Cristina Odone

Children are lost without fathers

Here are three numbers to bear in mind when talking of the riots: 8 billion (pounds spent by social services each year on children and young people); 3.5 million (children from a broken home); and one fifth (school leavers who are illiterate).

Given that the £8 billion spent by social services on children and young people is a significant increase on the amount they spent, say, five years ago, talk of cuts triggering the riots makes no sense. Even when Labour Governments increased spending on social security, the results were hardly encouraging: the population of young offenders didn’t shrink, it increased. So did drug and alcohol addiction among the young.

But let’s look at the second number. A large and increasing number of youngsters are brought up without dads…. Read More

If I hear Emily Maitlis talk about “protesters” one more time I’ll scream. Come on, Emily: let’s call a rioter a rioter.

A protester is a rebel with a cause. These youths in hoodies and men in bandanas are not fighting for a principle, they’re trashing neighbourhoods for a plasma telly and a pair of new trainers. Masked gangs are looting department stores, not waving placards. One woman described being on a bus that was set upon by angry rioters; someone else talked about Turkish men lining the street of their neighbourhood to protect their homes from looters: neither eyewitness seems to be describing a protest.

To elevate the gangs’ inarticulate resentment to “protest” is not only a mistake, it is the creation of a dangerous urban myth. That myth sows doubts about police, fear of anyone young and black, and… Read More

They didn't talk about 'community' during the Brixton riots

I stayed up watching the news on the telly last night, then heard Today this morning to keep up with the news from Tottenham (and Enfield, Wood Green, Brixton, and even the West End). In her blog post on the riots, Katharine Birbalsingh makes the point that the word that was missing from this coverage was “black”. True. And the word that kept recurring was “community”.

An inarticulate woman on Today talked about how much Trident had helped the “black community”. (Trident, you may recall, was the scheme launched by the Met in 1995 to make black people feel the police were on their side – rather than picking on anyone from an ethnic minority.) On ITV last night, David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham,… Read More

The Eton elite

My introduction to the notion of ‘elite’, British-style, took place in the quad at Worcester College, Oxford. I was walking with a friend under the cloisters. We were in our Freshman year, and quite nervous still of our surroundings: he was a grammar school boy, I had just come from a sixth form college after years in America, and to both of us Oxford seemed surreal. Suddenly we heard a booming voice fill the quad. I can’t remember what it was saying, but it was clear that the boy – another Fresher – seemed to think he owned the place. “Who’s that?” I whispered, awe-struck. “Oh, it’s an OE.” My new friend shrugged, a mixture of resentment and resignation in his expression.

Old Etonians, I soon learned, were the elite. I was pretty stunned… Read More

Steve Hilton has the PM's ear (Photo: PA)

Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s barefoot adviser, has been focusing on kick-starting the economy. He’s come up with some ideas to cut red tape and needless expenses (including the numerous press officers that each governmental department seems addicted to). But the Government has quickly branded his latest (leaked) proposals “blue sky thinking” and, according to one source, as unlikely to ever see the light of day.

This is because one of Hilton’s  ideas would have working mothers descending on Downing Street in droves, calling for Hilton’s castration. The policy guru has called for the Coalition to drop maternity leave. What????!!! British employees are so used to thinking of maternity leave as sacrosanct and an unquestioned “good thing” that Hilton’s suggestion sounds blasphemous. The EU… Read More

Children are very lucky to have grandparents (Photo: Alamy)

‘Tell the children about chucking a stone at the Germans, Daddy,” I pleaded over lunch. My father didn’t need to be asked twice. Seventy years ago, as the son of a famous partisan leader (awarded a DSO by the British and hunted by the fascists), he was in hiding from the Germans, living with his aunt in north-west Italy. But when German tanks crunched down the village street, the temptation was irresistible. The convoy stopped. A Nazi officer jumped down from his tank.

Who’d cast the stone? The officer scoured the villagers who lined the street. My father, aged 8 (“Just like you, Isabella” he tells my daughter), defiantly stepped forward. The soldier made a gesture to show he would cut off hi… Read More

The ugly Scandinavian

The massacre in Norway shocks not only because of the numbers involved, and their youth, but because Scandinavia has been held up as the model society since the 1960s.

Here was a social democratic paradise, a liberal Nirvana. Sweden, Norway, Denmark: they were small, wealthy, homogenous, and incomparable in their egalitarian principles. Theirs was a sophisticated civic society, where citizens paid the highest taxes in the world, but received the best services. Everything worked, and everyone prospered. OK, so it was all awash with blonde, blue-eyed blandness; and I haven’t yet met a witty Scandinavian. But who cared about being bored at a dinner party, when these Vikings had everything else? Even I bought into the stereotype, and I’m half Swedish.

Such was the pervasiveness of the Scandinavian myth that when Stieg Larsson’s detective… Read More

A traditional church wedding (Photo: Alamy)

Watch out, Sam Cam. Pipe down, Miriam Clegg. Your husbands are looking into polygamy. Seriously, I’m worried – and you should be too.

A Government “discussion paper” seen by Paul Goodman of Conservative Home argues that, to create “the conditions for integration”, all religious marriages should be recognised by the state. The paper notes:
Similarly, religious marriage is not recognised by the State unless you choose for it to be so. This leaves an individual who enters into religious marriages unprotected if their partner enters a second or third religious marriage. This can be remedied by requiring both religious marriages and religious divorces to be registered with civil authorities. Likewise, there could be a duty on anyone conducting religious marriages and divorces to register… Read More

Is the Archbishop too thin-skinned?

I was sad to read that my old friend the Rev George Pitcher was sacked from his post as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special media consultant. And I was shocked to discover I played a part in his downfall. I have written before about a little spat I had with Dr Rowan Williams – a man I admire greatly – over his guest editing of the New Statesman. Playing party politics by editing Labour’s in house journal struck me as a mistake; all the more so when the issue was stuffed with anti-Coalition article.

I never thought I’d get a chance to tell Dr Williams about my disappointment; but, God working in mysterious ways, I found myself at the same drinks party and, after a glass of champagne,… Read More

Charlie Gilmour swings from a union jack flag on the side of the Cenotaph (Photo: Ki Price)

I spent the student riots last year clutching my mobile, hoping that Johnny, aged 17 and in Parliament Square, would let me know that he was all right. He wasn’t: he was “kettled” by the Metropolitan Police and only released at night. Kept out on the street in sub-zero temperature, my stepson paid for the protest with a nasty cold. He got off lightly, though, in comparison to Charlie Gilmour, the son of David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd guitarist. He was sentenced on Friday to 16 months for his “outrageous and deeply offensive behaviour”.

That behaviour included swinging from the Cenotaph; hurling a dustbin at the car in… Read More