From New Zealand

Hello Everyone! Happy Spring time to Northerners bidding farewell to the white stuff and stowing their winter gear while Autumn comes to folk living in the Southern Hemisphere reaching for raincoats and settling in to the new 2007 school year.

During my recent travels, I’ve been thinking a lot about youth perspectives reflected in the media. As we flew out of the UK, the media was filled with headlines about ASBOs (youth on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders), knife crime amongst urban youths, teenage alcohol abuse, children living in poverty, and low standards of care in Scottish children's homes. I kept looking for the ways in which such issues appeared, or were represented by the media in New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and the United Arab Emirates (my stopover points during this trip).

Time for Celebration?

Wherever we went, youth culture was alive and well; some would even say “in your face". Outside the UK, there was no mention of ASBOs even though the media reported on teenage gatherings where alcohol-induced behaviour caused problems for the community. In those places where alcohol is readily available to adults, then it was clear that young people were also using or abusing it in the same way adults do. We spent time in New Zealand communities where youths are being groomed to become members of the Mongrel Mob or Black Power gangs, or in Papua New Guinea joining Port Moresby Rascal Gangs. In all of these places, incidents of gang related violence featured in the media but not like we’d seen in the UK media.

Youth Culture in Your Face!

The images of UK poverty televised via the BBC World Service were worrying. I noted the weekly income for a UK child said to be living in poverty with their single parent. That figure is mind-boggling when one converts such a weekly sum into any other currency in the world. Then the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Report assessing child well-being in 21 so-called rich, industrialised countries was released, placing the UK at the bottom of 21 countries, including Sweden, Denmark and the US when it comes to fighting poverty, deprivation and promoting the quality of relationships youngsters have with their parents and peers. The term used is relative poverty, but the term relative also applies to relative deprivation and relative quality of relationships with parents and peers. The question is: relative to what?

Tuhoe Children of Kuta Marae near Urewera National Park

Inevitably, someone will say: “It all depends!" Relative to the £22 million salary paid to a UK investment banker last year? There is no comparison, even if a relatively poor family choose to eat fish and chips from their local chip shop on a daily basis. Compared with children living in a squatters' settlement on a dump site at the edge of a Third World city? Is there a comparison? The issue involves expectations, indeed cultural expectations about, for example, youth opportunities, mobile phones or iPods.

Youths are watching to see what happens next!

One obvious question needs to be asked: “What do the top industrialised countries do to support their children?" Well, for a start, they are not part of the Coalition of the Willing. Lest one forgets, that means investing less of their national incomes on war.