Some time ago a journalist friend of mine, who shall remain nameless for the purpose of this blog, asked me if her 15 year old son could come and do a week's work experience with me in July. I like to be helpful so I said yes and thought no more of it. Yesterday I got a phone message from someone, who conveniently didn't leave their name, from a company called Trident, about this work experience. I phoned them back and spent ten minutes on hold while they tried to find the right person. They never did and in the end I hung up. Today they phoned back to tell me that in order for this boy to come and work for us they need to visit us, carry out a health and safety survey, see our employers liability insurance and a full breakdown of what he will be doing while he is with us. They want half an hour of my time on top of the twenty minutes I have spent on the phone to them. It doesn't matter that it was all arranged by his mother, who is presumably happy for him to be here otherwise she wouldn't have asked in the first place. It was all I could do to stop myself telling them exactly what they could do with their survey.
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A total 635,679 babies were born in the UK in 2006. More than 193,000 abortions took place, a total which showed a four per cent rise on the previous year. This means that nearly one in four babies conceived in this country is aborted. Let me repeat that. One in four babies conceived in this country is aborted. This is a statistic which I found profoundly shocking and at first did not believe. What on earth does it say about our broken society that so many living beings are aborted? Surely even those who are pro-choice are also shocked at these statistics?
In an ideal world there would be no abortion, but we do not live in that world and never will. Those of us who adopt a pro-life attitude must recognise that we cannot roll back the clock and shouldn't try to. We have to be pragmatic, but that does not stop us trying to understand why the abortion rate in this country is so much higher than in most others, and then doing something about it. The question is, what?
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I wonder if David Cameron has hit on something with his rallying call for the Conservative Party to be the 'progressive' party. You might think that 'progressive' was the opposite of 'conservative' but I don’t see that at all. It is absolutely vital for Conservatives to reclaim the language that the left has conquered for itself - social justice probably being the most important aspect. The political issues of the next twenty years are not going to be the same as the last twenty years, and all truly progressive Conservatives know that.
We are going to have to talk and think more about issues which might have been off our radar screens in the past. Banging on about Europe, and immigration has not been enough to win the last two elections and it won't do next time. To build the electoral coalition we need, we have to demonstrate that we are serious about other issues too - social justice, civil liberties, inner city education, green issues to name but four. This is not a short term proposition. Cameron has made a great start in his first eighteen months. I rather suspect the next six months will determine whether his progressive agenda will have 'stickability' with the electorate or not.
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Do you have a Facebook profile? Facebook is the latest fad on the internet which allows people to communicate with each other, sign up to groups like “Readers of the EDP” or “Fans of Carlos Tevez”, or advertise events they are organizing. You can “poke” people (ahem), by which I mean you send them a message to remind them you are alive, you can review films, books or travel destinations. In short, it’s a social networking site. The site does have drawbacks, though. One of the main features is where you ‘invite’ people to be listed as your ‘friend’. I’ve had quite a few people from my dim and distant past contact me this way. Normally it’s great to hear from people you had met at university or school. But just occasionally someone contacts you who you’d rather not speak to again. You then have a dilemma. If you reject their invitation to be your friend they know you’ve done so, but by accepting them you’re not being true to yourself. Such dilemmas make the whole thing quite addictive. It’s free to use and great fun so do yourself a favour and visit www.facebook.com and invite me to be your friend!
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I have never been nominated for an award before so I was delighted to be shortlisted last week for the House Magazine/Sky News Political Commentator of the Year. The House Magazine is the in-house magazine of the Houses of Parliament. Only MPs and Peers are allowed to vote in the awards. I’m up against Nick Robinson of the BBC, Matthew D’Ancona of The Spectator and The Guardian’s Jackie Ashley. It’s the first time someone from the world of the New Media (by which I mean blogs, websites and internet TV) has been nominated. I don’t expect to win, but as my mother used to say, it’s the taking part that counts. I always thought she was wrong on that!
