Let’s overthrow killing certainties and knock down presuppositions about singular identities.The Royal Court makes that happen and Roy William’s sharp new play Fallout, about a black policeman, continues that tradition. Stratford East too, with the wonderful show,Da Boyz, a hip hop version of an old Rogers and Hart musical (which, scandalously, the Arts Council did not support).This is art that dares It rejects the dogmas of both conservatism and diversity. It challenges, upsets, enlivens – and properly reflects the soul of our restless, imaginative nation
More from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. There are times when the real, interesting stories of the moment are not to be found on the newspaper front pages, among the familiar tales of lies, counterlies and huffiness in high places, but hidden away among the fillers on the home news pages. Over the past few days, for example, we have learnt of social developments that in isolation may seem trivial but, taken together, present a revealing snapshot of the way we live. These day marketing firms are targeting the “metrosexual”, who is described as “a guy who is definitely straight, but has embraced the worlds of grooming, facials, shopping with women and, of course, their feminine side”.

Meanwhile, it is reported that 75 per cent of modern women are embarrassed by feminism.At work, we work longer hours than anywhere else in Europe, but we also – and maybe there is some kind of connection here – have a lot of office affairs. The holiday firm Thomsons has become so worried by the trend that it has told its 11,000 employees that any liaison with a colleague, however brief and pointless, must be reported to a department head.Returning home late and exhausted after a day at, or on, the desk, British workers can relax by watching Big Brother (this week, the inmates will be supplied with alcohol in the desperate hope that they might say or do something interesting) or curl up with a copy of the new Harry Potter, a fantasy written for children.There is a pattern here, which will be clear to everyone except those who are part of it. A large percentage of our citizens aged between, say, 25 and 40, are going off the rails in one way or another. As they grow up, they have been led to believe that, once they become part of what their parents invariably describe as “the real world”, they will be on the path to achievement and inner satisfaction, but this real world has proved to be complex and difficult.They are professionally ambitious, and yet their biological natures, already in something of an uproar, are stimulated unbearably by the sex-struck media all around them. They reach a fretful compromise, working long hours but spending most of their time trying to get off with the person at the next desk.Eventually, because the child-rearing, domestic fantasy is particularly powerful at the moment, they may start a family, but soon they find that the reality is drearier and more tiring than the dream version. Over time, the pressures of work, parenthood, adultery and, worst of all, being part of a culture that insists they are in the prime of their lives prove altogether too stressful for them.None of this need worry those outside the vulnerable age group. Children and teenagers believe that it will never happen to them; the over-40s can watch the carnival in the comfortable knowledge that, during those 15 years, people may be having a tough time but they are socially useful, drones whose mad energy is propelling society forward, albeit in a somewhat haphazard fashion.Not that this trend is ever made explicit – the myth that the years surrounding the 20s and 30s are little more than shadowy foothills surrounding the sunny peaks of adult youth is steadfastly maintained by advertisers and television producers.But just now and then, a hint of what is really going on glimmers through the gloom.

In this week’s Independent on Sunday, it was revealed that two out of every three families now rely on grandparents to help with the child-rearing. According to Age Concern, which conducted the survey in question, grandparents are “the unsung heroes of family life”.Yet, scandalously, these heroes have neither financial assistance in the form of childcare allowance nor a legal right of access to their grandchildren – which is particularly heartbreaking since it is they who are in the firing line when their offspring, brains addled by metrosexual grooming, shopping and facials, become strange and irresponsible. As many families have discovered, it is the middle-aged and old who are secure enough in themselves and in the lives that they have chosen to be selfless and generous in their dealings with children.Those campaigning for less ageism in the workplace, sincere as they are, may have chosen the wrong cause. A young grandparent will probably be delighted to be away from the workplace, with its ceaseless round of jostling competitiveness and desperate flirtations. His or her contribution to the family and to society at large is gentler and more significant than that of the worker ants of a younger generation, and it is about time government, the law and perhaps even the ants themselves recognised the fact.terblacker aol
More from Terence Blacker. Tony Blair’s doing his floaty walk again; it’s the one he does when things get critical It’s how he appeared among us at the 2002 party conference. Very effective it is too: slow, liturgical almost, head up, casting forward into the middle distance of the committee corridor, it’s as though he’s in the grip of a higher power (Destiny, perhaps, or Alastair Campbell) It’s a leader thing.

It’s a leader thing.
And when he sat before the liaison committee, he was bursting with confidence, full of fighting talk, utterly convinced, completely unconvincing. A peculiar combination for Blair, considering what a straight kind of guy he is Quite suddenly, it’s just not working for him. Each point he makes sounds strong, but each is weakened by the point he makes next.Tony Wright asked him about the dodgy dossier: “Do you accept you inadvertently misrepresented Parliament?” The Prime Minister’s first word was a firm “No”. Yet, in reply to Donald Anderson, who said it is customary to apologise to Parliament after inadvertently misleading it, the Prime Minister said: “We did so.” He says one thing here, and another thing there.