The yoof of today

As you know Cicero is well ancient.

He has seen generations come and go, the ebb and flow of fashion, and changing cultural, moral and philosophical mores. And if he was to rely solely on our august and venerable Fourth Estate for his news and information he would be holding his head in despair and concern. Fortunately Cicero is more pragmatic and realistic and refuses to let the supposed decline in our moral welfare as illustrated through the news headlines get to him.  And nor should they you.

Pick up any quality newspaper, so obviously that excludes the paper they call ‘The Grauniad’, any day of the week and you would quickly gain the impression that in this country our young people, and by that we mean kids less than 16, are doing nothing but getting pregnant, injecting drugs or turning up at school drunk. Some of them no doubt doing all three at the same time. And no doubt much more depravity besides.

Nero, Caligula and other depraved Roman Caesars of Cicero’s acquaintance would be proud of the yoof of this Green and Pleasant Land.

In denouncing our yoof the baying hounds of the Fourth Estate are led by the Daily Mail, whenever they are not having a go at Li’le Ed’s Pater.

So when you read on a daily basis that 5000 kids are turning up at school drunk; that every girl sits their GCSEs pregnant or when breast feeding; and that hundreds of thousands of 14 year olds have tasted coke, and we don’t mean the diet kind here, at least once a week, you do start to believe that the yoof of today are running amok and that our moral fibre is on the point of collapse.

And if you don’t believe Cicero on this, have a look at the Daily Mail today…or tomorrow…or the day after.

Now in Cicero’s humble opinion such statistics have a serious flaw that makes the data spurious-the numbers are generated by asking the yoof the last time they had sex, got drunk or intravenously injected.

In other words some researcher approached some acne ridden yoof and asked them these questions.

Now Cicero doesn’t know what you were like when you were a spotty adolescent, and Cicero can barely remember what he did and thought last week never mind when he was a pimply yoof, but does it not occur to anyone, and especially to those who ply their trade in the Fourth Estate, that the yoof might make especially unreliable witnesses? Has it not struck the finest of our investigative journalists, even those in the Daily Mail, that the respondents to these surveys might be exaggerating to impress?

Imagine the kudos a 15 year old would get among his peers by admitting that he is regularly drunk and that he can drink anyone under the table.

Naturally a 14 year old will acquire additional swagger by publicising that he or she is a 3 times a night kind of person.

And of course a 13 year old would look and appear older in front of his mates by letting any Tom, Dick or Harriet researcher that he was a total coke head.

And it is on the back of such dubiousity that tomorrow’s fish wrappers generate their lurid headlines. That our Apparatchiks and their policy makers develop their policies. That Mr Tonbridge Wells declares that he deplores the yoof of today.

And that is why Cicero can be more optimistic when he sees these headlines. Quite simply they are wrong.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus. Semper.