Broken stuff and shoestrings

I was reading Conservative Home earlier, and came across the blog of Matthew Parris, who has a column in the Sunday Times. He has written a piece about the Conservative year of opposition.

"For them it’s about the future now: no time to linger over might-have-beens, no point in post mortems on opposition. But the rest of us are entitled to sneak a backwards glance."

He goes on to make several observations - You can read more here

His last point is that:

"We became a party of social justice. I'm biased (I count Iain Duncan Smith as a very close friend) but I'm proudest of this achievement. Iain was a rejected leader but by continuing work he began from 2001 until 2003 he has become one of the very biggest beasts in the Conservative jungle. More important than that - through his Centre for Social Justice - he has helped developed a policy agenda that can reverse the increase in deep poverty that has characterised the Brown-Blair years. It's going to be hard given the state of the public finances but there are things we can do without spending much money. "

I trawled through various links above, and came across a Telegraph article:

"In many voters' eyes, family breakdown is directly related to the rise in thuggery, drug abuse and street violence. The number of young people stabbed to death in the past three years suggests a street life reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. The casual intimidation and vandalism by groups of teenagers roaming around neighbourhoods terrifies residents up and down the country.

According to Conservative leader David Cameron, these are symptoms of a society that is broken; in which stable two-parent families are becoming the exception; where individual rights have blunted our sense of duty and responsibility; and where successive generations of children face a life devoid of hope or dignity."

- Broken Britain – can we fix it?

I think a answer is that there are a lot of things that can be fixed without spending lots of money.