Deborah Orr: If the kids are messed up, it's because they're apeing smug, spoilt adults

Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris, is one of those lucky women who balances career and family by having children, then sitting at her computer all day writing about how tough it is to look after them. Nice work if you can get it, surely, especially since Johnson has just sold her debut novel and its sequel for £210,000 in Britain and for £230,000 in the US. "It's only half a Plum," says Johnson, to a gossip columnist, in reference to the £650,000 another British woman, Plum Sykes, got for her own literary opus, Bergdorf Blondes. "I'm not buying anything, not even a handbag," Johnson told another gossip columnist about her amazing windfall. "I'm spending all the money on school fees."

Johnson's novel is called Notting Hell, and promises "a wry and steamy take" on the sliver of west London that is now home to David Cameron, leader of the Tory party, as well as herself. It all sounds like such a marvellous triumph for gentrification, this neighbourhood, especially since its proximity to such historic events as the Notting Hill Riots, Rachmanist slum-dwelling and the Christie murders gives it the "urban edge" beloved of today's crop of the timelessly privileged.

Unfortunately, not all the locals can count being unable to find change for a handbag out of half a million quid as their biggest problem. A new British film, Kidulthood (pictured) is set in the council estates of Notting Hill, and follows a group of 15-year-olds as they negotiate drug-dealing, prostitution, physical and psychological violence, suicide and murder, mostly in the name of "respect".

Kidulthood sounds a little like the US film Kids that the photographer Larry Clark made a decade ago, portraying the hedonistic and bleak existence of New York street kids. Predictably it's being marketed in the same way, too, with reports of unsubstantiated calls for it to be banned, and a fresh trotting-out of the usual argument against this sort of in-your-face social vérité - that it glamorises bad stuff.

Except that the "bad stuff" is happening, whether glamorised or not. Only this week it became apparent that the Government's campaign against teenage pregnancy was very far from achieving what it set out to. Just to emphasise this, it was reported that a 13-year-old girl has given birth while her unsuspecting parents sat in the next room. The girl had become pregnant while in a care home, and the parents, ominously, are now "taking legal advice". Might they be expecting to be compensated for being unable to protect their daughter from spending time in a care home, then for failing to notice she was pregnant or in labour? Probably. What hope for any of them, especially the baby?

Of course, it's largely to make sure that her own children never, ever encounter families like this one, with their sordid, difficult problems that Johnson shells out her punitive school fees, paying them with money earned from telling women how expensive it is to have babies. No one ever says this sort of stuff should be banned for glamorising inflated ideas about "lifestyle" and unrealistic views about the work-life balance.

No, no. Only the contrary, those who campaign for mothers to stay at home and start breeding young mutter instead about tax breaks. They are appalled that the number of women over 40 having babies is increasing, and appalled that the number having babies in their 20s is going down. They blame women for wanting to be able to earn as well as breed, and make no connection with the sort of lifestyles that are promoted by Johnson, Cameron, Blair et al - of grand houses and domestic economies in which fortunes are gobbled up by everyday expenses.

There is such a gulf today between the haves and the have-nots that it is hard to discern which is the bigger problem - messed-up children apeing the inadequate adults around them as in Kidulthood, or smugly spoilt adults behaving like greedy little children.

A world where hypocrisy has really taken off

Everyone I know seems to be feeling a bit down at the moment. Is it all because of Seasonal Affective Disorder? Or is it because the planet's going to be halfway to meltdown by the time our children grow up? The most horrible thing about living in these interesting times is the way in which cynicism is proved to be the only sensible standpoint, as one watches the big beasts running the world so counter-intuitively.

Tony Blair the other day earnestly told us that "it's democracy vs terrorism and extremism" as if the eventuality whereby terrorism and extremism had been democratically backed was quite unknown to him. Yet we all know now that for all his talk of pursuing the road map, Blair has not spoken out once against the widespread view that Hamas, the elected leadership in Palestine, should be denied political recognition and funding. Hamas will be left with no donor nations, except the Middle East and especially Iran. Somehow I don't think that's going to back democracy against extremism.

Then all these supposed denizens of free trade start remaking the rules when it suits them. How ugly to see George Bush crawling to the great and good of Dubai, desperate to cover up for the fact that his fellow citizens do not want their ports to be controlled from the Middle East. He doesn't even bother honestly to argue that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Instead he explains that Dubai is a "valuable ally in the war or terror" and therefore deserves a reward and a bribe.

Then there's Blair again, this time insisting that first, his understanding of the imminent threat of global warming is sophisticated and comprehensive, and second, that a tax on aviation fuel is not possible. Why is it not possible? Because that would disrupt the economy, by stopping vast numbers of people from flying around Europe at £10. The huge emissions caused by inconsequential and underpriced flights are the very reason why planes have to be wrestled out of the sky right now. It's the biggest thing Europe could possibly do to kick-start the slowing down of climate change, changing habits radically at a corporate and a personal level. What a shame we're too busy fighting terrorism to tackle our own worst instincts.

* Lo! Help is at hand for the poor and huddled masses. Having spent years pretending he's never heard of the Social Exclusion Unit he proudly set up when he first got power, Tony Blair has finally realised that ignoring the problem hasn't made it go away. So he's appointing a social exclusion minister, with responsibility for social exclusion at cabinet level. Which is something of a missed opportunity, because most of the really worrying pockets of deprivation are concentrated in the backbenches.