Eva Bradley: It's not just looted TVs missing

So who else out there is bovvered by all these chavvy 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 antisocial thing I did 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 teenage angst, it never once occurred to me to call up all my friends, incite riots and smash 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 bluff and the morals of those wearing them have dipped even lower.
A culture of entitlement has exploded among young people, a little 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, 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 much like our own. A modern society where most people are entitled to and get most things, and most people respect the rights and property of other people. Well, at least they used to.
For time immemorial we have watched news footage of violence in poverty-stricken third world countries. But the NIMBY mentality that rules us all 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 vodka?
A few years back, a visiting British psychologist, Theodore Dalrymple, attributed the rise of the teenage mob mentality to the disappearance of one piece of furniture from the family home... the dining table.
With parents working all hours to pay the bills and moral standards dispensed to young people via R18 digital downloads, the days when we all sat around the table 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 an utterly unspecific rage, makes me feel one part terrified to two parts downright sad.
It also makes me want to invest in a lifetime 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 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 dirtbags nick off with it and use it as kindling to torch the neighbour's house.
Eva Bradley is an award-winning columnist.