Weather obsession
So what’s wrong with being completely obsessed with the weather? I can think of a myriad of other obsessions that are much unhealthier and have at least one negative repercussion upon society! All that happens when you are obsessed with the weather is that you get to now each BBC weatherman by their first name and know when to wear a big coat, it’s completely harmless! Oddly enough by watching and checking so many weather reports you get to associate yourself with a favourite style of presentation whether, for example, they glide their hand smoothly over the screen in one sweeping motion resembling the intent of the next mid-Atlantic depression. Or they could do that other very British thing where they fist their hand into a ball and start jabbing very slowly at some peculiar part of the country that is about to receive half of its annual rainfall in 45 seconds! Weathermen (and women!) are by association true eccentrics, no other public figures could get so animated and happy telling the nation the way it is in front of a giant blue wall. You can see the power in there eyes, the fact that for the next 2 and a half minutes nobody, not even Gordon Brown or Simon Cowell holds as much authority as they do. If this was the Costa del Sol or even Germany the weatherman would be just as ignored as any other TV scientist but this isn’t South Spain this is Britain, where the predictions of the madcap weatherman over 2 and a half minutes can spark a million conversation nationwide about precipitation levels. As a nation we are, whether you admit it or not, completely obsessed with the weather. I for one, admittedly, am such a person. My daily routine consists of getting up and checking both BBC and the ludicrously poor ITV weather reports then getting to work and checking at least six other websites before I can even think about shouting at teenagers. Medically, this can probably be called obsessive compulsive but in my eyes its just another fundamental aspect of our genetic make-up, we all weathermen at heart.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Monday, 16 February 2009
A year in youth work
A year in youth work
A year last September I started a job in youth work working for an organisation based in Portsmouth aimed at engaging with young people and supporting them to access better life chances. The principle of the organisation and youth work in its most general form is to engage with young people, many of them in a disadvantaged position, to act as a guide and mentor and encourage them to achieve their potential and also to keep them away from offending behaviour. Youth work is a catch-all term meaning any type of work involved with young people but my role was to specifically work with young people aged 13-17 in a specific geographical location. Without getting down to the bare-bones of the location these areas are chosen because they have a history of youth offending, have a high ratio of young people entering the youth justice system for the fist time and the area has historically suffered from high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour. I don't want to concentrate on the location too much because that’s not what I want to focus on but it helps but this into context.Youth work has changed immeasurably over the last few years to cope with the demands of an evolving society. People have their own reasons why youth nuisance has become such a problem but youth work in its own right has had to become reactive to meet these needs and form a cohesive strategy to cope with the social problems that are related to it. Young people are more intelligent now than they ever have been and arguably ever will be but people have to steer away from this judgmental attitude that seems to have crept into society over the last few years. The public have this attitude where if they see a young person aged between 12-18 and they don't conform to the stereotypical vision of the youth in their childhood they are instantly judged to be thugs. I am not for one minute stating that all young people are angels and we are being misled by a moral-panic hungry media (ok, maybe) but what we are guilty of is stereotypifying a certain demographic and casting it upon the rest of the population just because they might be wearing a tracksuit or a baseball cap. Young people have evolved over the last few years mirroring the changes in society, they are disenfranchised, apathetic, bored and all too often being won over by the wrong role models who either know them personally or are a part of their lives through the media. Young people need the right inspiration and motivation just like the rest of the adult population by being diverted away from the corrupt.
For me it begs the question of stability. If a young person is from a stable background they are less likely to offend, obviously there are anomalies but in 9 out of ten of cases this must be true. Social deprivation and anti-social behaviour must be a significant judge of youth nuisance but if a young person has been brought up in a stable environment with a positive male role model then that young person is less likely to offend. Having a positive male role is absolutely key to that young person, more predominantly male, in ensuring that they steer clear of offending behaviour. This is why, and it’s slightly off the point, it is absolutely vital that more male primary teachers are attracted into the profession to have a valuable impact on young males from a very early age to procure these young minds. A lot of primary school children are without a dominant male figure within their lives and it is this along with the breakdown of the family group which is causing more and more young people to offend from a very early age which is why it is even more important that youth work becomes reactive both to the needs of the young people but more importantly the area in which they associate themselves.
My time in youth work has enabled me to gain a sound understanding of the needs of young people in a society that does everything in its power to provide for them but does absolutely nothing for them if they fail to take it. Neighbourhoods have to start taking responsibility for their own residents instead of blaming the very system whom they ask so much for. Parents and community members hold so much responsibility for the behaviour of the young people in whom they only want the best for. Having youth clubs and schemes in which young people can hang-out is great but these aren't generally the places in which youth nuisance is a problem. Parents and community workers have to be aligned in their objective and completely unified in their need to change the mentality of the young people from a situation where it is on most occasions ‘them versus us’. Germany, the States, Australia, Sweden, these countries place massive significance on civic pride and this is evident in the unity between residents and most significantly the attitude of the young people. We need to roll back the years to a time when we were connected to our youngsters, not enemies.
Youth work can be the most valuable weapon in the fight to curb youth offending and anti-social behaviour by bridging the gap between authority and the young people themselves. The last year or so has taught be some extremely valuable lessons through getting to know young people and how susceptible they are to influences from other people whether that be a family member, friend or worker. I guess what I am trying to get at is that youth work is extremely important, especially in inner-city areas where the need for intensive work is absolutely vital. The major paradox is this though; youth work is nothing without the shared responsibility and foresight of the wider community, it just doesn’t work. Working in places such as Portsmouth there is always going to be pockets of resistance to change and evolution and this will always be the major downfall of working in such a place. Youth nuisance will continue to be a major problem on our streets until we take it by the scruff of the neck and deal with it head on, taking away the reliance on the police as someone to blame.
This messed up and confused little isle is home to some fantastic young people with a massive amount of potential. Society needs to reinvent itself as a place where young people feel proud to be involved. Sport gives young people the sense of belonging, competitiveness and usually the ability to know how to cope with both winning and losing, but we should have so much more of it! The aforementioned countries treat sport with a massive amount of seriousness but we seem to see it more as a pastime rather than as a fundamental part of youth. This, and its no exaggeration, would go a massive way to solving some of the biggest questions that we have of young people and the problems associated with them. What a bloody great fifteen months….Tom Walters
A year last September I started a job in youth work working for an organisation based in Portsmouth aimed at engaging with young people and supporting them to access better life chances. The principle of the organisation and youth work in its most general form is to engage with young people, many of them in a disadvantaged position, to act as a guide and mentor and encourage them to achieve their potential and also to keep them away from offending behaviour. Youth work is a catch-all term meaning any type of work involved with young people but my role was to specifically work with young people aged 13-17 in a specific geographical location. Without getting down to the bare-bones of the location these areas are chosen because they have a history of youth offending, have a high ratio of young people entering the youth justice system for the fist time and the area has historically suffered from high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour. I don't want to concentrate on the location too much because that’s not what I want to focus on but it helps but this into context.Youth work has changed immeasurably over the last few years to cope with the demands of an evolving society. People have their own reasons why youth nuisance has become such a problem but youth work in its own right has had to become reactive to meet these needs and form a cohesive strategy to cope with the social problems that are related to it. Young people are more intelligent now than they ever have been and arguably ever will be but people have to steer away from this judgmental attitude that seems to have crept into society over the last few years. The public have this attitude where if they see a young person aged between 12-18 and they don't conform to the stereotypical vision of the youth in their childhood they are instantly judged to be thugs. I am not for one minute stating that all young people are angels and we are being misled by a moral-panic hungry media (ok, maybe) but what we are guilty of is stereotypifying a certain demographic and casting it upon the rest of the population just because they might be wearing a tracksuit or a baseball cap. Young people have evolved over the last few years mirroring the changes in society, they are disenfranchised, apathetic, bored and all too often being won over by the wrong role models who either know them personally or are a part of their lives through the media. Young people need the right inspiration and motivation just like the rest of the adult population by being diverted away from the corrupt.
For me it begs the question of stability. If a young person is from a stable background they are less likely to offend, obviously there are anomalies but in 9 out of ten of cases this must be true. Social deprivation and anti-social behaviour must be a significant judge of youth nuisance but if a young person has been brought up in a stable environment with a positive male role model then that young person is less likely to offend. Having a positive male role is absolutely key to that young person, more predominantly male, in ensuring that they steer clear of offending behaviour. This is why, and it’s slightly off the point, it is absolutely vital that more male primary teachers are attracted into the profession to have a valuable impact on young males from a very early age to procure these young minds. A lot of primary school children are without a dominant male figure within their lives and it is this along with the breakdown of the family group which is causing more and more young people to offend from a very early age which is why it is even more important that youth work becomes reactive both to the needs of the young people but more importantly the area in which they associate themselves.
My time in youth work has enabled me to gain a sound understanding of the needs of young people in a society that does everything in its power to provide for them but does absolutely nothing for them if they fail to take it. Neighbourhoods have to start taking responsibility for their own residents instead of blaming the very system whom they ask so much for. Parents and community members hold so much responsibility for the behaviour of the young people in whom they only want the best for. Having youth clubs and schemes in which young people can hang-out is great but these aren't generally the places in which youth nuisance is a problem. Parents and community workers have to be aligned in their objective and completely unified in their need to change the mentality of the young people from a situation where it is on most occasions ‘them versus us’. Germany, the States, Australia, Sweden, these countries place massive significance on civic pride and this is evident in the unity between residents and most significantly the attitude of the young people. We need to roll back the years to a time when we were connected to our youngsters, not enemies.
Youth work can be the most valuable weapon in the fight to curb youth offending and anti-social behaviour by bridging the gap between authority and the young people themselves. The last year or so has taught be some extremely valuable lessons through getting to know young people and how susceptible they are to influences from other people whether that be a family member, friend or worker. I guess what I am trying to get at is that youth work is extremely important, especially in inner-city areas where the need for intensive work is absolutely vital. The major paradox is this though; youth work is nothing without the shared responsibility and foresight of the wider community, it just doesn’t work. Working in places such as Portsmouth there is always going to be pockets of resistance to change and evolution and this will always be the major downfall of working in such a place. Youth nuisance will continue to be a major problem on our streets until we take it by the scruff of the neck and deal with it head on, taking away the reliance on the police as someone to blame.
This messed up and confused little isle is home to some fantastic young people with a massive amount of potential. Society needs to reinvent itself as a place where young people feel proud to be involved. Sport gives young people the sense of belonging, competitiveness and usually the ability to know how to cope with both winning and losing, but we should have so much more of it! The aforementioned countries treat sport with a massive amount of seriousness but we seem to see it more as a pastime rather than as a fundamental part of youth. This, and its no exaggeration, would go a massive way to solving some of the biggest questions that we have of young people and the problems associated with them. What a bloody great fifteen months….Tom Walters
BNP Membership
Having a membership to the BNP should not be deemed illegal however hideous the official partyline. Surely the membership details of BNP members being uncovered over the last couple of days should act as a wake up call to the main political parties to stop saturating thier poltical discourse with popularist policy and ineffective election campaigns. Having a membership to the BNP or any other political party should never be made illegal because if it is it goes against the very principles in which we fought agianst political extremism in the first place,to exercise our right to political freedom and the right to speak freely without the fear of persecution. What the main political parties don't realise is that if you consistently focus your attentions on a particular set of voters there will be a large sect of society left behind, normally the ones who have just lost their job and their house and are looking for someone to blame. The fact that the BNP have a surge in popularity in places such as Stoke isn't a sign of what the BNP can do for them more so a case of what Labour and the Conservatives can't. Denying people of their right to belong is a fundamental error, people are now educated enough to know that the BNP spout nonsense without censoring and making people scapegoats for falling for a party who are giving the people what they want. One more thing, and I find this frustrating to the point where its nearly upsetting. The fact that the Russel Brand/Johnathon Ross scandal was brought up in Parliament and the escalating crisis in The Democratic Republic of Congo wasn't makes me sick. You fucking people need to open your eyes.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Merry Christmas Twilight
Sat here in the twilight of the inter-christmas/new year period its difficult to think of a more confusing time. Christmas, however entertaining or predictible passes by quickly to leave you bloated, heavier and probably slightly diabetic. Christmas is great though, even for someone who is, much like alot of us nowdays, extremely unreligious it is hard to find a more exciting and care-free time of the year when excuses are thrown out of the window and ever so slight friendships are rekindled, embarrassingly or not. Christmas has and will continue to lose its meaning in a world masked by advertising, consumer greed and material gain but even so it is hard not feel some enjoyment at eating and drinking a hideous amount of food and drink and glowing in the contentment of another great present. For a brief moment even the most cynical of realists can sit back and forget that the gap between rich and poor continues to grow at unmittigating rates and that the world is probably going to boill itself alive with us as the proverbial sprouts. Christmas is a brief wormhole that opens for a brief second to let older people peer into their childhood, it can and should be a time when that irritating 'conversation' with someone you dont really like can be forgiven and you can talk about every bland topic he or she wants to. It is happiness personified, even after a terrible year with every personal disaster imaginable taken place Christmas gives us the opportunity to take a brief restbite from it. I hate the fact Christmas is now 'advertised' from the start of October to entice people onto the high street but once it has quietly sprung upon us the joy of eternal youth can once again excusably reappear. If you are in Chesterfield for the New Year, unlucky, and watch out for the 'clones', unbelievably and dangerously bland.
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Southsea
Take a cross-section of British society in its basic form, take the uniformity of the modern High Street and the mundane nature of the modern music fan and none would be found in Southsea. Quite a bold statement for such a small town located inside its uglier and often harder working older brother, Portsmouth. Southsea has and will undoubtedly continue to be an anomaly in an otherwise generic part of the south with some of the greatest cultural potential this side of Brighton but unlocking it will be the biggest quest the people of this town will ever have to achieve. Some would say that this has already been achieved and that Albert Road has fast become the street of choice for eaters and drinkers alike city-wide but I would say that the potential is far greater than people could imagine. In an age where the vast majority of the UK suffers from cultural stagnation it is refreshing to see that a small enclave of an island off an island can claim to be at the very heart of hedonism, a true gem of eclectic citizens all with the same relative ideas of live music and great atmosphere. You can go to very few places in Britain and feel part of something truly unique where, particularly along Albert Road, you are faced with an almost enviable mix of pubs, quirky shops and restaurants that haven’t sold their soul to corporatism and will probably continue in this same fashion for generations to come unbowed by the modernist’s dream of pedestrianisation and plastic facades.
Southsea truly holds the ultimate sense of eclecticism, a place that has been relatively well-hidden from the outside world as a place of character with an alternative vision. Walking amongst the Stella-boys migrating south from Guildhall walk you can still bump into the several thousand of students all vying for a place at the bar dressed in their golfing attire. Meanwhile you can still hold that drunken conversation with a member of the Old Conservative Club about the state of Sunday League refereeing whilst being heckled by twelve Pompey fans buoyant after Fulham away. This truly is the cosmopolitan mix that the Blairite years fascinated about, albeit without the middle-England blandness and wannabe’s drinking espresso’s on the pavement because they think it’s the done thing. One thing Southsea can claim is that it doesn’t subscribe to recent fads or trends in popular culture in so much that you can be 99% sure that whatever is popular in the rest of the country Southsea refuses to follow suit. The scene-ista’s that give any town or city its edge have found their home in Southsea too through the recent indie-girl converts hanging around the bands in Jonny Russell’s to the Fred Perry mopheads reliving a mod-revival moment because you can add a swagger and a Marlboro Light and be someone else. With only two credible live music venues dotted around Albert Road its hard to believe that so many bands have had the chance to showcase their talents and this has always been the real let-down with an otherwise up and coming scene. With more and more places to eat and drink opening all the time surely it is time to really showcase the talent and solidarity of such a fascinating corner of the world and provide the places and nights with which the potential truly deserves.
Southsea truly holds the ultimate sense of eclecticism, a place that has been relatively well-hidden from the outside world as a place of character with an alternative vision. Walking amongst the Stella-boys migrating south from Guildhall walk you can still bump into the several thousand of students all vying for a place at the bar dressed in their golfing attire. Meanwhile you can still hold that drunken conversation with a member of the Old Conservative Club about the state of Sunday League refereeing whilst being heckled by twelve Pompey fans buoyant after Fulham away. This truly is the cosmopolitan mix that the Blairite years fascinated about, albeit without the middle-England blandness and wannabe’s drinking espresso’s on the pavement because they think it’s the done thing. One thing Southsea can claim is that it doesn’t subscribe to recent fads or trends in popular culture in so much that you can be 99% sure that whatever is popular in the rest of the country Southsea refuses to follow suit. The scene-ista’s that give any town or city its edge have found their home in Southsea too through the recent indie-girl converts hanging around the bands in Jonny Russell’s to the Fred Perry mopheads reliving a mod-revival moment because you can add a swagger and a Marlboro Light and be someone else. With only two credible live music venues dotted around Albert Road its hard to believe that so many bands have had the chance to showcase their talents and this has always been the real let-down with an otherwise up and coming scene. With more and more places to eat and drink opening all the time surely it is time to really showcase the talent and solidarity of such a fascinating corner of the world and provide the places and nights with which the potential truly deserves.
High Street Clones
Has individualism been eroded? For the past few years, following trends in music and popular culture ive genuinely found it exciting at the prospect of the generic excesses of the so called hip-hop generation being replaced by a more care-free attitude intertwined with indie credentials. Its good to see more and more people ditch the glitsy clubs for sweaty pubs and live music but distressingly what has happened is people have become confused as to what they have become. It used to be easy to spot the pretenders from the genuine article but what we have seen now is this uniformity start to take hold once again. Everywhere you look people are afraid to truly commit to something uniquely individual. People feel forced to follow the crowd and in some respects feel they are being truly original by wearing or listening to something different but what they in fact doing is wearing or listening to something that is a by-product of the current trend. This has always been the case through passing subcultures from the arrival of rock and roll from america at the start of the fifties, to early mods and rockers, the original skins, mod revival, new romantics and lad-mag britpop. What is different today is the fact it isn't possible to pigeon-hole any existing movement, some could say that this is absolute individualism, I would say that people are more confused than ever and are looking at their parrot-top hairstyles for answers. The answer to the majority is to wear your cardigan without knowing what it truly represents. Walk around any provincial town on a Friday or Saturday night and you wouldn't be inspired, you would be bored, bored by seeing nothing but comfort-zone fashion.
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Philosophical Enlightenment
In everybody's lives their comes along a juncture, good or bad, which results in a change in philosophy and possibly a change in direction. Life, normally, whether you know it or not will take that pre-determined path that leads you towards your inevitable goal, whatever that might be. You may have never even thought about this goal at any point in your life but your actions and the consequences from those actions have lead you to this point in your life. Then a certain event will transpire to transform your feelings whether it be death, the death of a close one or maybe even a near-death experience. At this point life seems to take on a whole different meaning. All of a sudden you become aware of your actions and will quietly admit to yourself that you will no longer be truly ignorant to the consequences of those actions. In addition to this, maybe not all of a sudden but possibly over a larger period of time, your life starts to change facilitated by a distinct change in philosophy. This is not the cliched moment of mental clearness where you become aware of the bigger picture but an incremental transition to a life that will not be pre-destined but will be experienced rather than be made to sit in the passenger seat.
At the same time things become much more duanting. Life before such an adverse event was much more distorted but much easier. Its that age old jealousy of the simple builder who probably reads the Sun and who is probably not the sharpest tool in the box but you feel so much jealousy because he is happy with his place in the world, he is the king of his own castle surrounded by all the things he could ever need in life. His life probably hasen't been one long happy journey but it has unwittingly or not brought him relative peace and happiness. Would he therefore be the same person if a) he was more aware of world around him and b) he had gone through a life changing event?
What im trying to push at is the that maybe it does take a life-affirming event to change your philosophical approach to life but maybe being ignorant can bring equal amounts of pleasure and pain. On one hand life would be much easier to handle but do people really want to carry on being as ignorant as some pople are?
At the same time things become much more duanting. Life before such an adverse event was much more distorted but much easier. Its that age old jealousy of the simple builder who probably reads the Sun and who is probably not the sharpest tool in the box but you feel so much jealousy because he is happy with his place in the world, he is the king of his own castle surrounded by all the things he could ever need in life. His life probably hasen't been one long happy journey but it has unwittingly or not brought him relative peace and happiness. Would he therefore be the same person if a) he was more aware of world around him and b) he had gone through a life changing event?
What im trying to push at is the that maybe it does take a life-affirming event to change your philosophical approach to life but maybe being ignorant can bring equal amounts of pleasure and pain. On one hand life would be much easier to handle but do people really want to carry on being as ignorant as some pople are?
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