|
It was about 9 pm tonight. I went outside to sit in the car to make a phone call to a friend who had just moved to Birmingham. The house was too noisy with little nephews, nieces and extended family, so the car was to act as my solace.
My friend and I conversed about how we needed to get away to warmer climes and how the weather here is depressing. As we discuss this along with other things I notice that a group of boys gather on the street corner. I explain to my friend how this is now a regular occurrence, especially in the holidays, and how it can usually last until 11 or even midnight. The ages of these boys vary from about nine to sixteen or seventeen.
My friend informs me that they have a similar problem in his home town of Warrington. I’m sure it is the same through out other parts of the country too.
I tell my friend that it can become a real nuisance at certain times of the year when the kids can get hold of fireworks or eggs and in large groups throwing them like missiles. Despite both being in our mid-twenties, we still feel that it was not like this when we were the same age as these youths, some ten or fifteen years ago.
After the conversation with my friend finishes, I decide to go up to these boys and ask them to disperse and go home. It was now about 9.30 or 9.40 pm. Fortunately I knew each one of them hence it was not too much of an issue but for a random passer-by it could quite easily have been intimidating, especially with the music and random prancing around of the youths.
I went over to the oldest of them and asked him whether he thought it was time for him to go inside. The younger boys ran off. This older youth however explained how it was a free country and that I had no right to ask him to turn off his music or even to move on from where he was. He stated that I could do anything I liked but he was not going to move. The threat of calling the police was not a deterrent either. He began to use abusive language, not directed at me but to call back the others.
As I walked away the other children retuned.
Only last week one of the boys, aged 14 crashed his older brothers’ car in to a wall, having taken it for a joy ride around the surrounding streets. A loud noise was heard to which my sister and I reacted by running to the front window to see these youths stood around laughing. For a moment we had thought that a serious accident had occurred involving several cars.
So how do we deal with these children? Why are things getting worse? Why is Labour not taking this seriously? Is it not time to get children back in doors?
Too many children now do not have any respect for their neighbours or for anyone else for that matter. They believe that they have the right to stand where they want, doing and saying anything they like. Labour threatens them with ASBOs but most will take that as a badge of honour. So how do we deal with this problem? Only a few years a go if someone older came over to you and said they were going to inform your parents or the police, you would be in doors before they had finished their sentence. Not now. The Labour Generation have been let loose and there is no stopping youths across Britain.
Please add your comments on whether you have experienced similar problems and what needs to be done. In the coming weeks we will be releasing our thoughts on the problems facing our communities with youths today and how we propose to deal with these very important issues.
| 
Blog RSS feed