No Panacea

This was less than encouraging:

Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report....the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale.

Nearly 40 percent of teachers have taken time off to recover from violent incidents at students’ hands. About a quarter of British teachers have been assaulted by their students over the last year.

The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society. The signs of this fear are unmistakable on the faces of the elderly in public places. An involuntary look of distaste, even barely controlled terror, crosses their faces if a group of young teens approaches; then they try to look as if they are not really there, hoping to avoid trouble.

Written by a cynical pessimist with a chip on his shoulder? Possibly, but supported by this BBC article:

British people are the least likely in Europe to be "have-a-go heroes" and get involved if they witness a crime, research from a think tank claims.

The public policy group Reform says that Britons have become "passive bystanders" in the fight against crime.