Tia Sharpe: New Addington, south London...

[max_tranmere]

First off I want to say how heartbreaking it is that the 12 year old died, and I hope they throw away the key regarding the person who did it.

Next, I thought it would be interesting to debate whether a person's surroundings can influence their behaviour or whether they are bad anyway from the word go - I am talking about the person who did this, those who helped, covered it up, and also about the general chav culture in that area. I don't believe living on a chav estate could make you a murderer, maybe turn you into a low moralled thug though.

I used to know someone who lived in New Addington, and it is a grim place. I went there numerous times years ago. People used to call it "the Soweto of the south east". This is no reference to ethnicity (the place is almost exclusively white) but to the problems, the crime, and all round chav culture in the area.

As far as I recall it was one of those post-war new build areas to house people from the inner city, and ever since it has had very high levels of Benefit dependency, chav culture, teenage mums, crime, and everything else. It has one road linking it to the rest of the world and the joke always used to be that there was just one road so there were less routes into the district for people to bring the stolen TV's, DVD players, microwaves, and the like, that they nicked from neighbouring districts. It now has a tram-link, I guess that will make it easier to bring the goods in. lol.

It was no surprise to me when I heard the grandmother of this girl became a grandmother at 34. She is now 46. It means she would have had a child at about 16 or 17, then her kid did the same, hence her being a granny just four years into her thirties.

Chav estates are largely non-productive areas that cost the rest of the public a fortune to build, an even greater fortune in Benefits to keep them all, high Police costs, and so on. Most of the people I've seen in the news coverage about this murder have been typical New Addington types - basically the cast of the Jeremy Kyle show.

So what can be done about chav towns?

[number 6]

You can start by giving these young kids who grow up on these estates a decent education. At the end of the day if the parents don't give a fuck there has to be a father figure or a mentor at school to take the kids of these estates aside and show them the right way. Saying that not everyone on these sink estates are bad,most are decent and trying to do the right thing,you only hear about the bad in the press and the media. And most of them work! shock horror,though it seems to be the trend to accuse everyone of living on acouncil estate of being a lazy scrounger. Another lie.

[max_tranmere]

I wasn't saying everyone on council estates is like that, I was referring to those estates where a significant number of people do fall into those catagories. Many council estates do not have a reputation like New Addington does, there is a reason surely why some have such a reputation and some don't. Like I said I used to go there as I knew someone who lived there. He wasn't like that but he disliked the area. He moved there because it was cheap to get a place, so he moved there with some reluctance.

This from Wikipedia:

STARTS
Controversial reputation

New Addington has suffered from a bad reputation in the neighbouring areas, reflecting upon anti-social behaviour and gang violence involving youths on the estate from the 1970s to the present, as well as the perceived poor standard of schools. The area has received mixed press over the years, with educational and health standards low, with a high number of teenage mothers, particularly in Fieldway. New Addington is known locally by the nickname "Addo".
ENDS

A man called Kevin Lewis was born in 1970 and grew up there, he wrote a book about his appaling life and I have read it several times. It is called 'The Kid' and a film with the same name was made of it. He refers to how the houses there were built probably only to last a few decades, but they have lasted longer, and he says the area was basically built to stop these families ending up on the streets - a kind of proletariat stabling complex. I recommend the book, although it is troubling to read:



I have a friend who lives in Scarborough in Yorkshire and he was telling me there is a place called Bransholme in the East Riding that, from his description, is very similar to New Addington. He says people in east Yorkshire call it 'Branshole' and it is to be avoided after dark. It was built to rehouse bombed out families from Hull after World War 2. There are a number of places in the UK fitting the description that New Addington deserves, and Bransholme apparently has, but I am not for a moment suggesting all post-war new areas are like that.

Regarding education, that would certainly help things in these areas but if the kids refuse to learn then there is little the authorities can do. I've always thought you could go to the worst school in Britain and do just about enough and you would still come out with what they used to call "the three R's". Although not being very qualified, you would be employable. To continually bunk off, never do your homework, and get to 16 or 18 without being able to write you own name can not be the school's fault - but many people always blame everyone apart from the kids themselves. I didn't leave school very qualified but I was skilled enough to work from 18 and am still working now many years later. I agree there needs to be a parent type figure keeping the kids in line but we now have a situation where kids can't be punished in the way they used to be. Although, thinking about it, in the days when kids were regularly whacked, caned, hit round the head, etc, you still had a large amount of delinquent youth. So what to do?

[Robches]

If you stop paying chavs to have kids, they stop shelling them out like peas.

[frankthring]

Max, you sound a trifle right wing on these chav places, but probably far
left of me. Britain is over-populated. I have nothing against hard-working
Poles and others doing jobs lazy on the dole chavs don`t want. Personally
I think the best thing for New Addington, or those fecund-trainer-and
hoodie-wearing-lets-breed-more grubby-kids-at-14-chavs would be to
cordon off such places and gas the lot !

[Peter]

frankthring wrote:

> cordon off such places and gas the lot !

One of my neighbours has just today 'Darwined' himself, trying to do a 'breaking bad' but gassing himself when his home meth lab went wrong. We had the full hazmat team out, street cordoned off, the works!

[max_tranmere]

Interesting comments. I've always believed that if something deserves criticism then it should get it, if not - not. New Addington deserves criticism. I recall one of those 'I remember when all this was fields' stories from a mate of mine's grandad years ago. My pal and his family have lived in south London all their lives and his grandad always used to he remember when it was all green fields there. Then they built New Addington. Few people, including this old man, ever had nice words to say about it.

I suppose one thing I would criticise the authorities for is the often very bad planning when building some of these areas. Transport to other areas hardly existed, there were not enough schools, and very little for the youth to do. You often hear, with reference to these kind of places, that there aren't enough local jobs - but there aren't many jobs in lots of middle class areas either. People travel a few miles to work from those places. So yes, these are areas often devoid of train stations, but if people were really determined they would find some way of getting to neighbouring areas for a job. I can't believe, for example, that it is the lack of trains to elsewhere that keeps vast numbers of these people on Benefits - but the 'lack of local jobs' thing is often mentioned regarding these places.

[Lizard]

Peter, are you talking about the event in MB?

[Sam Slater]

I remember a time when murders happened and people just talked how awful it was and not use it to attack a certain class/type of society.

[Peter]

Lizard wrote:

> Peter, are you talking about the event in MB?
>
>

Barnsley, or a suburb of.