Post in Young Mayor For Newham: Democracy in action or more bread and circuses?

2007 Oct 19 23:28 UTC

Awais,

You have my commiseration.

You cannot make comments like... "Or, was the young mayor scheme
initiated to actually empower youth by providing a democratically elected (and
therefore more powerful) political body for them to utilise." without
qualifying what you mean.

In what way was the Youth Parliament not democratic?

And, how in any sense of the word, can you claim that the selection process and
election for youth mayor (and his self-selected council) was democratic?

Furthermore, it is far too early to claim that this "mini-me" mayor will be any
more "powerful" than a representative Youth Parliament.

Let's see if the new Young Mayor has the brass neck to question the Mayor on
issues that concern the borough's youth.

For example, it has been announced that the Council (sorry, the council tax
payers) are buying in the services of more police to patrol our streets. It has
been inferred that these officers will be under the operational command of the
Town Hall - which means there will be some political control over police
officers. The Town Hall has had operational responsibility for the parks
constabulary. It is well known that the decision was made in 2002 to call the
parks constabulary the "community constabulary" (there is no legislation which
allows for this) and have them patrol the streets unlawfully. I have a list of
arrests made by the constabulary on the streets and most are legally dubious to
say the least.

I am aware of two young Asian lads who were allegedly stopped and searched by
parks constables outside the boundaries of the borough; both the alleged stops
and the searches were illegal.

I witnessed four young black boys (aged 10) grilled by three parks officers
(their names and addresses were taken down and they were asked from what
countries did their respective parents come from). As I walked past the
officers questioning the lads, I heard one officer say to a boy: "What do you
mean, you don't know your date of birth? So, you don't know how f---ing old you
are?". I wanted to intervene, but I thought that if I did I'd just be accused
of getting on my "anti-parks constabulary" hobby-horse. I stood by at some
distance and spoke to the boys after the officers had gone. The crime they had
committed was skimming stones across a pond (I put a FOIA request to the Town
Hall to see if this is a by-law offence; it isn't). I told the boys that the
officers should have given them a copy of the paperwork they filled out, or
they should have given the boys the address their parents could write to
requesting the paperwork. I told the boys that their parents should complain to
the Town hall; I have no idea if they did.

So, the question is, what confidence can we have that the Town Hall will deploy
real police officers in a more responsible way?

I would have thought this would be an issue that would interest a Young Mayor
acting as the voice of the borough's youth. If and when he does question the
Mayor on this, or some other equally contentious issue, the response he gets
will be the measure of how powerful or weak the post of Young Mayor for Newham
really is.