Young People Now has a helpful article about the do's and don'ts of working with young people who are using drugs. Well, I say helpful, it's alright. Nothing revolutionary. Has a few interesting bits in it though, "Yet ignorance abounds. Young people believe 80 per cent of their peers take cannabis when the real figure is actually 30 per cent."
Love to see the statistics on that. Also, under the don'ts it says to never try and destroy drugs yourself, advice to which I've been told the opposite by other drugs professionals (with the justification that it's better than carrying it to the police station yourself).
The mess we’re in and the culpability of Youth Specialties. A confession that pushing the up-front event-lead programme as the best model for youth ministry is not the best way of doing things. The honesty is wonderful.
Younger Muslims 'more political'. Interesting I suppose, but I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions from this. Young people are generally more radically and opinionated, I imagine as they settle down, find jobs and get married the figures will drop fairly significantly. In the words of Simple Kid:
"In the Nineteen-Sixties they said hippies hugged trees,
but they all bought the cars in the end."
Also good Evening Standard style over-use of the emotive words in this headline: Teacher Sacked In Race Row Ignoring any sort of actual religious / terrorist issues here (so why it's under the subheading "Religion" I don't know), what I'm loving is the quote by the deputy head at the end.
Also, Steve Chalke's in the Guardian, apparently misquoted though (good work Phil). I'm chasing up what he actually said, more to follow hopefully.
There's money to be had! Windfall of cash that may go to youth clubs, couldn't care? What's more interesting is this; "The money would come from unclaimed assets in dormant bank accounts, and would be managed by the Big Lottery Fund." It's interesting that the Big Lottery Fund is holding more than just lottery-raised money, interesting in an incredibly frustrating way for those charities that would like money but reject lottery funding because of the social injustice that is the lottery. If you can't tell what's lottery and what's not how can you take any of it?
Uproar over youth club age changes. I like the way the council talks about how "thoughts of young people in the area are being sought", the BBC News reporter just asks the young people.
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