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The slums come to the suburbs

Much of the anguish about the killing of Rhys Jones has focused on the tragedy of his life being cut short so young. But what makes his death stand out from the recent spate of slayings of teenage boys is that Rhys didn't hail from the mean streets. Croxteth Park, by all accounts, is an "aspirational" suburb. Despite grim headlines about rising levels of violent crime, most of the disorder stays in the ghettos. This has allowed the middle-classes a luxurious degree of complacency about the dangers of Britain's flourishing underclass. Well, not any more.

Theodore Dalrymple, responding to a gunning down of two girls in Birmingham back in 2003, wrote this article which deserves re-reading.

These are just everyday scenes from underclass life in Britain, a life to which our middle classes, intellectuals and politicians have remained impenetrably indifferent for many years. Never mind: before long, they will soon get a few lessons in underclass culture whether they like it or not. They won't have to go to the slums: the slums will come to them.

Grimly prophetic.

Robbie Millen

You're in the public sector now

Digby Jones, interviewed yesterday by MPs gave us this gem:

How I voted in all my elections since I was 18 years old is actually a matter for me and no one else but I think all of you here would be absolutely surprised how I voted.

But I would suggest that remains what I always thought was democracy in this country, which is secret.

What a preposterous answer. Of course, formally he can keep his vote private. He can also keep his views on industry quiet. No one is forcing him to be a public figure. To use the secrecy of the ballot as an argument for keeping private the political views of ministers is absurd.

Knickers in a twist

Joseph Corre rejected his MBE today because he believes Tony Blair to be "morally corrupt". Mr Corre is founder of Agent Provocateur, purveyors of pricey pants, which as well as selling strip-poker sets, asks you to "whip up a fantasy with our collection of striking leather paddles and Swarovski diamante whips." We can safely say knickers to the views of this moral titan.

Robbie Millen

Pakistan keener on some honours than others

Why the Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister was so upset about the Rushdie knighthood is beyond me. After all, as this Pakistani news report shows, The Queen was bold in also honouring a Palestinian in her Birthday Honours list.

The report says:

Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace, the Palestine man in the Wallace and Gromit films, has been appointed an OBE for services to drama

Hmm. Our colleague and spotter-in-chief Hugo Rifkind, says:

I think they mean "plasticine". Not exactly a freudian slip, but something pretty close.

Murad Ahmed

Does this man deserve to be in jail?

Show me the victim?

The case of David Le Brocq is bizarre. He is the teacher sentenced this week to one year in prison after being found guilty of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust. Here are the facts: he had an affair with one of his pupils, a 15-year-old who made the first move; full sex only started when Karl Donaldson reached the age of the consent; Donaldson did not complain to the police nor did his mother who knew about the relationship which seemed utterly mutual; and Donaldson, who lifted his right to anonymity, is in no way damaged by the affair nor holds a grudge against Le Brocq.

Yes, a 26-year-old dating a 15-year-old is creepy. Yes, Le Brocq should have been professional and not become intimate with one of his charges. And most certainly he ought never to be allowed to teach youngsters again. But was this case really best solved by criminal law? Who, after all, is the victim of the crime that Le Brocq was found guilty of? Not the young man. Can it really be worth jailing someone for offending against the rather nebulous concept of breaking the trust of one's position.

Of course, it's not as if the papers are full everyday of stories about prisons bursting at the seams. And it's not as it if Lord Falconer is preparing the early release of criminals who've left a trail of victims behind them.

Robbie Millen

Blessed are the cheesemakers

My favourite fact of the last 12 months appeared in The Times this morning.

Apparently 52 per cent of senior figures in the dairy industry believe that this Government "is actively anticheese".

This amazing piece of information is one of a number that adorn an article that you couldn't make up.

The conclusions from Crevice - what went wrong?

What went wrong? The bitter conclusion from the Crevice trial was that, if the security services had spotted the clues, the 7/7 London bombings could have been prevented.

Vikram Dodd, writing in The Guardian analyses the systemic failings of the security services that let the 7/7 bombers, Mohammad Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, slip through their grasp.

Before the bombings, the security services had made several false assumptions. They assumed that the threat was primarily from north African jihadists, loosely inspired by al-Qaeda ideology, and they discounted the prospect of British-born suicide bombers...

Counter-terrorism is one of the most important areas of government activity, yet it is one of the least scrutinised - and the latest revelations suggest that what scrutiny there is does not work

With all the papers in agreement that mistakes were made, the question is, what should be done now?

Calling for an inquiry into the mistakes made, Rachel North, a survivor of the 7/7 attacks, and now a prominent blogger, writes:

We all make mistakes. I do not blame people in the security services for their mistakes and failure to use intelligence. It is failing to admit mistakes and then trying to cover up mistakes which is unforgivable and inexcusable.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, writing in The Times this morning also called for an independent inquiry, as have the Lib Dems

But would public safety be assisted by such an inquiry? Today’s Leader article in The Times thinks not:

There must be a transparent accounting for this failure, but a full public inquiry is a luxury that we cannot now afford. Preventing the next attack is a more urgent priority, and the essential lessons to be learnt from Operation Crevice are, regrettably, already clear...

The argument for a full and open-ended public inquiry is weak. Such inquiries, from Bloody Sunday onwards, have obscured as much as they have clarified. In this case, continuing reporting restrictions on separate but related terrorism investigations would sharply curtail an inquiry’s power to call witnesses and elicit new evidence

But if you disagree with that, you might want to sign this petition.

Murad Ahmed

The pros of Trident

People say it's useless... but the new Trident already appears to have deterred Nigel Griffith from being a member of the Government. That's got to be worth £20 billion of anyone's money.

No need for a Heelys panic

The tragic story of a young boy who was run over while wearing Heelys has produced a predictable response. Wearing shoes that turn into roller skates is dangerous, we are told. I predict that within days the news will be full of Heelys accidents.

The Times quotes the Singapore Medical Journal which recorded 37 accidents involving Heelys. But is this a lot or a little?

And more important still, did the total number of accidents involving children go up or down during the period of the study?

Wearing Heelys might be a substitute for walking safely across the road. Alternatively, it might be a substitute for, say, full scale roller skating which could be more dangerous.

In his excellent book Risk, John Adams explains the concept of risk compensation. We all (children included) set the level of risk we are content with and if we are banned from one risky activity we simply choose a substitute.

Lord preserve us from a "Heelys scare"

What do young Islamic radicals and mohican-styled punks have in common?

Young people are more tolerant than their elders, aren't they? Absolutely not. When I was 16 or 17, I went through a very religious phase and attended a charismatic evangelical church. It was the sort of place where people spoke in tongues and the devil was cast out. Naturally enough, the Biblical literalism and black-and-white morality appealed to young minds.

So while other youngsters rebelled against flabby conventional society by smoking pot or becoming Goths or joining the Socialist Workers Party or indulging in petty crime, my rebellion (which meant a lot less pleasures of the flesh) was to devoutly follow a very hardline conservative morality. In fact, I remember being doubly pleased with myself for rebelling not only against my left-wing teachers but also the rest of youth culture. Thankfully, we grow up: silly extremist views and outlandish lifestyles give way to the reality of 9-5, the property ladder and finding a mate.

So that's why I don't feel terribly alarmed by the Policy Exchange survey of young Muslim opinion that was reported in today's Times. We learn that young Muslims in Britain hold much more extreme, radical Islamist views than their parents - a third polled said they wanted to live under Sharia law, three-quarters preferred women to wear a hijab (though, of course, three-quarters of young Muslims don't wear them), and 13% said they admired al-Qaeda. That should not be a surprise. Young people love being angry and love outraging the bourgeoisie. And if you are a Muslim you can pick an off-the-peg radical identity that really upsets mainstream culture. It sounds flippant but the veil that young Muslim girls wears are, to me, no different to the punk's Mohican in the late 1970s: a way of saying "f*** off".

This may be overly optimistic but I suspect that the vast majority of these young Muslims's views will mellow and the following generation will find some other way of upsetting their elders. Certainly a few years back we weren't worried about young Muslims being too radical in their views. Rather, we were worried that they were becoming too much like oikish, alienated white youth. Indeed, there was a slew of articles about how Asian men were muscling in and dominating the drug-pushing game. The brilliant social commentator, Theodore Dalrymple, wrote a piece in 2001, before the 9/11 bombings worrying about that. I'm hopeful that in a couple of years time we can get back to criticising young Asians for being amoral and coarse.

Robbie Millen