Cenotaph In Manchester Damaged By Skateboarders

[ChillDoubt]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/517569/Skateboarders-trashed-restored-cenotaph

I'm not generally given to violence(my demeanour and physique means I almost always avoid it due to a 'presence') but had I witnessed this I would have struggled to contain myself.
The very least the council can do is name and shame.
I'd rather see them birched, but hope springs eternal.

[lady-janine]

stringing them up by their "ooh ouch" bits for a while in a public place with notices saying what they did seems quite a good idea to me.

[Old_Geezer]

Society gets the respect the previous generation of parents instill.

[paddywak]

Perhaps the stocks and pillories should be brought back for these scum or maybe the birch

[agchristie]

Let's hope that information comes to light that results in the felons being put before a bench with a difference. One that hands down the stiffest possible sentence.

[FrogNog]

To the skateboarders, this was just another place to skate.
Sad as it may be to some, there are families who have never mentioned the war to their children.
Maybe they didn't go, maybe they'd rather forget or maybe it just got old and didn't stay in the memory.
I realise how shocking that may sound, but it is true to an extent.
I'm not quite 40 and the war was not part of my childhood, It wasn't part of my childrens' childhood and it's not part of my great nieces and nephews childhood.
Sad as it may seem, it's just another fact to be recalled in an exam and then forgotten.
They don't have the connection that some older people have. Perhaps we should accord the skateboarders some grace. It's unlikely that they went out there with the intention to be disrespectful.

[woofgang]

I think its impossible that they didn't know that this was some kind of a monument so IMO that doesn't excuse them. I think that Frognog does have a point though about what people are taught. I am 60 and while I knew about the war and remember seeing church parades on Remembrance Sunday, the revival of public silence on the sunday or on the eleventh is a comparatively new revival. I can remember my mother telling me that people used to stop in shops and businesses and she could remember the traffic stopping too. I am thinking that it was only revived around 15 years ago, maybe a little less. It certainly didn't happen when i was a child or a teenager.

[agchristie]

Grace? Maybe the message might hit home if as many of these louts were hauled before the courts and MADE to realise the significance of what they have done!! Teach them a proper lesson.

[woofgang]

while I can understand your anger, I don't think that would help....maybe it might be better make them clean up the mess they made and then have them build somewhere where they can skateboard?

[FrogNog]

Why are they louts? They just want somewhere new to skate.
Your view is extreme agchristie and you don't know enough about these people to call them louts.
There are plaques and statues all over every city. With a lack of knowledge I can easily see why the skateboarders did not respect the area as you see it.
Had they understood, I doubt they would have done it.
Excuse my rant please Chillcoubt but people who dismiss other people as louts because they don't fit their own demographic make me cross.

[jourdain2]

What is wrong with a public shaming? If one shies against a birching (I don't), then a modern version of the pillory e.g. having to stand in a public place for a few hours whilst the populace jeers/shouts would be a substitute. I am old enough to remember when a public birching did the job (especially in the Isle of Man) - no-one was badly, physically damaged and it worked.

[agchristie]

Frognog, I used the word 'lout' as a synonym for oafish behaviour. I dont accept that the skateboarders did not know the significance of where they were or the continuing damage that they were causing. The damage to the benches and the nature of what was written is clearly loutish.

[ChillDoubt]

Why are they louts? They just want somewhere new to skate.
Your view is extreme agchristie and you don't know enough about these people to call them louts.
There are plaques and statues all over every city. With a lack of knowledge I can easily see why the skateboarders did not respect the area as you see it.
Had they understood, I doubt they would have done it.
Excuse my rant please Chillcoubt but people who dismiss other people as louts because they don't fit their own demographic make me cross.
---------------------
Afraid I disagree with pretty much everything about that assessment.
Given the historical centenary of this year(100 years since the start of the Great War) and the events that have thus far accompanied it, splashed all over the media, I find it inconcievable that youths who appear to be of school age have not been taught anything historical by either parents or teachers in regards to Remembrance and many of the monuments that mark it.

If it is so, then it truly is a very sad indictment on modern society.

[Cloverjo]

The report says many of the skateboarders were in their thirties. I can't believe they didn't know what the monument was for.

[Zacs-Master]

No it doesn't. It says 'Some are said to have been grown men in their 30s rather than teenagers.'
Note the words 'are said to be' and 'some'.

[agchristie]

And aren't benches for sitting on? Didn't the vandals understand that either or did they really believe they were put there to ink their moronic slogan?

[FrogNog]

I stand by my answer.

[naomi24]

To anyone with any sense, a war memorial isn’t a playground. No excuse!

[tamborine]

Fine them. Some only learn respect thru their pockets

[sunny-dave]

Sod it - I'm fed up with apologists for behaviour that is just inexplicable and fundamentally anti-social.

Shoot at least one of the ghastly little *** each day ('pour encourager les autres') until they learn how to function in our society.

You know - the society that they despise, but whose teat they still suckle greedily on when it suits them.

[agchristie]

Dave, my views were classed earlier as 'extreme', wonder what your post is classified as!!