The aftermath of the 'riots'

I'm always a bit sceptical of 'experts' who analyse problems in hindsight and tell us what was wrong and what we should do. Darra Singh, for example, was Chief Executive for both Luton and Ealing and I don't recall much commonality between what he said then and what he is saying now. I'm also a bit scpetical about one-off events such as the 'riots', as I'm not sure that exceptional cases should drive policy.

In this case, my personal belief is that the 'riots' were sparked by a single event - and were spread by a combination of ineffective policing and extensive media coverage of the worst of the activity. The violence in the earlier student protests, also heavily covered in the media, contributed to the expectation that violence was unlikely to lead to punishment. Since we have now seen thousands of convictions, I believe that the 'riots' will prove to be a one-off phenomenon. (I could prove to be wrong - we'll see.)

However, putting my scepticism aside, Darra Singh and his colleagues have pointed up some important issues. There are substantial communities comprised largely of families with low expectations, low educational achievement, and limited employment.  The media encourage unrealistic ambition for success without (much) effort through such programming as Big Brother and its ilk. Young people in these communities do become disillusioned and often resort to crime and substance abuse.And the solutions to all this do lie in 'rounded solutions'; there is no quick fix.

Just to pick up some existing interventions, Sure Start and Children's Centres were aimed at just these problems ... but are now not just under threat but are reducing their scope and capacity rapidly. And drug education programmes are also being cut dramatically. Both should be rapidly expand in a focused way to serve those families in greatest need.

And just to pick up on one proposed intervention. Of course it's right that children should learn to read and write at school. But teachers work their socks off because they have the same view - they want children to learn to read and write, of course they do! So 'fining' school for failure is plain misguided; rather schools should be allocated extra support, alongside family support, to make a real difference.