Is social conservatism essential for a strong society?

The more you look at the actual sociological data (rather than the dominant ideological clap-trap) the more it seems that social conservatism is the essential glue needed for that strong, stable society we crave for. Maybe Harinam & Henderson are selective in their data for this article but it makes a compelling case.

Go to church.

But why do some areas exhibit higher rates of upward mobility than others? For Carney, social capital is the key. Places with more civic activity, regardless of income, have more upward mobility. In fact, Chetty, calculating an area’s “social capital” score, found a strong correlation between civic activity and upward mobility, with religiosity (e.g. going to church) leading the way. Both white working-class and black inner-city neighbourhoods lack the civic institutions that allow for upward mobility. Furthermore, research suggests that a 15% increase in the proportion of people who think others are trustworthy raises income per person by 1%.

Take personal responsibility and follow the 'success sequence'- "graduate from high school, work full-time, and not have children outside of marriage"

According to Haskins and Sawhill, individuals in families that adhered to the success sequence had a 98 percent chance of escaping poverty. By contrast, 76 percent of those that did not adhere to any of these norms were poor. In a 2003 analysis of census data, the authors demonstrated that had the poor followed the success sequence, the U.S. poverty rate would have fallen by more than 70 percent.

Support the family and marriage

Whereas 8 percent of children born to married parents end up in poverty as adults, 27 percent of children born to unmarried parents live as impoverished adults. According to a study by social scientists Robert Lerman, Joseph Price, and Brad Wilcox, “Youths who grow up with both biological parents earn more income, work more hours each week, and are more likely to be married themselves as adults, compared to children raised in single-parent families.”

The authors report that not only does controlling for family make-up pretty much eliminate differences between races but that the single best thing to reduce social pathologies like depression, alcoholism, suicide, IV drug use, and domestic violence is to cut the rates of child abuse. And child abuse is dramatically higher where children are born outside marriage.

It's one article and I'm sure there's plenty to question but it matches the work on child and young people of Robert Putnam as well as robust evidence on how social stability benefits the less well off far more than it does us well-connected middle-class folk. What is very clear, however, is that the collapse in traditional families sits right at the heart of the problems we see in inner-city communities. And it's no surprise that, for these communities, the people who look to escape a world of poverty, violence and drugs turn to the stability of the church as pretty much the sole wholesome thing on offer.

I am mixed on the matter of social conservatism given its association with anti-gay messages and a traditional, essentially subservient role for women. But the argument here is compelling - finishing school, getting a job and keeping a job, getting married and staying married is still the best route out of poverty. Our social policies should, therefore, focus on supporting these outcomes - well-funded schools with good discipline and a focus on outcomes, real support for people in work aimed at keeping them in work and a substantive and genuine commitment to reward marriage.

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You'd have thought a prospective MP would have through about this before applying?

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"I am the mother of two children and, despite my best efforts to make arrangements to bring them to Bradford for the next 70 days, particularly as one of them is doing her GCSEs, this would have caused massive disruption at a critical time.

"I would not be able to do justice to the members of Bradford West CLP [constituency Labour Party] and the people of Bradford."

If this is the reason for withdrawing then that's fine. But - if moving up to Bradford was so disruptive to her family - why did Amina Ali apply for the job in the first place?

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Why we're conservatives...

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It's pretty simple really but sometimes someone captures the heart of it with a little story. Here's Marco Rubio:

Many nights growing up I would hear my father’s keys at the door as he came home after another 16-hour day. Many mornings, I woke up just as my mother got home from the overnight shift at Kmart. When you’re young and in a hurry, the meaning of moments like this escape you. Now, as my children get older, I understand it better. My dad used to tell us — (SPEAKING IN SPANISH) — ‘in this country, you’ll be able to accomplish all the things we never could’. A few years ago, I noticed a bartender behind the portable bar in the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father, who worked as many years as a banquet bartender. He was grateful for the work he had, but that’s not like he wanted for us. You see, he stood behind the ball all those years so that one day I could stand behind a podium, in the front of a room.

It's not about elites or privilege. It's not about government or administration. And it's not about banks or capitalism.

It's about people, about opportunity and a world where, if we take responsibility for our future, we have the chance to succeed. Even if that success is just seeing our children get a better start, a higher score on the dice. Rubio's little story doesn't mention the government, it doesn't weep about ill-luck or carp about poverty. Instead it tells of the human spirit and the pleasure of knowing that our achievement stands atop the broad shoulders of family and community.

It's why I am - and you should be - a conservative.

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Remembering and the prism of prejudice

Mum's Garden

Do we really remember stuff or do we rather see glimpses of the past through a prism of our prejudice? Sometimes that crystal is kindly, showing the past as a wondrous, carefree time filled with pleasure. Other times – other people – see the past as dark, scary, a place of evil ghosts and terror.

In one respect we can nail down the past – there are events and occurrences, things that happened. The day you started school, the time you broke your arm, family marriages, births and deaths. Are these the past or are they simply a framework on which we hang reminiscence?

Throughout my upbringing, we were told (with varying degrees of assurance) that our surname – Cooke – was Irish. Nothing wrong with that and the name is certainly is a good Irish name and we were brought up Roman Catholic too.

Yet when someone actually looks at the family history, it turns out that my father’s family has very little Irish connection and that the surname – originally without what we liked to called the ‘superior’ E – takes us back to the Isle of Wight. Turns out there’s a great deal more Irish in my Mum’s (Anglican) family than in my Dad’s (RC) family.

Reminiscence, in this case, had trumped history. The truth – the framework of facts – had been broken by the weight of that remembering. History was replaced by myth – in this case harmless but such myth-making might be dangerous.

There is a fine tradition of family biography. We are rightly fascinated by where we came from and how it made us what we are. But there’s a dark side to this – what I’d call the search for excuse rather than explanation. Too often this involves reminiscence cloaked in darkness, painting of the personal past as a terrible time.

We do this dark remembering because we believe it cathartic – let it all out, says the therapist. But does that person stop for a second and consider how such reminiscence might hurt others? Do we examine the truth or merely state that our recollection – however dark – is a true recollection? And, in our reminiscence, do we condemn others as wrongdoers so as to set ourselves as victims?

I suppose that it doesn’t matter much really if we are discussing the distant past (although the damage of myth is plain to see in Ireland, the Balkans and many other places of conflict) but what if our reminiscence – the myth-making – is about the living? We cannot let indulgent catharsis come ahead of truth and our remembering is not truth. Yet too often we are tempted to tell others of our remembering.

For me, if we remember only bad things – and blame our current predicament or the struggles of our lives on those things – then we are little better than the things we criticise. We choose to hurt others as a means of explaining our personal position.

We want that remembering to justify what we think today. And so we do it through that prism of prejudice.

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"Selling off the family home..."

Tomorrow Andrew Dilnot presents his report on the funding and structure of long-term care for the elderly - a subject of enormous importance but sadly one characterised by an obsession with not "selling off the family home". Take this example from the Sunday Telegraph - described as 'examining the issues' but, in reality, saying that it's terrible to have to sell the "family home". One case is cited at length:

This was precisely what happened to retired librarian Doris Cutler. At the age of 80, she was fit and well, and enjoying life in the bungalow overlooking Swansea Bay that she had bought with her husband 30 years ago.

After his death, she had been determined to stay in her home, surrounded by friends and neighbours. Even when signs of dementia emerged she was resolute, and an army of carers were hired to keep her at home.

After a fall this winter, at the age of 85, everything changed.

Her daughter Diana said: "It was just untenable for her to stay at home. She was extremely confused, and needed around-the-clock care and that meant a nursing home."

Selling the home was the only option.

Absolutely - a significant asset perhaps with sufficient capital to provide for a comfortable and dignified end to Mrs Cutler's life. What exactly is the problem? Are we suggesting - as this article does - that somehow using this capital is wrong? Or that taxpayers - many of them without good incomes or significant assets - should pay for Mrs Cutler's care so her daughter can inherit the "family home"?

And, of course, Mrs Cutler's home is not a 'family home' and this sort of statement presents a lie:

Inevitably, many who spend decades working hard to provide a home for their family, will still be forced to sell up when frailty overwhelms them. 

In the case cited the "family" appears to consist of a 53-year-old daughter - who is probably employed and living in her own "family home" somewhere else.  That is the typical situation - there will be exceptions (and, I've no doubt sad and tragic exceptions) but most octogenarians aren't providing a home for their families.

Rather than this emotional (and misleading) tugging at the heart-strings of family, we should be asking how we get people to plan for the likelihood of care requirements - indeed the inevitability of such needs. We should be speaking with our own families about how we deal with the funding of care. This means considering savings, releasing asset value and, yes, should it be necessary, selling property. After all, you can't take it with you, can you!

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Super-injunctions and the media missing the point

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After perhaps six or so weeks of discussion in various corners of the 'blogosphere' - notably regarding the efforts of John Hemming MP to raise his concerns in Parliament - the big media boys and girls have finally noticed. Or rather have fixed on one aspect of the problem - its use to protect the 'privacy' of footballers, actors and politicians who don't wish for their sexual adventures, peccadilloes and misbehaviour to be paraded across newspapers and TV screen for the public's titillation and entertainment. As the Daily Mirror puts it:

The people who are granted injunctions that prevent the media revealing things of which they are ashamed have two things in common.

They are all rich and they are all men.

These injunctions aren’t just creating a privacy law, which should be the prerogative of Parliament, but can be an attack on women who ­understandably want to reveal how they have been treated.

All very righteous but, I feel, missing the main point. The place where John Hemming started wasn't with some footballer's sex life but with the family courts. With the gagging of people through threats to remove children, with the seeming tendency of the courts to protect the professional rather than the child and with the byzantine - even Kafka-esque - processes within these systems.

The person in question could actually be jailed for telling his MP that he had been in court case No. 773. What is so sensitive about that? In practice, even family court proceedings are not that confidential. I think this case was in the Commercial and Admiralty court. My first question is not just how the hell this could happen – I apologise for the non-parliamentary language, Mr Bone. How does this happen? How many more of these cases are there? How many secret cases do we have in this country, with people being banned from even saying that the case exists?

This is what we should be concerned about. It is not enough for us to be told by some lawyerly opinionator that:

Hemming seems to discount the possibility that the professionals involved may actually be genuinely trying to do what we pay them to do – protect young people like this. 

I know from experience that professionals do try to do their jobs well and to maintain their duty to the child. But that general observation - along with ad hominum attacks on John Hemming and others - is not sufficient to answer the specific charge. And that charge is that the family courts do not always behave properly and that these hyper-injunctions can be used - just as they are with footballers - to prevent the public knowing what the public should have the right to know.


By obsessing about the sins of celebrities, the media are providing a smokescreen for a substantive examination of these issues and, at the heart of them, the use of gagging orders to cover up the failings of public servants.

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Wednesday Whimsy: a glimpse back as the sun sets on the first decade of the third millennium

The picture above was taken on the island of Bryher – close to the most westerly point of England – and coming across it again set me to thinking about the end of a decade. What follows are a few whimsical thoughts on the past ten years – not a list of good or bad. Not a set of achievements nor a load of political gripes and grumbles – others will do that so much better than I ever will. In a way they are first few things that come to mind about the ten years since the millennium. So – as they say – in no particular order!

1. That Kick! England winning the Rugby World Cup – against Australia with the last kick of the game. Absolutely priceless!

2. Watching from the Bradford Alhambra’s “Gods Bar” as Provincial House was blown up – paving the way for what will be one of the best public spaces anywhere in England

3. Moving into The Nook and having the central heating break down – six days later - on Christmas Eve (Ralph, now retired plumbing genius, came out and fixed it)

4. Rocky, next door’s bantam cock who would fight anyone or anything – but sadly lost his last bout to the fox

5. My wife’s cousin Maurice winning the Mott Medal for Physics – read the citation and understood one word in ten! (And he’s now an FRS too!)

6. Getting my Masters degree – never thought I’d have a degree with the word “science” anywhere near it!

7. Jethro being the first Bradford Grammar School pupil to get a Gold Medal in the Royal Society of Chemistry “Olympiad”

8. Going to my first ever game at Old Trafford – Tevez scores! Manchester United 0 West Ham United 1. Magnificant!

9. Presenting Bradford’s case to UECA – and getting the International Markets Festival for the City (worth the hardship of a trip to Rome)

10. Seeing Nabucco at the Arena di Verona – with Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate coming just after the sun had set. I cried my eyes out.

There were bad things during the decade – I didn’t get to be an MP (although I halved Anne Cryer’s majority), my wife lost her job of thirty years and we have had Gordon Brown as prime minister. But I prefer to focus on the positive and on the fact that as was once said: things can only get better!

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