I'm disgusted.

I can only speak for UK, and I'm no longer a teenager, but these kids in Derby, like so many of thier peers, have lost all moral grounding and now barely know right from wrong - or, rather, don't bother to distinguish. Many come from an underclass who feel alienated from the rest of the country. Poor males now have fewer jobs, no prospects, less ideals and no hopes.

Why should they care, they ask, what normal standards of behaviour are? Normal standards, in their experience, are class oppression, poverty, police persecution and hypocrisy. So they react by giving mainstream society the finger, ignoring its laws and abandoning any semblance of morality.

Fathers are all absent. There are few males to look up to - is only the local gang leaders. And you must belong to a gang if you want to survive. Possession of weapons is routine: knives certainly, guns increasingly. And their only amusement now is to cause outrage wherever they can, by fighting, binge-drinking, doing drugs, and, of course, creating a scene when one of their number finally loses it. The others can't be seen to be concerned, so they jeer and taunt. "How far can you bounce?" is sickenly witty.

I don't think they wanted him to jump, and I expect they were as surprised and shocked as anyone when he did. They are still human, have loves and frindships. But they display it differently. "They were there" and they had to take those photographs to substantiate their new bragging rights.

I despair.