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28 April 2006 Kings End in Bicester gets Dispersal Order Life on the reservation My hometown of Bicester has just got a dispersal order - in an estate called King's End. Ok. There will be a lot more on this soon. The estate has seen 'problems' over the last year or two. The 'problems' chiefly involve young people with nothing to do hanging around outside. There is a trend for under-age drinking. Apparently one of the factors in awarding the estate a Dispersal Order was that young people were acosting adults outside supermarkets begging them to buy them alcohol! The police have been using powers to confiscate alcohol from young people and Tescos displayed notices warning people that they would be prosecuted if they bought alcohol for under 18s. The area is a relatively disadvantaged one. (I will obtain and publish soon figures for income etc if they are available). Social housing. Employment is probably relatively low-skilled in the warehouses around Bicester. The houses are very small - considerably smaller than say the houses of Mr Blair and I would guess the senior police officer who signed the order. So moving out of the house and socialising on the street seems like a natural and healty thing for young people to do. In Mediterranean countries young people frequently congregate outside and this doesn't cause a panic. Another obvious point is that this is an area where there is certainly less money, and probably less of a tradtion, than in a middle-class area where well-heeled parents organise after school activities for their young. There is no youth club on the estate. There is a Youth Arts Centre the other side of town which puts on a series of structured courses in arts run by 'professionals' for which participants have to pay. Not surprisingly take-up is low. What is outrageous about this is that staff in Cherwell District Council who colluded with the police in imposing this draconian order could, for basically a pittance, have set up a youth club using the existing community centre on the estate; providing useful activities for the young people, who, it doesn't take a soothsayer to figure out suffer chiefly from being bored out of their heads. |