By
Mail On Sunday Comment
19:21 EST, 12 May 2012
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19:21 EST, 12 May 2012
Combating yobbery: David Cameron hopes the scheme will help halt the breakdown in family discipline
We seem to have lost the ancient art of turning babies into civilised human beings. Nurseries repeatedly complain that their small charges have no idea how to behave.
Having started on the wrong foot, many of these troubled infants go on to be undisciplined pupils in the school classroom, and then progress to much worse things in the world outside.
There is plainly a severe problem – and it seems to be deeper here than in most of our Continental neighbours. It is of course important to discover and rectify its underlying causes. But many parents and children need immediate help. So the Prime Minister is quite right to address it.
His plan for a trial offer of parenting classes – with vouchers readily available to all those in charge of young children – finally puts into practice an idea that has been urged by experts and pressure groups for more than 20 years.
It is very important that this experiment is not allowed to fizzle out, like so many similar initiatives. It should be taken seriously, closely monitored and objectively studied in action.
Several obvious problems need to be addressed from the start. Those who most need help may well be those most reluctant to seek it, or those least likely to hear about the scheme at all. Compulsion in such matters would be totalitarian. So the vouchers will need to be more actively promoted in some areas than in others.
It is, and always will be, impossible to reach a consensus on the ideal method of bringing up babies.
Voucher: The £100 token which will be handed out in selected Boots store from tomorrow as part of a £5million trial
So mothers and fathers should also be able to choose different styles of parenting, rather than being directed to a one-size-fits-all programme.
These vouchers must be paid for from taxation, and could end up costing a great deal. There is a danger that plausible charlatans could take advantage. So the teachers themselves will also need to be carefully selected, carefully inspected and judged by their results.
With these precautions, there is a very good chance that this idea could make many lives better than they would otherwise be.
Lansley’s label of love
Like most people over 35, the Health Secretary feels he needs all the help he can get to control his waistline. And, while he deserves praise for his candour about his own weight, Mr Lansley should also be complimented for seeking clearer, more consistent labelling on packaged foods.
Nobody can legislate willpower into existence, but it is far easier to avoid or combat obesity when we know more exactly what we are eating.
Victory for the stingy?
It has been a long time since every schoolchild knew Horatio Nelson’s final signal to the Fleet by heart, or was stirred by the story of his death at Trafalgar at the moment of triumph.
But some may still have doubts about whether parts of HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship and an irreplaceable national shrine, should be hired out to those who want a splendid setting for dinner, to help pay for her repair and maintenance.
Nelson himself, like all naval commanders of his day, was well used to dipping into his own funds to overcome the stinginess of the Treasury towards the fighting services. He might have smiled wryly had he known how little some things would have changed two centuries after his death. Perhaps we should do the same.
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