memories

and we made friends with old tramps in woods, and anybody else we liked, and never told our parents, and never got interfered with

I was a kid in the 70's and had a kinda go anywhere attitude, go exploring and on adventure. I remember spending it in London, Southampton and up here in Liverpool, crazy bloody kid. Remember walking for bloody miles aged maybe 8-9, never worried about perves in cars, just perhaps other kids the bullies from school who lived in your locality, but I was fast runner see (-: But yeah you made friends out exploring your neighbourhood and community, but it seems as more open spaces went you ended up being hemmed in increasingly. But we weren't out to do anyone any harm, as you said we made our own fun oh and bicycles were for cycling around with your mates. Sure I made a go kart they were popular in Southampton in my neighbourhood we all made them but we lived on a big hill in a place called Thornhill, I loved mine as it had a metal chassis and proper steering wheel something I found thrown away somewhere in my regular neighbourhood patrols (-: I crashed it alot as it got up a great speed but that was the fun of it come off a park and turn over the grass, oh and defo no breaks ever! oh and we made 'dens' out of the neighbourhood junk, funny we never saw any rats when I was a kid. Oh climbing trees, oh and adventure playgrounds what the hell ever happened to them, ain't seen one of them for a long time, in fact I've not seen so much as a swing, slide or roundabout up here in the North end of Liverpool how sad )-: not in Croxteth, Norris Green, Fazakerly. Up there in Crosby they've got this cool slide on a rope between two big hills near the beach front. We just used to put up rope swings with a big piece of wood from a tree, ahh I remember trees. It kinda links into what I was complaining about in the 'Culture of Capitalism' posting, ie what have we seen for out kids from the Objective One funding, big fat ZERO!

When I was in my anti-social (stay at home) phases I used to make things, sketch weird inventions like I recall a wristwatch video communicator. I made like a weird weapon (don't know if it was meant to be a weapon though) from this beloved big red book that I found, I've still got it (-: this flying propeller thing was made out of cut tin can and you pulled a string wound round a cotton reel on a small pole and off this proller flew, first time it flew of and hit my mum and cut her, oops I weren't impressed with it. I did make bow and arrows quite regularly great out of sticks you got in gardens from the hedges. It seems we played because there was space for us kids intentially and unintentionally. Kids now, mostly in working class communities, just don't seem to have enough open space. They've lost parks, playing fields, so they end up hanging around on corner streets with little to occupy them, make noise and annoy the pensioners, throw stones at buses for a laugh. But also they don't seem to have the skills of making fun out of things they find around them without be destructive.

Perhaps parents and other adults in neighbourhoods need to encourage them to make go- karts, french arrows, kites and things like that and those things that allow our children to socialise and run off some of that energy and keep them fit they need to learn to play again and be children not little consumers.

It should be the responsibility of parents and wider family to take their kids out more I know many ain't got the money and perhaps their jobs mean they come home exhausted. Kids seem to be stuck in the house a lot these days and parents leave them so much to their own devices, playing on computers and games consoles, watching too much TV, videos DVDs, etc not socialising with other kids. But there again 9 years complain they're stressed out with too homework.

Speaking as a former voluntary youth work, youth workers are a no subsitute for caring parents or the wider supportive neighbourhood and community where everyone looks out for one another sometimes the kids help their elderly neighbours to carry their shopping and elderly neighbours smile at the kids and say hello! Do places like that still exist or have we all beat retreat behind our doors because we no longer know our constantly changing neighbours.

Kai Andersen

What happened was - the mothers won.
We live in a woman's world. Somehow the dad's got guilted into knuckling under to female protective "nanny state" hysteria.


Sick thing is - the modern kids don't even know what they lost.

When I was in a hospital waiting for heart surgery in the USA back in the 80s, there was a little 4-year old boy named Luke in the next room who had eaten some of the pretty lead paint chips off the wall of his bedroom. He came from a poor family so his parents both worked long hours, and could only visit him at night. He sat there all day long, alone, with tubes in his arms and tubes up his nose, with only the occasional nurse for company. Every time one of us patients walked past his door, he'd smile and call out "Hey my man!"

Sometimes after lunch, if I was able, I'd drag myself over to his room, and read him a story. I got moved off the ward a few weeks later, and never saw him again.

So whenever I see a copy of this stupid horseshit essay from some well-meaning idiot, claiming that lead paint is something little kids don't need to be protected from, I think of little Luke, and wonder if he's OK, and how much brain damage he suffered.

 http://www.freep.com/news/childrenfirst/chel24_20030124.htm

I think the essay must have been written by some middle-class dickhead, who doesn't have to live or work in a slum, and doesn't get anywhere near lead paint. He objects to having to pay to sort out the lead paint problem, because only poor people are still suffering from it.

But your response is a perfect example of the sort of narrow hysteria of which I complain.

Instead of addressing the whole thrust of the previous postings, which are concerned with a broad and widereaching societal process over about the last five decades, what do you do ?

You give us an anecdote about one poor little lad affected by one single issue, and yo draw big inferences from that.

You're the kind of moron that says "if we can save just one life by doing xxx, then it is worth it" without noticing that xxx may cost the workers of the country, say £50bn.

(example: train protection system designed to allow us to recruit Helen Keller as a driver - do a google search on her name if you don't know who she is)

And you don't even choose to attack the argument at one of its main points. The argument is about curtailment of peoples (children's) freedoms and behaviours. Obviously, once it was realised lead paint was seriously poisonous, it was no problem to clean up the formula. Only constrained the behaviour of a few businessmen.

NOT what we're talking about.

- Childproof lids on medicine bottles: a lot of kids died from eating prescription medication, and the pharma vendors did nothing about it. So laws were passed compelling them to put childproof lids on.

- Helmets when riding bikes: lots of kids died from horrific head injuries until they started wearing helmets.

- Seatbelts and airbags: ditto.

The arguments in the article about overweight kids etc. are perfectly sensible. The accompanying nonsense, about not protecting kids from poisons and accidents until they're old enough to decide for themselves responsible, is not.

And train protection systems have nothing to do with this discussion. The article was talking about kids "taking risks", and learning about "freedom, failure, success and responsibility". Offering a small child the "freedom take the risk" of riding without a seatbelt, eat lead paint, eat prescription drugs, etc. is crass stupidity. We knew it back then, and nothing was done about it 'til legislation was passed.

So next time, why not edit the article you post here accordingly, instead of mindlessly posting up the entire text of something someone emailed you, simply because it made you smile.

Better still, why not post some news on the newswire?