Paul Holmes: Every heart will go out to them

James Webster's family at his funeral at King's College, Auckland. Photo / Doug Sherring

It is hard to know how to comment on something as awful, as out of the blue and as unspeakably sad as the death of young James Webster who died after drinking a bottle of vodka. He drank it at a party last Saturday night, passed out and was dead by morning.

He went to the party having fibbed to his mum and dad about where he going. I make no judgment here. How can anyone? It happens. James was 16. There was a party on. It was going to be fun. We'll all been fibbed to by 16-year-olds.

You cannot always know where your teenagers are, sad to say. That is a fact of life, no matter what the talkback callers might say. I am a parent who knows this well and who learnt it painfully and heart-breakingly. With teenagers, things can get out of control very quickly and before you realise what is going on it is too late. Parenting is so hard. There is no manual for it.

There are no exams we sit in order to qualify. Sometimes, of course, you do not know that you do not know what your teenagers are up to although you might be sure that you do.

This is what happened to Charles and Penny Webster last Saturday night and it is why the heart of every parent in the nation went out to them this week.

By all reports James Webster seems to have been a lovely, talented, dedicated boy, involved in various activities including music and board diving.

He seems to have been popular with everyone at both Kings College and at his diving club and diligent in his studies. His grief-stricken parents have been incredibly brave and generous in their statements.

Penny Webster, James' mum, is right when she says the whole country has to learn from this. The Websters' transparent pain should cause us all to heed their call: we need to look after each other better. Mates have to look after mates. It is such an important thing.

No doubt the man who took James home to his place will regret forever not phoning an ambulance. James was not responding to anything. The man should have called an ambulance. But the boy, in the end, was simply drunk.

The man looked after James and put him to bed. I imagine many people would take that course of action. We know now that the best thing would have been to call 111 and what happened to James is a lesson to us all. If in doubt, phone the ambulance.

But, as Penny says, she and Charles level no blame at the man who, at least, took James home and put him to bed.

That man will blame himself for the rest of his life, I suppose. God, it is sad.

But I think when it comes to the arguments about and consternation at the extent of our youth drinking culture and the controversy over the drinking age Penny Webster speaks the most sense of all when she implores people simply to look after each other.

And I find myself in agreement with John Key when he says the drinking age had nothing to do with James' death. James did not buy that booze.

He didn't get anyone else to go and buy it for him, either. He acquired it at the home of a relative. No legislation or any specified drinking age played any part in James' having that bottle of vodka. No raising of the drinking age would have prevented what happened to this wonderful boy.

While some people are adamant lowering the age at which people can buy alcohol and drink it publicly was a catastrophic move, and I am not one of them, I do confess to having a little niggle about the signal the law change sent.

When the law demanded you had to be 20 before you could buy booze, 18-year-olds felt they had the nod. When we went to 18, did it give the nod to those younger? That is what many fear.

But the truth is all our lives we have known that if teenagers want to get hold of alcohol teenagers can do it.

When was it not so? The answer is in education and reinforcement of the messages. And the answer is in what Penny Webster says about us all looking after each other. That is a message for our entire community and it is especially a valid, important message for our young people as they negotiate the rites of passage. Mates have to look after mates.

Charles Webster says his family will never be happy again. Mr Webster is wracked by grief at the moment with the loss of his wonderful son. Nevertheless, grief can be lightened by the passing of time. Time helps immeasurably in the end. But time, of course, takes time. But it does pass. And it does help.

I weep for the grief of James' family and for the grief and shock that must be overwhelming James' school, King's College. The mourners who farewelled him in that beautiful old Kings chapel would have been specially moved when they heard the organ on which James so often practised.

In the UK this week I read in The Times an interview with the grumpy but celebrated modern historian in a pub in Oxford about a new work he has published.

He orders a double gin and tonic, with the sun barely above the yardarm and takes the interviewer out the back of the pub under a corrugated iron extension in which it is permitted to smoke. What's wrong with this country? he asks. You can't smoke in pubs any more but the young people of the nation are drunk.

In other words, we may need to balance our efforts at improving the public health a little better.

AND SPEAKING of the UK, the speed at which, and the finesse with which, David Cameron and Nick Clegg stitched up what appears to be a very solid and a very workable coalition agreement was very impressive.

Nick Clegg becomes Deputy Prime Minister to Cameron himself and his party gets five powerful cabinet positions.

And while the parties will work together on legislation they may still campaign against each other in any elections. For instance, there is by-election shortly and they will each compete against the other there.

Tricky, I would have thought, but not unmanageable. And especially so now with Labour knocked for six with intense manoeuvrings going on for the leadership.

What is fascinating about the Cameron-Clegg team is they look almost to be the same man, even though they have hugely different policies. There seems to be a real air of acceptance and understanding between them.

I mean, they actually even look alike. And the facility with which they have forged the detail of their coalition agreement indicates a deep pragmatism in both.

Britain has not had a coalition since Churchill brought Clement Atlee into his cabinet in the early 50s. Britain has always been proudly first past the post. But the way those two worked was as if they were entirely used to a proportional voting system with its endless needs to compromise and consider other positions.

I marvel at their ages. David Cameron is merely 43. Nick Clegg is just a few months younger.

The old Thatcher Tories are sniping and snarling about the idea of coalition, of course, predicting a bad ending. They would, wouldn't they? But a torch has passed to a younger generation in the UK.

The old politics may well have gone, as Cameron says. He and Clegg may well have effected, as Cameron says, a seismic change in British politics.

And Cameron sees the landscape ahead of them. He made it clear to reporters in the garden at the back of No 10 that if they want to find members of both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems who are dissatisfied with the policies formulated, they will find lots, but it is the big picture that will matter. Well, we shall see.