Deborah Orr

Deborah Orr: We should all be shocked by these stories of teenagers shot and stabbed on our streets

When Boris Johnson tripped, literally, on to the London stage, and spoke of crime being the issue that worried Londoners most, he delivered a perfect illustration of how easy it is to be the new guy.

Recently by Deborah Orr

Deborah Orr: The real tragedy after 11 years of Labour is that we have learnt so little

Saturday, 3 May 2008

I think it is safe to say, in the light of this week's elections, that the New Labour project is not looking healthy. Suddenly, there is much discussion about how the Government's social democratic principles can be revived, none of it amounting, so far, to very much.

Deborah Orr: Josef Fritzl - The man that still lurked in the monster

Thursday, 1 May 2008

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." If ever a family has been unhappy in its own way, then it is the Fritzl clan, in Amstetten, Austria. I don't believe the geography is important in this most abject story – the nationhood, the location, the really quite simplistic Natascha Kampusch connection, familiar from the old human tales we tell our children as a matter of course, round the world, of incarceration in a cellar, in a sleep, in a tower.

Deborah Orr: It is poor discipline, not low pay, that drives teachers to quit the classroom

Saturday, 26 April 2008

My small son has managed to survive his first involvement in industrial action quite well, with a trip to the Science Museum, a sunny-intervals romp in the park, and an impressively thorough drenching in the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. That's what I was told anyway, as A N Other mum took him off my hands for the day, while I got on with work as usual. Lucky me. Lucky him.

Deborah Orr: The giant delusion that lies at the heart of Brown's pledge to lift children out of poverty

Wednesday, 23 April 2008

Alistair Darling says it would cost £7bn to "unpick" the foul-up whereby 5.3 million households lose out because of the abolition of the 10p tax band. Why? What's he thinking of doing? Sending a monthly courier out with top-up cash for each and every loser? If ever any figure illustrated just how much money is wasted on administering our complicated system of tax thresholds and tax credits, then this figure is it.

Deborah Orr: Cheers! But it's a shame we need a law on 'love'

Saturday, 5 April 2008

As of tomorrow, if you believe the media, it will be illegal to call a barmaid "love", and another of the simple joys of human interaction will have been extinguished by the nanny state. The banning of the use of the word "love" was neither pledged in a manifesto, nor brought before Parliament, so "love" has been banned without reference to the Will of the People. Now an otherwise craven nation awaits the emergence of the first man brave enough to stand up against the fatwa and declare himself a "love" martyr. Will anyone rise to the challenge?

Deborah Orr: How ruthlessly is Britain prepared to battle with those who want a slice of its wealth?

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

The vast movement of people across borders is a defining feature of globalisation. So it is hardly surprising that, as a new cross-party report on the subject from the House of Lords repeats, immigration to Britain "has reached a scale unprecedented in our history". The general tenor of the report implies, as does broader national debate around the issue, that the influx is merely the result of recent liberal border and immigration policy in Britain. A cap on immigration from outside the EU is all that is needed to roll back the tide, or, as Gordon Brown maintains, just a rigorous new points system, delivering similar but less crude restrictions.

Deborah Orr: If we can keep politics out of the Olympic Games, it will be a first

Saturday, 29 March 2008

I'm not sure that I can wholeheartedly go along with the spirit of the claim in this week's New Statesman that "Bjork's cry of 'Tibet, Tibet' at a concert in Shanghai pre-empted the riots in Lhasa". The implication is that the two events were intimately connected, and even Bjork herself isn't convinced of that.

Deborah Orr: You can't blame teachers for quitting when entire families are hostile to education

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

The problem is "spoilt little princes and princesses," who are influenced by a "materialistic society" and a "culture of immediacy", says the National Association of Schoolmasters, Union Of Women Teachers (NASUWT).

Deborah Orr: Believe if you will. But don't impose your ideas on others

Saturday, 22 March 2008

What would Easter be without a religious spat or two? No one knows, because there hasn't been an Easter in living memory that hasn't flushed out some point of religious disgruntlement or another. Yesterday, betting shops opened on Good Friday for the first time since the Government reformed the gambling laws last year. Tomorrow Cardinal Keith O'Brien will use his Easter Sunday sermon to attack the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

Deborah Orr: Proof that we fail too many children

Wednesday, 19 March 2008

It is quite normal for people to be evangelical about the wonders of their own area of expertise. So it is not surprising that Gary Pugh, director of forensic services at Scotland Yard, believes that recording the DNA of the children most at risk of falling into criminality is a good idea. But with around 360,000 children already on the police DNA database, and the figure projected to be 1.2m in the horribly near future, one has to ask whether the real problem is being able to identify children at risk of offending, or summoning the resources to make positive interventions early on.

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