Deborah Orr
Deborah Orr: For a man to refuse to acknowledge a baby he has fathered is about as low as it gets
The photograph on the front of the Government's White Paper, Recording Responsibility, is very jolly. It depicts a healthy and smiling couple, as they bill and coo over their pink, gleaming baby. Which is very odd, since this White Paper, published jointly by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), does not concern itself with happy couples, or happy families, in the least.
Recently by Deborah Orr
Deborah Orr: What went wrong with this family?
Saturday, 24 May 2008
A full inquiry is being called for. But blame aplenty is being apportioned already. No one knows exactly what ghastly events led to poor seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq's death from malnutrition, as her five siblings grew weaker alongside her. But it is self-evident that she was let down by every single adult who might have been able to make a positive intervention in her short life.
Deborah Orr: A simple equation: the tougher we are on youth crime, the worse the problem is
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
It is hard to believe, as one digests despairingly both the steady supply of individual stories of needless, pointless loss and the more general figures about young people and violent behaviour, that Labour has kept its 1997 promise to be "tough on crime". Yet, it has.
Deborah Orr: How I walked alone in a Kabul street – and scandalised everyone around me
Saturday, 17 May 2008
I've just spent a week in a deeply conservative Islamic culture – always wearing a headscarf and always covering my body in the loosest of clothing – for the first time in my life. I thought appropriate dress and hidden fair hair would protect me, and on my first day in Kabul, one of the most liberal cities in Afghanistan, I walked to a meeting 40 yards from my hotel, by myself.
Deborah Orr: Cherie Blair has turned the private life of a PM's spouse into public property
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
"Goodbye. We won't miss you," Cherie Blair told the press, on the day of her husband's handover of power to Just Gordon. Touchingly, it appears that she has missed us, so very much that she's spent every spare minute of her new, less scrutinised life, scribbling away at her memoirs, inviting with their surprise-surprise publication another round of the comment and the speculation she had claimed to be so exasperated by.
Deborah Orr: We should all be shocked by these stories of teenagers shot and stabbed on our streets
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
When Boris Johnson tripped, literally, on to the London stage, and spoke of crime being the issue that worried Londoners most, he delivered a perfect illustration of how easy it is to be the new guy. In making street violence the centrepiece of his campaign, he had echoed the rhetoric of David Cameron, with his claim that Britain is "a broken society".
Deborah Orr: The real tragedy after 11 years of Labour is that we have learnt so little
Saturday, 3 May 2008
I think it is safe to say, in the light of this week's elections, that the New Labour project is not looking healthy. Suddenly, there is much discussion about how the Government's social democratic principles can be revived, none of it amounting, so far, to very much.
Deborah Orr: Josef Fritzl - The man that still lurked in the monster
Thursday, 1 May 2008
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." If ever a family has been unhappy in its own way, then it is the Fritzl clan, in Amstetten, Austria. I don't believe the geography is important in this most abject story – the nationhood, the location, the really quite simplistic Natascha Kampusch connection, familiar from the old human tales we tell our children as a matter of course, round the world, of incarceration in a cellar, in a sleep, in a tower.
Deborah Orr: It is poor discipline, not low pay, that drives teachers to quit the classroom
Saturday, 26 April 2008
My small son has managed to survive his first involvement in industrial action quite well, with a trip to the Science Museum, a sunny-intervals romp in the park, and an impressively thorough drenching in the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. That's what I was told anyway, as A N Other mum took him off my hands for the day, while I got on with work as usual. Lucky me. Lucky him.
Deborah Orr: The giant delusion that lies at the heart of Brown's pledge to lift children out of poverty
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Alistair Darling says it would cost £7bn to "unpick" the foul-up whereby 5.3 million households lose out because of the abolition of the 10p tax band. Why? What's he thinking of doing? Sending a monthly courier out with top-up cash for each and every loser? If ever any figure illustrated just how much money is wasted on administering our complicated system of tax thresholds and tax credits, then this figure is it.
Deborah Orr: Cheers! But it's a shame we need a law on 'love'
Saturday, 5 April 2008
As of tomorrow, if you believe the media, it will be illegal to call a barmaid "love", and another of the simple joys of human interaction will have been extinguished by the nanny state. The banning of the use of the word "love" was neither pledged in a manifesto, nor brought before Parliament, so "love" has been banned without reference to the Will of the People. Now an otherwise craven nation awaits the emergence of the first man brave enough to stand up against the fatwa and declare himself a "love" martyr. Will anyone rise to the challenge?
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Columnist Comments
• Deborah Orr: For a man to refuse to acknowledge a baby he has fathered is as low as it gets
7 per cent of all our children are registered at birth with no legal father
• Hamish McRae: No-frills democracy
Ryanair's cheap flights have been a huge force for the opening up of Europe
• Johann Hari: No wonder 'Gone With The Wind' has failed
Lordly lordy lord Miss Scarlett, this musical be one biiiiiig turkey!
• Claudia Winkleman: Take It From Me
'My husband says he's wheat-intolerant. He's given up bread. No biggie, I thought. I should have hit the panic button...'
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1 Deborah Orr: For a man to refuse to acknowledge a baby he has fathered is about as low as it gets
2 Johann Hari: No wonder 'Gone With The Wind' has failed
3 Mark Steel: You want children to learn? Here's how to do it
4 Claudia Winkleman: Take It From Me
5 Hamish McRae: No-frills democracy: cheap flights help the poor
7 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: A lament for the death of the left as a political force
8 Thomas Sutcliffe: Teenage drinking... it's hard to think straight
9 Bruce Anderson: We are destroying the very values which could save us in our battle against Islam
10 Leading article: A welcome assault on 'flat earth' politics
Emailed
1 Johann Hari: No wonder 'Gone With The Wind' has failed
2 Mark Steel: You want children to learn? Here's how to do it
3 Leading article: The world ignores these farmers at its peril
4 Bruce Anderson: We are destroying the very values which could save us in our battle against Islam
5 Hamish McRae: No-frills democracy: cheap flights help the poor
6 Johann Hari: Why bananas are a parable for our times
7 Leading article: A welcome assault on 'flat earth' politics
8 Johann Hari: The world must end its addiction to oil
9 Deborah Orr: For a man to refuse to acknowledge a baby he has fathered is about as low as it gets
Commented
1 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: A lament for the death of the left as a political force
2 Deborah Orr: For a man to refuse to acknowledge a baby he has fathered is about as low as it gets
3 Johann Hari: No wonder 'Gone With The Wind' has failed
4 Mark Steel: You want children to learn? Here's how to do it
5 Hamish McRae: No-frills democracy: cheap flights help the poor
6 Claudia Winkleman: Take It From Me
7 You Write the Caption - 03/06/08
8 Steve Richards: Advice is useless – Brown is condemned to swerve and scheme like Harold Wilson
9 Bruce Anderson: We are destroying the very values which could save us in our battle against Islam
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