Those slightly addle-eyed folk who rant about Government conspiracies, claim that we're all microchipped at birth and believe the Oyster card is a sinister scheme to track our movements may be feeling a little righteous today: Transport for London has been criticised for "collecting data without a clear purpose" when asking kids to fill in an application form for their free Travelcard. Since June, kids looking to jump on the bus or tube have......

At a time when the mainstream media is awash with knife crime statistics and government-sponsored images of dismembered hands, it is refreshing to find that members of the public have taken it upon themselves to offer assistance in the ongoing War on Knives (yes, this term exists). It seems that youngsters in South London have responded well to a newly piloted anti gun and knife crime scheme, which has seen Crimestoppers receive a 440%......

Pity London's poor crafty underagers. A further hurdle was today placed in the way of their illegally buying booze and fags as supermarket chain Budgens unveiled a trial of hi-tech face-recognition cameras in one of its London stores – technology that will weed out teenage drinkers and smokers before they reach the tills. First the smoking ban. Then Boris's quaint 'don't drink on the tube' posters. Indulging in our favourite national pastimes is getting......

In the relentless battle against anti-social behaviour and juvenile crime on our public transport we've reported on 999 text hotlines and genuine gansters brought in to educate the kids. We've had local heroes, PCSOs, poster campaigns and overzealous bus drivers. Now, apparently, we need God. The Ascension Trust have been deploying Street Pastors over large parts of South and North East London since 2003. Their mission "engaging with people on the streets to care,......

Just as concern about our disaffected youth seems to be getting absurdly out of control and becoming a despairingly permanent fixture on our news radar, along comes a media friendly academic to reassure us that it has ever been thus. Yes, yootful human nature has always inclined to disturbing the peace with covered heads according to Professor Robert Bartlett of St Andrews whose expertise in Medieval history confirms that the teenage apprentice boys of London......

A quarter of all 'youth gangs' reside in Lambeth. Now there's a statistic to make the Borough's residents sleep easy at night. According to Auntie, an unpublished report has linked 40 gangs to the area, one with over 2,500 members. That's not a gang, that's a Union. With increasingly more depressing reports coming through every day on the nature of gang / youth violence, and increasingly more hysterical attempts to find a London shaped......