Boy of 11 has been shot dead in Liverpool

[stoppinattwo]

www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/6959761.stm


This is so tragic. What did anyone do that was so bad, to deserve this. His family must be devastated

[WideWebWitch]

(and I've started another thread about news coverage in general)

[persephonesnape]

I findi t strange there are so few messages on this thread. what a tragedy, he seemed sucha lovely little boy - helping other kids with problems with bullying etc.

[McEdam]

I think there's not much anyone can say apart from how very sad this is, really. Maybe that's why it hasn't got 999 posts.

[Baffy]

horrendous

and so close to home it just seems to hit you even harder

the poor boy's family

[SpawnChorus]

HOw can teenagers get hold of guns?? Seriously, how? It is such a tragic waste of life. The poor boy, and his poor poor family

News like this makes me want to run away to deepest darkest nowhereland become a recluse with my DCs and DH.

[margoandjerry]

agree with McEdam. There's nothing to be said. It's just unspeakable. What are we doing to create a world like this?

[Blu]

And WHY is YouTube hosting 'promotional' videos by each of the teenage gangs thought to be responsible for this? Apparantly (the Guardian covers this in some detail today) the two gangs each have a YouTube video, clearly threatening, and showing gang members with guns, dogs, knives, dogs, doing stunts in stolen cars etc etc. Why does youTube have videos of people illegally flaunting guns, allowing them to glorify themselves as violent, and flaunting things which are illegal?? Absolutely supporting the horror which is gang culture.

(The poor boy was not a member of a gang...but thought to be a victim of gang bravado.)

[Blandmum]

Horrific. the whole gang 'culture' thing is very worrying. And also the feeling that we adults can do nothing to curb the excesses of teenage misbehaviour.

[Blu]

SpawnChorus - researchers interviewed prisoners with a history of gun crime in prison. Apparantly Manchester and Liverpool are the areas wheer guns are most freely available - with shotguns available for £400 and replica guns (easily convertable) for £50. Guns are illegally smuggled into the country or 'leaked' (stolen, I suppose) from legal sources. Then they change hands a lot. ne criminal commented indignantly that you had to be careful not to buy a gun which had killed someone as you could get put away 'for something you haven't even done'.

[marthamoo]

It's so sad.

I agree about the YouTube gang videos - they showed segments from them on the news last night - yobs in hoodies with guns and pitbulls. Why is that stuff not pulled as soon as it is uploaded? Can't the people who upload it to YouTube be traced?

[Blu]

Can YouTube be challenged over this?

[McEdam]

YouTube is known for hosting and refusing to remove violent clips. Including records of 'bullying' where schoolchildren are being attacked. No idea what their problem is but there have been several occasions where they have ignored requests to take repulsive content down.

[Mercy]

omg Blu! How old are the 'gangsters' on these Youtube vidoes?

I've also heard that it possible to hire a gun for £50 a time.

[Blandmum]

There also seems to be this undercurrent of 'Every life choice is valid, we mustn't judge' that ends up with people acting in the most awful antisocial way and being honestly surprised when the penny finally drops that they are guilty of crime (re the 'you might get blamed for something you haven't do......does he think that carrying a gun is OK if it is 'clean'? )

[margoandjerry]

Also the whole "there's nothing for kids to do around here..." argument.

Hate that load of crap.

[Blandmum]

utter bullshit.

you could give these kids the best facilities in the world and they would wreck them is days.

Its like the kids I teach who moan that they are 'Bored' in school. You could put them in Alton towers free for the day and some of them would whinge that they are bored.

Kids very often misbehave beause

a. they have poor role models
b. they want to
c no resposible adult in their life tries consistantly to stop them

[Blu]

Ashley Walters ('Asher D) was in the Observer at the weekend saying that actually he was relieved when he got caught - it freed him from a viscious circle of defend and attack.

The organisation I work for does intensive projects with young people who have been involved with gang violence. Our work centres on enabling them to think two steps further ahead and look at consequences, and to look sideways fro solutions to what they face - out of the circles of defend and attack. 86% of the young people we work with go back into f/t education after our course. (and these are yp referred by the Youth offending team, some tagged, some with very violent pasts). Most have not been parented in any way we would recognise as parenting on MN. they are not able to empathise, and have complete 'tunnel vision' about the way to survive - which is to compete in the very violent environment they find themselves in - either for being hard, or being cool. Being cool leading to no less violence as thjose v expensive designer acessories have to be aquired somehow. With us they get practice in effective decision making, communication, analysis of what makes them take the actions they do, and alternative strategies.
But we can't get ongoing funding to continue. Even though long term tracking by outside parties confirms our 86% success rate.

[Blu]

MB I wholeheartedly agree with your reasons a and c - and think that those give rise to b - unless they are well-resourced scamps who just experiment with b - and know that in the long term they will have the leeway to make thier lives ok again.

Most of the very disaffected kids we deal with have never thought they had any other life to invest in. Shit housing, no working relatives, no responsible parent, etc etc.

[Blandmum]

farcical blu, how can funders be so short sighted as to fail to see the benfits that your program will give, and long term finacial savings as well? (if we have to be cynical and look at the ballence sheet) As well as lives saved from a violent end, and wasted lives in prison? Crazy!

[margoandjerry]

Just

Was prompted to go and renew my direct debit to Kids Company (the Camilla Batmanghelidjh enterprise) which sounds a bit similar to yours after I saw her on tv complaining of the same problem.

I would be terrible with these children. Terrible. Just glad someone is trying.

[Dinosaur]

I read recently that Kids Company is also really struggling with funding and Camila B is thinking of throwing in the towel (having in the past remortgaged her own flat twice in order to keep KC going) .

[Blu]

For £50k a year we can work intensively with 60 of these young people. In terms of 'outcomes' this is appparantly too expensive. They wnat us to have a greater throughput of young people. But it doesn't work, to work with such 'beyond reach' yp in a tokenistic 'hit and run' way. We work with them twice a week for 20 weeks. In groups of no more than 10, and with two trained specialist staff / tutors per sessoin - and additional one-to-one time.

£50k is, in real terms, cheaper than the overall costs of one arson attack on a car on an estate.

[Blu]

Yes, our organisation has links with Kids Company...it's a f-ing disgrace.

[Blandmum]

oh ffs, how much will they cost a year once they get to prison? Because that is what will happen, unless they end up dead.

You lose the will to live after a while when you think about the shortsighted nature of funding.

The same thing happens with these kids in school. We don't get the 1 to 1 they need, so they end up getting expelled, and that sends them further down the downward spiral of neglect, volence, drugs and crime.