Owen Temple

I went to a meeting of the Young People’s Forum tonight at the Civic Centre. What a pleasure it was - even though they weren’t expecting any visitors.

They were putting together some ideas for the July 21st meeting with councillors. Unfortunately I can’t get to that one, but it was really encouraging to hear the things they wanted to promote. Of course there was plenty of banter, but underneath it were some very positive ideas.

I won’t spoil their thunder by mentioning any of their ideas here, because that’s for them to do on July 21st, but I hope they get a good turnout of councillors on the day.

It just reminds me that we’ve got to keep fighting the anti-youth culture which exists across Britain. The culture that brands youngsters as anti-social. The culture that thinks it’s impossible to get young people interested in anything important, because all they want is to be out binge drinking. The culture that will end up with us getting the young people we deserve if we’re not very careful.

The sooner we start listening to young people, the sooner we’ll start hearing what they think really is important. And we might just learn something from them!