Last week, Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard wrote a rather dreadful comment piece in The Times lamenting the role of the Children’s Commissioner and suggesting that there wasn’t any need for such a position: “How about a Ginger’s Commissioner, for the rights of us redheads?” he asked. “What about a Wii Commissioner, for those who want access to computer games?”
As I’m sure many others did, I sighed, tutted and wished once again that columnists of his ilk would get out of their trendy Islington townhouses and dig a little deeper before putting pen to paper. So I was glad to see that Sathnam Sanghara composed a fantastic response to the piece; answering the criticisms with a robust defence. His standfirst said it all: “If this column were about puppies being held in indefinite detention with no judicial oversight, my inbox would be full.”
Attacking government quangos and those paid to head them up is easy fodder for op-ed writers, and I’d be lying if I hadn’t ever seen the title of a government agency and thought: ‘my taxes go to pay for that!?!’.
But I struggle to think of a section of society more worthy of a publicly-funded body that stands arms-length from government and calls it to account. Those under 18 are heavily reliant on the state, from the education they receive, the healthcare they need, or the thousands of them who are looked after through fostering, care-homes or social services. Many young people come into contact with the state through getting into trouble with the police, but for every young person under 18 with an ASBO, there are around 200 who are providing substantive care to a parent or sibling*; massively subsidising the nation’s social care bill as part of a workforce that would be illegal if it was recognised. All this, and yet because they haven’t yet turned 18, the state isn’t accountable to any of them. Earlier this year, young people were even banned from entering Parliament.
Perhaps Stephen thinks that young people should get together and form their own lobby group to ensure their views are heard and counted, just like every other sector does. There are, of course, organisations that do this, and I’ve seen some brilliant examples of where this is occurring (tomorrow for example, young people will sit in the House of Commons chamber to discuss some of those issues). But, by the very nature of their age, young people don’t have the financial resource, or the time, or the knowledge of how the system works, to effectively campaign amongst professional policy makers and politicians. They need adult support and funding. Especially if English isn’t their first language, or they’ve had an unstable upbringing, or they are simply too young to engage in a debate with adults.
Stephen picks on a single comment made by the current Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, as demonstration of the pointlessness of the role. Last year, Sir Al was quoted as saying that using stop and search powers to prevent knife crime could antagonise young people, and this was seized on as ridiculous both by a government minister (Tony McNulty) and a raft of pundits who get paid as much as Sir Al does to file their columns. The original quote follows the introduction of new powers that the police were given to stop and search people even if there was no reasonable suspicion that they were carrying a weapon. Sir Al, quite reasonably, said: “There is a balance here. On the one hand for young people to feel safer by having the presence of the police – but on the other hand making sure the new powers don’t create further antagonism by increased stopping and searching.” To my mind, that is exactly what someone paid to stand up for the rights of children should be pointing out: especially when I know teenagers who line their walls with the Stop and Search receipts they’ve received.
Sathnam highlights the work 11 Million (the organisation that the Children’s Commissioner heads) has done defending the rights of children who are detained, without legal representation, because of the action of their parents.
But if I was to highlight another reason we need a Children’s Commissioner, it is the effect Sir Al and his team had on the use of Mosquitoes, the devices that emit a high-pitch audio sound that only younger people are able to hear. It is appalling that it took the intervention of the Children’s Commissioner to highlight how indiscriminate these devices were before councils and other agencies started considering and regulating their use. Until then, it seemed no-one in authority concerned themselves with the legal, let alone ethical, consequences of using these devices.
Perhaps when red-heads are subjected to audible irritation because their demographic is deemed a nuisance; or gamers are locked away in cells, without access to any medical facilities, because their mums and dads broke the law, then they will deserve a commissioner who makes sure the government is looking out for them. But whilst the UN deems the UK to be the worst place in the developed world for children to grow up in, then we absolutely need someone paid to argue the case for young people.
Like Stephen, I would love to compile a list of government quangos that should be got rid of, and put the Children’s Commissioner on that list. But unlike Stephen, I’d like that to happen because the state recognises and respects the rights that young people have, rather than his approach: simply deny there is a problem in the first place.
* Calculation based on the statistic of 869 ASBOs issued to young people aged 10-17 in England in 2007, against 175,000 under 18s who are classed as Young Carers by Ofsted’s Supporting Young Carers report.
Apologies for the extended break between this and the previous entry, it wasn’t actually meant to be quite as long as it was. My last post, in early August, was just before I went to Scotland for a few days, and ever since I’ve been back I don’t seem to have got in the swing of updating my blog.
However, many long-running TV programmes have a “summer break”, and I think being away from a blog for a while probably is no bad thing. That’s not to say I haven’t actually written anything in that time, but I’ve never got to the stage where I’ve wanted to publish anything. Perhaps I’ll go back and you’ll see some ‘catch-up’ posts over the next few weeks.
I haven’t totally been skiving in my time away. As well as trips to Scotland, Wales and France, I’ve been busy at work worrying about the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But I’ve also been working on a new project (which, if truth be told, I actually did back at the start of summer but also seemed to get lost in the lazy days of September).
We Need Young People is an idea I’d been kicking around for a while. Partly it is me trying out some new technical ideas (everything from producing XML feeds to generating automatic Twitter updates). But primarily it is based on my thinking that “there must be a better way to do this.”
At work we regularly get emails sent around saying ‘we’re looking for young people to…’, whether it’s from a TV production company desperate for a teenage mum to appear in a documentary, to cash awards that are available for innovative projects initiated by young people. I’m sure there are countless projects, competitions, requests etc that are floating out there, all hoping to reach young people.
Email is obviously quite effective, but it’s not desperately efficient and also by only telling people you already know about projects, only the same young people hear about the same projects.
Surely, if someone could pull all this information together, and present it in a way that it could be divided up so the signal-to-noise ratio wasn’t quite so high, then it could become a really useful tool. Particularly if the data wasn’t just available on a single website, but able to be placed wherever young people, and their adult supporters, were likely to be looking.
So that’s essentially what I’ve built. Add your project etc (or one that you’ve found) by completing a simple form, wait for it to be moderated, and then watch as it is released for the rest of the world to consumer as they see fit. Or, take the data and build something clever with it; on your website, on Facebook or whatever you feel is most appropriate.
It’s early days, and I’m realising that like most great projects there needs to be a critical mass of data in the system before it becomes useful, but hopefully if people can see the benefit they’ll spend a bit of time adding their content.
Let me know what you think, it is very much a work in progress so it’ll develop over time and all feedback is useful.
And, I promise, it won’t be a couple of months before my next post.
Photo courtesy of Bob AuBuchon. Used under licence.
Melissa Suffield is an actress in Eastenders. Despite the fact the programme is made less than a mile from where I live, I never watch it. It’s only through osmosis that I know her character is Ian Beale’s daughter, Lucy.
On Tuesday night BBC Three aired a documentary, as part of their adult season, looking at the issue of lowering the voting age to 16. It was an authored piece by Melissa, who is 16 herself. If it was a requirement of contract agreement, she did an excellent job of appearing genuinely interested in the issue. In actual fact, it was pretty obvious that she was bothered about politics, and as one caller to a radio show that featured on the programme said “when you give up playing Lucy Beale, you’ve got a good job ahead of you as a political reporter.” (Good news, given her Eastenders profile lists political journalism as her future career ambition).
The set-up for the programme was that she had four weeks to find out about the issues around votes at 16. This involved extensive travelling around the UK, and the Isle of Man, in order to investigate whether the voting age should be lowered. It would have been all too easy to fall into the trap of mixing a few celebrities with a few opinionated teenagers, but refreshingly the programme steered clear of all the usual suspects. And along the way it tackled issues as diverse as volunteering, young carers, the BNP and citizenship ceremonies.
Being television there has to be some “visuals” to make the documentary more than just talking heads, and apart from a couple of silly costumes and a slightly pointless meeting of 30+ young people in Trafalgar Square, the programme was light on the fluff and actually allowed the interviewees to do the talking. Among the more poignant moments was the 17-year-old young carer, who had to look after her autistic(?) brother, who despite Melissa’s observation that she was one of the most mature 17-year-olds she knew, said she didn’t think she was old enough to vote. That reminded me of BYC chair Emily Beardsmore’s assertion that the very fact young people think that way is a demonstration of their maturity.
In fact her’s (apologies, I haven’t got names as iPlayer isn’t working very well on my computer) and a child psychologist’s were lone voices against the lowering of the voting age. There was a good sequence in the Isle of Man, the first country in Europe to have lowered the voting age, that offered some proof that young people would take their responsibility seriously. Asked whether there was a risk young people would vote because they liked the name or the colour of a party rather than its policies, the Speaker of the House of Keys (IoM’s parliament) pointed out that plenty of people in the UK voted for the Monster Raving Loony Party. And they were all over 18.
If I had a few criticisms of the programme they were that it focused on national politics, and didn’t look at devolved or local governments (who’s decisions tend to have far more of an effect on 16-17 year olds), and that in an effort to show that people were apathetic about politics asked the question “How many parliamentary constituencies are there?” Yes it was depressing that most people guessed numbers under 100, but actually not knowing what a constituency is doesn’t mean you are apathetic towards politics. (Being a political geek that I am, I can tell you there are currently 646).
The most interesting bits were the two sequences filmed inside a polling booth, at the recent European elections. The first was recorded on a mobile phone by a Brazilian woman who had just got her British nationality, and therefore was voting for the first time. The second was Melissa and her mum (who had decided to let Melissa choose who she should vote for). Both times, and I’m guessing this was just coincidence and not a very clever bit of electioneering, the party that was chosen was the Liberal Democrats. Moreover, I always thought it was an offence (with a custodial punishment) under the Representation of the People Act to communicate how someone voted.
Which, given that overall I thought it was a good piece of television, did leave me wondering whether it would go the way of another great BBC Three documentary, Tower Block Dreams. That programme fell foul of the 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act that prohibits any promotion of illegal radio services; meaning that whilst it is perfectly legal to interview a terrorist, you risk being thrown into jail if you do a programme about pirate radio. As a result, the series will never be screened again.
I hope that isn’t true of this programme. And that this isn’t the last time we see Melissa the political journalist.
Photo courtesy of David Spender. Used under licence.
At it’s best, there is nothing that compares to the brilliance that is radio. Working in radio was my first proper job, and despite moving into new media eight years ago I remain a total radio enthusiast. Not in the taking-photos-of-transmitters-and-collecting-jingles variety, but of the fact that radio, above all other mediums, can totally immerse you in an environment or experience. Programmes like From Our Own Correspondent or Simon Mayo or my friend Marsha’s excellent podcast interviews with comedians (I particularly recommend her chats with Andre Vincent and Micky Flanagan) all are ways that stories are told simply and powerfully.
It also appears that at its worse radio can be horrific. I still find it incredible that the biggest media story of last year involved a late night radio programme. However, the Ross/Brand affair is nothing compared to what happened in Australia, where two days ago an even more incredible example of when-radio-goes-bad was broadcast. The Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show, on 2Day FM, ran a competition where a mother made her 14-year-old daughter undertake a lie-detection test live on air. After some questions about whether she had bunked off school, she is asked whether she had ever had sex. A clearly distressed girl admits she had been raped when she 12. It is horrible car-crash audio.
From a radio producers point of view, I struggle to understand how such a stunt could have been allowed to go on air. The presenters have tried to defend their actions, claiming that’s one of the pitfalls of live radio, but I can not comprehend how they or their producers even let the competition go ahead, let alone allow the mum to ask her daughter about her sexual experience (even if they had no idea the answer would be what it was). Apparently their jobs are not under threat, despite Australian PM Kevin Rudd joining the chorus of criticism [Update. On Sunday 2nd August, Austereo, owners of 2Day FM, announced that Kyle and Jackie O would be suspended indefinitely as a result of this broadcast.].
Throughout the interview, you get the very real feeling that the daughter doesn’t appear to be a willing participant in the whole saga. Personally, I think there are huge questions the station has to ask about putting participants on air when they actively don’t want to be there; but perhaps the focus needs to be on the mother, who as one commentator described it was willing to “prostitute her daughter for a couple of free concert tickets.” As the daughter says after she admits the rape, and the mother concedes she knew about it, “yet you still asked me the question?”.
And that’s the real horror of this story. Yes the radio station was in the wrong, but it is the mother that really has questions to answer. What kind of parent would put their child through such an ordeal?
Sadly, it’s not the first time that such a thing has happened. A couple of years ago, an six-year old girl in the US had her prize revoked after she had made up a story about her dad being killed in Iraq so she could get some Hannah Montana tickets. Yet it was her mother who made the lies up, saying “We did whatever we could do to win.”
Let’s not forget the parents of Alfie Patten, who were quite happy to sell their son’s “young father” story to the tabloids despite the fact that he wasn’t the father and they should actually have been supporting him rather than running off to the papers.
And for the really sick parents, you need to look no further than the story of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who committed suicide after an online ‘friend’ turned nasty on her. It turned out that the ‘friend’ was the mother of one of her real friends who wanted to find out what Megan really thought of her daughter. Lori Drew, the mother, was eventually found not-guilty because there was no law in place to cover such action.
None of these stories are anything other than individual examples of where parents go wrong. The vast majority of parents understand their obligations to their children; and would never dream of doing anything like the parents above. And yet, a small minority let them all down.
Isn’t that what they say about teenagers?
PS. I wrote something very similar a couple of years ago on YPulse.
Image courtesy of aloshbennett. Used under licence.
There’s been quite a lot of discussion over the last couple of weeks about the decision to allow BTCV and the Wildlife Trust to run a programme of volunteering for young people in London to regain their free travel passes.
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone introduced a radical scheme that allowed every young person under 16 the right to free transport on the capital’s buses. It was widely heralded as a positive step in order to tackle social exclusion, on the simple premise that if young people couldn’t get to places they couldn’t participate.
Young people who’ve caused anti-social behaviour, and other offences, have had their passes taken away (which in itself has led to discussions about whether that is the correct punishment). In order to get them back, they need to undertake a period of volunteering with the above charities, as outlined last week.
It’s just another example of the increasing stretching of the term volunteering, particularly by government, to fit a whole host of programmes and projects. I may be a volunteering purist, but I get worried that too many initiatives are muddling volunteering with participation, work experience or community service.
Volunteering obviously comes from the word “voluntary”, which means optional. If you are asked to make a voluntary contribution, you can decide not to give. If you are asked to volunteer some information about yourself, you can choose not to. All this makes a mockery of both the government and opposition proposals for compulsory volunteering.
But volunteering isn’t just about making a choice to do something. My favourite definition of volunteering is “philanthropy of your time”. The great 19th-century philanthropists (and today’s philanthropists) didn’t donate their money for personal gain, but because they believed in the greater good. The libraries, art galleries, hospitals and trusts that enriched public life in this country came about because those people understood the basic principles of social return on investment.
And that’s why some schemes appear to be betraying the concept of volunteering on two related fronts. Firstly, whilst I’d never deny the right of volunteers to use their volunteering to develop skills and gain experience, nor that people should be stopped from volunteering because they want to improve their CV, I get particularly worried when volunteering is promoted as primarily about skills development and increasing job prospects. Hospital radio has always been the way budding DJs got to practice their ‘art’, but certainly at my hospital radio station it was always made clear that you were there to serve the patients; the skills you developed were a by-product. Volunteering is not simply about personal gain.
Which is my second point – volunteering is about doing something that makes a positive difference for someone else (or at least something else, in the case of environmental volunteering). That’s why I get a bit nervous by things like the National Talent Bank that appear to be about promoting volunteering without a single mention that volunteering is a means to an end; not the end in itself. Even v appears to be about counting the number of volunteers placed rather than the effect those volunteers can have.
And if I could have a third point, it would be that volunteering has to involve a sacrifice. I’m all for new ways of volunteering, including current thoughts around micro-volunteering, but I’d get slightly worried if you could count yourself as a volunteer because you had re-tweeted a message on Twitter. That’s akin to counting yourself a philanthropist because you dropped your 1p of spare change into a collecting tin.
Does this matter? Well, I think so. Five or so years ago, before the current rush to push volunteering, lots of people (including young people) engaged in positive volunteering opportunities because they believed in the cause and wanted to make a difference. I certainly don’t want to rubbish the new initiatives that have tried to engage new people into volunteering, but we need to be careful we don’t lose or de-value that level of volunteering, or muddle good citizenship (participation) with the extra effort required for an activity to be counted as volunteering. Because, if a young person who helps run a Brownie night every week is compared equally with a young person who once spent an afternoon in a recording studio making a music track, we’re in danger of losing the real value of volunteering. And that is the effect it has on others.
So what do I think should have been done to give back travel passes to young people? Well, my suggestion would have been the creation of young people’s courts, to introduce the principle of being judged by peers. Part of what the “jury” would look at was what pro-social activities the young person had been involved in. That could include volunteering, but it wouldn’t make the direct connection between volunteering and returning the pass. And the jury should of course focus on the effect that the volunteering had.
Posted in media, politics by Olly Benson
July 22, 2009
My second post in as many weeks based on what I saw on Question Time. This week, despite being a ‘regular’ programme, it had a very much end-of-term feel about it.
Margot James, vice-chair of the Conservative Party and a prospective parliamentary candidate had some difficulty defending as a serious proposal an earlier announcement that young people who committed anti-social behaviour would have their mobile phones taken away. The audience and other panel members rubbished the idea, likening it Tony Blair’s much lamented suggestion that yobs could be made to pay on-the-spot fines by marching them to the nearest cash machine.
But one question led me to think about the relationship that young people have with their mobiles, and how it differs from older people. An audience member asked “Won’t they just replace the phone?”. Yes they might, said Margot, but they won’t have their sim card. Now, with the obvious caveat that this is not a definite rule, most of the young people I’ve dealt with are on pay-as-you-go, and it’s not just devices that are replaced regularly. The sim card, effectively the number and the contacts contained on it, has no value to them beyond the credit it has on it.
I’m old enough to be of the generation where you’d answer your home phone with your number “Hello, Bedford 55122*” (I’ve never quite understood why we all did that). 25-years-on, I can still remember one of my neighbour’s number, and if I thought about it hard enough probably another couple of numbers as well. And yet, I can only remember three mobile numbers; and they pretty much the first friends I knew who had mobiles.
Mobiles allow you can store numbers by name in your phone, in a way you never really did with landlines (you could set preset buttons, but it was often limited to 10 numbers). You also don’t have the problem of remembering the number when you are away from your house. Therefore, once you’ve programmed the number in, you don’t have to ever worry what it is. With mobiles, you often swap numbers by allowing others to type it in to your contacts, or text you. You may never actually look at the number. And increasingly, mobiles are integrating with services such as Gmail or Facebook so your friends’ details automatically drop into the address book.
I’ve had the same mobile number since I first got a phone in 1997, and when I changed network I took my old number with me. But actually that’s a fairly irrational choice to make; although I’ve got friends (and family!) who have known me since that time, the vast majority of calls/texts I get on my mobile are from colleagues or people who I’ve seen within the last month. It wouldn’t be that difficult for them to get my updated number. In the same period I’ve been through five primary personal email addresses (and three work ones), and although there may be people I’ve lost contact with as a result, they wouldn’t have any trouble finding me again if they needed to.
So apart from the obvious practical issues of removing a mobile, unless it was going to be illegal to have a mobile during that time, I can’t see how confiscation would be in any way effective.
On Thursday the BBC broadcast one of my favourite programmes of the year, Schools Question Time. It’s the annual edition of the regular Question Time but with a distinctly youth flavour: produced by student winners of a competition; a young audience; and for the third year running a “young person” on the panel. Because I was out on Thursday evening, I’ve only just got around to watching it.
For whatever reason, this year’s programme felt significantly more small-c conservative than previous editions. The audience definitely was older than before*, and the panellists, with the exception of 18-year-old Suzanne Burlton, could have been on any edition of the programme. And whilst all credit to Suzanne for her ability to participate in the discussion, I couldn’t help thinking she was a fairly predictable wannabe-politician and brought little to the table that wouldn’t have been said by someone twice her age. It’s a theme similar to my previous two posts, we need to engage young people on their level: not dress them up in suits and tell them to act like grown-ups.
Even the comments from the audience seemed a lot more restrained than other years, and certainly they seemed less vocal than we’ve seen on the programme over the last few months. A young person who suggested that others turn to drink because there was nothing for them to do on a Friday night was rebuked with the suggestion she should read a book. (Meanwhile a friend on Twitter said “they have the internet now FFS!” – I can’t quite work out whether he was joking).
Where was anyone, in the audience or on the panel, championing the right for young people to hang-out with each other on a Friday night? With the exception of one audience member, there seemed little support for the idea that young people might actually want places to go on Friday night and the weekend, and pointing out that if there isn’t the provision of suitable activities then they’ll create their own. There are moves to increase weekend opening of statutory youth clubs, but it’s still sketchy as best and there is plenty of resistance to the idea. And yet we know that young people respond positively to having activities to do – it’s often that there aren’t the adults to support them.
All this said, I still like the fact that we have this programme and would love to be invited to work on the show (or be in the audience one time).
On a related note, I was glad to see that John Bercow, the recently-appointed speaker of the House of Commons, stepped in to reverse a decision made by Commons authorities to prevent Cub Scouts being able to lobby their MPs because they were not old enough to vote. Luckily most MPs appear to have thought this was a patently absurd decision, but you do have to wonder how anyone reached that decision in the first place.
* it’s worth pointing out that reading up on how the programme is put together, I think the young producers can choose the age of the audience as well as the panellists.
Photo, showing David Dimbleby at another Schools Question Time event, courtesy of eyedropper. Used under licence.
Sorry, I haven’t blogged for a while, primarily because my new job (details) that kind of took over the last couple of weeks (plus my birthday).
During that time, two interesting new pieces of news broke. Firstly the report of the Youth Citizenship Commission, and secondly the launch of The Youth of Today, the butterfly that resulted from the caterpillar that was the National Body for Youth Leadership.
I’ve been wanting to blog about the Youth Citizenship Commission since it reported the Friday before last, but having seen the reaction from others it doesn’t exactly set the world alight. Perhaps I should at least read the whole report prior to writing about it, but if the press release is anything to go by I can’t exactly imagine it being a riveting read.
Yes, there are some interesting nuggets of ideas, including keeping schools open when polling is going on and proper funding of UKYP, but essentially it boiled down to revealing that young people felt disengaged with politics and that there needed to be better citizenship education in schools. Hardly earth shattering.
What was even more disappointing was its stance on Votes at 16. Personally I’m in favour of a reduction of the voting age, although I don’t actually think it’s the number one priority and I understand there are quite reasonable arguments against reducing it. So what annoyed me the most about the commission’s finding was that they didn’t come to a conclusion. If the Government of the day produces a Green Paper, asks a commission to investigate various elements of it, it doesn’t really want it to come back going “erm, we don’t really know – make your own mind up.” That’s a bit like a forensic scientist saying “well, what do you think happened?”.
And, once again, I see mandatory volunteering being bandied about: this time for Key Stage 4 pupils. I’m all for using lesson time to allow young people to help in their community (I used to help out at a local school instead of do PE), but I really worry when I see words like compulsory being thrown into the mix. Before it becomes compulsory, someone has to at least answer the concern that it could alienate a generation of future volunteers.
Perhaps what is most depressing though is that I can’t help feeling somewhat cynical that the much more radical Power Inquiry came up with far more exciting solutions to these problems, yet it faded into nothing. What is the point of these inquiries if change doesn’t come about from them?
The Youth of Today looks a more promising proposition. I’ve already blogged about it when the original proposal was announced, and I still really hope it is a catalyst for recognising the importance of developing young leaders. But, as other commentators have pointed out, my reaction was that it seems a bit too heavy on the institutionalised mandate: leadership appears to be about MPs, councillors and similar elected bodies. I realise there are other schemes that promote innovation and individual excellence, but I’d hope the Youth of Today takes a broader, more grassroots approach to what leadership is. With the exception of our friend in the States, I struggle to think of many politicians who really fit my idea of what good leadership is. And not all young leaders get excited by the prospect of a trip to the Houses of Parliament.
As an example of what I mean, I’ve been party to conversations about the Young Achievers Awards, an independent charity that seeks to recognise inspirational youth volunteers (colleagues of mine are trustees for the charity). Young Achievers Awards are presented to people like Ryan Hartson, a 23-year-old from Rotherham, who was described by his MV co-ordinator as “an all round mentor and role model to literally hundreds of young people.” Ryan initially helped and then ran dance lessons, before organising a Battle of the Bounce competition that attracted over 200 young people. He’s gone into schools to talk about his work, not bad for someone who had to deal with bullies when he was younger due to a speech impediment.
As part of his prize for winning a Young Achievers Award, Ryan met with Jonzi D, artistic director of Breakin’ Convention (an international festival of hip hop dance). As a result of that meeting, Ryan was invited to audition for this year’s convention in Nottingham. His company was successful, and got the opportunity to perform with some of the biggest names in hip hop theatre. They’ve also performed in Bradford as part of the Breakin’ Convention there, as you can see:
Apart from being a great opportunity for Ryan, what was brilliant was the feedback from the Breakin’ Convention, which included him being described as “very organised and a complete joy to have on our stage.” To me, Ryan absolutely symbolises what a young leader should be about, and exactly the sort of person that The Youth of Today should be championing.
Incidentally, you might like to know that this year’s Young Achievers Awards are now open. You’ve got until the 27th September to nominate a suitable young person.
Last week I ended up interviewing Meryl Roberts, the young person who I’d seen speak the week before at the Hansard Society debate. We like doing case studies at work on young people with interesting/inspiring stories and I thought someone who at 22 wanted to be an MP was pretty interesting. You can watch my interview here.
What I found fascinating was that otherwise very pro-youth participation colleagues and friends had quite interesting reactions to Meryl’s interview. One described it as “a little sad”. And I sort of understand where they are coming from.
When the Electoral Commission last looked into Votes at 16 and decided it wasn’t viable, they instead recommended that the age of becoming an MP/councillor be lowered to 18. Their rationale was that there was no logical reason why it should remain at 21. The law was amended accordingly, although given that the youngest MP was 26, it wasn’t as if there was an urgent demand for this change at national level.
Meryl isn’t alone in being someone under the age of 25 who wants to get elected. Emily Benn (granddaughter of Tony and niece of Hilary) must rank as Britain’s youngest PPC (prospective parliamentary candidate), winning nomination to stand for Labour in East Worthing and Shoreham whilst she was still 17 (on the basis that the election would be after her 18th birthday). Admittedly, her constituency is a fairly safe Tory seat, so it’s unlikely she’ll be taking her place in the House of Commons quite yet, but it’s still a pretty impressive achievement.
Not far behind, whilst still at university Claire Hazelgrove got the nod for Labour’s PPC in Skipton and Ripon (Interview with her). However, again it’s a fairly safe Tory seat. And then there is Georgia Gould, the 22-year-old daughter of Lord Gould, who lost her opportunity to be selected for the safe Labour seat in Erith and Thamesmead after accusations of dirty tricks.
That they are all Labour is probably not a coincidence (I’m sure there are some fairly young Lib Dem PPCs, not so sure about the Tories but I’ll try and find out and compile a list at some point. And of course there are no doubt young PPCs from other parties). That two of them are related to existing politicians is perhaps not surprising. That they are all female is rather encouraging.
But, whilst I think there is a real need for diversity in politics, I worry the focus on getting young people through the doors of Westminster misses the point somewhat.
The “professionalisation” of politics has changed the way people become MPs. Traditionally (and I realise this is very generalised), someone would work in another career for several years, get involved in local politics, and eventually get chosen to represent the seat they lived in. Nowadays, it appears that the most recent bunch of MPs and PPCs all appear to have only ever wanted to be MPs. They did politics at university, worked as researchers for MPs or other jobs directly connected to their chosen party, before being dropped into a suitable seat wherever they can get in. They know nothing other than the world of party politics, and forefeit their youth to get to being an MP (as Sarah Teather told the BBC on getting elected).
One young person I know, who has plenty of plaudits and suggestions that he could make high office, is totally happy in the company of older adults but struggles to chat to anyone his age or younger. I shudder and think of 16-year-old William Hague addressing the Tory Party conference in 1977.
And this is the real rub, and where I worry that we’re missing the point about getting young people into elected office. My concern is that politics changes them, not the other way around: that they adapt to be accommodated, not that the system adapts to accommodate them. I jest slightly, but looking at Claire Hazelgrove’s pictures you’d think she only owns a suit and her only friends are other politicians. Where are the PPCs in jeans and trainers? Or, better still, where are the politicians who can skate?
If you type the name Darryl Marfo into a search engine, you may find yourself ending up in pretty despicable racist forums. You may well find yourself reading the national newspapers that covered his arrest in April. What you won’t find, unless you specifically look for it, is news that all charges against him have been dropped.
Darryl was the inner-London student, brought up by a single mum, who won a scholarship at the prestigious £25k-a-year Pangbourne College in Hampshire. Not only did Darryl win the scholarship, but he excelled, playing rugby for the England Under 16s team, chairing the school council, helping write the school newspaper and ending up as ‘chief cadet captain’, aka Head Boy.
And then, in April, Darryl was at a house party with other students when some sort of fracas broke out. Darryl was on the end of some racial abuse, apparently from a solider from nearby Aldershot barracks, and allegedly “grabbed a kitchen knife”. No-one was hurt in the incident, but the police were called.
Two people were subsequently arrested as a result of the incident. One of them was Darryl.
I’m not for one moment condoning using any sort of weapon, and I wasn’t there, but “grabbing a kitchen knife” could mean a variety of things. Not surprisingly this turns into ‘pulling out a blade’, ‘brandishing a weapon’ and ‘knife brawl’ for the benefit of good newspaper copy.
Several national papers ran the story (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and most stated that parents of other children were demanding that Darryl be suspended from the school. A mother was widely quoted telling the Daily Telegraph: “We are paying £25,000 a year to this school and it’s not what we expect.” Another said that parents would be writing to the school’s governors to demand action be taken against Darryl. The school, to its credit, said it wouldn’t take any action until the police investigation had concluded. This was especially important as Darryl would be sitting his A Levels whilst on police bail.
Meanwhile, another student (on condition of anonymity) contacted the local paper in Reading, where the other boy who was arrested lived, demanding that this student was innocent: “In our eyes he was a hero. He should never have been arrested… He was identified by mistake by someone who was not at the party.” An email to Reading’s evening paper (from someone whose sex is known but is not identified) said that the unnamed boy had removed the knife, and stated: “We are proud of what the other Pangbourne pupil did and he should be praised and rewarded.”
But something didn’t stack up with this story. Only the Telegraph made it explicit that it was the other, unnamed boy, who was arrested on the night. Daryl was arrested several days later after he contacted the police about the incident.
And here’s another question: Why was Darryl’s name so freely bandied about (complete with obligatory Facebook photo) when the other boy’s identity was never revealed? Obviously Darryl was the better newsline, but there was no legal reason not to name the other individual, and if it was that easy to get Darryl’s details then it couldn’t have been that difficult to get the name of the other individual? Why did no-one else (not the eyewitnesses, or the people who contacted the local papers, or the concerned mother) want to be identified? Why are the only young people named in any of the newspapers Darryl and his younger brother (who also happens to be at the school)?
And another question: Why were the parents so determined that Darryl should be suspended, but not the other boy who had been arrested? Darryl’s crime was serious, but it also appeared that he had been the victim of racist abuse that night, so surely there were some mitigating circumstances for his alleged actions? There was no suggestion that he had actually threatened anyone with the knife, let alone caused any injury.
And what action, if any, has been taken against the unidentified solider who was responsible for the racist remarks? Why didn’t any newspaper bother itself with investigating this angle? And which of the boys stood up for Darryl against the racist abuse (because they should be named and praised).
I really hope that this is a serious of coincidences, and there is nothing sinister here. But I couldn’t help feel somewhat uncomfortable when I saw the original story, and nothing I’ve seen since has made me feel any better.
Image courtesy of welshwitch36. Used under licence.(The photo has no relevance apart from it was taken in Pangbourne and I quite liked it)
