Sign Of The Times No 1

On Radio 4's PM programme this evening I heard something which I found so profoundly depressing I really started to wonder, for the first time, what kind of nation Britain has now become.

Apparently a number of schools in Bristol are teaching children how to treat stab wounds. In a city which is far from the being the worst affected by the rise in knife crime, pupils are being taught how to stem blood loss and bandage a wound. The lessons are being given to children as young as 12.

What struck me the hardest as I listened wasn't the fact itself that a local education authority thinks that the war on crime has been lost to such a spectacular extent; it was the reaction of the kids themselves, taking in the lessons seemingly without question or any sense of shock - almost as if learning how to deal with the impact of appalling violence was as normal as any other lesson. Then I thought of my own kids, 12 last October, and the fact if our education authority follows Bristol's lead then they too will face this sickening reflection of the reality that is being a young person on Britain's streets today. And I thought "My God, what sort of country are they growing up in ?"

I didn't think that I had an over-romanticised view of my children's development into adolescence and adulthood. We haven't tried to shelter them, or to pretend that the world they're entering is some rose-tinted utopia. I can cope with them learning about STDs. I've been with them to the sessions on drugs. We keep on eye on what they do online. But this ? Dealing with their mates' stab wounds ? This I am quite definitely not prepared for.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, so New Labour told us to sycophantic acclaim from the Establishment's liberal intelligentsia a decade-and-a-half ago. So tough, it seems, we now have to teach 12 year-old kids how to stop their best friend's blood seaping out across the pavement.

This country is in crisis.