Knowle West… respect!
Posted by woodsy on 24 January, 2007
At the start of this week the media were falling over themselves to report the government’s latest public order gimmick – the establishment of 40 so-called ‘respect zones’ in various local authorities around the country.
According to the BBC, the idea behind these zones is that they will provide parenting classes, meetings between police and the public and “intervention projects” to tackle so-called “neighbours from hell”.
Needless to say, Bristol City Council is one of those involved and has picked on one of its favourite target deprived areas – Knowle West – for this stunt. It’s not that Knowle West, like any deprived community, does not have its problems with feral youth, drug dealing and the like. I reckon I know how the residents of Knowle West like to have their community stigmatised in this way: exactly the same as the good folks of Easton did when Stapleton Road got wrongly labelled by the media as the most crime-ridden street in the country.
On Monday’s launch date Knowle West duly saw a flying visit from Tony McNulty, the Home Office Minister with responsibility for policing and security. The Evening Pest carried a report on McNumpty’s visit.
There’s a budget of £6 mn. available to fund the scheme. If shared equally, this works out at £150,000 per local authority. Given that all local authorities waste public money and Bristol provides just about the worst value for money service going, I cannot see this making much of a difference, whereas spending £6 mn. on additional police just might have.
Finally, when I was young I was taught that respect had to earned and couldn’t be bought. This £6 mn. looks like the government trying to buy it. Just as it can be gained, respect can also be lost and as long as politicians, the police and others in authority who used to have the respect of the community keep telling lies and generally misbehaving they do not deserve any respect at all.
