Young people unhappy with police...

A new poll conducted by the BBC has suggested that up to 70% of UK residents consider themselves to be 'happy' with the police. Conducted by Radio 5 Live, the research discovered that the majority of people thought the police were doing a good job, and that 60% felt that there was no crime in the areas that they lived in. Perhaps as the research was carried out by a radio station it's fair to assume that at least a few of the interviewees were expressing their love of the popular 1980s band, The Police. If some bloke with a BBC radio logo microphone approached Westmonster and asked us if we liked the police we probably wouldn't respond with an answer about crime, but about the guitar riff from 'Missing You'. Or about how it would have been better if Sting had remained as a P.E. teacher and never got those lofty visions.

Anyway, it appears that whereas the odd one or two UK dissidents like to complain about the country turning itself into an orwellian police state, the majority of thinkers feel that things are fine and dandy the way that they are. Erm, apart from the young that is, who feel that things are worse than ever. Regardless of what the adults may say...

In a telling revelation, the same Radio 5 poll found out that, opposed to the adults, the youth demographics considered crime in their areas to be a "real problem" in their neighbourhoods, with 42% of people saying so. A further 40% of interviewed kids said that they didn't feel the police were handling crime in their area effectively, regardless of what official reports may claim.

But why are their views so different to adults in the same parts of town? Westmonster could only come up with two semi-logical answers to the conundrum, which are that either A) the adults live in a dream-world and are too busy watching Coronation Street to know what's happening in their towns on an evening, or B) the kids are paranoid from smoking too much weed in the park and their anti-police fears have led them to project their hatred through the interview results. Something certainly smells a few different shades of funny, that's for sure.

As difficult as it is to choose between the two options, we feel that A is perhaps the most logical of the two. The constant reports in the media of little Timmy from Manchester getting stabbed, or wee Shiela from London town getting molested in the park, suggest that something is definitely happening in this country that the older generations are failing to get a grasp of. And, as this is just the stuff that we learn about when the media finds it to be topical, perhaps the stuff that we don't know about is an even more regular occurrence than we had previously imagined. Consider all the crimes going on that don't get reported or national attention and the picture is probably quite a bleak one.

The cynics in us would like to believe that the BBC headlining the poll results as "'Most people happy' with police" is an attempt to give the police a break by reporting them in a favourable light for a change. The realist within us, though, feels that it stands as yet another example of the scared youth of England calling out for help and having nobody listen...

Photo: Flickr

Written by Oli Anderson on 2 Jun 2008 6:16 PM. Permalink