It can kill !!!!!!! (Vandalism)

Member Name: forrest

Product:	Vandalism
Date:	19/09/01 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Can Kill, Causes Pain

The acts of vandalism are evident in nearly every street in the country. I am not saying that this is a past time restricted to the UK but this is the area I am more familiar with. The dictionary describes vandalism as:

"The deliberate destruction caused by a vandal or an instance of such destruction".

There are many examples visible from the high publicity of graffiti, to the various bus shelters, phone boxes and abandoned cars that seem to bere the brunt of peoples aggression. I cannot understand what drives people to do such wanton destruction of property that doesn't belong to them, or maybe that is the reason. The fact that it is not theirs, I guess brings an element of danger into getting caught either by the owner or by the police. Or just disrespect for peoples lives with the example of litter being thrown over fences into peoples gardens.

At one time I believed that all of this was due to jealousy. The scenario of "if I can't have it, why should they?", but I now feel that it goes further than that. It would seem that the aggression which is borne by the current climate and unrest around the world, not taking into account recent events, channels the aggression and the release of which ends in violence. I would say that the only saving grace is that the violence is against an object and so no one gets hurt, but I would be wrong. All of these objects belong to people, whether personal or something that they repair in their line of work. These are the scars which are unnoticed. The pride that people take in their belongings, their work and their lives is hit by the acts of vandalism, but go unnoticed because "its only a car!"

But it seems that the attitude towards vandalism is changing in that people see it and then just carry on. I am not talking about the actual act here, but how many times have people walked down the road, seen the broken bus shelters, phone boxes, cars, just sighed
mumbled to themselves and carried on? It seems that nothing is ever done about the acts. Indeed the figures from the home office suggest that vandalism cost the country over £1billion a year, wouldn't we be better off spending this on something else, such as the National Health?

But vandalism does go beyond the visual to that which can cause death. In talking to a friend at the weekend it became evident that the people who carry out these crimes are looking for more daring challenges. They have taken it into their minds that sneaking onto railway tracks and breaking the signals would be funny. In parts of the country there are security patrols beings used purely to stop this happening. With all the problems and dangers on the railways over the past ten years can we really afford for this to happen? But there are another group that have an even more horrific concept. Paint the light green! The idea of this is that the drivers of the high speed trains think that that light is green and proceed at speed through the signal. As I understand so far it has been the duty of the driver to try and distinguish what is a true signal and what has been vandalised. Cages have been put up around the signals to try and deter these acts but we should not be taking preventative actions that almost accept it will happen. Why do our laws allow people to get away with these acts, does it need to take another disaster such as Hatfield or Clapham Junction before people start to realise the consequences of their actions?

It is down to everyone to try and do something about this by getting involved in stamping out vandalism and instilling the attributes of right and wrong in children from an early age.

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