Why Boris is wrong to say that the children of jihadis should be taken into care

Do your children have a bleak and nihilistic view of the world? It’s hard to tell, really, when they spend 30 per cent of the day blamming away at those whores in Grand Theft Auto and the remaining 70 per cent asleep. How should one go about inquiring such a thing? Text them, maybe. ‘R U blk n nlstc lol? — Dad’. But they might well lie in response: ‘OMG no! (followed by five smiley emoticons)’.

I have to say I’d be a little disappointed if they were not bleak and nihilistic, seeing how things are. One usually finds with relentlessly upbeat and chirpy children that they are receiving additional help in many subjects at school and may even travel each morning on a special bus with other similarly afflicted youngsters. Rather, surely, that they were sullen when not out of their brainboxes on legal or illegal highs.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has an interesting plan for the social services departments to take into care all children who are brought up with a bleak and nihilistic view of the world — so I suppose I had better start packing their bags and taking down their posters of Kierkegaard. More particularly, he suggested that the children of radical Islamic militants should be taken into care, because the ‘bleak and nihilistic’ world view to which they were subjected amounted to child abuse.

I am not sure that, strictly speaking, jihadi maniacs are nihilistic at all — a bit on the bleak side, I’ll grant you, but also filled with a rather worrying sense of purpose. But that is beside the point. Boris went on to say: ‘At present there is a reluctance by the social services to intervene even when they and the police have clear evidence of what is going on.