Teenage Wasteland

Back to the grind after a lovely week in The Smoke, though it would have been a lot lovelier if the dollar was currently worth more than the paper it's printed on.

After extensive anthropological research (ie: talking to my mates and reading the papers) I want to revise what I wrote in my previous post about English teenagers and their cellphone use. The problem isn't that they're talking loudly into them on buses, it's that they're murdering each other over them.

Shockingly, 51 kids have been killed by other kids this year in England — over 20 of them in London alone. According to some recent studies English children these days are out-of-control feral beasts, obsessed with celebrities and consumer gadgets and depressed and stressed-out wrecks scared of their own shadows.

I don't want to get all Daily Mail on you, but stories like this remind of the sickness that afflicted the country in the 1970s when it felt like there was something rotten at the core of England. Back then it was our economy and industry that were broken and falling apart, now it's our families and children and it's happening behind a shiny facade of go-getting 21st century capitalism where the capital is awash with money, kids dream of Big Brother tabloid celebrity, and you can buy a loaf of Ciabatta 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I've only been living abroad for 15 years but sometimes it feels like I've been gone over 100. Pretty soon there won't be anything left for us to feel superior to Americans about.

Download: Pop A Cap In Yo' Ass - Ben Watt featuring Estelle (mp3)