says David Cameron.
He said he backed tax breaks to help families stay together
Fathers 'must fight gang culture'
Ironic that the boy that got shot this week in Clapham was living with both parents; this didn't seem to have prevented him from being excluded from Ernest Bevin or being under a supervision order.
Of course, in an ideal world, all other things being equal, the best way to bring up a child is by both legal - biological? - parents. In an imperfect world, where so many different factors are involved that isn't always the best option, or even a possible option. And it's so obvious that teenage boys who lack a positive male role model are at a disadvantage to those who do. But the majority of boys raised solely by their mother, or with a father more absent than present, or by a mother and step-father, are not gun-toting gangsters. And 25% of men have a criminal record, almost all for petty one-off offences, the exuberance or misjudgement of youth; most of them haven't been lacking a father or father-figure.
There is no simple solution to the cesspit of problems that culminates in three teenagers being shot dead in two weeks, within a few miles of each other (and my home). If there was a simple solution, it would have been applied years ago.
I don't see a problem in principle in encouraging fathers to take more responsibility for the upbringing of their children. How to enforce it, and how to enforce it in a way that isn't counter-productive is another issue. I'm not sure of the proportion of children who have a genuinely unidentifiable father, but that can be eradicated by having all men's DNA compulsorily stored on a database (gay? vasectomised? lifelong monogamous? Catholic priest? Nope, you're a man, guilty of breeding random children until proved innocent). Although I am not quite sure who would pick up the pieces when it is revealed that the legal father, the mother's husband, isn't after all, the father.
We could release all fathers from prison so that they can take care of their children. Yes, even those jailed for abusing their own children. We can cancel all the restraining orders resulting from domestic violence. We can compel mothers to hand over their children to their drug-using gun-toting gangster fathers. We could compel widows to marry their late husband's brother. Failing that, we could make abortion compulsory for all unmarried pregnant women. Or perhaps sterilisation, female and male, for all those who fail the criteria for a 'licence to breed'. There could be exceptions on religious grounds ( a note from your Parish Priest/Imam/Rabbi should suffice), and those resulting bastards can be placed in large specially built institutions where their basic subsistence needs will be covered by non-English speaking temporary labour from Eastern Europe - not EU countries, obviously, because they'll demand at least minimum wage, and we can't afford that.
And we can ban the sale of rap music. All rap music. In shops. And request the BBC to stop playing rap music on Radio 2.
And a tax cut for David and Sam Cameron will, presumably, make all the difference between the junior Camerons becoming gun-toting gangsters. Even though, as far as anyone knows, neither the junior Blairs nor the junior Majors have turned into gun-toting gangsters, despite their parents not having that preventive tax cut.
David Cameron: never a coherent policy where a photo-opportunity will suffice.
I really should join the Tory Party; I could make their policies up for them as I go along.
