Trina Dawes

This is my rant. Yes, I am a mother and I understand how overwhelming and stressful it can be to entrain children full of beans. However, my experience the other day in soft play really buggered me off.

After hearing Alex Wheatle's story about his time in a Lambeth children's home in the 1970s, he wrote a book called Brixton Rock, where he told his heart-breaking childhood in a care home where he was racially, sexually, and physically abused my the staff member's at the care home.

I enjoy having conversations with other parents and non-parents about gang culture and the problematic rise in crime in London. I am a former Londoner who has moved out of London. And with no willingness to return for the safety of my son. I grew up in the 90s so I am not that much older than many of the teenage gang members in London today. It has been reported that 6 percent of 10 to 19 year olds belong to a gang in England and Whales. Gang culture researcher Keir Irwin Rogers said that "there was 9,000 stabbing in London alone last year - 2017."

18/07/2018, I was browsing through Facebook and then I came across a viral video of two teenagers that had bumped a taxi driver in Birmingham. The taxi driver was recording them. He shouted after the girls "That he should throw them to the floor and keep them detained till the police arrive." My first thought was that is a threat. If someone had said that to me over the sake of £20 I would be scared.