I’ve lived in council or housing association properties up until 5 years

Comment on Broken Britain, Broken Society and the BIG Society by David.

I’ve lived in council or housing association properties up until 5 years ago when we bought our first house. So 30+ years in mostly council housing (rented privately when at Uni for 2 years).

In the last housing association property we lived in Grimsby next to a street locally called murder mile.

On one side we had OK neighbours, your average family (kids loved football), didn’t cause any trouble. On the other side we had a single parent mother in her forties with three kids that had NO parental control whatsoever, (though the kids weren’t that bad, issues with boundaries, but never caused problems with us) the mother was on drugs (she even sold drugs), was drunk 90% of the time and while we lived there their windows were put through twice! She had different low life men and women at the house every week and the social services were too afraid of the family to take the kids into care! Eventually everything went to crap with that family and the kids did eventually end up in care.

When the housing association took the house back it was a complete mess and needed a new kitchen etc…

The next tenants weren’t much better. Young single mother with young kids and we just didn’t hit it off. They were constantly causing trouble and I was assaulted by her boyfriend: fortunately I can look after myself and he came off much worse.

A young lad was visiting their house and someone he was with (a neighbours kid) caused trouble with our kids and I told her to pack it in, next thing I know I have this lads Dad (recently out of prison) at the door with a friend pissed that I’d told his kid off. Nothing happened since I wasn’t even talking to his son, but could have easily gone violent.

After the fight with the neighbours boyfriend that bloke came back with two friends, one carrying a car tool and wanted me to come out the house so he could sort me out (I may have made a few stupid decisions in my life, but I’m not that stupid :-)). Called the police, nothing happened and never saw that numpty again.

As a teenager (14) I received a 24 hr attendance centre order for burning down a cricket pavilion (I was a complete idiot as a teenager) and at 15 spent 2 months in a detention center for a bunch of juvenile crimes (burglaries mostly).

At 18 I was cautioned for criminal damage, would have been worse but agreed to pay for the damage (stupid drunken night out, me and a friend put our fists through a pub sign). Used to go to pubs and night clubs as a teenager and would get into fights quite a lot.

I’ve been part of the anti-social behaviour problem and experienced it.

Oh, we also have drunks hanging around at the back of our property and had a brick through our kitchen window recently and I left a bunch of copper piping down the side of the house (own an ex-guesthouse and removed a lot of plumbing work, wink in every room) and it was stolen!

I still don’t think our society is broken, it’s individuals that are ‘broken’ not society, the majority of people living in Britain today are good people. It’s the minority that’s the problem, when it’s the majority then we’ll have a broken society.

So you “Get Real!”

David