[00:00.00]Unit 8 Party animals 3 While you read
[00:10.50]Rave to the grave
[00:14.65]A rave party nearly ended in tragedy last night,
[00:20.72]when over a hundred people fell through the floor
[00:25.57]of the fourth-floor flat they were dancing in and into the flat below.
[00:32.03]Amazingly,no one was killed,
[00:36.18]although seven people were taken to hospital suffering from shock.
[00:42.06]The party was organised by a group called Tribal Spiral,
[00:48.51]and was held in a deserted flat on ahousing estate in East London.
[00:54.44]It is believed that have the extremely hight volume of the techno music being played
[01:01.81]weakened the structure of the floor.
[01:05.33]Bert Jones,aged 64,who lives in the third-floor flat below,said:
[01:13.59]’I must admit,I hadn’t really noticed the party going on.
[01:19.36]I’m a bit hard of hearing and I didn’t have my hearing aid in,
[01:25.29]but I could feel the vibrations from somewhere.
[01:29.94]I just thought it must be kids messing around upstairs somewhere.
[01:35.50]Then,the next thing I knew,there was an almighty crash in the living room,
[01:42.58]so I ran in and the place was full of dust and plaster and people screaming.
[01:49.24]I just couldn’t believe my eyes.I got the shock of my life,I can tell you.
[01:56.09]Now I’m waiting for the council to send someone round to fix things.’
[02:02.15]The incident follows a number of complaints about techno parties all over the capital
[02:10.51]and public outcry about raves.
[02:14.58]A recent tabloid headline screamed,
[02:19.55]’SPACED OUT!11,000 YOUNGSTERS GO DRUG CRAZY AT BRITAIN’S BEGGEST EVER DANCE PARTY’,
[02:27.49]while the number of drug-related deaths at raves has risen dramatically over the last year.
[02:34.57]All of this will undoubtedly lead to calls for tighter anti-rave laws.
[02:42.22]The government is ready considering introducing a new law
[02:48.07]which will help police crack down on unoficial gatherings of this kind.
[02:54.13]They are proposing a bill which will allow police to break up any groups of more than twenty people
[03:02.20]listening to ’music with rrepetitive beats’
[03:07.45]and also intend to make club owners responsible
[03:12.73]for any drugs being sold on their premises.
[03:17.28]A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said,’Things are getting out of hand,
[03:25.11]and ovciously what worries us the most is that where you have rave parties
[03:31.88]and where you have drugs,you’re bound to come up against organised crime.
[03:38.33]We’d obviously appreciate any new law which gave us more powers to tackle this problem.’
[03:45.70]David Goodyear,a Stepney ambulanceman,
[03:51.94]claimed that many of the partygoers at the Tribal Spiral event
[03:57.90]had failed to notice the floor had collapsed.
[04:02.26]Most of the young people just carried on dancing
[04:07.82]-a fact he put down to the mind-altering affects of Ecstasy
[04:13.70]and other so-called ’dance drugs’.
[04:17.85]However,there are signs that young people themselves
[04:24.10]are already looking for alternatives to the rave scene.
[04:28.64]One of the most successful new clubs to have opened this year is the Domino Club.
[04:35.88]Here,young people sit around drinking cocktails whilst a D plays laid-back jazz.
[04:44.32]There isn’t much dancing-instead,
[04:49.04]the club-goers play board games such as Scrabble and Monopoly.
[04:54.82]Another club which has become very popular is The Big Chill,
[05:01.06]which is held in a church called the Union Chapel.
[05:06.23]Ironically,maybe young people today are closer to God
[05:12.19]than the government and the police realise!