Family

Siobhan Courtney, who blogged for us last week, is part of our ‘another voice’ series – occasional posts from writing from lines of argument different to the ones we normally take on Coffee House. She has sent this report from Dale Farm, where hundreds of travellers are due to be evicted tomorrow. Siobhan was granted access to the site, on what will probably be its last day of existence. Irish folk music pounds out from one chalet. Women vigorously scrub the outsides of neighbouring caravans, while their children bring tea to the men who are fixing their vans. Around them, plastic statues of Mary Magdalene are firmly rooted into the

Tony Blair has dropped in to write an article on the social context to the recent riots. It’s insightful, especially as a testament of his failings in government. At the close of his premiership, he says, he’d realised that the acute social problems in Britain’s inner cities were “specific” and could not be solved with “conventional policy”. So much for ‘education, education, education’, Blair’s favoured solution was a mixture of early intervention on a family by family basis to militate against the “profoundly dysfunctional” upbringings these young people endure and a draconian response to antisocial behaviour. Alas, he was forced from office for before implementing the plan. The present government

The facts of life are Conservative, as the old phrase has it. The events of the past few days have shown the urgent need for Tory social policies. The case for reforms to the police, welfare and education has been amply demonstrated.  Some in the government appear to get this. But there is also an odd hesitancy about getting on the front foot. As Tim Montgomerie said yesterday, why wasn’t a minister put up for Question Time last night? They could have used the programme to push Cameron’s reform agenda. Equally, why isn’t Cameron setting up an inquiry that will expose how the police have effectively abandoned parts of our

I understand that the government’s view is that social housing tenants whose children live with them and are convicted of looting should be evicted from their homes. The law already allows for this, although only if the criminal act occurred within the borough in which the family lives, and the Department for Communities and Local Government is encouraging councils and housing associations to use these powers. Although, the final decision on any eviction would be for the courts. Personally, I think there might be a case for broadening this out. The problem with the current approach is that it lets off those dead-beat dads who take no interest at all

As James says, it’s been a day of high passions here at The Spectator. He feels strongly that many of the problems in Britain are societal, and require a cultural shift. Maybe so. I disagree with James when he says a Prime Minister’s role is to “lead society”. I disagree. We pay him to run the government, not offer his advice (or, worse, condemnation) on how society is running itself. Sure, society is shaped by government incentives. Cameron can fix these. But shaping society by exhortation is not what we expect of limited government. Fundamentally, it confuses what I see as the natural pecking order. In Britain, the people pass

Tomorrow sees the publication of the report David Cameron commissioned on how to address the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood. Thanks to a leak we already know most of what’s in the report. It proposes, among other things, that sexualized advertisement shouldn’t be displayed in places near where children go, that the watershed should be more strictly enforced, that lads mags shouldn’t be displayed at eye level and that it should be easier for parents to block access from home computers to certain internet sites. There’ll be those that dismiss these proposals as gimmicks or as too small to make a difference. But making the public square more family friendly

I’m afraid that women have been faking it, having us men on. You see they understand the offside rule and always have done. How could they not? It’s so simple that even a brace of abject football pundits know that an actively involved player is offside when he is closer to the opponent’s goal line than both the ball and the second-to-last defender, but only if he is in his opponent’s half of the pitch. Messrs Keys and Gray may not be too sharp on interpretation – unlike the ‘young lady’ (£) they berated – but they’re smoking hot on the theory. So do me a favour love and drop

The birth of Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish John gave that of Christ a run for its money in the broadcast news over Christmas. In Ireland, where I was, the newsreader declared that the singer Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, had had their first child. Hang on, I thought. Not so. Some woman, and possibly two – bear with me – has had a baby with one of them. And as it turned out, the birth mother was a client of the Center for Surrogate Parenting based in Encino, California, which has been providing surrogacy arrangements for gay would-be parents since 1989. Elton John and David Furnish will, I’d have thought,

As Michael Gove said at the launch of the Conservative Party manifesto: “Britain in 2010 is a great place to live in many ways” (4:12 in on this video). Lord Young, The Spectator’s Peer of the Year, agrees: for many of us, we’ve never had it so good. He told the Telegraph: ‘For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession – this so-called recession – started…Most people with a mortgage who were paying a lot of money each month, suddenly started paying very little each month. That could make three, four, five, six hundred pounds a month

The Times has a spread on free schools (p20-p21) today (£), focusing on the model of Kunskapskolan, one of the largest Swedish chains, who are setting up shop in Britain. “Pupils set their own homework, decide their timetables, set themselves targets and work at their own speed – oh, and they clock off at 2pm,” says Greg Hurst, the paper’s education editor. He visits one of their schools in Twickenham. “At the heart of the personalised learning”, he says, lies a “one-on-one tutorial with a teacher for 15 minutes to review progress, weekly and long-term targets and timetables to meet them.” A pupil, Lisa, is quoted saying: “You talk to