Take it away, Doc!
Dear Dr Wordsmith, I am puzzled by the frequency of the phrase “drug abuse”.Dr Wordsmith writes: And why, pray?Dear Dr Wordsmith, Because we never hear the phrase “drug use”. I am glad to welcome back the celebrated lexicographer and etymologist Dr Wordsmith, who is here yet again to answer all your queries about the modern workings of the English language. Sadly though, the “message” will be empty.d.orr independent.co.uk
More from Deborah Orr. This will be a lovely “message” for the Government to send out.

What it wants is improved statistics and achieved targets, and it has been heavy-handedly “sending the message” out to schools, which are all under orders to improve their attendance records any way they can.It’s much, much easier to persuade caring parents that they are very, very wrong to take their children on holiday during term-time than it is to tackle the woeful dysfunctionality at the heart of the family lives of those such as Mrs Amos.Cracking down on the discretion of parents – and the teachers at their schools – to take their own decisions about what’s best for the children they know intimately will be guaranteed to make an impressive dent in the truancy figures. What’s actually happening is cynical.The Government has so far made hardly a dent in the figures, which have been running for years into several million school days lost each year. Frankly, that would be preferable to what is really going on, because it would merely be stupid, misguided and patronising. School drug dealers to be expelled? What was the policy before yesterday? Giving them their own little corner in the tuck shop?Film of dead heroin addicts to be shown to 11-year-olds? Are you a bad parent for keeping your child off school on the day when that charming lesson is slated for them, whether you agree with such tactics or not? With schools this imperfect, how can a parental decision to keep their child away for a day or two always be condemned?So what is the reason for tarring all parents who ever keep their child off school with the same brush as sad, messed up Mrs Amos? Many a fool will contend that this truancy campaign is all about political correctness, with the middle-classes targeted for reasons of socialist envy. However, if they’re responsible enough to be able make a judgement about how to fit the needs of their child into the needs of the family as a whole and make sure that a term-time holiday can be an excellent educational experience, then they’re still, in the eyes of the Government, feckless parents.Anyway, other “messages” from the Government yesterday were fit to send any decent parent reaching for the home-schooling manual. The message, ostensibly, is that parents must take responsibility for the education of their children. So far, no useful policy decision has been taken on how to deal with this most challenging of problems.What a confused message this one on truancy is turning out to be.

There is an intimate relationship between lack of education and crime.So are we to believe that children are causing this mayhem while holidaying during term-time – as Mr Blair’s children did – in the Seychelles? I think not. But that’s supply, demand, capitalism – the very same system that needs the people at the bottom to remain abject in order to “send out the right message” to encourage the others.And anyway, doesn’t the Government’s own rhetoric imply that family holidays during term-time are not the problem at all? Truancy, we are told, is a terrible threat partly because 40 per cent of street crime, 25 per cent of burglaries, 20 per cent of criminal damage and a third of car thefts are being perpetrated by truants aged between 11 and 16. And yes, it is pretty appalling that the travel industry behaves in this way. The travel industry must definitely be informed that such practices are “sending out the wrong message”. It is also about middle-class parents who take their kids on holiday during term-time.”Concern about this cancer at the heart of our society is such that talks with the travel industry are to be had, no doubt gently and rhetorically, inquiring as to why it is that they double all their prices during the school hols.

“It cuts across all society and we have to get the message across This is not an attack on the poor. The Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, is in favour of the sentence, because it “sends out the right messsage”.This message isn’t clear enough, though, and was therefore embroidered by a government spokesman. Signs of such resentment were apparent during a recent two-week truancy sweep by Islington police in London.Not only did the police discover that the vast majority of truanting children they apprehended were accompanied by their parents (my guess would be that the unaccompanied ones steer clear of the police), they also noted that quite a few of the adults were rather irritated to be questioned about their responsibilities as parents, or lack of them, at all.Truancy, and how to combat it, is a hot topic at the moment.Today, Patricia Amos, single and pathetically inadequate mother of five, launches an appeal against her 60-day custodial sentence for “condoning” the truancy of her two youngest daughters. If there is a phrase that sums up modern society’s self-righteous yet lazy search for the quick fix, then it surely must be the dreaded but mercilessly overused homily, “sending out a message”. But walking the lush streets of Washington DC I get the feeling that retail therapy matters too
More from Hamish McRae. But ask yourself why the voters of the Netherlands and France are so evidently unhappy, while those of the US are still so solidly behind their President Just patriotism? There is a bit of that, to be sure. Nor can I prove the link between the continuing popularity of this US administration and the great burst of prosperity in the US.