I was particularly taken by this bit:
If people have learned through their close relations to have no hopes for their future, to confuse cruelty with having a laugh, or to see society as so unfair as to make any morality absurd, this can only be changed through patient relationships that can nurture alternative ways of seeing. Support services for children know that the most successful interventions are long-term ones, but these are not the most attractive options for politicians seeking eye-catching, new policy initiatives.It helped 'name' some of the things that I've been finding important to throw into the debate but it does so in a way that I think helps capture the imagination and remember some important truths that the frames of usual public discourse tend to elide. My question however goes beyond it: if it is true that the most successful interventions are long-term, how do we build a political process that can support them? Especially when the latter sentence of the quote not only does not support them but actually undermines them by building in insecurity and early termination?
That's the real policy issue I think we need to face and it affects also the way that we politicise about the environment and even the economy. How do we feed the longer-term into the now of policy making so that it can appropriately trump the short-term?
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