Category Archives: Risk and fear

Kirstie Allsopp is right about parental safetyism

The TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has been reported to social services for allowing her then 15-year-old son Oscar to go on a post-GCSEs interrailing trip with his 16-year-old friend. Earlier this week she posted on X celebrating Oscar’s safe return from his travels, leading to a predictable furore about parental irresponsibility and the dangers of the world out there. She has […]

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Generation CUB – how the events of Covid, Ukraine and Brexit will shape our teenagers’ lives

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on March 11, 2022
  • Coronavirus crisis,Risk and fear
  • Comments Off on Generation CUB – how the events of Covid, Ukraine and Brexit will shape our teenagers’ lives

Our children have grown up in a febrile state of emergency. How will they deal with a changed state of mind in years to come?

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How Greta serves the elites

In the early months of the pandemic, children were neither seen nor heard. Amid the eerie silence of padlocked playgrounds and empty town centres, those earnest appeals to ‘the voice of youth’ that were prominent in every big political debate of the last decade were quickly forgotten. Gripped by an emergency that threatened adults’ health, all that […]

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After Grenfell: more health and safety?

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on June 23, 2017
  • Risk and fear
  • Comments Off on After Grenfell: more health and safety?

People talk about health and safety gone mad. The truth is it never really quite goes mad enough.’ This was the verdict of Times columnist David Aaronovitch, in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster. He reminded us of some of the terrible disasters that scarred the 1980s, including the deadly fires at King’s […]

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Millennial terrorism comes of age

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on November 18, 2015
  • Millennials,Risk and fear
  • Comments Off on Millennial terrorism comes of age

‘If you want to strike at the sinful west, you pick a Friday night. While devout Muslims are fresh from prayer, young Parisian non-believers are knocking back the booze’, wrote Roger Boyes, diplomatic editor at The Times, on 17 November. ‘Islamic State killers made their point about a clash of civilisations: frustrated young men ready […]

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‘Edge of Eternity’: before freedom was feared

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on October 10, 2014
  • Baby Boomers,Risk and fear
  • Comments Off on ‘Edge of Eternity’: before freedom was feared

For anyone who has devoured the first two novels in Ken Follett’s ‘Century Trilogy’, the publication of Edge of Eternity last month comes as an eagerly awaited treat. Follett’s journey through this tumultuous period took us through the First and Second World Wars (Fall of Giants, Winter of the World), and now brings us to the Sixties – […]

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From the freewheelin’ Sixties to the fearmongerin’ Noughties

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on December 27, 2012
  • Baby Boomers,Risk and fear
  • Comments Off on From the freewheelin’ Sixties to the fearmongerin’ Noughties

Arthur Marwick’s history of the Sixties, first published in 1998, is one of those books that you just want to have on your shelf. Covering every cultural development from the rise of the mini-skirt to the birth of hippy culture, from sex and urban planning to art, film and literature, it’s a fascinating romp through […]

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How the vetting frenzy alienates adults from kids

The Liberal-Conservative government’s announcement that the controversial Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) will be ‘very significantly’ curtailed is very welcome. Under its new incarnation, rather than seeking to subject anybody who works or volunteers with children to a police check, the vetting scheme will reportedly focus on ‘those in sensitive posts or who have intensive […]

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Anthony Horowitz: ‘We’re afraid of our kids, and we’re afraid for them’

‘A child should be able to make up his or her own mind about an adult they are meeting without that adult having to wave a government-stamped piece of paper. The idea that the government can come in to the most fundamental of relationships – between an adult and a child – and somehow manipulate […]

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Turning teachers into objects of suspicion

One of the most pernicious prejudices of our time is that adults, given half a chance, will abuse the children in their care. This is the prejudice that lies behind the UK government’s out-of-control, increasingly unpopular mass vetting scheme, in which adults who want to spend time with, or take responsibility for, children other than […]

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