav uniform are more likely statistically to engage in criminal activity on the premises. The problem is though that banning things risks making those things more attractive like a badge of honour.
The problem lies in appalling discipline in schools and the 'me me me' culture that is prevalent but to be honest there has always been dissafected youth and there always will be... it is often part of being young. A globalised world means they are dressed the same and they are involved in the same cultural trends so they seem like a cohesive force. However, they are no different to troublesome kids at any other period in time.
As for Bluewater -they have the right to impose clothing bans especially if they have justification for thinking that people dressed in chav uniform are more likely statistically to engage in criminal activity on the premises. The problem is though that banning things risks making those things more attractive like a badge of honour.
The problem lies in appalling discipline in schools and the 'me me me' culture that is prevalent but to be honest there has always been dissafected youth and there always will be... it is often part of being young. A globalised world means they are dressed the same and they are involved in the same cultural trends so they seem like a cohesive force. However, they are no different to troublesome kids at any other period in time.
helena
Swim Upstream
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
- Messages
- 6,428
- Reaction score
- 5
More on the state of the UK.....£600 a month in benefits and this is only going to increase as they all get older.
Sisters give birth at 12, 14, 16
Natasha, Jemma and Jade Williams with children Amani, T-Jay and Lita
Three schoolgirl sisters have given birth aged 12, 14 and 16.
The Williams sisters, who live with their mother in a council house in Derby, feature in a BBC3 documentary called Desperate Midwives.
Natasha, the oldest, Jade and Jemma, the youngest, are reported to receive £600 a week in benefits.
Their mother Julie Atkins, 38, who said the girls were too young and had ruined their lives, blamed schools for providing poor quality sex education.
Mother defiant
Jemma was first to give birth, to T-Jay in February last year, and weeks later Jade and Natasha discovered they were pregnant.
Natasha had daughter Amani in November and Jade followed with Lita in December. The younger sisters are still at school.
Mrs Atkins told the Sunday Mercury: "I don't care what people say about me. I blame the schools - sex education for young girls should be better."
The sisters feature in the BBC3 series Desperate Midwives: The real truth about childbirth, starting from 9pm on Monday.
Episode seven follows a midwife from the Derby City hospital as she helps the family prepare for the third child.
No going back
Mrs Atkins told the Sun that she still found it difficult to believe what had happened.
"They are still little girls and now they have babies of their own," she said. "But I don't care what people say, I love my kids and I'm here to help them.
"If I could turn back the clock, I would prefer them not to have children. Their education is so important."
Two of the girls are no longer in contact with their children's fathers.
Jemma is quoted in the Sun as saying: "I only told my boyfriend David, who was 14 at the time, but I didn't want to have an abortion. "He was my first love but now I'm gutted because he doesn't want to have anything to do with me or T-Jay." Desperate Midwives starts on Monday, 23 May, 2005 at 2100 BST on BBC Three.
Sisters give birth at 12, 14, 16
Three schoolgirl sisters have given birth aged 12, 14 and 16.
The Williams sisters, who live with their mother in a council house in Derby, feature in a BBC3 documentary called Desperate Midwives.
Natasha, the oldest, Jade and Jemma, the youngest, are reported to receive £600 a week in benefits.
Their mother Julie Atkins, 38, who said the girls were too young and had ruined their lives, blamed schools for providing poor quality sex education.
Mother defiant
Jemma was first to give birth, to T-Jay in February last year, and weeks later Jade and Natasha discovered they were pregnant.
Natasha had daughter Amani in November and Jade followed with Lita in December. The younger sisters are still at school.
Mrs Atkins told the Sunday Mercury: "I don't care what people say about me. I blame the schools - sex education for young girls should be better."
The sisters feature in the BBC3 series Desperate Midwives: The real truth about childbirth, starting from 9pm on Monday.
Episode seven follows a midwife from the Derby City hospital as she helps the family prepare for the third child.
No going back
Mrs Atkins told the Sun that she still found it difficult to believe what had happened.
"They are still little girls and now they have babies of their own," she said. "But I don't care what people say, I love my kids and I'm here to help them.
"If I could turn back the clock, I would prefer them not to have children. Their education is so important."
Two of the girls are no longer in contact with their children's fathers.
Jemma is quoted in the Sun as saying: "I only told my boyfriend David, who was 14 at the time, but I didn't want to have an abortion. "He was my first love but now I'm gutted because he doesn't want to have anything to do with me or T-Jay." Desperate Midwives starts on Monday, 23 May, 2005 at 2100 BST on BBC Three.
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PrinceOfCats
Naturellement pulpeuse
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Newcastle/Tyneside has the highest teen pregnancy in Britain, what an achievement...
Concerning school discipline, is it not a parent's job to bring up a child properly rather than the school's job? What kind of discipline can a school enforce? None really...
Concerning school discipline, is it not a parent's job to bring up a child properly rather than the school's job? What kind of discipline can a school enforce? None really...
helena
Swim Upstream
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PrinceOfCats said:
precisely PoC - teachers can't even bash the living daylights out of the little shites anymore. LOL.
can you believe the audacity of that mother saying its the school's fault her twelve year old has a baby.....i wouldn't be surprised if the mother put all three of them up to it just so they could get more dough out the social.
