Opinion: Get young people out into public spaces

Children's experts have endeavoured to put parental fears for their children into perspective: the chance of abduction is apparently less than winning the lottery. Others evoke those halcyon days when children played happily in the streets. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has reported that the greatest encroachment on public play space, according to young people themselves, is the motor vehicle. And it is those in the most advanced countries who have been the hardest hit. Parks are likely to be littered with broken glass and, sometimes, dirty needles, though not paedophiles. Cycling is little fun with lorries rumbling past, oblivious to kids on bikes; and if young people cycle on the pavement, this may now be grounds for a criminal prosecution.