Smacking very young children to stop them putting their fingers in the electric socket is fine as I am concerned as long as it is proportionate. It only has to smart not even leave a mark. Once kids get older smacking has less effect. Though some parents have no idea how to chastise them without smacking.

My dad was perfectly calm when he smaked my ass. Its was extremely rare that I did something that warranted a smack but just the words (come here now) said in that calm voice made me 1) know I'd done something I really ought not to and 2) made sure I didnt do it again. He never hit me hard and it was more about knowing what I'd done and that it was wrong, etc.

I was a good kid too, well behaved at home and in the classroom. I look around at some kids today and wonder if they could do with a smack.

i didn't get slapped much, but I was a totally disrespectful B*** towards my mom in my late teens and took a couple. And i think it was good and justified

Ditto but then every teenager is a *anker at some point.

I remember my mum talking to me when I was about 13/14 explaining that I probably wasn't going to get on with my dad for a few years.

Thankfully he is now my best mate.

So he managed to avoid being placed under the patio then?

Patio? Patio!??!

Listen to you and your silver spooned upbringing, patio indeed.

Where else could he have hidden the body?

An urn in a lake?

A shoe box in t'middle o' road.


Luxury

A shoe box? We didn't have shoe boxes in my day. Our shoes came wrapped in a coal sack.

Ooh luxury we lived in a hole in the road.

Shoes? You had shoes?!? We only ever dreamed of having shoes....