[Carth]

Gosh all this 'parental responsibility' stuff is interesting isn't it.

I'm sure the decline in standards had nothing at all to do with Governments deciding to severely restrict the ways that parents (and teachers) could punish kids for being unruly tearaways.

People of my age (ha) grew up with a clip round the earhole from parents (and the local bobby), and got the cane at school for being naughty. This taught two valuable lessons:

1) you didn't do it again
2) if you did it again, you adapted so you didn't get caught.

nowadays kids don't care . .