Blog: Joanna Lumley - New Avenger against modern youth?

Blog: I read today of Joanna Lumley criticising the way that British children are brought up, writes Liam Thomas. She said that we have 'slack' morals.

She added: "I was taught not to shoplift, not to steal, not to behave badly. We weren't even allowed to drop litter." Well, yeah, neither was I, and the same goes for most young people. Most of the time the people who drop litter are the people who think that they can get away with it as they are more mature.

The article went on: "Lumley, who went to a boarding school, complained: 'We are very slack with our moral codes for children these days.'" Well, that would explain why, according to her, there was only one 'crime' while she was at school. She was fortunate enough to have parents who could afford pay for her to go to boarding school, a place where the classes are small (a ratio of one teacher to every nine pupils is what I've heard), and where, because the pupils are from privileged backgrounds, no one needs to steal so that they can sell that item to buy their lunch. And, yes, this does happen. I went to school with people who have been unfortunate enough to have to do this. It's shocking that it happens but it does.

And as for her saying, "nowadays, children find it laughably amusing to shoplift and steal", she's speaking a load of rubbish. The majority of us youngsters would not steal, but when it's the choice between to eating lunch and not, some people do it. I feel sorry for anyone who has to do that; they would definitely not be laughing, but ashamed of what they have been forced to do.

I'm glad that I went to state school, it's prepared me for the real world, and I succeeded in getting the grades that I wanted (actually they were better than I expected).

As for Miss Lumley saying that "we are very slack with our moral codes for children these days", has she ever spoken to real young people, and not those that the tabloids portray so that they can sell more newspapers? They only publish the bad news stories as they sell papers. Local papers, especially the Shropshire Star, do seem to publish more good news stories about young people than bad; I'm an example of this, being a young blogger for this site.

She also stated that young people "download information from the internet and lazily present it as our own work. We allow them to bunk off school and bring in sick notes". This is the utter tripe! It's actually impossible for someone to download information and pass it off as their own; all of the exam boards have anti-plagiarism software to look for changes in the style of writing and for work that is in the public domain which could have been submitted to the board as a candidate's own.

She also tries to tell us that we should be treated like the children are in a less developed country to our own: "In Ethiopia you might find a seven-year-old expected to take 15 goats out into the fields for the whole day with only a chapati to eat and his whistle." I find it saddening that a child of seven is made to go out looking after goats. They should be in education so that they can eventually get a job and start to bring their family out of the poverty that they are in.

Joanna Lumley REALLY does need to get out and see real young people, the majority of us are not as bad as she describes, and unfortunately there is poverty in the UK.

Maybe she should actually look at helping the needs of people in her own country before the needs of those in others, but she won't do this as the people who help those in poverty in the UK get very little recognition for what they do. They do it because it is such a rewarding activity.

If she was to help people in poverty in the UK it wouldn't get her in the spotlight. I suspect she's only come out and said this so that her celebrity status stays with her slightly, and so she doesn't have to go on reality TV like the rest of the celebs who have fallen out of the limelight.