I know all of these kids, and they are just kids. I can agree with everything you have said Pete, we have all been kids and as you know you never listen to anyone older than your self until it all goes t!ts up. Well I belive Josh and Jakob both realise thier paintball world is about to go t!ts up.My take on the collateral effects is this; I agree that what people like Josh has done is reprehensible and they do deserve punishment .... but .... I was 15 once and I did things that were pretty bad [I never stole from friends though, I did steal from businesses etc] and the one thing I know is this, if you get a group of lads at that age... then the behavior pattern tends to follow the lowest common denominator which in this case is breakwell ... he's about as low as you can go .... I've no idea of the psychology behind this but it's true, if you got some prick in your peer group who likes to push the limits then the others tend to follow ... with that in mind, I think if we factor out breakwell, I think we are left with a bunch of kids who wouldn't be that bad ... i might be wrong but I have to say it as I see it ..
I am not gonna go for Josh in the same way as I'm going for breakwell; I spoke to Josh and his mother tonight and I'm pretty sure Josh wants nothing more than to put this all behind him and the difference between him and breakwell is... I believe Josh will learn from it ..... and on that basis, even though I banned him from my site today [his punishment] I told him and his mother that I won't be looking to get him banned from playing anywhere.
If however site/league owners decide otherwise, then that's down to them but it will have nothing to do with me ....
I might be going soft and you guys end up having a more stringent take on things and I will of course respect that ...
I genuinely wish I could say 'thread closed' but I think breakwell's nature is gonna push this to its natural finale and it looks as though there are a couple of ways this can end up going ... looking over everything, breakwell has committed an awful lot of crimes some of which he has admitted to ...... I think it maybe expedient at some stage, it's all handed over to the police and I'm pretty sure there will be enough wetnesses willing to stand up against him to ensure he gets nicked and prosecuted appropriately.
This is his best outcome ........
I spoke to them both earlier and as they both pointed out the date on the facebook post was mid November and they have had nothing to do with Tiny/Beakwell since this thread kicked off.
There are a few personal reasons why they do not get on with Joe, but now they just try to avoid contact.
Both "kids" have asked me to express thier heartfelt and profound apologies to anyone that was offended by thier comments