Speaking up for the young (From Borehamwood Times)

Speaking up for the young

4:02pm Thursday 27th March 2008

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Over 70% of printed news coverage dealing with young people are negative stories painting youths in a poor or bad light. Just one in ten stories about young people paint them in a positive light. That’s a very sad statistic. Are we saying that three quarters of our children and our young are bad people – do they all commit anti-social behaviour, are they all binge drinkers, hoodies and drug misusers? Yes, sure there are problems and sure we see our fair share of them in Borehamwood but do we really feel our young people are getting a fair press?

We were confronted with those statistics and questions when I attended the Young People of the Year Awards this week. As one of over a dozen judges, I was asked to look at the stories and lives of a dozen nominated young people in Hertsmere, Watford and Three Rivers – stories of great courage, character building, leading by example and stories of pain and tragedy which had brought out the best in the nominees.

It was a humbling experience and I hope that newspapers will cover those stories and that print media in general will focus more on the positive side of our young, as well as the negative.

It was good to see among the nominees Charlotte Weston and Tom Dunn who for some time now have been involved in organising and running youth discos at The Vibe Youth Project in Borehamwood. To quote Charlotte (aged 20): “I love to inspire the children we work with and work with them to create shows, helping them be part of ‘something’, meet new friends and grow.” Tom (aged 13) said: “At the last Vibe there was approximately 120-130 kids there which makes me feel a lot better because if I see them enjoying themselves, I think I’ve done what I was meant to do to a good enough standard. The Vibe discos were mainly set up to keep kids off the streets and from the last 7 to 8 discos I feel like its working.”

What great examples Charlotte and Tom are. There are more young people like that out there and we should speak up for them too.

Well it’s the 27th March today, and we enter what is known in local government circles in the run up to the local elections as the “purdah period”. The purdah period starts from the publication of the notice of elections – in Hertsmere’s case this is Thursday 27 March – and lasts until after the elections on Thursday 1 May 2008.

This means that there are restrictions placed on the publicity that the Council can put out during this time. The restrictions do not mean that the Council cannot undertake any publicity – it would seem odd if residents suddenly heard nothing from their councils for five weeks – but the Council must ensure that during the purdah period any publicity it is involved in must not be perceived as giving support to a candidate, their supporters, or a particular political party. The Council must also avoid issuing any publicity that deals with controversial issues or which reports views or policies in a way that identifies them with individual members or groups of members. (The restrictions on political publicity are contained in Section 2 of the Local Government Act (1986), as amended by section 27 of the Local Government Act 1988 and revised in April 2001.)

I tell you this because there will be some who believe that perhaps to err on the side of caution people like myself should not be writing blogs during this period. I must admit I thought so too.

Yet I’ve sought advice from both officers at Hertsmere and also from the good folk at the Borehamwood Times. While I was getting ready to shut it all down for the next month, their general feeling seems to be that we can carry on with these blogs if everyone feels happy to do so, as they are not being written or sent out by the Council itself.

I think though to be on the safe side, even though I personally am not up for election, I’ll stick to non-contentious issues in the weeks ahead, matters that I hope we can all agree on and seek your views on those. It doesn’t mean that its open house on coming gunning for me because I can’t write back, but it does mean I will endeavour to ensure that these blogs are kept as apolitical as possible in the weeks ahead.

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