The American Spectator

Still, if children are deprived of adventure and excitement in one way, they will often find it in another: All this care lest children be exposed to the tiniest conflict coexists with some of the highest rates for juvenile crime, drug abuse, underage sex, sexually transmitted disease, and underage drunkenness in Europe. (Russia, a byword for dangerous, drunken chaos, has a rate of juvenile and teenage alcohol abuse a fraction of Britain’s, according to a recent survey.)

Beverly Hughes, the new Children’s Minister, said in May 2005 that the government could do no more to tackle the problem of teenage pregnancy, which was out of control. Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate was five times that of the Netherlands, three times that of France, and double that of Germany. In 2004, the Department of Education and Skills released figures showing that more than 10 children were expelled every day from English state schools for assaulting either staff of fellow pupils, and another 280 a day were suspended for similar attacks. Millions of people now claim to be in fear of gangs of marauding teenagers.

H. G. Wells’s story The Time Machine depicted a distant future in which the human race had divided into the helpless, sheeplike Eloi and the brutal Morlocks. Present British policies appear aimed at creating future citizens who are Eloi and Morlock in one.