Feb 24th

According to his mother Samuel is a stoner. Oh, and his father also found ecstasy in his coat pocket. He's not even clever enough to hide his drugs. Although his lassez-faire approach may have been encouraged by a speaker who came to his school (Westminster) and apparently said ecstasy was less dangerous than smoking. 

It seems Sam and his mother are at loggerheads. He doesn't listen and he has basically checked out as far as his education is concerned. Samuel is the youngest of five kids and, boy, he doesn't half live up to it. He can't make his own breakfast. Apparently he asked his mum: 'how do you make fried egg?' 

This is a kid who managed to get himself 8 A* grades at GCSE but now there is nothing that interests him. Although I know that there is something more going on. He has become infatuated with another boy at his school. A kid who regularly spends a couple of thousand pounds every weekend.

Samuel also explains to me how he wants to have power when he grows up. 'I'd be a good mafia boss,' he says, 'accept the mafia aren't as glamorous as they used to be.' To which I reply: 'you mean they don't kill people as elegantly as they used to?' 'Whatever brings in the...' And he rubs his fingers together in the universal gesture of money. 

I tell him about a woman I know who is not only suffering from cancer but is also waiting to hear about her asylum case. She is from Zimbabwe and has been terribly abused. I wonder if this will shake him up, awaken some kind of emotional response but he just shrugs his shoulders: 'nothing to do with me.' 

The trouble is that he knows how easy he's got it and so is making a decent attempt at destroying his future. At some level I think it's about a lack of identity. A vacuum of testosterone he looks to his rich friend as a role model. It makes me think, more than ever, that we need more diversity in our schools.