James Forsyth

This YouGov poll in the Daily Mirror makes for depressing reading. 42% of people don’t believe that it is safe to go out at night, while 11% don’t ever feel secure in their neighbourhood. 50% say they are less safe than when Labour came to power. The poll also shows that 89% of the public think that parents should be held responsible for the behaviour of their children. 62% say that poor parenting is most responsible for loutish behaviour and, despite all the attention given to the issue, only 5% argue that the biggest problem is the availability of alcohol.

Alice Miles argues in her Times column on the climate change protests at Heathrow  that, "Pretty much anyone without shares in BAA would not wish another runway on that particular part of England (if, indeed, upon any of it)." I really don’t think this is true, even if some people won’t admit to wanting another runway in green company. I’d wager that the vast majority of those who have been delayed taking off or landing at that airport would welcome something that would cut down on these delays. While everyone I know who flies out of there regualrly is positively clamouring for it.

Charles Moore has a must-read in the Telegraph today about the Dispatches programme “Undercover Mosque” that the CPS and the West Midlands police have criticised. They claim that the programme apparently took the quotes of various Islamic preachers out of context. But, as Moore points out, no one is claiming that the quotes were made up. While adding ‘context’ to observation such as that the Taliban who killed a British Muslim solider in Afghanistan was a hero, doesn’t make them any less disturbing.

I would have thought that the idea of granting asylum to those Iraqis who have served as interpreters for British troops would be fairly uncontroversial. But Neil Clark has issued a ferocious broadside against it today on Comment is Free, saying "let's do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain.” What’s particularly striking, or one might say sickening, about Clark’s arguments is that he is under no illusions about what will happen to these people once the British leave.

It is safe to go back in the water in Cornwall. It turns out that the the great white shark that was supposedly seen off Newquay was actually photographed in South Africa by a Cornish nightclub bouncer who sent the photos into the papers claiming he had snapped them off the Cornish coast as a bit of a laugh.

Over at Conservative Home, Peter Franklin has written a hard-hitting piece setting out some ‘home truths for the right.’ He accuses various bits of it of being self-indulgent, hypocritical and living in the past amongst other things. I wouldn’t agree with everything he says, but it is well worth a read.

‘Food miles’ is one of the new eco buzz phrases and makes people think that buying local food is inherently better for the environment. But an op-ed in the New York Times today flags up some new research that shows this is not the case when you consider all the energy used in producing the food not just the amount of CO2 emitted while transporting it. Here’s the key point about what the researchers discovered: “they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed.

It is good news that the government has finally got round to making certain that forced marriages are illegal. (How on earth it took this long baffles me. It is hard to imagine a more clear cut case of denying someone their rights than forcing them to marry someone against their will). But as Sunny Hundal points out over at Comment is Free, the bill actually does far less than it should—social services can still turn a blind eye while victims can not sue for compensation.  How supposedly good feminists like Harriet Harman are content to sit by while the government is so weak on these issues never ceases to amaze me.

Nick Robinson has a funny little blog post up on the ongoing needle between him and President Bush. Back in December 2006, Robinson asked Bush if he was in denial on Iraq. Bush bristled at the question, he doesn’t much like Fleet Street’s finest who he reportedly views as a bunch of smart alecs and Robinson with his quick-fire question seemed to embody that. So yesterday when the BBC man popped up to ask his question, Bush grunted “you still hanging around.” But it was at the end of the press conference when Bush got his real dig in. As Robinson writes, the president looked at me, sweating in the swampy conditions, and said, "next time you should cover your bald head". I made the fatal error of answering a quip with a quip: "I didn't know you cared".

This week’s Newsweek has a piece on what it calls “Britain’s post-Blair identity crisis.” Most of the article is about Gordon Brown’s current obsession with Britishness but this fact in it stood out: “every second child in London is now born to an immigrant mother.” This isn’t a problem if these children are being brought up in a way that leaves them feeling part of society rather than in opposition to it. (On that front, it is not encouraging that “only 26 percent of the 1.3 million British residents of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent are fluent” in English). But it does show how imperative it is that we articulate a sense of identity that the population as a whole can appreciate.

To date, Cameron has got the better of Brown at PMQs but the clunking fist had some good lines today. I’d bet that this one--"The wheels are coming off the Tory bicycle; it's just as well he's got a car following him!"—will be on the news tonight. As Tony might say, clunk!