Reflections of a stormy petrel

Four years and two months ago I argued that the catastrophic failure of contemporary British schools, and especially Tony Blair's utter unwillingness to deal with the real problems, was pouring out enormous numbers of young people (I estimated one twelfth of the whole generation) who were functionally illiterate, utterly unable to function in any significant manner in a modern society, excluded by nature... but very clever with computers. I underestimated this last issue, but I did point out that the stupid computer classes so eagerly championed by Blair were nothing but free periods with internet, in which each child played with the machine as they saw fit. They could not spell or count, but man could they play with graphics and surf the net. Then, one year and eleven months ago, I singled out a Harriet Sergeant article that told the same story and defended its importance and significance against inverarity, who managed, like many liberals faced with unwelcome messages, to find a "racist tinge" in it.

Now we see the results of everyone's chronic incapacity to deal with reality and facts on the ground. The police, paralyzed by PC, have nearly forgotten that their place in life is to use force - any force necessary - to maintain or restore order: in the face of viciously destructive rioting carried out mostly by black boys, they see the skin colour and fall back. From one end of England to the other, the story is the same: rioters loot at will, almost unhampered by any show of force. The police brag of having arrested a few hundred looters and charged a few dozen. That noise you hear is the laughter of thousands upon thousands of rioters.

What happens when hundreds of thousands of young men find that they are wholly excluded from national life - since they are too ignorant to read the papers, too innumerate to be gainfully employed, and carry a chip on their shoulder to boot - and effectively have no future? Now we have the answer. I have never been less happy to have been proved right. There is only one possible upside to this: we shall no longer hear from smug, out-of-touch ministers bragging how Britain is a "happy exception" in the landscape of international turmoil and crisis. When I heard Vincent Cable of all people saying that, I felt like tearing his throat out.