I wrote this one last year, intending it for the blog but for reasons I can’t now remember I held fire on it and published something else instead.

At the time I was feeling somewhat incensed about the behaviour of a certain young thug who was in the news for all the wrong reasons and it sort of wrote itself out of my anger.

So without further ado, I give you – Kicking Against the Pranks.

I’m growing increasingly worried, gentle reader, about the state of this world we live in. No, I’m not talking about wars, famine, pollution and crime; although those things are more rampant now than at any point in modern history and certainly worth worrying about. What I’m concerned with is the actual state of humankind in general, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

Is it just me or are human beings actually becoming more and more degenerate by the day?

Thus, I’d like to draw your attention, if I may, to this character I keep hearing about who goes by the epithet Mizzy! Not his real name of course.

In short, he wants locking away from decent members of society. For there are still some of us left.

Mizzy, apparently, is what they call a prankster. He makes videos of himself “pranking” people in the belief that this is providing entertainment for others. These videos are shown on the internet platform Tik-Tok, something to which I beam with pride to say I have never watched. Nor never will. To be frank, if I want to see a load of heavily made up young women in yoga pants and crop tops with micro-bladed eyebrows, hair extensions and trout pouts then I’ll just wander along to the nearest nail bar. I don’t need to see it on any of my screens.

These “pranks” that Mizzy plays range from entering peoples houses without permission to stealing peoples hats from off their heads in the street. Well, surely the first of those is unlawful entry and warrants investigation from the police and the second one is surely interference and theft and therefore warrants that somebody gives him a bloody good hiding for it. If someone stole one of my many hats off my head in the street they would receive the business end of my walking stick betwixt their legs for their troubles.

However, it gets much worse. Now our friend Mizzy is actually in trouble with the law (hurrah!) for entering the drivers compartment of a train and messing about with the controls. Well, call me an old-fashioned alarmist if you will but in my eyes that’s attempted murder.

Oh come off it Stevenson, I hear you cry, that’s pushing it a bit too far. No, damn it no, I’m serious. In doing what he did on that train he risked the lives of a lot of people. If that train was derailed or in a crash with another and people died then that’s precisely what he would have done – murdered them all by his intolerable actions.

And all in the name of a “prank”. It’s a pathetic example of how piss-poor we’ve become as a society when young people think of this as entertainment or see this young man as some kind of role model or hero. For that, my friends, is the scary truth.

And before anyone accuses me of being overly pious, yes I did pull some stunts when I was a teenager, knocking on doors and running off etc. But I never entered anyone’s home without permission, I never stole anything and I never endangered the lives of a train full of commuters. I knew what the consequences were if I went too far. Back then we were scared of the police.

Mischief is nothing new, I know that. All kids get up to naughtiness of some sort but this notion of modern day “pranking” has gone too far. It’s not amusing, it’s obscene cruelty dressed up as humour. And it’s about as funny as a blind boil on the butt cheek.

I suppose we could say it all started with TV shows like Trigger Happy or Jackass, maybe even Game For a Laugh and Beadle’s About, or heck, even further back to Candid Camera, but I believe it goes much deeper than that.

You want my honest opinion? Very well, I’m not ashamed to give it.

We removed any and every trace of God from our schools decades ago and the devil walked right in and took his place.

We’ve had a few generations now of school kids who were given free reign to behave exactly how they wished without fear of retribution. What happens if you misbehave in class these days? You get a letter B (for Behaviour) written in your student planner by the teacher. Wow! That must be absolutely terrifying to all those little miscreants.

I’m not tarring all of them with the same brush but there is certainly a decline in moral standards amongst the youth. And yes, there are a good many fine, upstanding members of society in the young who are a credit to both their parents and teachers, millions of them, but the balance has definitely shifted somewhat.

And no, I’m not one of those “Bring back the cane” types who are living too far in the past. But there has to be some kind of a deterrent. Although, for the life of me, I can’t think what it might be.

Our lovely daughter is a teaching assistant. Recently she has been head-butted, spat at and had a chair thrown at her. All by the same kid. A friend of ours is also a teaching assistant and she told me of how she tried to help one teenage boy with his work only to for him to say that he wasn’t bothered about it and he then wrote the letters CBA on his book and then fell asleep on the desk. CBA, by the way stands for Can’t Be Arsed!

Is that where all our progressive thinking and liberal mindedness has got us? Kids writing CBA on their work and violently abusing members of staff who are there to help them? No wonder Mizzy and his ilk are so popular.

Listen, I’m a socialist. I am. Equal opportunities for everyone, that’s what I believe. But there has to be some barriers here or where will we be in another ten years time and another generation of young people who feel it is their given right to grotesquely torment others in the name of fun? It’s gone beyond pranking when lives are endangered.

And don’t even get me started on the knife issue.

Maybe I had a sheltered upbringing in the countryside, but I have no recollection of seeing stories on the news when I was a child of kids murdering other kids with knives and machetes. And it wasn’t even illegal to carry a knife back then. Every kid I knew, myself included, had a pen knife. We just didn’t plunge the blades into one another.

It’s a sick world we live in and I can’t see it improving at any time in the near future. Something’s got to change or we really do risk having the lunatics running the asylum. If it hasn’t already begun.

That is all.

I shall return to something humorous next time when I have calmed down a bit. Sorry for ranting, it’s just that this whole crappy Mizzy thing just made my blood boil.

There will be a final post from the archives next week.