Calls For Hooded Tops Ban After Shopping Centre Bans Anyone Wearing Them From Their Mall.

"YAY THE BOSOM!"

"BOO THE HOODIE!"

"CRY, THE BELOVED MAN U FAN."

Thug? This looks like Jon.

Will sunglasses be next since they obscure your eyes ?

Why don't they give kids somewhere to go so they aren't bored and hanging around these malls? This is the real issue.

New laws to tackle yobs and restore respect in society have been promised by Prime Minister Tony Blair. But will more legislation solve the problems, or just make them worse?

(I can't keep down my fascist urges here. Fuck the vicious thieving fuckers)

i've been asked to take off hats (not baseball caps) in bars before(i'm sure anyone who wears hats has) which is totally acceptable, otherwise what's the point of the cctv? the shopping centre also banned swearing, leafletting etc. it seems to be just the papers that are making it all about the hoodies

SAVE OUR HOODIES!

So, gargantuan London shopping centre Bluewater has decided to ban hooded sweatshirts. Always quick to spot a soft target, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has thrown his considerable weight behind the ban, declaring hoodies as "aggressive and intimidating", which, coming from him, is quite something. Apparently the amateur pugilist and style guru was recently "confronted by youths in a motorway café” and the sight of their shadowy cowled silhouettes looming over his pie'n'mash has clearly been haunting him ever since.
While it's hard to deny that hoods are indeed used by dealers and thieves to keep their guilty mugs off CCTV, the hoodie is one the great inventions of the 20th Century and we must not allow it to be soiled with the grimy fingerprints of petty crime in the same way that the Burberry baseball cap has been made synonymous with football hooliganism and the advanced stages of chavdom.
Everyone loves a hoodie, it 's the beans-on-toast of the fashion world, a comforting, effortless, everyday classic, often reinvented by rarely bettered. From the WWII navy seals who first stiched drawstring hoods and front pouches to their smock tops to the Bush-baiting "Black Hoodie Mob" in Eminem's pre-election “Mosh” video, via Afrika Bambaata, Rocky Balboa, Kylie, Donnie Darko and even the Grim Reaper himself, the hoodie has become a timeless wardrobe essential. It has survived the affront of J-Lo and Juicy Couture's slimy velour meddling, it has even survived the deeply disturbing "hoodie beneath a suit jacket" look of Timberlake, Charlie Busted and their boy-band brethren. But this new threat is far more sinister: a pincer movement from youth culture's two worst enemies; politics and commerce. Enough already. It's time for hoodie lovers to unite and make a stand. That's why Dazed is officially declaring this Saturday National Hoodie Day. So don the most "aggressive and intimidating" hoodie you can find, get down to your local mall, strike your shiftiest pose, hold your hoods up high and just say 'No' to Hood-ism. See you at Bluewater.

what about when the hat is perched atop a hooded head?

D&C's riposte is a bit of a joke when you consider A) nobody complains THIS much about club or other social establishment dress codes, and B) who the fuck wants to hang out in Bluewater anyway? get one imagination kids.

Get One EImagination? Its a mall full of shopsand a 20 screen cinema and a cheap food court and plenty of stuff to nick/play with. How much of an imagination do you need if you live in Thurrock?

Is this just a British thing or is this happening every where? By this I mean this terrible way of dealing with problems?

Problem: Too many spotty little oiks chewing gum and using slang words in the town centre.
Solution: Start a club night for young people or even a youth centre or at least SOMETHING that might let them escape their home for a few hours and let them socialise outside of school. No, not a Christian youth group or an old fashioned youth club with skittles like you used to have in the old days. Kids be playing Playstation now. Even lowering the drinking age a bit if we must?
What really happens: Lets ban baseball caps and hoodies because that'll stop bored teens hanging around outside the VG waiting for their fake ID to come through the post. Then lets complain that our nation's children are becoming a bunch of lethargic, overweight telly addicts who have no concept of what it is to be a part of society.

Problem: Too many cars on the road, too much pollution, too much congestion.
Solution: Enforce cheaper and more efficient public transport.
What really happens: Make the roads smaller and raise the price of petrol in the hope that it will discourage people from using their cars while public transport becomes outmoded and disarrayed.

It's this solution of restriction rather than liberation that seems so ingrained in the way Britain is run. Instead of looking at solutions, councils and governments go for the shortgame by putting up balsa-wood barriers in order to entertain Daily Express readers until the next grumblefad (to coin a term) comes along.

bit in the guardian this weekend spoke to one of the hoodies, made me think this is too little too late - 'yeah i used to wear my hood up all the time last year *when it was fashionable*'

can't decide if what bothers me most is the fear != respect thing or the way they're starting from so obviously completely the wrong place and direction.

xxpost.

well, obviously the hoodies are the symptom and not the problem, but with youth criminality in general talk of symptoms and problems is more difficult. what is the 'root problem' and what should be done?

Pff, fuck teenagers, anyway.

A children's charity has hit back at a controversial ban on hooded tops by urging young people to boycott the shopping centre which imposed it.

HELLO, EARTH TO CHILDREN'S CHARITY!! YOU CANNOT BOYCOTT SOMETHING FROM WHICH YOU ARE ALREADY BANNED!

Spokesman Tim Linehan said: "Here you have a shopping centre banning people who wear the items of clothing that they sell at the centre.

"What happens to young people if they buy those items of clothing on the premises, are they not allowed to wear them on the way out?

erm, wearing clothing just bought from a shop?? Automatic arrest by the LAME PATROL.

Feral Britain: Thugs attack funeral car
A funeral cortege has been attacked by a teenage gang as the yob culture plumbed new depths. In the sickening attack, the thugs threw an 8ft-long lump of wood through the windscreen of the slow-moving limousine carrying women mourners. The incident is the latest in a hooligan explosion faced by communities across Britain

brett anderson/paul dacre -- have YOU seen them together?

hooligans are suicide bombers now?

xxpost

That's like saying "not everyone wears jeans". I'd say that about 75% of teens own some kind of hooded top that they wear regularly.

someone photoshop a hoodie on jon spencer plz

spontaneous combustion no doubt

A school could help restore the reputation of the notorious hooded top after making it part of its uniform.

Richard Haigh, principal of Coombeshead College, Newton Abbot, Devon, has criticised "hysterical" stereotyping of 'hoodie' wearers as thugs.

"Most young people are fine, upstanding citizens, and some of them wear hoodies. Why should they be tarred with this rather hysterical brush?" he said.

Bluewater shopping centre, Greenhithe, Kent, last week banned hooded tops.

This was part of a new code of conduct for visitors aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour at the complex.

"It's the behaviour that's the problem, not the clothing," Mr Haigh said on Thursday.

He added: "If you know how young people's minds work, the best way of encouraging them to do something is to ban it.

"The more fuss we make about hoodies and baseball caps, the more a certain type of young person will want to wear them."

Hooded tops have been part of the uniform at Coombeshead College, a 1,600-strong media and arts college, for two years.

Between 10 and 15% of students wear them, the headmaster estimated.

They are only allowed to put up the hoods when it is raining.

In a letter that he described as "tongue in cheek" to the Times on Wednesday, Mr Haigh wrote: "I am disappointed by the lack of subtlety in dealing with the hoodie problem.

"Follow our example and make them part of school uniform. How uncool does that make them?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/newspapers/20_may_2005/img/3.jpg

I wonder how many more bad puns the press will come up with before this fad is over.

Manchester's Trafford Centre, the Elephant and Castle complex in South London and shops in Liverpool have also banned hoodies.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15599732%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=banned%2dfrom%2dshops%2d%2d%2dbecause%2dshe%2ds%2da%2dgoth-name_page.html

"It was good for Bluewater but I do not think the centre would offer advice to any other business as to how to run their services."

When you go to pick up said geezers from their digs, present each one with a complimentary hoodie and baseball cap. have each of your youthful volunteers wear an identical cap and hoodie. Emblazon these paraphernalia with charitable slogans such as "Jesus Loves Us All!"

Have your youthful volunteers help all the geezers into their gear. Invite the news media and tip them off. Bring the geezers to the mall, suitably accoutered. Meet the media. March to the offices of the management and defy their fucking stupid ban with the cameras rolling!

Checkmate.

I can understand them making kids take off the caps. I can understand them saying don't wear hoods up. But banning them completely is stupid.
especially as the same people could just wear tshirts or tracksuits or any form of clothing and still cause the same amount of bother.

I mean, the hoodie is the basic essential clothing I use to get around the very London-esque weather in this town. I'm not wearing a knitted sweater and carrying an umbrella the next time I'm over there, sorry.

Well, granted, it is %^$%^Exclaim#$%$%$ magazine, but from the Lady Sovereign interview I read, the article writer and Lady S make it sound like the entirety of the UK has declared war on "the hoodie"... I should know better than to make ass umptions based on that article.

I know it's only a matter of time now until it spreads to our joke of a shopping centre in my town.

Checkmate.

With added bonus that it would probably put the antisocial types off of wearing hoodies!

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41138000/jpg/_41138786_nohatsign203.jpg

This is a nice hint at subversion here. People who engage in criminal activity should iconify things that are practical in daily life, like CAR or WALKING icons. Therefore cars or pedestrians will be banned from certain places, if the people who run the places are loonie enough.

Loving the caption on the top pic.