Local Blog: Parish council meeting disrupted by public unhappy with shelter plans

A recent parish council meeting held on the 2nd March had to be called off after the public 15 minute question time because members of the public who attended the meeting disrupted it.

The members of the public who attended the meeting believed that they had not been consulted. More about the meeting is reported here.

The council received 240 responses, and it was advertised on the Parish Council notice board near the library. 240 is actually a very large response to a consultation.

The council I suspect did not consult the roads around the Morgan recreation ground as this is what the members of the public believed (I have emailed the council to ask who they consulted). If the plans were explained to the public along the roads I expect most people would be happy with the plans (which do appear to be quite good see here ). This could be partly down to the council consulting the wrong individuals. Maybe the council were concerned that the plans would be turned down.

However there are two sides to this story.

Does this action by the public demonstrate that we are now so scared of our youths and teenagers that some people will now react against a new play area. The Morgan recreational ground already has a play area. Some youths do hang at the park benches and around the area. I went there myself last night to speak to some of them and to have a look for myself. They seemed perfectly pleasant. Perhaps if we engaged with youths a little more rather than making them out too all be vandals and criminals we would perhaps have a better society and better behaved youths.

Does this mean that we can no longer provide facilities for the young for fears that it could descend into some crime hot spot. it's these facilities and the work of youth groups that help make our teens better people. Showing them how much they are disliked will only encourage bad behaviour. I myself once hangout at the Morgan Rec . Police even then did used to come down and talk to us. Once we were even chased by the police because we were having races and the police thought we were running away from them and were up to no good.

Before we blame the youths perhaps we should look at our own attitude and step away and think about the impact of our actions.