Eva Bradley: Entitled to create havoc? Not

So who else out there is bovvered by all these chavy youfs in London town, dissing their own'hoods'n cribs'n generally just out there on the streets being wack. Yo, it's, like, totally dizrezpectful, innit?
When I was a teenager, the most anti-social thing I ever did by far was use a little bit of Twink to change my rival school's motto on their main signage from "Aim to Excel" to "Aim to Expel".
It was a little bit naughty, a wee bit risky, a tiny bit clever and we all had a jolly good (and stone cold sober) titter about it before heading home five minutes before curfew.
In all the years of wrist-slashing teenage angst, it never once occurred to me to call up all my friends, incite riots and smash through plate glass windows in order to destroy or steal whatever I could get my hands on.
Now perhaps I'm showing my age when I say this, but what on earth is up with the youth of today?
In less than one generation, jeans have dropped from the waistline to somewhere just south of the buff and the morals of those wearing them have dipped even lower.
A culture of entitlement has exploded among young people like the acne on their chins and the monosyllabic grunts of youthful discontent have been joined by a mentality that sees teenagers not just wanting everything handed to them on a plate, but expecting it.
If they don't get it, well, we've all seen this week that they're quite prepared to resort to violent crime to remedy that.
The frightening thing about the London riots is not so much that they are happening, but that they are happening in a place very much like our own. A modern, First-World society where most people get most things, and most people respect the rights and property of others. Well at least they used to.
From time immemorial, we have watched news footage of violence and social unrest in poverty-stricken Third World countries with little interest. But the Nimby mentality that rules us all whether we like it or not has seen us shocked to the core that the same sort of behaviour could erupt in the Mother country.
Just when did young people trade in the cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey for baseball bats and bootlegged vodka?
A few years back, a visiting British behavioural psychologist, Theodore Dalrymple, attributed the rise of the teenage mob mentality to the disappearance of one simple piece of furniture from the family home ... the dining table.
With parents working all hours to pay the bills and moral standards now dispensed via R18 digital downloads, the days when we all sat around the table at dinner time and listened and learned are largely a thing of the past.
Watching children as young as 12 tearing through the streets of London filled with unspecific rage makes me feel one part terrified to two parts sad.
It also makes me want to invest in a life-time supply of birth control. Where our parents were producing tomorrow's leaders, it seems we are giving birth to little monsters.
My mother used to drive me crazy with her theory that there was "no such thing as teenagers". Despite strong hormonal urges to act like the Tasmanian devil between the ages of 13 and 18, I was expected to behave like a civilised human being first, and a teenager second, if at all.
I'm not quite sure how she did this as a single parent without so much as a whip to resort to, but she did it well.
Perhaps it's time today's parents invested in a dining table instead of the next generation PlayStation, and sat their snotty-nosed youths around it and shared a few home truths.
Either that or bolt it to the floor before the teenage dirt bags nick it and use it as kindling to torch the neighbour's house.