I wrote ‘hug a hoodie’ and I’m proud of it
Danny Kruger, who was David Cameron’s speechwriter, defends his most notorious piece of work for the Tory leader and says that love is a neglected crime-fighting device
Today’s aristocracy — the elite who make the culture and the policy — have a similar duty. Most obviously, we need to change the way the people at the very bottom of society are paid: through the drug trade and the welfare state. Between them these things wreck the natural reward system which, without them, would incentivise responsibility through simple economics.
Middle-class students and professionals who buy drugs from young black men (I was one of them once, God forgive me), need to put their vaunted social conscience into practice and stop paying people to be criminals.
And politically we need to reform welfare to promote activity not passivity, fatherhood not just fathering, and local leadership not state provision of everything. Unconditional, unlimited welfare not only smothers ordinary responsibility. It hampers the extraordinary people who are trying to build the institutions of love — like my friend Marie Hanson, a single mother living on a Battersea estate who somehow manages to provide support for 40 other single mums and their children.
I’m sorry if all this sounds priggish. But liberal sophistication, justifying the deliberate disengagement of the elite from the moral and social welfare of everyone else, has partly got us into this mess; it won’t get us out of it.
Danny Kruger manages Only Connect, a creative arts company and resettlement charity for prisoners, ex-offenders and young people at risk of crime and exclusion. Any Which Way, David Watson’s new 30-minute play about knife crime, will be performed by ten ex-offenders at the Only Connect theatre in London WC1 on the evening of 27 June. For more information please email info@onlyconnectuk.org.
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adrian drummond
June 26th, 2008 3:45pmA bit Lord Longford'esque.
So you want ‘to show a lot more love’ to the boy that gave you a thick/cut lip?
Not me. My answer would be a bad lads army. Naturally, this is an old fashioned approach and would not go down well with the new 'aristocracy' of which you are one.
You lot - the new 'aristocracy' - have screwed up this country and now we - the victims - have to watch you try and put it back together again.
Good luck.
Christopher Chantrill
June 26th, 2008 6:54pmYou have to say that Danny Kruger is walking the walk. In On Fraternity he wrote:
"Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says 'we should…'."
You could look it up on Wikiquote.
Parasite
June 26th, 2008 7:32pmThe kid who split your lip and shouted abuse at you for having the temerity to not want the moped stolen is the product of a society in which "greed is good". He thinks he (or rather his fellow chav who was on the thing) has the right to the moped.
It's the result of the crude gimme-gimme materialism unleashed in the 80s. The rich simply got it, the poor think they have a right to it, and the means don't matter. And how dare you stand in their way, that is the thought process.
Whether a Tory columnist would like to hear it or not, the responsibility for your split lip ultimately lies with a little old lady living in Dulwich who you all blindly hero-worship.
David
June 27th, 2008 11:17amExcept, Parasite, that the trend could be seen starting in the Seventies, the first generation brought up under the full embrace of a welfare state, where society was supposed to give them what ever they wanted otherwise it wasn't fair.
John Bull
June 27th, 2008 2:10pmCongratulations twerp !
It seems even a thump in the face can't drive any sense into your thick neanderthal skull.
My hope it that you insist on personally visiting all your little ( and big ) crooked and violent 'clients' in their own neighbourhoods - and without any police 'protection' of course. Darwins selection theory still works !
You may live to tell your tale - who knows - but not before your wrecked body heals first.
Grow up and stop pandering to all the thugs and scum perpetuated by your own stupidity.
Just because that mindless wonder, boy Cameron, articulated your rubbish does not make it any more sensible - quite the opposite.
John Bull
June 27th, 2008 2:16pmDanny - if you have life or health insurance, I hope you have declared your mentality to your insurers - none with any sense of 'risk-assessment' would touch you with a bargepole !
'Dead-Man-Talking' is an apt epitaph for your tombstone. Save your descendents the trouble - order it now.
Female 29 Australia
July 14th, 2008 1:13amI believe this too. Thank you for printing this where we can all read it. And for the great work you devote yourself to.
Bill McCall
July 29th, 2008 4:16amBoofheads like Kruger are a blight on Conservative politics, but unfortunately too many of them are already in positions of authority, the current leader being another.