Have I misjudged Cameron?

For a change I find myself agreeing with Cameron on something!

The life lived by thousands of young people in Britain's big towns and cities was "a disgrace to all of us". "Tell a 16-year-old boy, abandoned by his father – neglected by his mother, on drugs, dyslexic, hyperactive – that it's all his own fault when he ends up in Feltham [Young Offenders' Institution]," he said.

I agree with most of that - and I know who is at fault. Liberal progressives.

Mr Cameron suggested that crime was influenced by society's willingness to allow the gap between childhood and adulthood to grow.

"We advertise products to pre-teens as if they were fully sexualised adults. We encourage them to listen to music that glorifies violence.

We, David? I don't, but liberal progressives do. Are you a liberal progressive, David?

"We collude in the natural childish wish to grow up as quickly as possible."

You collude, David - many of us tell our children that they will grow up soon enough. I tell my kids that their childhood days are the best days of their lives and to make the most of them.

At the same time, the responsibilities of adulthood did not begin until 25 or later, because there was less social pressure to marry, for young men to look after children they father, "little incentive" to save, and "owning your own home is a distant if not impossible prospect".

I wonder why that is?

Why is their less social pressure to marry? Why don't young men feel the need to look after children they father? Because the liberal progressives have told us that marriage is an outdated religious institution - anachronistic to modern life. Instead they encourage us to sleep around, try out anything - legal or illegal - and avoid taking responsibility at all costs. The state will always look after them and their progeny.

Incidentally, owning your own home is irrelevant to crime. Millions upon millions of people didn't own their own home in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's - but they didn't commit crime either. What they did understand, though, was the value of money and the necessity of saving. They believed if you wanted something, you saved for it and paid cash for it. With credit so widely available today, few people understand the need to save. And with the currency so inflated, few people understand the value of money - even those in government. How can they when the talk is in figures that few people can grasp the meaning of?

I'm planning a post on the value of money in the future so I won't dwell on it too much here.

But Cameron is right to question the gap between childhood and adulthood. So many children grow up too soon and far too many adults put off growing up. There are several men and women in my office - well into their thirties - who still live at home with their parents and live lives like they were teenagers. They just refuse to grow up.

The crucial thing is, though, that Cameron hits the nail on the head.

Family breakdown and family failure was leading to an "Asbo society".

That is exactly right, David. Maybe I was wrong about you being a soft liberal progressive left wing loon.

Now what are you going to do about it? Will you recognise that the traditional married family is the key to a functioning society and give it the special recognition it deserves above ALL other forms of relationship - or will you submit to the politically correct view that to give special treatment to traditional married couples is to discriminate against other forms of relationship?

There must be more spaces in young offenders' institutions to ease overcrowding and to improve education, training and counselling. At present such institutions were "social dustbins".

Offender management services should be opened up to public and private competition, and there should be more rigorous and challenging community punishments.

Yeah - that's really going to turn it around.

It's one thing to recognise the problem, but it's going to take moral courage to do something about it. I don't believe Cameron has the moral courage to do so and this is confirmed by his "solutions" which are just the usual liberal progressive nonsense for tackling the symptom not the problem. And they don't even work at that.

I was right, he is a pratt after all.