Tolja

[fpb]

This - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215389/Abandoned-parents-betrayed-schools-young-boys-turning-criminal-gangs-protection-sense-belonging.html - is without a doubt the best and most important article printed by any British newspaper in months if not years. And Harriet Sergeant is an exceptional journalist - I have seen other items by her, and she is brave as a steel sword. But I regret to say that I foresaw every word of it before I ever started blogging, and described it in my article about the Tony Blair generation two or three years ago.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Excuse me, but someone said that they did not want to be "trapped" discussing political issues on my blog.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I never said "trapped." :P I blame only myself when I succumb to temptation.

I'm actually disposed to vociferous debate by natural inclination. So I made a choice to try to keep my LJ/authorial presence detached from that -- but sometimes the spirit is weak. ;)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And I do not usually reject an opportunity to argue. But in this case it seems to me that you have already decided that what I posted about is the result of scare stories in newspapers, rather than - as some of my older friends know - decades of experience of British society at literally every level (from the high table of Balliol College, Oxford, to months on the streets of London and three years in a housing estate in the East End), which means that not only I can attest the truth of what this unusually brave and forthright journalist describes, but that I predicted it nine years ago and described it two years ago. I do not react well when my own personal experience is denied and ascribed to bad reading.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://fpb.livejournal.com/250748.html