Dadblog

My son was mugged last week walking home from a friend’s house, and what amazed me was the matter-of-fact nature of it - the guy doing the talking (one of a group of four) said “sorry, going to ruin your day, we’re going to mug you.” My son hid his phone in his sock so they wouldn’t find it. It was all very run of the mill, but he was shaken up nonetheless.

The fact that this is run of the mill is the most chilling aspect of where we are in London. I walked to a gig with my lad and a friend of his, and the difference between walking the street on my own and walking with two teenagers was palpable. Suddenly, the street was a threatening, not a vibrant place.

Dave Hill describes this well in his Cif piece this morning:

On London’s streets no teenage boy is free. His eyes are peeled, he keeps his head down and his senses ever alert to the danger of intimidation, assault or worse. His female counterparts too have grown more wary.

Even if they’ve never been hurt or harmed or have heard of statistics showing they’re unlikely to be, the young are nervous of streets they should be able to walk in tranquility. Some have greater cause for fear than others, not least those young males inhabiting the very twilight worlds from which the worst horrors flow.

True, and I hate it. Hill’s premise is that, whatever you think of BoJo, he’s bringing some energy to the problem, as well as an apparent realisation that this is not all about cracking down:

Read the transcript (pdf) of Ray Lewis and his colleague Ian Joseph talking recently to Channel 4 and recognise that, for all their conservatism, they are at one with liberals in comprehending that the only way to turn around a kid who’s on the ruinous road to damaging someone else is to mend the damage that’s been done to him. There seems to be a developing consensus that enforcement responses achieve little in the end unless coupled with therapeutic ones; that both are required if we’re to liberate troublesome kids from their destructive destinies and free the rest of us from our dread of them. What’s needed next is political will. Could Boris Johnson be leading the way?

Hmmm. We’ll see. But in 19 years of living in London, I’ve never felt so fed up with the place and (some of) the people in it. I don’t see why my children should feel threatened, and I expect the leaders to do something about it. If they can’t do anything, well, what does that say about modern politics?

Of course, when I broach with my son the subject of moving out, he looks at me like I’ve just grown another nose. So there you go…