Monday 15 August 2011

Mending Our Broken Society Together


Today from a youth centre in Witney, the Prime Minister addressed the nation about last week’s rioting across England and concluded by stating: “The restoration of responsibility has to cut right across our society. Because whatever the arguments, we all belong to the same society and we all have a stake in making it better. There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’- there is us. We are all in this together and we will mend our broken society- together.”


David Cameron gave a passionate speech where he pledged that the government would “turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families” by 2015. He said that all future domestic policies would be subject to a “family test” so that they do not encourage family breakdown as many rioters had grown up without fathers or male role models.

He reminded us of the plans to have school leavers take part in a National Citizen Service where young people spend time volunteering in hospitals and community centres.

He announced that the government would accelerate the plans for free schools and city academies as “an education system is needed that reinforces the message that if you do the wrong thing you’ll be disciplined, but if you work hard and play by the rules then you’ll succeed.”

He also made reference to Croydon: “I’ll never forget talking to Maurice Reeves, whose family had run the Reeves furniture store in Croydon for generations. This was an 80 years old man who had seen the business he had loved, that his family had built up for generations, simply destroyed. A hundred years of hard work, burned to the ground in a few hours.”

Social problems have been festering for decades in our society and last weeks riots were a wake-up call for our country. We need to be determined to change attitudes and behavior if we want to turn our country around and this morning Cameron gave a stellar performance as he spoke passionately about how we will solve these problems together.

To read a full transcript of his speech please click here 

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