Drop the political PR stunts and let parents get on with parenting

WHEN you have a Government that is not rooted in ideology or guided by any clear principles, what you tend to get instead is a make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of policy-making driven by PR stunts.

If Britain's New Labour remains the most blatant exponent of this style of governance, our new Minister for Justice is catching on quickly.

Whatever position one takes on the issue of asylum seekers, or the "huddled masses of the world" who apparently want to migrate here, the much-vaunted Operation Hyphen was clearly designed primarily for public consumption. And Mr McDowell's identification of so-called superpubs as a root cause of our society's ills makes no sense whatsoever but resonates with an anxious public, particularly in light of Geraldine Chambers' tragic death in Donegal.