New Labour has achieved what I thought impossible

They've put my sympathies firmly with the track-suited delinquents in my charge.

Ever teacher likes to bitch and moan about the kids and particularly when they get older (I should say "we" but unbelievably I count as a younger teacher) - but this drivel is really too much.

It's not that I don't sympathise on aesthetic grounds; the sight of 30 track-suited, acne-ridden teenagers with their zero-carat jewelry is a fairly unsettling sight first thing on a Monday morning with a hang-over but really, when did teenagers ever look anything other than threatening?

I friend of mine from school was a punk. He looked fairly threatening at the time - a bit like a diseased toilet-brush with safety-pins but he turned out ok.

I have a fairly pessimistic view of human nature and let's face it, adolescence is not when homo sapiens are exactly at their best - what with the raging hormones, parts of them growing at different speeds, and the onset of existential angst.

But doesn't the government understand that this wears off?

Don't give them the vote; therein lies the path to insanity.

But cut them some slack, for god's sake; there's no need to put them in chain-gangs either.

And I can set my child's bedtime myself thank you very much, you preachy bunch of patronising New Labour turds.