Conventional Wisdom - Pure Drivel

Dear Stan,

At least one commentator (Peter Hitchens, as ever) was willing to back the Pope. And incidentally willing to point out that conventional wisdom (i.e. 90% of both politicians' words and media output) is pure drivel.

* Conventional wisdom says the Pope is stupid and wrong to say fidelity and abstinence are better than condoms at guarding Africans from AIDS.

Conventional wisdom, as usual, is talking out of its backside. What the Pope says matters only if anyone listens to him. If nobody does, his opposition to condoms won’t stop anyone using them and will make no difference. If lots of people listen to him, his support for marital fidelity will persuade many people to follow this path, and so save untold lives.

The experience of such countries as Uganda suggests very strongly that he is right when he says this, and that fidelity is a far better protection than a rubber sheath. The only real hope is a change in sexual habits.

I am not a Roman Catholic, but I am weary of the concerted smearing and misrepresentation which the Pontiff constantly faces.

The Other Side of the Revolutions

After my recent visit to Basildon Park and seeing the exhibition for the "Pride and Prejudice" filmshoot, I reflected on my trip to Jane Austen's home in Chawton last year. Chawton is a picture postcard village and the Austen connection will doubtless ensure that it stays unaltered for a very long time to come.
 
But of course the outward shell of the buildings does not reflect the multiple social revolutions within the walls. As I toured the upper floor of the Austin house, I heard horses' hooves outside. Sure enough, there was a pair of well groomed animals, with their equally well groomed riders, walking at a relaxed pace down the one street of Chawton. No need to rush; after all, this was Sunday and these were animals kept as an expensive hobby.
 
In Jane's time, there would have been plenty of horses around, but as essential working beasts, supporting everything from farm work to deliveries of essential products to transporting people locally or nationally. The only horsepower used by most Chawton people today is the 200 bhp under the hoods of their BMWs as they set off for well paid jobs in the Thames Valley or up the M3 motorway to London.
 
As I came out of the Austin house, I heard the unmistakeable and very rare sound of a steam locomotive. The last steam locomotive ran on British Rail in 1968.  Of course - it was the preserved railway which runs behind the row of trees near the house. Again, a form of transport which was the backbone of the Industrial Revolution for over a hundred years is now a tourist curiosity. The famous "Watercress Line" starts at Alton, less than two miles north-east of Chawton. Alton is a little gem of a historic English town, as much as Chawton is a little gem of a village. Appropriately, Alton station is both the terminus of the Watercress Line and the terminus of the real present day trains which carry commuters to London.
 
Jane Austen's life finished shortly before the railway revolution started in the 1820s in England. No wonder such a famous person traveled only short distances in her lifetime, as I noted in a previous blog entry. Before the railways, any long distance travel was laborious, expensive, time consuming, uncomfortable and often downright dangerous. Period films hardly convey the problems; the immaculately polished carriages and impeccably presented horses are covered by present day Health And Safety laws and legislation forbidding cruelty to animals.
 
The Railway Revolution was only one of multiple revolutions which separate us from Jane. The Industrial Revolution of which it was an integral part is obviously another. The social and sexual revolutions within Chawton are less visible than the flat screen TVs and the broadband internet links within the historic houses or the BMWs in the driveways. But they are longer lasting and more deeply felt than the ephemeral technologies around us.
 
Watching the glossy, but unsatisfying 2005 version of "Pride and Prejudice", some of the aspects of the social revolution are far more startling than the beautiful houses and costumes. The interesting, but inadequate "additional material" on the DVD outlined some of the aspects of social attitudes underpinning British high society of the time. Obviously the kind of potential husband with an income of five or ten thousand pounds a year was part of a very, very tiny minority of the British population. Yet a procession of such desirable beaus was paraded across the screen.
 
Most telling was the position of clergymen. It is almost unimaginable now, but in Jane's time a clergyman held one of the most lucrative and desirable professions in the land - comparable to a very high powered lawyer or City trader today. This is evident in the reference to one character getting eyewatering compensation for losing out on preferment for a parish. The power and wealth of the ordinary clergy was a direct reflection of the national power and wealth of the established Church.
 
Almost as revealing are the courtesies and behaviors between the sexes - with the young ladies bowing automatically before any gentleman and the care taken over the reputations of the ladies. It was not merely bad being "damaged goods", as Elizabeth's youngest sister threatens to become as she elopes to London. Being related to the damaged goods would be social disaster and spell the end to any hopes of a respectable marriage.
 
The discretion exercised between a potential "couple" rang a distinct bell. Of course - all that old Catholic teaching about "avoiding the occasions of sin". You should not just avoid sin, but any circumstances likely to lead you to sin. No doubt Jane Austen and all her characters would have been horrified at any insinuation of Popery, but here they were, taking traditional Christian precautions, ensuring that a young man and woman should not even have a private conversation by themselves and that they behaved with the utmost decorum.
 
Even the present day actors portraying these characters could see some of the advantages of such rules; people knew where they stood, how they should behave and how to interpret the almost invisible signals given by the opposite sex. Not much scope for the present day excuses of "I though she meant Yes, Your Honour".
 
So here we are after 200 years of English revolutions far more radical than either the French or Russian variety. As Dr Johnson so truly remarked, no sensible man would pay a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. Jane could hardly have comprehended our present day technologies, beyond anything imagined by the most visionary science fiction writers of her time. But she might have written an even more devastating satire on present day sexual behavior - "Nonsense and Insensibility" perhaps?
 

Jane and Jesus

It was the 30th anniversary of the opening of Basildon Park (picture to right) to the public under the auspices of the National Trust. So they dropped the entrance tickets to their 1979 price of 90 pence ($1.35) and I arrived early to grab this bargain offer.

I have been to this minor stately home, 10 miles north-west of Reading, once before. But there had been a few changes since my last visit. A whole room was devoted to the filming of "Pride and Prejudice". Part of the 2005 version, starring Keira Knightley, had been shot at Basildon Park, with a few even more magnificent houses around England providing other backdrops. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414387/

Jane Austin was a relatively local girl, spending most of her life in the county of Hampshire, immediately south of Berkshire. I visited her home at Chawton, about 40 minutes drive from Reading, last year. She also spent a short time in Reading, attending the Abbey School about 200 yards from St James. This early 19th century establishment had absolutely nothing in common with the present-day Abbey School for the daughters of the affluent, but I suspect that the latter is very happy about any confusion on the part of the ignorant.

Her life is a reminder of how "local" was the life of nearly all people until very recent times. Such a famous (and fairly privileged) person never travelled outside a 70 mile radius of Reading in her whole life. In her later years, when she wrote her most famous novels, she spent most of her life within a small family circle in a very small radius of Chawton. But then Jesus travelled in an even smaller area and look at his impact...... (Chawton house at right.)



The film exhibition conveyed a highly positive image of the cooperation between the movie makers and the National Trust. This was in marked contrast to the impression of the James Bond film, "The Living Daylights", filmed at Stonor House (picture at right) on the other side of Reading. One of the staff at Stonor told me "Never again!!" Filming a huge budget Bond film was obviously a very different enterprise to "Pride and Prejudice". P and P's budget of $28 million was large by European standards, but modest in Hollywood terms.

Working in such a historic house posed endless problems for the crew. They obviously wanted to keep the National Trust on-side, otherwise they would compromise future cooperation in granting any filmmakers access to the hundreds of wonderful locations controlled by the NT. There were endless restrictions on the intensity of light and temperature; no equipment was to touch the historic walls. All the priceless and irreplaceable artifacts in certain rooms had to be catalogued, dismantled and carefully packed away.

As ever, the perversity of the creative team knew no limits. Having gone to all this trouble gaining access to a splendid house of the correct period, they decided that certain rooms were not splendid enough and needed some improving touches. 18 feet high pillars were constructed by a master plasterer (no fibreglass here) and shoehorned into a room. Once filming was over, they would just be dumped. No use storing all that expensive workmanship in the hope they might be reused in some future historic epic.

Basildon Park has known its up and downs; it is very lucky to survive to the present day without being demolished or destroyed as so many major houses have been. The 1930s depression and World War 2 obviously didn't help. During WW2, the legendary 101st Airbourne Division was billeted there, plus Italian prisoners of war. Between neglect, abuse and the ceiling of the library being scorched by brasiers during the grim 1940s winters, it was in a very sorry state by 1950.

Other parts of Basildon Park were equally enthralling. I couldn't recall them from my previous visit - I can't have paid proper attention. The Sutherland room was given over to a celebration of the largest tapestry in the world "Christ in Glory". This stunning work, 78 feet high by 39 feet wide, hangs in Coventry Cathedral. See http://www.know-britain.com/churches/coventry_cathedral_6.html


The original Cathedral was destroyed in the 1940 air raids on the city; Coventry was a major centre of the arms and vehicle manufacturing industries. At the time the destruction of this major city eclipsed even the London blitz; a new phrase, "to Coventrate", conjured up the new total warfare on civilian and military simultaneously. But was a civilian on a production line making a gun or a truck any less of a soldier than the man who used them on the battlefield? In 2005, when I visited Berlin, the German Historical Museum had relics from Coventry Cathedral on display.

The new Cathedral was consecrated in 1962, with the scorched shell of the old cathedral still standing beside it as a memorial. I have visited it only once in 1967. There was a still a huge empty area, used just for car parking, surrounding the new building. The rubble of 1940 had been cleared away, but no new buildings yet filled the vacancy. The enormous tapestry was emblematic of the new hopes for a new cathedral, a new city, a reborn Anglican Communion in England. The 1950s were a time of religious revival in Britain, with both the native clergy and exotic visitors like Billy Graham attracting churchgoers. In a few decades there was a catastrophic collapse into doctrinal chaos, moral confusion and organisational schism.

The Iliffe family, who bought and restored Basildon Park after WW2, made their money in provincial newspapers in the Midlands. They were friends of Graham Sutherland who designed the tapestry.

The Sutherland room contains numerous sketches and designs, both of the whole tapestry and detailed sections. Such a colossal project had to be subdivided to make it manageable. It also describes the manufacturing process at Freres Pinton in the little town of Felletin near Aubusson in France. To tackle this unprecedented task, this very specialised family firm had to bring out a huge loom last used 50 years earlier - talk about long term investment.

They were not even sure if this old tool could handle the sheer weight of the fabric, over a ton. But they did it and the whole enormous artwork was finally airlifted to Coventry. Someone suggested a 500 year warranty for the tapestry. No problem, monsieur. Tapestries made in the 15th century in that area still hang in cathedrals 500 years later.

See http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france_159/label-france_2554/label-france-issues_2555/label-france-no.-46_3691/feature-creative-arts-very-much-alive_3692/tapestry-tradition-of-excellence_4947.html

Royal Bank of Madoff

Some much needed light relief; "The Daily Mash" is in prime form with a comment on Bernie Madoff's fundamental mistake.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/madoff-pleads-guilty-to-not-being-a-bank-200903131639/

The picture of the "Royal Bank of Madoff" is a quick adaptation of the "Royal Bank of Scotland". RBS's recently departed Chief Sir Fred Goodwin has pocketed a pension of well over $1 million a year after flying the bank into the ground - and thus into the pocket of the taxpayer.

Despite all the ludicrous huffing and puffing by the media and various politicians, there is no legal way of relieving him of the money. And he is only 50 and in excellent health, so we may be paying him the $1 million a year for the next 40 years.

Still, informal vengeance is often the best. Some one daubed "Scumbag Millionaire" in large letters opposite Sir Fred's home in Edinburgh - in the same neighbourhood where J K Rowling of "Harry Potter" fame lives. As you might guess, it is a rather different neighbourhood from that inhabited by Danny Boyle's Edinburgh druggies in "Trainspotting".

Because It's WRONG! (Part 3)

A further postscript on the ever-depressing subject of child protection from the news this morning (Friday 13th March - how appropriate). The eminent Lord Laming complained that his recommendations for improvements in Social Service child protection had not been implemented. These recommendations were made years ago after the horrible death of a little girl, Victoria Climbie, in London. The occasion for his protest was a further investigation after the more recent and equally horrible death of a little boy, Baby P, in London.

With all respect to the good Lord, one of his well-meant recommendations was that sufficient resources should be devoted to child protection. Given the scale of the problem, do you think the entire Gross Domestic Product might make up for the failures of parents? The inefficiencies involved are mind-bending.....not to mention budget bending.

One social worker described the follow up to a family visit. If she spent a hour with a problem family, on return to the office she might spend anything from 30 minutes to 3 hours on electronic paperwork and other actions. There has to be a full accounting for all actions; even telephone calls to other agencies (e.g. police, schools, National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, etc) have to be recorded. And that is excluding other "downtime" such as travelling to and from families, team meetings, training, sick leave, holidays, etc.

A classic theme in past inquests into the horrible deaths of battered children has been "failures of communication" between the numerous responsible agencies. Teachers' worries about a neglected child did not get passed to Social Services, Social Services' communications to the police got buried in police files, the hospital staff hesitated to breach medical confidentiality, etc, etc. So the remedy for bureaucracy is super-bureaucracy.

And of course while the social worker is covering his/her backside in the case of one family, he/she cannot give attention to the other problem families in the desk. A totally perverse set of incentives encourages the social worker to spend more time protecting himself than protecting little children.

But given the way in which Social Service departments, from the most senior to the most junior front-line worker, have been mercilessly vilified in the media every time another disaster happens, such self defence is inevitable. And the witch hunting media are not going to indulge in any self-criticism about the way in which they have promoted the sexual liberation agenda and hence the mass abuse of children.

One of the few thoughtful articles I have ever seen on the subject is in the ever-superb "Touchstone" magazine:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-03-031-f

Carson Holloway's article "Dare We get real about sex" argues forcefully that you cannot promote the sexual liberation of adults without promoting the sexual abuse of children.

Which is why well meaning but unreflective politicians like Tom Harris are caught on the horns of a dilemma. He is rightly horrified at mass bastard breeding by vulnerable girls who are hardly more than children themselves. But to coherently argue for reform means far more than condemning such behaviour, however cautiously and diplomatically. You have to reject extramarital sex among consenting adults....and the gay agenda....and contraception...Er, hold on, Holy Cow, I want a few voters behind me come the next General Election. And the next General Election in Britain is barely a year way. All the New Labour chickens, from years of schmoozing bankers to PR spin to illegal wars to lying about education, are coming home to roost in quick succession.

Because it's WRONG! (Part 2)

(Stan writes:)
Bill,

In the previous post on Right and Wrong, are you indulging in sarcasm or are we to take you literally? There are several places in this post where I had that question. I'm not saying you need to make it clear, as such ambiguity fosters thinking.

Stan

(Bill's response follows)

Dear Stan,

I meant it literally; the problem with Tom Harris's article, like many "conservative" commentators' writings on "morality", is that he makes moral declarations without any bedrock of seriously considered principle to give them credibility.

Consider his sentence:

Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.

This statement by itself is obviously silly beyond belief; it condemns a large percentage of our mothers, grandmothers, etc. It is wonderful that modern teenage girls have far more opportunities than their ancestors. But what about those who have no aptitude for or interest in formal education, especially given the abysmal quality of secondary school qualifications in Britain? There is nothing "wrong" in the serious moral sense, about choosing to have children at an early age. It might be a misguided, ill-advised or short-sighted decision.....but that's part of the risk of being alive. For some girls it might actually turn out to be a very worthwhile choice.

Of course, if there were radical reforms in education to make it more relevant to deprived young girls' lives you might get some of them going for careers rather than diapers. God knows, Labour has poured more than enough money into state education to make some difference even in the worst areas. But Tony B Liar's mantra of "Education, education, education" doesn't seem to have reached the grass roots, at least in Tom Harris's constituency. What about a voucher system to promote new schools and draw educational innovators into providing for families who have never known the dignity of choosing their own private schools? Well, Tom's fellow Labour education bureaucrats and the teachers' unions would never stand for it, so I think we can forget that one.

And if he is condemning young girls only for having children out of wedlock at the ever-luckless taxpayer's expense? Well, that IS doubly wrong in a serious moral sense, both as an abuse of sexuality and recklessly making yourself dependent on the public purse. But Tom will have to do some serious arguing about the correct use of sexuality within the context of marriage and he's going to sound like the Pope, despite his unconvincing protestations that he is not promoting Christian morality. Or we are all going to suspect that he is picking a soft target for cutting public expenditure.

You can make a very convincing and purely rationalist case for encouraging people to have children within stable marriages by pointing out the terrible statistical outcomes for children born to single mothers. But these arguments always seem to lack practical effectiveness in the face of the libertines' ideology and their assertions that people are free to indulge their sexual preferences in any way they want.

In fact Tom almost endorses the libertines' position:

Don't interpret this as any kind of "back to basics" crusade; I'm not remotely interested in what adults do in the privacy of their own homes, and I'm not sounding the rallying cry for Christian or religious morality. But when the actions of others has such a debilitating effect on the rest of society, it's time to stop being polite. It's time to stop worrying about how people's feelings might be hurt if we question the choices they've made.

If he is not interested in what adults do in private, why does he regard it as wrong for young girls to be sexually active - unless he is hiding some religious agenda?

Tom gives a superb exhibition of delicate figure skating on very thin ice where he describes the grandfather whose immature daughter had just given birth. He did not want to condemn the father or daughter; after all, he is a politician and does not want to offend too many potential voters or seem to be religiously judgemental. But how are we going to reduce the incidence of illegitimacy unless it is again regarded as a target of serious social disapproval? The complacent acceptance of illegitimacy is plainly an important support for a girl's decision to get pregnant.

In short British politicians, even the sincerely well meaning like Tom Harris, are too compromised in too many ways to act as credible contributers to any serious debate. Merely lamenting the eyewatering expense of single mothers looks ludicrous when the Government and Opposition are united in continuing public expenditure at its present crippling level and in refusing to abandon anything: useless defence projects, useless computer systems, hordes of parasite consultants and Public Relations liars, expensive schools with appalling exam results, the 2012 Olympics, countless building programs which run way over budget.....and that is barely scratching the surface.

As for objecting to the killing of little children....well, some of us have problems taking any British politician seriously, given the scale of abortion in Britain and the near-impossibility of even reducing the number of weeks at which a baby can be aborted.

[More on the next post.]

Because It's WRONG!

It was a strange and unnatural sight. Here was the word "wrong" being used in an article in the "Guardian". It was seemingly being used in the sense of "morally wrong", not in the sense of getting the answer to a maths question "wrong". Indeed, the article was headed: "The return of morality". How could such an article be published in the temple of secularism and liberalism, "The Guardian"? And, to stretch the eyes wider, it was written by a Labour Member of Parliament, Tom Harris [picture at right].

He was rightly horrified by the spectacle of young women, barely out of childhood, giving birth to children out of wedlock and preparing for a lifetime on Social Security benefits. In short, a member of the Labour party was prepared to see the downside of the Welfare State which his party had promoted for over 60 years. And Tom Harris is a Scottish Member of Parliament; they don't come more hard-core traditional Labour than the Scottish variety.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/welfare-children

The very conservative writer Peter Hitchens [picture at right] went into understandable outpourings of joy over this apparent repentance by one member of the party of sinners. He declared:

I'd like to say a word in praise of the Labour MP Tom Harris, who this week very courageously spoke up for millions of respectable working-class people, long deprived of a voice by New Labour trendies who know nothing of real life.
He said: ‘Teenage girls shouldn’t be having underage sex. Why? Because it’s wrong. Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong. Parents shouldn’t teach their children that a lifetime on benefits is attractive or even acceptable. Why? Because it’s wrong.’

As he rightly says: ‘The most vociferous critics of the dependency culture and of deliberate worklessness have always been those who live in the same communities, those who resent paying their taxes to help other people waste their lives.’

Welcome, Mr Harris, to the ranks of the wild-eyed extremists. And good luck.

Peter's enthusiasm ran away with his normally sober brain, as I explain below. But it was forgivable; the sight of any British politician showing the smallest glimmer of sanity or courage is so rare that you tend to overreact in delight.

"Scotland on Sunday" on 8th March described one end result of multiple strands of the permissive society, aided and abetted by the Welfare State. The short and wretched life of Brandon Muir in the small city of Dundee came to a disgusting end just before his second birthday. With a junkie prostitute single mother who had just shacked up with a child-abusing paramour, his long term prospects were never promising. But to die in hours of lingering agony after a savage assault.....

It was a sobering reminder of the drugs underside of modern British life. Scotland's beautiful and prosperous capital, Edinburgh is famous for the biggest arts festival in the world. And its historic castle and other ancient buildings. And its Scottish Parliament. And its art galleries and film theatre. And the biggest theatre in Great Britain. (I saw "Les Miserables" there in the early 1990s). And the highest concentration of HIV sufferers in Britain, thanks to intravenous drug use.

You probably won't find any links to the Brandon Muir article on the Scottish Tourist Board's website (http://www.visitscotland.com).

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/opinion/The-Forgotten-Children-How-society.5049981.jp

A few weeks ago Danny Boyle won the Best Director Oscar for "Slumdog Millionaire". I thought it was a grotesquely overpraised movie, especially in comparison with his earlier brilliant "Trainspotting", which depicted the lives of junkies in Edinburgh. Trainspotting's most unforgettable scenes appropriately featured a dead baby. [Picture at right: EWEN BREMNER the perpetually unfortunate druggie Spud in Danny Boyle's cult classic Trainspotting (1996)]

Now we had a real life dead baby coming out of the drugs underworld of central Scotland. Not the first and certainly not the last. One estimate puts the number of children living in the Edinburgh area with at least one junkie relative as 6,000. There are 143 social workers looking after families in the Edinburgh area. Doing simple maths, each vulnerable child might have as much as 20 minutes attention per week from a social worker, once each worker has spent hours on his/her laptop doing the electronic paperwork to cover his/her backside against the next Dead Child inquest. These children might as well rely on a paper napkin to protect them from armour piercing bullets. As one commentator noted after the death of yet another abused child in London, there was a perfect audit trail showing how the social workers had failed to protect the deceased.

All this ought to be good ammunition for any ardent social reformer seeking to arose public determination to reverse disastrous trends. Yet the limitations of Tom Harris' position become horribly obvious once you think about them for ten seconds. What particular moral authority has he? About as much as you or me or the resident bore propping up the bar who declares it is all "wrong" that these Poles are allowed to come over here and take British jobs.

Take his proclamation:

Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.

Of course it's not wrong. This is a perfectly laudable and worthwhile ambition, as long as the teenager has a good husband to support her and the children. What is the glorious value of spending thousands of hours of your young life getting the transparently bogus British educational "qualifications", followed by years as a wage slave in some supermarket or call centre?

But, you protest, Mr Harris is merely objecting to such young women breeding at the taxpayers' expense. So what? Which paragon of moral authority decides that such actions are "wrong"? The British state pours about $150 billion per year down the toilet on wasted public expenditure of all kinds from useless defence equipment to useless computer projects to the 2012 Olympics. Who cares about a few billion spent on single parent families? As for ordinary people objecting to professional welfare claimants - who gives a **** about the opinions of our moronic tabloid reading masses?

And why is it "wrong" for underage girls to have sex, especially if they avoid pregnancy or seek an early abortion? The current age of consent (16) in Britain was imposed in the 19th century as part of the fight against child prostitution - and against the ferocious opposition of some senior politicians who wanted to continue breaking their sons in on child prostitutes. A girl's 16th birthday is a legal borderline as arbitrary as a tax percentage or a speed limit, with zero reference to objective morality. In other parts of the world, including Catholic areas, a girl can be married at 14. Tom Harris declares elsewhere in the article that he is not seeking to reimpose religious morality. So what basis of morality is he leaning on? The guy's a politician, after all. You can't help feeling that part of his Damascene conversion is down to the catastrophic recession - we just can't afford to fund a never ending stream of bastards out of the public purse. So is it just expedient to trumpet those fragments of "traditional" morality which assist public expenditure?

But surely some actions are visibly, indisputably wrong all the time, regardless of political ideology? Battering a little child like Brandon Muir to death is just plain "wrong". Well, at the moment, most people would agree. (What about the thousands of innocent Iraqi children killed horribly in an illegal war waged by a, er, Labour government? Er, well, er, that's different). But if Brandon had been two years younger many people would have reluctantly supported his termination right up to birth. What hope had he as a child of a junkie mother? Much better to eliminate him quickly and mercifully and avoid all the later pain and expense.

Tom Harris is notably silent on any other aspect of morality except the
is expensive moral failure of the underclass. But his confused and incoherent contribution is one hopeful sign that genuine moralists may have more public space and more sympathetic hearers for genuinely intelligent discussion than for decades past.

POST SCRIPT:

It was the Brandon Muir tragedy which sparked off Tom's article. On his website, Tom expressed his frustration that the Dundee child protection authorities hesitated about taking Brandon into care, even though his mother was a drug addicted prostitute with learning difficulties. But if he was taken into care, where would you stop? There are so many little children at varying degrees of risk from druggie parents; there aren't enough specialist social workers to supervise them or foster parents to care for them all. And there probably isn't enough capacity in the courts or legal profession to accommodate thousands of legal cases taking children into care and the resulting appeals....

[See following post for continuation of Bill's posts on this issue, and perhaps clarification of the problem facing all society.]