David Cameron, Social Responsibility and the launch of the Youth Task Force.

Now we stand for social revival

Introduced by David Willetts,


David Cameron


David began leveraging the 70s and 80s Tories in their fight against the Unions and the rampant economic problems, contrasting to 21st century Tories and their fight against rampant social problems including "rampant crime" then quoting some of the UNICEF report (Available here as pdf) that shocked the UK by calculating out of the 21 richest countries, we have the 19/21 lowest score for educational well-being and material well being. With the lowest, 21/21 subjective well being, the most unhappy children.

Some choice quotes from the launch of the youth task force were,
on the subject of instigating social change and creating social responsibility it "is a job for everyone"

On the work / life divide he suggests that if we're harming our families and our relationships with our children then we must "change our working habits"

In response to home care for children of working parents, he'd "Audit the entire welfare system" and allow "care policies that include extended families" not simple mandating that child care allowances must be used at registered care practitioners. He made excellent use of himself as an example saying that he has small children and as a working father he wouldn't know what to do without the support of his parents with some child care. He alluded to making absent fathers properly responsible for their children in a better fashion that the CSA ever did, cutting a cheque simply isn't good enough.

Since this was also the launch of the local authority manifesto he implicated the local councils in the collective responsibility "locals authorities have a big role to play"

Most interestingly for me as a technologist David used violent video games as a very good example of a need for social responsibility. Alluding only briefly to the art imitating life versus life imitating art debate and not wanting to wield the large state legislation and laws about such games. David said that the designer should exercise some responsibility when making the creative work, then moving on to the fashion industry that he accused of "sexualising" young people. Claiming that some companies are treating 12-16 year olds as fully sexual being, this made me think of this educational blog post from pepperpot.

Finally he took questions:
-A return of the assisted places scheme
-Was the removal of punch and judy politics a good thing
-Improve aspirations and social mobility
-Disparities in funding from local authorities in response from a newly federated school governor.

All in all a good speech, he impressed the people I was with, although our pretty liberal row seemed to be nodding far more than the rest of the room who are supposed to be his vanguard. It was apparent from that the herculean task he has ahead of him in moving this aged party to the centre ground even with his quite agreeable message of social responsibility.

The reason I mention who was on my row is that they were all politics students and often have a definite liberal slant - yet they could be seen nodding away. In contrast to the lady with the blue rinse a row in front who positively shrieked when it was mentioned that a struggling school and a very successful school had federated - she clearly is happy in her walled garden. Pity not everyone can get in.

What was interesting to note was how engaged the Shadow minister for Schools was with the students on my row when he discovered they were students of politics he seemed genuinely interested in fact I definitely heard someone say "He seemed really.... (clearly struggling to say it in reference of a Tory)... nice"