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Topics and issues of interest to cavers which are not related to caving. No political or religious discussions, please.

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Postby JackW » Jul 18, 2006 4:35 pm

CKB69 wrote:I think they need to re-introduce bears,wolfs,and,mountain lions,to the area. That would put a stop to the 'fugees little 5 acre kingdoms,when they have to accept nature on her own terms.


Hmmm, that's the same idea I've got for gangs in the city...
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Postby Wayne Harrison » Jul 19, 2006 8:28 am

Here's an article that just came out that fits into this discussion....

The London Times
July 19, 2006

Our cotton-wool kids
by Carol Midgley

So, school is out, the long summer holidays stretch ahead and what do we think will be top of the average parent’s worry list? How to keep the children entertained for weeks while remaining sane? Whether they can afford to take the family on a day out to Alton Towers when there’s still the Tuscan holiday to pay off on Barclaycard? Probably not, actually. The thing weighing heaviest on most parents’ minds will almost certainly be fear of catastrophe: fear of their children being injured in a road accident; of them drowning in the swimming pool; of them hanging around bored on street corners and being mugged or offered drugs; of being targeted by a paedophile.

Parents, of course, have rightly fretted about protecting their children since time began. What is new and perhaps a little weird is that the more that medicine and child supervision, and road, car and playground safety improve, the more our anxiety seems to grow. Study after study indicates that mothers and fathers are palpably more fearful for their children than they were 30 and 40 years ago. We see dangers lurking on every corner that would scarcely have occurred to our parents and grandparents. Conversely, we tend to see our own childhoods as gold-tinted eras in which it was far safer to play out on our bikes all day, to talk to strangers, to walk home from school alone, than it is today. But is that true? Do children today really face more dangers than we did then? Let us go back 30 years to 1976 and examine the evidence.

Most parents in their late thirties and forties will remember the great summer of ’76: Elton John and Kiki Dee were at the top of the charts, the weather was so hot that the Government appointed a Minister for Drought, most kids had a Chopper bike. And in that year a total of 668 children (0 to 15 year-olds) were killed on the roads in England and Wales, either in cars or as pedestrians.

Now let’s compare that with today. In 2004 (the most recent figure available from the Department of Transport) the number of 0 to 15 year-olds killed was 166 — a reduction of 75 per cent. Such fatalities and serious injuries have been falling consistently since the 1970s, thanks largely to better car safety features, child seats and road design. Nevertheless, many parents are convinced that the roads are more hazardous than in their day because there is “more trafficâ€
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