I Know A Man Who Can

When your car has a breakdown then you call for the AA (other breakdown services are available). Why? Because they have a man who can.

When there's something strange in the neighbourhood, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!

To repair the broken society, who should you call for? David Cameron set out his stall as prime minister in waiting today, in his speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. In it he talked about a plan for social change, that I was most interested in.

Who can deny the truthfulness of the proverb "prevention is better than cure"? Well it does look like the Labour government is in denial over this. They are more interested in treating the symptoms with tougher sentences and effective punishment, and of course there's no reason to stop sending people to prison. However, society will remain broken unless we deal with the causes more effectively.

Cameron, in his speech, said;

Come with me to Wandsworth prison and meet the inmates. Yes you meet the mugger, the robber and the burglar. But you also meet the boy who can’t read and never could. The teenager hooked on heroin.The young man who never knew the love of a father. The middle aged failure where no-one in the family has known what it’s like to go out and work for two generations or maybe more. Miss the context, miss the cause, miss the background and you’ll never get the true picture of why crime is so high in our country.

This is the problem in a nutshell. The twenty-first century family is failing, falling apart, breaking up. The benefits system works against families where the parents are still together. Advice from the Job Centre staff is that, financially, it would be better if mother and father lived apart. This is crazy! This has to change. The couple penalty must go.

If the family does fail, the schools give children another chance. The problem is that there aren't enough good schools.

... we will break open the state monopoly and allow new schools to be set up. And to those who say we cannot wait for structural reform and competition to raise standards I say - yes, you’re right, and we will not wait.

The election of a Conservative government will bring – and I mean this almost literally - a declaration of war against those parts of the educational establishment who still cling to the cruelty of the "all must win prizes" philosophy and the dangerous practice of dumbing down.

This speech from David Cameron was one of a statesman, a leader of a united party, and, some might say, a prime minister in waiting.

Rebuilding our battered economy. Renewing our bureaucratised NHS. Repairing our broken society. That is our plan for change. But in these difficult times we promise no new dawns, no overnight transformations. I’m a man with a plan, not a miracle cure.

A man with a plan. That's who we need to repair our broken society. Gordon Brown hasn't got one, so I'm going to call for David Cameron.

Find out more about that plan by watching the video below ...



JR