1) Mentoring Research

An excellent review of mentoring research has been produced by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation http://www.mandbf.org.uk/fileadmin/filemounts/general/Publications/Synthesis_of_published_research_MBF_report__Kate_Philip_.pdf This paper is a serious attempt to analyse and discuss the mentoring research canon. I particularly liked the way that the authors try to understand mentoring in at least three dimensions: firstly, in terms of the often unspoken theoretical framework and assumptions underlying projects; secondly, trying to construct a typology of mentoring in order to distinguish different categories or types of relationships, for example, drawing a distinction between befriending and mentoring; thirdly discussing specific research findings. I think there is great merit in this approach, as it holds out the possibility of locating mentoring as part of broader social analysis, such as the way mentoring develops or utilises social capital in a community. This is particularly important when considering populations suffering from a range of disadvantages. However, it does add complication to the analysis and I’d recommend anyone interested in this subject to begin by looking at a more clear-cut review and listing of the research such as that to be found in Mentoring and Young people, A literature review, by John C. Hall at the university of Glasgow (2003). This survey adopts a more pragmatic approach to the research, largely bracketing off the theoretical debate and limiting itself to asking questions such as ‘what works’ and ‘what doesn’t work’ http://www.scre.ac.uk/resreport/pdf/114.pdf . For me, this is a great way into the research literature as it quickly highlights research findings. For example, Hall argues that the history and practice of mentoring is more developed in the USA than in the UK with, for example, organisations such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America who have been in operation for over 90 years. He also points out that the US experience is much richer in quantitative studies of mentoring than the UK; indeed, such studies are almost non-existent in the UK. In more than one study, the American researchers used a neat, if slightly brutal, solution to the problem of finding valid control groups; they used the existence of waiting lists for schemes, to fast track a randomly chosen cohort for the scheme, while leaving the other cohort to wait in line and to act as the control group. There is no mention of e-mentoring in these studies but there are many lines of discussion and findings that are of interest, not least, that there has been considerable work into the importance of matching mentors and mentees.

2) What Skills

Unlike some people, the recent release of immigration figures didn’t make me think fondly of Enoch Powell; rather, it made me think again about the situation of the unemployed in the UK http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2801894.ece. The Leitch review, as has been discussed here before, has predicted that unskilled employment will shrink dramatically in the UK over the next twenty years, and in an economy where there is movement of labour across the EU, it will mean the few remaining unskilled jobs will be contested by migrant labour. This double whammy of a reduction of unskilled work and greater competition for that unskilled work is very bad news for our home grown young NEETS. In the past, these young people could drop out, drift, and when reality bit back, possibly when they became responsible for a child, they would find a job and rejoin the mainstream. This looks an increasingly difficult project, as the jobs they will be able to find will be temporary and paid at the minimum wage. The group I think that are least well prepared for this new reality are white working class boys from areas where traditional heavy labouring work has disappeared over the past 30 years. Many of these young men remain locked into a macho culture that is rooted in a way of life that no longer exists. They proudly identify themselves as straight talking, no-nonsense, hard working, real men. Unfortunately, for them, their adopted culture tends to downgrade or denigrate those personal skills which are essential, even for the low wage, low skill, work of the future. Although my evidence is largely anecdotal, the reason NEETS cannot find work or training isn’t because their GCSE results are weak, it’s because they turn up late for work, argue with the supervisor, ignore customers and clash with their colleagues. Better to employ a willing eastern European, whose English may be poor, than struggle with one of our home-grown NEETS who you know will be unreliable and may cause trouble. Once again, I think this shows that the educational needs of the most disadvantaged and disaffected are at the level of discipline and non-cognitive skills rather than GCSEs grades. That’s where apparently trivial matters such as school lunch breaks and places to socialise, are important, especially for those children with the less developed social skills http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2209798,00.html .

3) Size Matters

Are secondary schools too big? http://news.independent.co.uk/education/schools/article3158166.ece It’s a simple point: we developed large comprehensive schools in the 1970s because of the need to combine existing grammar and secondary modern schools in most geographical areas. It wasn’t because they were seen as an optimum size. Shame we didn’t discuss this before committing billions of pounds on the schools rebuilding program http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6935505.stm . Still, maybe breaking down the large schools into smaller units and treating them as separate units could be a way of combining some of the advantages of large units (bulk purchasing, niche services and products) with the advantage of smaller units. The closer relationships of the smaller units would seem to make it less likely for a failing child to be overlooked and to make the transition from primary to secondary schooling less of a formidable leap.

4) Criminal Thoughts

OFSTED recently commissioned an e-survey by MORI to provide a ‘snapshot’ of school students attitudes and experience of schooling http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2212044,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront Although it’s not recorded in this article, the survey found that around 50% of students think they’ll go onto university, which is a much lower level of expressed intent than we are finding in baseline surveys of our e-mentoring projects, but about the right level of expectation given the reality. It was however, the problem of bullying that caught the attention of many commentators and this ‘coincided’ with Ed Balls announcing more money for anti-bullying schemes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7094827.stm . Peer mentoring anti-bullying projects are not new, many have been running for years, but it’s difficult to know how useful they are, as I don’t know of any serious attempt to measure their effectiveness. I was reflecting on the apparently widespread experience by children of bullying and theft http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7036880.stm and how this is combined with a perception by children that the school authorities did little about it. I began to wonder if this was related to adult’s perception of crime in modern Britain, today. It has been a puzzle to government, police and some commentators as to why the fear of crime seems to be rising when the chances of being a victim of crime is in decline. Many blame the lurid and voyeuristic reporting of the press. While I can believe that this reporting can trigger a response, might its resonance be rooted in the largely forgotten memories of childhood, when crime was rife and no-one acted to stop it. Is it this experience, which is still lurking in the subconscious of many adults, the reason why they are vulnerable to such stories? For if one grows up in a society where crime both pays, and is ignored by the authorities, then you are more likely to believe, later in life, that crime is widespread, getting worse, and that the police won't do anything about it.

5) Choice and Disadvantage

Another report, another apparent blow to the Government’s schooling program http://education.guardian.co.uk/newschools/story/0,,2210064,00.html. The full report is to found at http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/files/12803.pdf . While the government feigned disappointment at these findings, in truth, I think they will find it useful, as they continue to try to re-orient government policy towards a more directly interventionist program of support for disadvantaged students. I would combine this review with the new HEFCE targets and policy. There is a feeling in government that policies to address educational disadvantage have not been sharp enough, not positive enough. However, this will inevitably raise the old problem of whether it is appropriate to limit the choices of the non-disadvantaged, in order to aid the disadvantaged. It’s the old problem; did the existence of high quality grammar schools also produce low quality secondary moderns?

The old Blairite educational team, which this government has inherited, is a delicate alliance, united in little, beyond a belief in meritocracy and finding a ‘third way’ to improving opportunities for the disadvantaged without restricting the choices of others. The key political question for the next period is how much will the old Thatcherites and Social Democrats, who make up the rump of the education team, stand for any restriction of choice in the education system. Their commitment was always to creating opportunities for the disadvantaged, while not restricting the choices of others; indeed for them, choice was the key to improvement and opportunity for all. This thin basis for unity may in part explain the routine blaming of bad teachers and teacher training for any bad news in the education system. It is a therapeutic howl, first developed by the ‘black papers’ lobby in the 1970s, and vented ever since, by both labour and conservative politicians alike. Like a football chant, it seems to have more to do with reinforcing group solidarity rather than being a factual description and analysis of the world. However, I doubt whether this shared chant will be enough to hold them together. I think for many of New Labour’s new found friends, any restrictions on student and parental choice would be the end of the affair. Expect to see sparks over A levels and Academies.

6) The Future

I’ve been told that the government are about to release a major report that they hope will ‘correct’ the impression that the life quality and life chances of disadvantaged children in the UK are not improving. This report, it is said, will lay the basis for the government’s new 10 year strategy. I sure it will be given a high profile launch, but fear not, I will post a link here as soon as it appears.

1 E-mentoring as aftercare?

I was impressed by this project http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialcare/story/0,,2192278,00.html When I worked as an education social worker, it always seemed to take ages to get support to children whose troubled behaviour was rapidly moving them into harms way. Too often, by the time they were offered support, it was too late and they were already locked into serious anti-social behaviour. Forgive me, but I doubt the claim here that after this intervention, only 6% of these little lovelies ever get into bother again. I can well believe that they fall back to a lower level of troubled behaviour, and maybe for a good while. However, I was wondering if anyone has ever considered the use of e-mentoring as a mechanism for delivering aftercare to these young people following a successful intervention. With a system of long-term mentoring support maybe the minimal aim of keeping out of serious trouble could be developed into constructing a positive future.

2 Scots do it differently

One of the interesting effects of Scottish and Welsh devolution is that social policies are now being pursued differently within the UK. One example that caught my eye is the plan to provide free school meals for all pupils in some Scots primary schools http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7054334.stm – This deceptively simple initiative could, in my opinion, significantly benefit the whole school population. It will benefit children from seriously disadvantaged families, who will no longer be identified or feel stigmatised by qualifying for free school meals (FSM). It will also help the borderline disadvantaged who come from families with low incomes, but who don’t qualify for FSM and whose carers sometimes don’t think it worth the financial outlay, as they know their child hardly eats anything. For all the pupils, it could be the basis for a healthy diet which could be a key component in an integrated exercise/local life style regime aimed at combating early year’s obesity. It would also build social capital, through encouraging a sense of social inclusion and unity among all pupils in a school. We often hear how good it is for families to sit down to a shared meal, a common experience and bond, why not among school pupils. Meanwhile, initiatives in England seem to be all puff and nonsense, celebrity based baloney, such as super nannies, super chefs, and patronising advertising campaigns. Why are the population of England so easily fobbed off with celebrity stunts while the Scots do policy seriously?

3 Too clever Eddie

Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, has announced some interesting additions to the range of the new educational diplomas, some of which are being launched next year. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/pnattach/20070195/1.htm For us, at The Brightside Trust, the new general science diploma might be of particular interest.
However, the newspaper responses were almost entirely focused on whether the announcement of these new non-vocational diplomas, combined with a delay to the review of A levels until 2013, was indicative of a government manoeuvring to replace A levels with the new education diplomas, as had originally been proposed by the Tomlinson report http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2197531,00.html
The background to this is that Blair’s former education ministers buckled under pressure when presented with the Tomlinson report and refused to get rid of A levels. It’s going to be a recurring problem for the Brown government, how to reverse policies brought in by the Blair government, often by individuals still in the Cabinet, without admitting the reversal. The preferred strategy seems to be to make the changes by manoeuvre and stealth, accompanied by the mantra ‘circumstances have changed’. I think the press commentators were basically correct, this government would like to adopt the Tomlinson proposals, and in particular it would like to abolish A levels. Ed Balls thinks he can manoeuvre into a position where he can argue that diplomas have become the qualification of choice and that A levels can be phased out. Just one problem Eddie, the approach you’re adopting won’t work. The diplomas will not be seen to flourish as long as A levels are on general offer. Sometimes you cannot manoeuvre cleverly while presenting yourself as the unbiased Renaissance man making a rational choice.
Look back to 1988, when Mrs Thatcher abolished O levels. Thatcher abolished O levels in the teeth of opposition from her own party, her own supporters and her own supporting newspapers. She didn’t finesse the change, she didn’t manoeuvre, she knew that wouldn’t work, so she just did it, poleaxed them with a single blow, and that was the end of the debate and the end of O levels. Sometimes you just have to do it, Eddie. Take a leaf out of Mrs Thatcher’s book; some might say you’ve already borrowed the entire first volume, so what harm in one more page. As long as we have A levels there is no chance of diplomas being seen as an equal alternative, just as there was no chance of grammar and secondary modern schools ever having, to use the ministerial jargon of the 1960s, ‘parity of esteem’. Kill the A levels Eddie, shut your eyes and think of Maggie.

4 Future perfect

The Conservative leader, David Cameron, has committed the Conservatives to abolishing poverty in the UK. A summary of his speech can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7047193.stm This commitment appears to be more than a match to the Labour government’s pledge to end child poverty by 2020. Consequently, it would seem that whoever is in government, we at The Brightside Trust, and the bulk of the rest of the third sector, have at the most 13 years before our collective reason to exist will disappear. However, before everyone under the age of 52 rushes off to discover new challenges, I think we should check the small print. The full speech can be found at http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=139763&speeches=1
Limiting welfare, as a strategy to end poverty is, of course, nonsense, but as a way of getting some people to move into the workforce and out of poverty, has been shown to have some success during periods of full employment. In that regards, the Cameron policy is on a similar trajectory to that of the government. Unfortunately, it doesn't look to me as if the target of halving child poverty by 2010, which was the first and easiest part of this strategy, will be achieved. Today, the government are announcing a new unit to co-ordinate their anti-poverty drive, this will involve officials from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Children http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7066838.stm I’m not sure what they plan to do, but the link with the DWP suggests a further increased emphasis on getting carers into work. This is a worthwhile enterprise, which I could see The Brightside Trust being involved with, but ending child poverty by 2020, I'm afraid there's a lifetimes work here.

5 Young people today: I say bring back national service

Yes, that’s exactly what I think the government will do. If I were laying a bet on what will be the surprise idea of the Brown government, I’d put money on a ‘new’ national service for young people. It won’t be in the military, they have no need for mass cannon fodder these days, despite the revived fashion for invading countries. It will be a community service organisation. It will be a copy of the sort of organisations that are already in place in the USA. Remember, Gordon Brown is a more integrated Americophile than Blair ever was. There are a variety of American models to choose from, for example http://www.americorps.gov/for_individuals/ready/programs_vista.asp This program is aimed at post-college students, while my guess is that any UK variant would be aimed at 18 year-olds, as a sort of gap year exercise. Note the way that service is counted as a financial credit against college debts in the USA.
These American origins will not feature strongly in the UK launch, as the aim will be to build on the Brown vision of Britishness. The movement will strongly feature the union flag and it will be projected as a force building national unity through community development. There will be an emphasis on the way that it unites individuals from all classes and ethnicities in a common endeavour. Politically, the quasi-military style will play well in middle England where it will be spun as instilling discipline into our feckless youth. It will also be presented as a practical way to mend the broken bits of society rather than just moaning about it (Cameron).
Still, a significant question remains, should this movement take its name from its inspirational founder and be called the Brownies, or maybe the brown shirts, oh no, I guess all forms of brown trousering is out; so the brown socks it is. Forward the brown socks, always loyal to our movements historic pledge, ‘a little community DIY or death’.

1 Sweet Dreams

If I was to be restricted to a single source, or reference point, for analysis of poverty and disadvantage in the UK, then I would choose the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website. As you can see from their home page http://www.jrf.org.uk they conduct wide ranging research projects and produce excellent research reports that are available free, as pdf files. For example, of current interest to the Brightside Trust, is the study http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/2063-education-schools-achievement.pdf which is an example of a quantitative study using large data sets.

These investigations often find their way into the national news and have for many years acted as a spur to social policy. For example, this project which literally mapped out the increasing social divisions in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6984707.stm . If you look round their website you'll find many similarly insightful reports. What I particularly like, is the way that their findings are often both surprising and counterintuitive. For example, http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/pdf/2123.pdf found that “Just 14 percent of variation in individuals' performance is accounted for by school quality”. I was genuinely surprised by this finding, as I had assumed that individual school quality was overwhelmingly important to overcoming educational disadvantage. I guess I had formed this opinion on the basis of government policy and statements of the past 20 years, which, in my opinion, have assumed individual school performance to be fundamentally, indeed at times, exclusively important. For us, as a charity addressing disadvantage, I believe this finding potentially broadens not only the site or focus of our work but what we see that work achieving. For example, the way mentoring and e-mentoring works towards overcoming disadvantage must be seen as much more than a school supplement.

It also suggests that understanding social disadvantage needs to be more imaginative; for example, I felt the approach adopted by the ‘dare to care campaign’ who asked children what they thought defined living in poverty was interesting. Not having a mobile phone featured strongly in the replies.
http://www.daretocarecampaign.com/News/Missing-school-trips-makes-you-poor---say-British-.aspx

2 Private Parts

The first avowedly commercial enterprise, BPP College, has been authorised to award UK degrees http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7012203.stm . In my opinion, this will be the first of many. While no minister would say it, I believe that it is government’s hope that by increasing the numbers and types of suppliers of degrees that this will drive up efficiency and quality standards at the old polytechnics who are at present the bulk suppliers of degrees to the masses.

3 Do you feel lucky?

Philanthropy and 5% (or maybe 20%)

‘The Cabinet Office has opened a consultation on the working of a new £10million risk capital investment fund for social enterprises. Many social enterprises find it difficult to access risk capital, leaving a gap in their finances. The risk capital investment fund will fill this gap and help develop better access to private and independent investment in the future.'

I don't know if it's a conscious revival of an old movement, but there were Victorian social housing companies that informally used the slogan ‘philanthropy and 5%'. It was a sort of ethical investment campaign of the 19th century, where money was raised to build social housing while guaranteeing the investor a moderate return on their money. I guess this is intended to be a similar model, so I cannot see this fund offering a high return to investors.

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector/documents/consultations/consultation_risk_capital.pdf

However, if we at The Brightside Trust had a ‘sure fire hit' of a project, and wanted to raise between £250,000 and £2 million, might this be an appropriate vehicle for funding. Do we have anything to contribute to the consultation exercise, given our experience of funding successful projects?

4 Calm before the storm

Once again, the Sutton Trust has produced a research report that has triggered public debate. In particular, the finding that a third of places at Oxbridge are given to pupils from only 100 schools, 80% of which are private. This short piece from the Guardian poses the question, ‘whose job is it, universities or government, to transform the educational chances of poor children?’ The two contributors, the universities minister John Denham, and Wendy Piatt, waltz through the current debate with no apparent animosity in this Guardian article
http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialexclusion/story/0,,2176286,00.html .

However, I think this mild mannered debate could get rather edgy rather rapidly. There is great unease in the Brown government that progress in reducing social disadvantage in the UK seems to be slow. The government are still committed to their very ambitious objective of ending child poverty by 2020, so there is real frustration that something as ‘easy’ as opening up higher education to the socially disadvantaged seems to be making little progress. Equally, on the basis of recent discussions I've had with some Aimhigher staff, they too are frustrated, but in their case because of what they see as government’s inability to stick to a consistent strategy or to let them get on with the job. Instead they find they have to cope with ever changing demands and guidelines. I predict this will come to a crunch next year, when schemes which cannot prove in detail that they are working with disadvantaged students, in the terms laid out by HEFCE, will suffer a ministerial biting. Remember, Gordon Brown only allowed himself one class struggle moment in the last 10 years, when he attacked Oxford University’s admissions procedures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Spence_Affair

As an end note, I notice that john Denham mentions that every secondary school is to have a higher education partnership and “We'll soon be setting out how formal partnerships through academies and trusts can be established.“

5 Young at heart

In my opinion, the Young Foundation are the UK’s leading analysts of innovation and the role of the third sector. They have recently produced a report “In and out of sync: growing social innovations” which seeks to explain why certain social innovations grow and why others don’t. For example, why did the Big Issue newspaper flourish in the UK but flop in California? The report has a strong analytical structure and is enlivened by a series of attention-grabbing case studies
http://www.youngfoundation.org.uk/files/images/In_and_Out_of_Sync_Final.pdf
The report identifies four conditions that are essential for developing innovative products, services and models on a large scale and in a sustainable way:
demand for the innovation within society;
good supply of ideas in workable forms;
effective strategies to connect supply and demand, and to find the right organisational forms for putting the innovation into practice;
ongoing learning and the ability to adapt to changes in the external environment.
I believe this is what we have been doing at The Brightside Trust, but I'm not sure that we have been doing it in an overt and systematic fashion, perhaps we should.

Disadvantage defined

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has produced a document which “provides guidance on targeting outreach activities at young people from communities under-represented in higher education (HE)”. Some of you might think that it would have been wise to have sorted this out before spending millions of pounds but I’m not one of those moaning minnies http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07%5F12/
For anyone working on widening participation related projects these guidelines are essential reading. As they are to be implemented from autumn 2007, I would suggest checking that you are HEFCE compliant as soon as possible. I particularly liked the rule of thumb that “Aimhigher partnerships and HE providers should aim to ensure that around two-thirds of participants in widening participation activities are from the target group.” The good news is that we appear to be ahead of the government’s game, as we have been evaluating our work in the terms that HEFCE recommend for the past 12 months. The only slightly surprising feature is the modified categorisation of adult employment which we can easily incorporate.

Overall, I welcome these guidelines, as they are relatively tight and proscriptive and should help us engage with disadvantaged populations.

HEFCE has promised universities and Aimhigher assistance with local data in order to identify qualifying neighbourhoods and schools. In the past, a number of universities have said they found this data difficult to obtain: frankly this claim is disingenuous. Even without HEFCE help, excellent school and neighbourhood data can be easily marshalled from two major on-line sources. If we find that partner organisations are claiming that a lack of local data is making evaluation difficult, then we at the Brightside Trust can show them how to construct their own local map.

Firstly, the government’s national statistics office, neighbourhood statistics http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadHome.do;jsessionid=ac1f930bce6048c8bb53e5240d89babfb8ebe040ced.e38PbNqOa3qRe34LbxuNah4ObNj0n6jAmljGr5XDqQLvpAe?bhcp=1 Why not try your own postcode and see the range of datasets that can be drawn upon. If looking in detail, I recommend choosing the ‘more areas’ tab in section 2 and then selecting ‘lower layer super output area’, as your unit of choice. This has emerged as the fashionable unit of analysis among the pointy head analysts of neighbourhoods in the UK and will be the HEFCE unit of choice when they get their act together. Indeed, if you really want to be part of the ‘in’ crowd, use the other tab on the data sets screen to get a view of the range of stats available. Note lower layer super output areas can be found by postcode, so as long as you know a student’s postcode then you can define their neighbourhood as disadvantaged or not. For individual school details, ask the student which school they attend and then draw on the OFSTED website http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.2daefc8f97e956fe628a0d8308c08a0c/?vgnextoid=ba6a8587fd24a010VgnVCM1000008192a8c0RCRD, where every school in the UK’s latest inspection report can be downloaded. This provides considerable detail of both the schools performance, including the strengths and weaknesses of individual subject departments as well as the demographic and social profile of its pupil population.

There can be no excuses for non-compliance!

So, I hear you ask, how are people going to bend the rules. I know where I’d begin: there are some small neighbourhoods which are sharply divided between advantaged and disadvantaged, especially in cities, especially in London. For example, neighbourhoods in Islington where multimillion pound properties stand over the road from Victorian council flats. Even with lower layer super output area small area analysis, these neighbourhoods will average out as disadvantaged (each area has around 2000 people). Who’d care to bet that some universities haven’t already identified the post codes of these ‘golden’ lower layer super output areas and will be especially welcoming to its residents.

1 Gangs, Shooting and Anarchy

Much has been said and written about the shooting of Rhys Jones in Liverpool. This child lived in a middle class area that abuts 2 disadvantaged estates. It might be an unpalatable thought, but maybe the killing of middle class children will be more of a spur to politicians than the mutual slaughter of the disadvantaged. But what action are they going to take? I worry about the inadequacy of the measures being mooted and that there is a naive simplicity to much of the talk. First, the idea that increasing the cost of alcohol is a way of dealing with the problem: in my opinion this will make things worse. The youths concerned will turn to using greater quantities of other drugs to get out of their brains and will then spend the little money they have on alcohol to top the evening off. This cocktail of drugs and drink will make them even more unpredictable and disagreeable. Also, it will push them even further into the hands of local drug dealers; it would be better to push them further into the hands of the local off-licence. Secondly, there has been much talk of there being an easier access to guns in the UK now than there was in the past. This again, is plain wrong. During the 20th century, the UK was always awash with guns; many were trophies from the First and Second World War and this pool of weapons was regularly toped up by a constant feed from returning imperial troops and civil servants. In terms of the law, you didn’t even need to register having a gun before 1920 or need a licence to buy or own a shotgun before 1967.

I think we need to understand a little more before prescribing a fix. In pursuit of that, I think Camila Batmanghelidjh has written an interesting article
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2893902.ece
This line of argument chimes with my own experience from when I ran a group for 14 year-old boys on the edge of school dropout and offending. It was a condition of group membership that they attended school and kept out of trouble with the law. One day I received a report from the police juvenile bureau that one of the boys had been caught stealing a vehicle. I spoke to him about what had happened and he told me, in a matter-of-fact fashion, that he had stolen a steam roller (if this is what they are still called) from a road repair site. I couldn’t believe the stupidity of it, I asked him, what were you thinking of; how were you going to outrun the police on a steam roller; what was the point of taking it, you couldn’t sell it - All good rational questions and, of course, completely irrelevant. He shrugged, no answer. The point I only later came to understand, was that he didn’t think because he lived in a world where there wasn’t any point in ‘thinking’. Without outlining his personal history, his life had been chaotic; he couldn’t plan or rely on anything or anyone, so before he did things he didn’t ask himself consequences-type questions. Rather, he lived in the present, and took it from there. This tended to short-termism in decision making and also to doing what made him feel good at that moment. I agree with Camila, this is nihilism, not anarchy.

However, I’d like to ask a trickier question: are these children so very different from the rest of modern British society? The way the press are speaking of gang members they are seen as self evidently, ‘the other’, the jackals of society, living by a different philosophy, uniquely selfish and dangerous to those around them. However, when the gang members look at ‘us’, what do they see? I would say they see a society dominated by a similar ethos of amoral individualism. This ethos includes a similar disregard for others and a disrespect for the law when it is thought to be interfering with an individual’s immediate desires. If we brought a Liverpool gang to London Bridge, might they look no further than the respectable middle class commuter cyclists disregarding all traffic laws and caring nothing for the safety of pedestrians as they hurtle along the pavement? If they asked the cyclists why they do this, they’d be told it’s because they are in danger from the car drivers who care nothing about them, and who similarly breach traffic laws whenever they think they can get away with it, including dangerously making calls on their mobile phones. Our child thugs might then point out that many more children are killed each year by wilfully careless car drivers than by gang members with guns. Also, when people speak of having alternative adult role models for these children, who do they have in mind? Sports personalities perhaps, but what lessons can be learnt from them. It seems to me, that many footballers and their partners are appalling individuals leading trite and dissolute lives. Or perhaps we should introduce them to the City folks who make money out of selling arms to repressive regimes and asset stripping third world countries of their natural resources, what is our juvenile gunman going to learn from them - to increase his prices perhaps. Or the Daily-Mail-reading-60-year-old who rants about the law being flouted, while they park in the parent and baby spaces at the supermarket, allow their dog to run loose and foul the local playing field, and drive home from the golf club drunk as a Lord. Is our visiting crew really so different, when they individualistically and amorally pursue their own self-interest with no concern about the impact on others. I’d go further; I’d ask who came first, who is imitating whom.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advising hugging a hoodie; they’ll either hurt you or steal your money or probably both. You can call these children feral, if you like; life for them is indeed a sort of opportunistic scavenging in an unpredictable and unstable world. There are many more children growing up in chaotic environments than is often acknowledged, for example, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2327918.ece

Finally, I suspect when the young person who committed this latest shooting is caught, their explanation will seem wilfully inadequate. However, rather than reacting with anger about that, I suggest, accept it at face value and see this shooting as a product of lives lived as a series of reactions to events, not as some diabolical strategic gang initiative that went wrong, and then, most sadly of all, recognise that the reasons for murder can be truly banal.

2 You(test)Tube

America's National Science Foundation has opened a test version of a video sharing site called SciVee, a sort of "YouTube for science" http://www.scivee.tv
Video is a bit slow and I couldn’t see a way to directly embed into this blog. Why not try http://www.scivee.tv/node/53 - OK, it’s a specialist taste.

3 This Year’s Physics GCSE Paper.

Those of you on the distribution list will have received a copy of one of this year’s GCSE physics paper. Here are the answers – how did you do?
1. C, 2. B, 3. C, 4. B, 5. C, 6. B, 7. B, 8. C, 9. A, 10. C, 11. D, 12. D, 13. A, 14. C, 15. C, 16. D, 17. A, 18. D, 19. A, 20. B, 21. D, 22. A, 23. B, 24. D, 25. C, 26. C, 27. C, 28. C, 29. B, 30. A, 31. D, 32. C, 33. A, 34. D, 35. A, 36. D, 37. C, 38. B, 39. D, 40. C