Battling On
Posted: Wed 31 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 6 Comments »Interesting idea in a story in the Guardian today. Apparently Peterborough council has had a problem with fights between “goths” and “chavs” in the city centre, and has tried to defuse it by sending them off to shoot at each other in local woodland.
In a lot of ways I hope it works – if a scheme like this can release some of the inter-clique tensions, and also take that tension out of the town centre where apparently it’s also been affecting other members of the public, then it may even be a good thing. Of course there’ll also be the lobby bleating on about how it promotes guns and blah blah blah, but if it’s done as an obvious game along with adequate safety information etc., I still think it’s probably going to be beneficial.
Sounds about right for Peterborough.
That’s funny, when I lived in Peterborough the number of Goths could be counted on the fingers of one hand, whereas there were whole estates stuffed with Chavs.
Great idea, give them real guns and the problem’s solved.
Actually, a bit of a story has come back into my memory bank.
I used to work in Peterborough regularly, but prior to that, went on a couple of nights out with work colleagues. Both of these nights out involved my colleagues getting involved in fracas that were not caused by them – in fact on one of the occasions, some youth attempted to chase one of my mates down the street wielding a drainpipe. There was no provocation or reason for this whatsoever – it just happens in Peterborough.
Well if you lived in Peterborough, you’d think jail was a preferable alternative too.
To be fair, Skytower, that sort of thing happens in most medium-sized anonymous new towns. I lived near Letchworth for a while and that was the same, as were the nearby Hitchin & Stevenage of a Saturday night. Even the genteel country market town I live in now has its fair share of beer-fuelled arseholes.