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This is such a non-story. Sundae's right, it's his baby face that's brought the tabloids in.
My part of England (my borough) has one of the highest teenage conception rates in the country. We've also brought those figures down at a faster rate than anywhere else, because it's something the local authority and partners (health trust, police, anti-social behaviour units, neighbourhood management, CYP Directorate) have concentrated a hell of a lot of effort, time and resources into: reaching at-risk youngsters, outreach education programmes in schools in the area etc.
Why does my area have such high levels of teen conception? It's nothing to do with permissiveness, and a lot to do with the kind of social breakdown that goes hand in hand with poverty and economic distress. Much of my borough is no different to the rest of the country; but we have two areas within it that rank in the top ten on the multiple deprivation index: which means we have two of the most deprived areas in England. No prizes for guessing which parts of my borough are contributing most to those figures. The life expectancy of children born in those two parts of the borough is ten years lower than children born in my village. That is not a slipping of conservative values, it's poverty plain and simple. It never went away.
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