Debbie Johnson Column: Good v. evil ... our tale of two cities.

Byline: Debbie Johnson

SOMETIMES I get the impression that this city is made up of devils and angels. In my line of work, over the years I've met a lot of people - some doing amazingly good things for others, for their communities, for society as a whole. And others - often in the pleasant setting of Liverpool magis-trates' court - who seem to be doing their best to undermine it. I don't think there's another city in Britain as dedicated to its char-ity - if a kid in a Liverpool street gets leukaemia, there'll be race nights, cabarets and raffles until that child is on his way to Disneyworld. Give us a cause and we'll rally. If you haven't figured it out yet, they are the angels. On the other hand, you get the wreckers. The scum who'll beat up an old lady for pounds 2.50; who'll steal a kid's Christmas presents from under the tree, who'll stand outside post offices waiting for pensioners to come out. This week, it was all highlighted to perfec- ti on by goings-on in Stanley Park. The place suffers from long-term vandalism things were taken to ex t remes as some delightful youngsters went on a spree and tore the park up. Among the damage they caused was the destruction of the goalposts for the Anfield Junior League: thousands of youngsters play in it and they'd raised the money to buy their own goals. There was a lot of public-ity and there'll be a happy end-ing in this particular case but again it brings me back to the devils and angels here. The damage was in all likelihood caused by kids. Can someone tell me when a park stops being a place with swings and grass and a little slice of paradise and, instead, is just a great big arena for destruction? At what age does that happen? One of the biggest causes given for this kind of behaviour is there being "nothing for the kids". But am I the only one to notice how many times things specifically set up "for the kids" end up being targeted? I've lost track of the number of stories I've written that involve vandalism at schools, nurseries, youth centres, libraries, sports halls. Exactly the types of facilities that these kids are supposed to want. Steve O'Reilly is one of the organ-isers of the Anfield Junior League. He and his mates - dads who wanted to give kids something to do - give endless hours of their time to run-ning it, to providing something "for the kids". His thanks, from some of the kids in the area, was a big slap in the face. It starts to feel like one half of the community is working hard to build something good, and the other is knocking it down, just for fun. Why does it happen? I know it's probably just a minority causing the damage, but that doesn't change what harm is done. Why are some kids immune to what is on offer, and instead focused on what they can break? I've been thinking about this (can you hear the cogs turning?) and I know the usual response is "it's the parents fault". Well, I think that's right. There are too many parents out there who are convinced the sun shines out of their kids backsides. If you complain about their behav-iour, you just get aggression and threats, and then it becomes easy to see why their children are the way they are. But where do they get it from? Is it their parents? And their parents before them? Everyone is eager to say it is - but if you trace it back a couple of gener-ations, you'll undoubt-edly find a pair of nice o l d great-grandparents who f oug ht war s, worked hard, and never wrecked a thing in their lives. They prob-ably went on courting walks in places like Stanley Park. So it's not that simple. Something has happened, over the last couple of decades, to change p e o p l e 's basic behaviour. I think it goes back to the first generation who experienced mass unemployment. They also happened to be the first who experienced the wholesale import of heroin into the city, and the Thatcher government. The genera-tion that first saw itself as apart from the rest of the world, and decided to act like animals. Even if we had 100% employment tomorrow and drugs disappeared from the streets, something has been lost: a work ethic, a belief in the importance of respect not just for others, but for ourselves. A lot of work is being done to bring that back. But while most of us are willing to moan about how terrible the world is not many are willing to do anything about it. If faced with a gang of 15-year-olds wrecking a park, would your instinct be to sit down and talk to them, ask them what else they would like to be doing, try and work it out? Or would it be to round them up, and shoot the lot of them to save us the trouble of sending them to jail in three years time? The second isn'tan option. So we just have to hope that the angels keep the advantage.