Jobs are no longer for life
Jobs are no longer for life.Last May the Chancellor showed that he was aware of the dimensions of the problem. What the Chancellor had actually been talking about was the phenomenon of an economic recovery in which many paradoxically feel anxious and insecure. In the Eighties, the sense of personal threat was shared by relatively few. if we don’t cut taxes before the next election, I don’t think we’ve a hope in hell of winning it.” The shadow chancellor, Gordon Brown, was jubilant: “He [the Chancellor] shows that he has no confidence in his economic policy.” It was a great story.Except that it ain’t so. His Tory colleague John Townend lamented: “We’ve spent too much and talked too much … Within hours calls by radio and television producers, agency reporters and newspaper correspondents had summoned up an army of critics to testify to the foolishness of Clarke.
Bill Cash, opinion once again outrunning comprehension, attacked the Chancellor for his negativity “I am extremely disturbed,” he said We know, Bill, we know.
But the Greatest Gaffe of Clarke was Wednesday’s admission on radio that there might not be a “feel-good factor” before the next election. Time will tell whether Ms Armstrong is allowed to set such stringent tests of competence for her own colleagues, should they achieve office. If she does, Labour will go through ministers like nobody’s business – Ken Livingstone may get a turn. Yesterday he mentioned the nappy-making industry of Consett – regrettably also defunct.
The Labour MP Hilary Armstrong felt that this “just confirms what we already know – it is time he was out of office”. This, said Labour, proved just how out of touch the Chancellor was. Poor old Ken Clarke. Two weeks ago he praised the efficiency of a long-closed steel works in Consett.
It would also be absurd to have a system under which a child could bear no criminal responsibility up to the age of 10, but, once past that point, be regarded essentially as a fully fledged adult.We should not be rushed into changes that could criminalise members of a generation before they really know what being a criminal is. Children may have changed a great deal, but they have yet to outgrow the need for special legal protection that the Law Lords rightly endorsed yesterday.. Home Office research demonstrates the difficulty that repeat offenders have in developing this faculty.Children mature at various paces: the law must, for the sake of fairness, make allowance for different rates of development. Most children are quite old before they can empathise with the victims of their actions, and so really understand why they should not do certain things. Children may, even as infants, be able to recognise differences between right and wrong: a young child soon distinguishes between actions that are praised and those that are punished But full moral sensibility amounts to more than this. There is increasingly vocal pressure to change the law so that children aged 10 and over are considered to be fully developed moral citizens.
