Tightening family ties - not a good idea

In his weekly "anti-yob" announcement - found every week in a Sunday paper near you - Tony Blair is running around trying to establish controls over small children and their parents, turning them all into images of Fifties suburban respectability.

"Blair argues that family ties have weakened and communities fractured over the past decades, allowing a new kind of disorder to flourish that the courts have failed to tackle."

Meanwhile, as the Guardian in a fine piece of journalism yesterday, reported on a year's toll of domestic violence: "For December 2003 to December 2004, the period of our research, we found 68 cases that had resulted in convictions for murder or manslaughter, or in which the perpetrator had committed suicide (many cases are still ongoing, or have yet to come to court)."

There's just so many horror cases it is hard to pick out one; and in some cases the final court verdicts are astonishing, like the one in which "nagging" was established as mitigation!!! (Heh mate it is simple; if you don't like what your wife says, leave!)

Sarah Jane Dudley, May 16 2004 Dudley, 33, a mother of two, was burned to death when her ex-boyfriend, Anthony Frost, pushed a lit carrier bag through the letterbox of her home in Bargate, Derbyshire. Frost, 47, told Nottingham crown court he had called Dudley but dialled incorrectly and flew into a rage when a man answered. He denied murder, but admitted manslaughter and reckless arson; he was jailed for 10 years in December 2004

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And Tony Blair wants to "strengthen" the family. I'd say loosening the bonds - so women and children (and men) subjected to violence can escape - is a more urgent priority.