clockwork orange come to life?

I thought this article was interesting. It's about gangs of teenagers in England going around beating the crap out of people, taking pictrues with their famera phones, running off, and posting the pictures on the web. I've had trouble finding pictures. Most recently, a small girl was raped and a man, defending his car, was beaten so severely he fell into coma for two weeks.

Apparently this is not new for England. It was a fad in the 60's and 70's, glorified by Stanley Kubrik's Clockwork Orange and novel by Anthony Burgess. Until recently, the slap-happy incident's remained minor, inflicting only minor injuries among early teens preyed upon by gangs of teenagers. This sounds remarkably like mob-like bullying to me. It's even affected the blogsphere. See e.g. : http://inklings.blogs.com/inklings/2005/04/slap_happy.html, see also http://theladyjustitia.blogspot.com/2005/04/as-technology-advances.html; compare http://baldilocks.typepad.com/baldilocks/2005/04/slap_happy.html.

~B