Quote Of The Day

"I am one of the lucky ones. That I escaped my destiny [growing up in the projects] I put down to three things: being part of a close-knit family; having a determined mother; and being enrolled with the Army Cadet Force (ACF) when I was 12 years old. I had a role model in my uncle who when my dad wasn’t around made a deliberate attempt to replace him in many of the fathering things. That was important to me. When everybody else was trying to grow up quickly and act like a man, my uncle disallowed it. His being there meant I was able to be a child, to be interested in toys. This separated me from my peer group. One of my mum’s proudest boasts about me was that I never brought the police to her house. I also got to know my father when he came back to support us and that’s a rarity in this area." — Shaun Bailey, youth worker in the projects, member of the Conservative Party (Britain) and parliamentary candidate