Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

MARAUDING YOUNGSTERS

On Friday the three Plymouth MPs (half of my constituency is in the city) met with the excellent Chief Superintendent Morris Watts to discuss crime statistics. This is one of several regular meetings the three of us have with various local agencies to seek solutions to some of the challenges facing our city. I am all in favour of cross-party working.

It was no surprise to learn that although Plymouth police are doing very well in many areas, low-level violent crime is on the increase. Much of this is related to binge drinking and young people. It is one of the greatest social problems of our time.

As residents of Plympton, Plymstock and Ivybridge know only too well there are increasing groups of young people gathering together at evenings and weekends and getting drunk and making a darned nuisance of themselves. I am going out on patrol with the police shortly to see the full extent of this problem for myself.
Some may say that it was ever thus: young people hanging out on street corners, drinking too much and causing trouble.

Maybe, but there are three very real differences these days. First, the age of the troublemakers is getting much younger. Jan and I recently spoke to some of the pack of thirty or so youngsters on the Ridgeway at 10pm who were hanging around being rowdy. One admitted that she was very drunk (obvious anyway) that her parents did not know where she was or what she was doing and that she was only thirteen. Thirteen!

Secondly, binge drinking is becoming a huge problem and the levels of excessive drinking naturally lead on to more extreme behaviour. Third, the general decline in respect for others means that these marauding groups don’t really care who they upset or intimidate.

So what’s to be done? A whole range of remedies is being tried out from Acceptable Behaviour Contracts to Anti-social Behaviour Orders. The police are also considering a Dispersal Order to prevent certain young people from gathering in certain places. I am all in favour.

But what on earth are thirteen-year-olds doing regularly on our streets drunk and incapable? Where are the parents?
We can install more CCTV cameras, we can clog up the courts with young offenders, but unless we find more effective ways of going upstream and sorting out what is going wrong in our homes we are in for many more turbulent years ahead.

posted by Nigel on Monday, January 24, 2005

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

FOOD

Some of you can remember food shortages just after world war two, ration books and all that. That can never happen again in a country like Britain, can it?

I hope not, but I am not so sure. We now import the vast majority of our food from overseas, whilst our own farming industry withers on the vine. Dairy farmers are leaving the industry in droves, because they can hardly make profits at the prices paid to them. Thousands of acres of land every year leaves agricultural production and becomes leisure or recreational land, and so the potential for domestic food production falls even further. Young people cannot afford the capital costs to break into farming today, even if they wanted too – and few do.

At the same time the supermarket shelves are full of produce from all over the world. It is wonderful to have access to exotic fruits vegetables and produce that former generations could only read about. But we also import many of the dairy meat and arable products that we can and do make ourselves. We are now even importing milk from New Zealand (why?)

Does any of this matter? Is this not just like any other industry, say cars or textiles? Is this not just a reflection of globalisation: one big happy world where we all buy and sell from each other as our ancestors did from their own village.

Maybe. I hope the world develops in a peaceful and constructive way; I hope that natural, or political, or medical, or technological, or military disasters will not impact the growing inter-dependence of today’s world. But the sheer scale of the recent tsunami ought to cause a moment of reflection.

It would be inconvenient if we could not access new cars or the latest fashion labels for a season. But when a nation cannot feed its own people, that is a different matter altogether.

The farming industry is not like many others; you cannot just turn on a tap and produce pork chops and potatoes for all. It takes time to gear up food production. That was why farm subsidies were introduced in the first place: to help our agriculture industry survive the capricious cycles of the market, so there was always enough food on Britain’s table.
We should take more care over the British farming industry and make sure that it is still there when we need it.

posted by Nigel on Monday, January 17, 2005

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

TSUNAMI

The devastating tsunami waves that swept away so many lives over the Christmas break underlined the timeless truth that bad things happen to good people. It is pointless agonising over deep philosophical meaning to this tragedy: why them, why now, or simply why? It just happens. The earth’s crust is unstable. There will always be earthquakes and other powerful geological events. We will never completely conquer the awesome power of our planet. Natural disasters have always been with us, always will be.
The crucial thing is: how will we respond?

1. We can all make a small difference. Cataclysmic events like this recent tragedy can make us feel helpless, but we are not helpless. There is plenty we can do. We can give money and many are. The great British public have shown again how big-hearted we are by digging deep into our pockets and stumping up £70 million and rising. It does make you proud to be British. We can support the existing charities that are already doing good work in the regions so badly affected. We can launch new charity ventures of our own. We can enter into those excellent schemes where you “sponsor” a child from afar, for as little as fifteen pounds a month.

2. We can work for a better world. We can put pressure on our politicians to do more, not just in giving aid right now, but working harder for global security and prosperity. Look at the difference in the capacity of mighty USA to cope with recent hurricanes compared to humble Grenada. Britain now has leadership of the G8 group of wealthiest industrialised nations. We should use this terrible disaster to focus the minds of world leaders on some of the obstacles that hold back progress for poorer nations, not least free trade and conflict resolution. For me, the most important target is to reshape the United Nations into an effective organisation that can play a real part in global events rather than a pointless talking shop.

3. We can put in place better warning systems. It may only happen every few decades, but there is no reason why we cannot ensure that in future the precious few hours of warning of impending tidal waves are used to move people back from the coast.

Plenty to think about then as we start another year. We can’t stop bad things happening, but we can choose how we respond.
Happy New Year!

posted by Nigel on Sunday, January 09, 2005