Column: Parents who are a shining example (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Column: Parents who are a shining example

12:24pm Wednesday 9th May 2012 in Nick Nunn column By Nick Nunn, Assistant editor

AS a journalist it’s easy over the years to become cynical about your fellow men and women.

Generally it’s not the good things people do that others want to read about.

Sales figures show personal tragedies and disasters are what sell newspapers.

Bad news is usually good news in circulation terms and that does mean reporters meet many folk when they have done something they shouldn’t or are trying to find their way through trauma.

But every now and then you are privileged to meet an individual who does a whole lot more than just cope with a desperate situation.

It has always amazed me how a handful of people are able to turn grief-laden negative events into something really positive by summoning up astonishing determination and energy to focus on trying to ensure no-one else has to suffer in the way they have been forced to.

Dave and Pat Rogers, the parents of single-punch victim Adam, are two of these few.

Last week they publicly launched an education pack and video as part of their Consequences campaign to highlight to young people the potentially fatal risks they run by going into our town centres at night, getting drunk and almost inevitably becoming involved in violence.

The sort of behaviour we see every Friday or Saturday night in Blackburn and Burnley isn’t unique to East Lancashire.

It happens in towns and cities all over the country and elsewhere in Europe and other nations of the western world.

But there are also plenty of countries where you won’t see inebriated teenagers in large numbers near to pub closing time.

Parents can warn their sons and daughters about the dangers but the vast majority won’t take much notice.

However the emotional statements from the young friends of Adam on the Consequences DVD hopefully will work as a wake-up call to the awful things that can happen when youths drink themselves senseless.

No-one can fail to be inspired by the efforts Dave and Pat Rogers have put into trying to open the eyes of a generation to the life-threatening risks many of them are running week after week.