Pigeons
Over a number of years now the pigeon population has been growing.
You may say "wait a minute, aren't you a supporter of the environment?"
Well that would be true, but that doesn't make me an animal rights supporter. UK pigeons are goften not native, they have migrated across Europe over the centuries and decades then settled here. We have a lot of problems with our activities causing extinctions of many species and that issue is getting worse, in the case of pigeons our activities are also causing a problem with an expansion of species. So in both cases extinctions and growth of various species are a result of our own growth and influence.
Youths
There is a distinct problem of male youths gathering in significant numbers in Waterlooville early in the evening. Initially they congregated around Subway in small groups, the food outlet appears to be popular with school children and teeneagers, for some time Subway also wasn't kept very clean and by evening time the floor was often littered with food packaging and remnants of food. My last visit suggested it was cleaner, but that was just one visit, the staff in the outlet is generally young and maybe the work ethic was not there.
Anyway a digress, a bigger problem appears to be intimidating males youths on their cycles and walking around the town centre in the early evening. I walked past the centre at about 18:00 recently and there were about a dozen youths larking about, one of them was kick boxing with another youth.
On another evening I noticed a police car had been parked outside Lloyds bank, it was empty and I assume it was there to send a psychological message.
It appears to be clear that in common with other shopping centres in Havant Borough, Waterlooville is potentially declining further. The centre still manages to maintain some character, but it is close IMO to an irreversible decline. Pigeons and larking youths just add to the issues.
2 comments:
Shouldn't you be a bit more tolerant? By your own account the youths did you no harm. Your ELP posts suggest that you were also young once. What did your grandparents think of ELP? Long haired yobbos at a guess?
Actually they did do harm, I stated that they were intimidating, in other words myself and others did not feel welcome at the town centre early in the evening.
What did I do at their age?
Well I certainly didn't hang around in the middle of town like a moron and I didn't have all the entertainment technology that these kids have today to keep them occupied (and off the streets).
Like many kids, I had a tiny transistor radio and the family had one TV. I usually had far to much homework to do, so the luxury of hanging out in some town centre was not an option.
What did my grandparents think of ELP. Well I used to take my ELP albums over to my grandparents house to play on their HIFI (because I only had a little portable unit at a later date, after the tiny radio). My grandfather listened to the band patiently with me.
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