Home is where you come to when you've got nothing better to do.
Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today's political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order - as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice.
People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.
I remain totally convinced that when children are young, however busy we may be with the practical duties inside the home, themost important thing of all is to devbote enoughh time and care to their needs and problems.
Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.
[On being asked how many Mrs. Thatchers there were:] Oh, three at least. There is the intellectual one, the intuitive one and the one at home.
