The Poolie Bunker

The Bridge Youth Centre is getting demolished but they are saving Eldon Grove....for a couple of months anyway!!!!

Pardon my ignorance but what is it getting demolished for ? is it lack of use ??if so do kids prefer to hang around street cornes??As for " what do they offer the kids nothing" is going a bit far they seem to have a hell of a lot more to do now then when I was a kid ,but most of what is on offer probably isn't COOL!!!

Another building to photograph for posterity..... sadly.

My mother attended her first 'residents' meeting the other day which, she said was very well attended with reps from all age groups. Some of the younger element expressed a wish for somewhere to go or hang around instead of outside the shops getting grief off people. Now it wasn't so long ago that every school had attached to a building for teenagers to do just that, sadly all of these buildings are now defunct. Surely these can be resurrected with a modern feel? one of the great losses of having these centres is the relationship with adults who were not teachers, but attempted (albeit unbeknowingly to us) to guide us into acting in a socially acceptable way. These places have demised and now kids hang around shops ,as they have always done but not in the numbers that are there now, and this in a time when demographics point to a decreasing number of young'uns.

But there again If caring parents want somewhere for their normal kids to socialise and express themselves away from the conformity of parents and teachers, and kids want to go somewhere to stop them getting hassled so they can express themselves then the only rationale option is to...open a needle exchange clinic and shut down the centres, oh and a full school.




I'll stop now

When you see kids hanging about night after night, it is a minority, but you have to look at the parents half the time as it's not necessarily the poorer members of society who cause the most hassle, some of the 'chewiest' kids come from very comfortable backgrounds. Sadly, the problem is weak parenting and that can mean treating the kids as mates instead of offering guidance ..... plus the fact that giving your kid just want they want should not be confused with loving them. Kids are now being programmed by the media to grow up too fast, get them into the cosumer society and get their money out of them, the sad progression from school to pub is just one inevitable outcome.

one of the great losses of having these centres is the relationship with adults who were not teachers, but attempted (albeit unbeknowingly to us) to guide us into acting in a socially acceptable way. These places have demised and now kids hang around shops ,as they have always done but not in the numbers that are there now, and this in a time when demographics point to a decreasing number of young'uns.

that was me.
i was a youth leader for a few years working at tunstall youthie.
it is actually 20 years this year since i completed my basic training course in youth work.
during my training i worked at brierton youth club with a canny group of kids including a very big for a 14 year old mr david garside.
worked at tunstall for about 10 years but they started changing the way we worked and wanted projections for the term of what you were going to do and how the members were going to benefit from it.
the leaders today are very disillusioned.

errr I was Brierton youthy then, although not as big as DG like!