Our children urgently need less self-esteem

I had a sort of Tottenham High Street moment just after lunch on Tuesday. I was passing a sandwich shop near the Spectator offices and happened to see the slogan beneath its name: ‘Live your life, love our food.’ The urge came, right there and then, to torch the place and maybe rough up the counter staff but — maybe this is an age thing — the feeling quickly passed. It was the impudence of the imperative that most annoyed me, although the general fatuity of it grated too. Why would I not live my life? What’s the alternative? And what has it got to do with your food, you presumptuous idiots?

As it happened, I had just bought a sandwich at another one of these sorts of shops, a few yards down the street (you will have noticed that almost every shop everywhere sells sandwiches. Even Boots sells sandwiches.