Save Southmead not-just-for Youth Club !

May the Force Be with Southmead Youth Club!

Not just for the kids! Older residents, Marion and Joyce have many a story to tell about the club

Last night I was lucky enough to go along to the Save Southmead Youth Club Campaign's talent show. Thanks to Southmead Legend, BS10's very own, original Darth Vader Dave Prowse 's enormously generous support and help, the club is embarking on a 'May the Force be With You" theme for its fundraising.

The plan is to succeed in Community Asset Transfer, to enable the community to run the club. There is a lot of money needed, and still a lot of work to do, but with the support from Southmead's stalwart community, and the Southmead Development Trust , there is real hope we can make it.

The club is a vital hub for the young people in the area , but it's not just the youngsters who care about keeping the club open and thriving. Residents Marion and (the notorious!) Joyce told me many a story of the early days of the club, and how Southmead has changed over the years. It's a vital community resource. With the help of Darth Vader and others, hopefully the force really can be with us.

Fairbridge: Turning around lives ( and making great cakes)

One of the perks of being an MP is that occasionally it means being forced to sit down to a nice cup of tea and eating some sinfully enormous and rich chocolate cake. I know. Tough, isn't it...

My visit to Fairbridge was one of those tough times: The young people ( some pictured here) many at risk of exclusion, come to Fairbridge for a variety of activities that, in their own words ( and I didn't see any of the staff kicking them under the table to say this!) - really has turned their lives around.

One of my young constituents in Southmead had made an obscenely superb chocolate cake for the occasion - and cooking is one of the activities that the Fairbridge centre offers. It had banana and chocolate goo in the middle, and over cake and tea we discussed what the young people had gained from the scheme, what their future plans were, and I spoke to one young man who had benefited from Fairbridge, who has now come back to help and plans to be a youth worker. That, and the views of the young people themselves, is testament enough to the great work the organisation does.

Manor Farm Boys Club

It was an inspiration visiting Manor Farm Boys Club. Not only has it resisted the tide of political correctness in holding onto its single-sex status, and it's original name, but it is also an example of what can be done, not by endless meetings and discussion, but by just using initiative and getting on with it.

The club is a bit of a tardis - much larger on the inside than it seems on the outside. And they have made superb use of space, with a new gym and an art room and store-cupboards in every available corner.

The club also owns a cottage in Wales for community adventure weekends, which it lets out to other youth clubs and organisations across Bristol. When I visited, they were also making use of the demand for parking spaces by people coming to watch the (sadly unsuccessful) Rovers game, and charging for car-parking.

It was really encouraging to see community minded people taking the initiative and making the club work - even more so when you realise that most of those now involved in the club came through it themselves and have grown up to want to put something back in. That's real sustainability.

Henbury Crime Public Meeting

I had become sickened and frustrated by the apparently huge discrepancy between what was officially the state of youth crime in Henbury, and what people actually living in Henbury were telling me.

I'd spoken to Charlie Barron, who's resigning from Henbury Football Club because he is simply tired out of coming to the club to find it vandalised again. I'd spoken to people who'd had kids taking drugs in their back garden who were too afraid to do anything. I've been trying to help vulnerable residents get rehoused because they are bullied to the point they are prisoners in their own homes...

Against that back-drop, I'm afraid I find it hard to believe that home-secretary Jacqui Smith had fully understood what people are going through when she came to Henbury, trailed by the local Labour party, last Autumn to say how great everything was.

I know people are working hard - I work with them where I can. I know lots of good stuff is being done - but that does not mean that the views and experiences of people living in Henbury can simply be white-washed over with statistics, initiatives, Ministerial visits, and official reassurances that Henbury is an 'inspirational example' ( as Jacqui Smith said.)

That's one reason why I called a public meeting - to get out in the open what is really going on. The other reason was to pool all the suggestions and comments together to come up with a plan of action.

When I asked the audience how many of them thought the underlying causes of the problem was that discipline seems to have become a dirty word; police don't have the powers they need, but all the paperwork they don't need; and that human-rights legislation has been absurdly abused to place the welfare of the criminal about that of the victim, nearly everyone raised their hand. But changing that culture and in places the law, is a job for government. In the meantime, there are things we can do:

1. Get the Youth Centre reopened, every night, offering diverse and exciting activities. Ensure that local young people are responsible for decorating and building the centre, so they feel they own it.
2. Press for more police, out on the streets more - not just around Crow Lane, but around other trouble spots as well.
3. Really clamp down hard on alcohol outlets that sell drink to underage kids.
4. Whatever happened to real zero-tolerance? We need it back.

And we haven't got time for all this to be done through a cloud of initiatives and a jungle of agencies and a confusion of a proliferation of partnerships. It needs to be done swiftly and decisively.

Something that's often forgotten in all this, is that it is a minority of young people who give a bad name to all the rest. Two young people from Henbury school - Amy Hillier and Joel Bowd, spoke to the meeting about how fed up they were with a minority wrecking everything for the majority, and how many young people are as afraid of the antisocial behaviour as the adults. It's worth remembering that although a minority of young people are the problem, the majority can be part of the solution.

Horfield Youth Center's bloomin' lovely

I dropped in on the hard work going on at Horfield Youth Club, this afternoon. All sorts of impressive looking gardening tools were being wielded by youth club members, under the watchful eye of Pete Hockett who runs the club, and Becky and Pete from 'Grounds 4 Change'.

The Grounds4Change programme helps young people brighten up their area. Over the summer a patch of rubbish-strewn weeds next to Horfield Youth Club has been transformed into a wood-chippings flower bed. But it is about more than simply spade-work. Becky was giving youth club members instructions about what was and was not weeds, and I found out there was to be a test on Latin names of plants when all the hard work was done. I used to do Latin at university. I made myself scarce before anyone found out...