Tolerating organized crime promotes the cheap philosophy that everything is a racket. It promotes cynicism among adults. It contributes to the confusion of the young and to the increase of juvenile delinquency.

The hardest problems of all in law enforcement are those involving a conflict of law and local customs. History has recorded many occasions when the moral sense of a nation produced judicial decisions, such as the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which required difficult local adjustments.

Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly.

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

I think it true that, you know, sometimes things start to change even before a government changes and, actually, I think you can begin to see even the Labour machine beginning to understand that it has become over-reliant on targets and processes, that local governments have been over-bossed and bullied.

We do learn a thing or two from art. It may not be the one-to-one instruction of a moral lesson or the rote learning of a grammatical rule or mathematical concept. But the habits of mind art cultivates are important.

I have always respected education, which is why I actually went back secretly and taught school for eight years.

Instead of unfairly demonizing teachers, we should be working with them to find solutions to the problems in our schools and make sure every child gets an outstanding public education.