27th August:

The root cause of social problems like youth crime and obesity is one
simple thing: education.

Or, to be more precise, a lack thereof.

I know people who have barely had two pennies to rub together in the past, but they did not have a compulsion to go out and steal cars and blame society for their actions, nor feel the need to eat at Burger King five times a week and then pull a surprised face when their GP told them they had chronic heart disease. I am guessing this is because they were brought up and educated in an environment where their parents had a strong moral compass, and they believed that hard work and diligence would see them alright. The importance of this parental influence cannot be underestimated.

Television is currently full of programmes like ‘Supernanny’, which seem to involve an endless and gormless stream of fat and foul-mouthed parents queuing up to explain, usually with a perplexed look and a cigarette hanging out of one side of their mouths, to the resident child behavioural expert just what a fucking little shit young Justin has been recently. I am embellishing a little, of course, but it doesn’t take a leap of genius to see where young Justin got it all from...

Our baby daughter recently embarked upon the new adventure in alimentation we call ‘solids’. Which coincidentally enough led to the new adventure in retching we now call ‘nappy changing’. Being responsible and caring parents, we have started making purees of organic meat, fruit and vegetables which our offspring takes great delight in partly eating and partly redecorating with. It’s all part of the learning process, I tell myself. Food is, after all, partly social as well as being a necessity. Our local Health Visitor recently commented that we should probably be moving up a gear and offering our daughter solid food 3 times a day instead of the current 2. When asked for suitable breakfast suggestions, she helpfully offered us ‘cheese on toast’. Our daughter is 7 months old. And the government wonders why everyone is fat…

All too often, poverty is used as an excuse for criminality. It’s an argument that I have little time for. People with very little money might covet things owned by people with more, but there’s still a massive moral jump between coveting something and smashing someone in the face with a beer bottle so you can help yourself to it.

Nobody has an automatic right to wealth or happiness in this world. You have to work hard to achieve both. We should educate our children accordingly and stamp-down on the idea that the secret to success lies with short-cuts and quick fixes.

They just land you in jail or make you fat.