What has happened to the youth of this country?

Anna Raccoon has the story of some children who seem to bear no resemblance to how I was in the early 1970s.

'An Asian shop keeper in Kirkaldy was arranging his new magazines on his shelves when a group of schoolboys came into the shop. Some of the out of date magazines were in a pile on the floor to make way for new stock. They included some rather risqué titles. Bollywood Babes, Asian Titties, Mustapha-Ouank, you know the sort of thing. A magnet for adolescent boys the world over.

Distract the shop keeper, shove a few magazines in your pocket, and run like hell for the back of the bike sheds where you can put them to good use and while away an hour or so?

Not a bit of it.

These boys hot footed it straight to Fife to the offices of the ‘Front Page Campaign’ where they reported that the shop keeper was currently failing to keep these titles on the top shelf contrary to the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981. They knew their rights.

Amy King, who fronts the ‘Front Page Campaign’, beetled round to the police at Kirkaldy.

Since she wasn’t reporting a burglary in her house, or a bank robbery or anything like that, they dropped everything and rushed back to the shop where the shop keeper was still innocently arranging his stock. They were that quick off the mark.

Which is how Saeed Ahmed came to be the first person in ten years to be prosecuted under this Act – and fined £53.'

I am disgusted, back in the 1970s young boys would have to learn which newsagents would sell such educational magazines to under 18s and which second hand book and magazine shops had some small stock of such magazines. I even remember boys retrieving such periodicals from train tracks, such was their thirst for knowledge. What has happened to the youth of this country?