""I guess Don I did not explain my thoughts very well. In fact i just wrote the original post in haste and anger. I came from an area where boys (Girls were not accepted as yet in the forces.) if lucky finished school. Those that didn't found it very hard to find a job. A good number turned to the forces.""

Believe me Beer, I understand your POV completely.

However, while the army will accept and train any youth who has the necessary physique, and is willing to learn, what they don't want is to be burdened with recalcitrant conscripts and disaffected dropouts.

The situation with regard to those who, as you put it "turn to the army", in other words volunteer, is the same as it ever was, but Political Correctness, and the reaction to a number of NCOs who went too far means that they are hardly permitted to raise their voices to recruits.

So the methods by which they knocked (literally) young tearaways into shape are no longer useable.

As to blaming parents, I agree that parents aren't up to scratch in many cases and just don't care in almost as many more, but the parents really to blame are those of the 1960s who espoused the lunacy of Dr Spock.

It is they who injected the rot and it has festered ever since.

As far back as 1969 I predicted that we would see feral bands of youths on the streets of the UK.

Behold! The prophecy fulfilled!

Don T.