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We need to prevent the teenage gangs from treating the buses as getaway cars, and intimidating other passengers. That's why I have proposed a trial of live CCTV on some routes, so that the police can see the violence taking place as soon as they are alerted to it by the bus driver - and immediately go to the scene. We should be making sure that all new building in London is designed to make crime more difficult; and that means no more vulnerable walkways or dimly-lit stairwells - no more repetition of past mistakes. But we will never deal with this problem unless we also understand why kids seek out gangs. In some ways, their choice is rational. The gang provides a sense of security, opportunities to earn the esteem of their peers. The gang can be a kind of family; and that's why we should be doing so much more to allow them to obtain these benefits - excitement, competition, achievement - but in other ways. The Mayor could be doing so much more to encourage competitive sport of all kinds, with all its potential for developing emotional maturity and for allowing young males to let off steam. There is so much that could be done with the arts. But above all, we should be using mayoral funds to encourage the thousands of volunteers who are working with the kids - and their parents - and trying to nip the problem in the bud, trying to steer them away from criminality, because that is the best way to save the taxpayer millions. There are people across London who are doing life changing work - organisations like the Street Pastors, XLP, Prospex, Kids Company, Eastside Young Leaders - and what we need to do now is to bring all these people together into a London-wide network. Where necessary, we should be helping them expand with London Development Agency money, and not wasting it, like the current administration, on pointless politically correct agitprop. We need to do this now, if the problem is not to be even worse in a few years' time. We need to take London's gang culture seriously if this year's toll is not to be a tragic repeat of 2007, or worse. To see the full advert click the links below: JPEG version (low res) - 258kb | |||||||||||||
| Promoted by Colin Suckling on behalf of all Conservative candidates in the Royal Borough of Kingston, all of 11 Kingsmill Business Park, Chapel Mill Road,Kingston, Surrey, KT1 3GZ Produced and Hosted by Rubber Duckiee Ltd |
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