Rob Shorrock

After 16 months of campaigning, residents of Larch Close and Shaw Rd on the Earlesfield estate in Grantham have managed to get an area of grass nearby registered as Common Land.

The Common Land registration process was reformed and  theoretically simplified from April 2006.

The land in question was owned by South Kesteven District Council, who had earmarked the land for housing and, along with a partner housing association, had initially objected to the application. Persistance, getting well-informed about the process and standing up to rather crude attempts by council staff to destabalise the process paid off. In the end a bit of negotiation on the area to be registered meant that both the housing association and the council removed their objections.

This registration is important in that it demonstrates:

• Local people can get together and preserve and protect informal areas of recreation.
• Planning policy in terms of housing needs to take into account green spaces, rather than paying lip service to the idea of them. 
• Housing developers can't just get away with sticking a childrens play area into the design.

In principle, the registration process is open to any group who believes that they have had unhindered access to land for recreational pursuits for more than 20 years, regardless of who owns the land. It also means landowners can't suddenly try and argue that it is private property just because they want to develop on the land - which was the case prior to the new legislation. More details here.

This was a good campaign led by local people. Particular praise should go to Carolyn Scothern who organised residents, encouraged hundreds of people to give witness statements and submit evidence and pushed the application through the sometimes unnecessarily slow and cumbersome process.

Superb. 

Here is a compendium of commentators views on the so called rise of young people carrying knives and occasionally stabbing each other with them:

Boris Johnson resorts to the old chestnut of 'violent video games' (suggestion and emulation theory)

Adults being rude to each other - bad role model theory, from Alan Steer (hell in a handcart, Daily Mail theory)

Kids trying to defend themselves because they have a fear of being attacked (media-peer group socialisation theory)

Music listened to by many black men (racial intelligence theory)

Poor parenting (bad socialisation theory) 

And the solutions......

• Curfews for young people
• National Service 
• Compulsory prison sentences.
•  Taking offenders around hospitals and meeting victims (restorative action)
• Increasing serch powers of teachers.
• Increasing search powers of police.
• Raising the age of purchasing knives.
• Banning internet knife retail sites.

 And the reality........

Britain still has one of the world's lowest youth homicide rates. The authoritative World Report on Violence and Health, published in 2002, estimated a global average of 9.2 youth homicides for every 100,000 people aged 10 to 29. That average masks striking variations. Colombia topped the youth murder table with 84.4 killings per 100,000 young people, followed by El Salvador and Brazil. Across Africa the average was 17.6 youth homicides per 100,000, in Russia it was 18, in America 11. In the UK, there were 0.9 killings for every 100,000 young people.

Compare this to key cause of premature death in young people - road traffic accidents or incidents:

In the UK, 91 people are killed and seriously injured every day on the roads, of whom more than a third is under 25, according to the UK's national road safety charity Brake

Compared to a sprinkling of kinfe crimes this gets largely ignored. Why?  

Bob Marshall Andrews writing in the Yorkshire Post describes in a nutshell the awful political opportunism that pervades the government on eroding civil liberties.  In a meeting with a senior whip a number of years ago he recalls that; "She smiled wearily with disbelief. "People in my constituency don't give a damn about civil liberties," she said. There were three depressing things about this statement. The first is the remote possibility that it may be true. The second is that she firmly believes it is true and the third is that she obviously approves of it. In her view the collective indifference of her constituents chimes precisely and accurately with Government policy".

The idea that civil liberties lets the criminal off the hook has a dismally long and exasperating heritage. Even as we were clearing through the detritus and beginning to unravel the stupendous abuse of human rights and civil liberties from the second world war there was a reactionary fervour to maintain ID cards, continue with rationing, maintain a death penalty, control opening hours, licensing hours and the whole paraphenalia of the all pervasive state.

Parties that believe in liberty and liberation need to make the case for the kind of society the grown-ups want to live in. This means that we do not all get punished for the crimes and misdenemours of the few. It also means that we understand our rights and our obligations as citizens in expressing those rights. It also recognises that this is sometimes a philosophical enterprise and this means we need to constantly renew our understanding through thought, dialogue and debate.

People do give a damn about civil liberties - speed cameras had to be painted in bright colours so that drivers knew they were being monitored; a majority enjoy the right to late night and Sunday shopping, not being sent home from pubs early, the right to know what information is held by agencies and organisations about them. People believe they have the right to go about their business peacefully and not to be hindered by arbitary police stop and search powers. Even the most trenchant supporter of ID cards, with a 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' mentality would moan like hell if the police were constantly stopping and inconveniencing them.