Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Q: Children in our towns and cities are being robbed of safe spaces to play. Where do the children play? Where can they run around unsupervised? On most of the housing estates I visit, the answer is hardly anywhere . A community not built around children is no community at all . A place that functions socially is one in which they are drawn to play outdoors . As Jay Griffiths argues in her heartrending book Kith, children fill the "unoccupied territories", the spaces not controlled by tidy-minded adults, "the commons of mud, moss, roots and grass" . But such places are being purged from the land and their lives . "Today's children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and enclosed in rigid schedules of time." Since the 1970s the area in which children roam without adults has decreased by almost 90% . "Childhood is losing its commons." Given all that we know about the physical and psychological impacts of this confinement , you would expect the authorities to ensure that the remaining 10% of their diminished range is designed to draw children out of their homes . Yet almost everywhere they are designed out . Housing estates are built on the playing fields and rough patches children used to inhabit, and offer almost nothing in return . In the government's masterplan for England, the national planning policy framework, children are mentioned only twice: in a catalogue of housing types . In parliament's review of these plans, they aren't mentioned at all . Young people, around whom our lives should revolve, have been airbrushed from the planning system . I spent Monday wandering around the new and newish housing developments on the east side of Northampton . I chose this area because the estates here are spacious and mostly built for families : in other words, there is no possible excuse for excluding young people . In the places built 10 or 20 years ago, there is plenty of shared space , but almost all of it is allocated to cars . (You can see the photos on my website .) Grass is confined to the roundabouts or to coffin-like gardens , in which you can't turn a cartwheel without hitting the fence . I came across one exception - a street with wide grass verges . But they sloped towards the road: dangerous and useless, a perfect waste of space . This land of missed opportunities, designed by people without a spark of joy in their hearts, reifies the idea that there is no such thing as society . Had you set out to ensure that children were neither seen nor heard, you could not have done a better job . On the last day of the holidays, which was warm and dry, across four estates I saw only one child . By comparison, the Cherry Orchard estate just completed by Bellway Homes is a children's paradise . But only by comparison . Next to the primary school, with plenty of three- and four-bedroom houses, it is designed to appeal to young families . But in the middle of the development, where a village green might have been, there' s a strange grassy sump, surrounded by a low fence . It's an empty balancing pond, to catch water during exceptional floods . Remove the fence, plant it with trees, throw in some rocks and logs, and you'd have a rough and mossy playground . But no such thing was in the plans . Other shared spaces on the estate have the charming ambience of a prison yard : paved and surrounded by garden fences almost nine feet high . There were a few children outdoors but they seemed pressed to the edges, sitting in doorways or leaning on fences . Children don't buy houses , so who cares? Throughout the country, they become prisoners of bad design, and so do adults . Without safe and engaging places in which they can come together, no tribe forms . So parents must play the games that children would otherwise play among themselves , and everyone is bored to tears . The exclusion of children arises from the same pathology that denies us decent housing . In the name of market freedom, the volume housebuilders, sitting on their land banks, are free to preside over speculative chaos , while we are free to buy dog kennels priced like palaces in placeless estates so badly designed that community is dead on arrival . Many want to design and build their own homes , but almost no plots are available , as the big builders have seized them . In Scotland the government is considering compulsory sale orders , which would pull down prices - essential when the speculative price of land has risen from 2% of the cost of a home in the 1930s to 70% today . A national housing land corporation would assemble the sites and supply the infrastructure, then sell plots to community groups, housing associations and people who want to build their own . It goes far beyond England's feeble community right-to-build measures , which lack the muscular facilitation that only public authorities can provide . But it's still not far enough . What if people were entitled to buy an option for a plot on a new estate, which they would then help to plan? Not just the houses, but the entire estate would be built for and by those who would live there . The council or land corporation would specify the number and type of homes , then the future residents - including people on the social housing waiting list - would design the layout . Their children would help to create the public spaces . Communities would start to form even before people moved in , and the estates would doubtless look nothing like those built today . To the Westminster government, this probably sounds like communism . But as countries elsewhere in Europe have found, we don't need volume house builders, except to construct high-rises . They do not assist the provision of decent, affordable homes . They impede it . What is good for them is bad for us . Bellway, its brochure reveals, asked children at the neighbouring primary school to paint a picture of a cherry orchard, and displayed the winning entries in its show home . "Why not pop over to say hello, view our wonderful development and sneak a peek?", it asks . That's the role the children were given: helping the company to sell the houses it had already built . Why can't we shape the places that shape our lives?

A: A place that functions socially is one in which they are drawn to play outdoors
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Q: Peace on Earth? There are a whole bunch of people who simply don't like Christmas and are fighting to get rid of it any way they can . And, there are a lot of people on the other side who are angry at those efforts . And so, this whole battle over whether to say Christmas or Happy Holidays misses the point . I suppose it may be hard to be a non-believer in the religious themes around Christmas and live in our culture . You are confronted daily with the religious symbolism of Christmas in the books you read, the friends you have and the movies you watch ; and , above all ,  you have to stay away from religious stuff...like Christmas celebrations . I'm a believer, but not without a modicum of compassion for those who don't share my religious beliefs . I can imagine how irritating Christmas must be for those whose whole worldview is built on the belief that Christmas doesn't matter because it points to what is spurious at best and dangerous at worst . I get that, too . I must admit, though, that I get irritated sometimes when a group of people bring a lawsuit to get rid of the town creche or when someone wishes me "Happy Holidays." It bothers me when universities remove Christmas trees or Christmas concerts are canceled because it offends those who aren't religious or Christian . Frankly, I listen to a lot of stuff from the other side all the time . Fair play suggests that it wouldn't hurt for the other side to abide some of mine . I decided that I'm just not going to fight the Christmas war . I'm an old guy and old people are already irritated about being old . As someone said, it takes very little to tick us off . Instead, I'm just going to sing as loudly and as publicly as I can a Christmas carol---a Christmas carol about love and a God who went to a lot of trouble to express his love for us . You see , in my belief system, Christmas doesn't mean that God came to destroy us or to kick posteriors . I believe that the reason he came was to tell us that he isn't angry . And when we make obscene gestures or get mean with those who disagree with us, it kind of misses the point . It becomes a disconnect between what I believe and what I do . And if I really believe(and I do) that the King came , it kind of changes my perspective . I have a friend whose family takes playing chess very seriously . It gets so "hot" sometimes that they end up throwing chess pieces at one another . As you can imagine , they lose a lot of pieces . One Christmas when they were playing chess, my friend took the baby Jesus from the small creche under the Christmas tree to replace one of his lost pieces . My friend then began to move all over the board, going after his brother's pieces . "You can't do that," his brother said,"that's illegal." "Oh, yes I can," my friend said."This is Jesus and he can do whatever he wants to do." Jesus does as he pleases and he does it right well . At Christmas he decided to love and, then, clean up the mess later . So I think I'll opt out of the war . The King was doing fine before I came along and will do fine long after I'm gone . He doesn't need my defense . So, Merry Christmas or...uh .... Happy Holidays . Whatever .

A: There are a whole bunch of people who simply don't like Christmas and are fighting to get rid of it any way they can And, there are a lot of people on the other side who are angry at those efforts
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Q: Power without purpose: the tragic rule of David Cameron. When the history of David Cameron's time as prime minister is written , no doctrine will be named after him . The government has been ideological, but not in a way that bears an intellectual imprint of the Conservative leader . There have been upheavals in schools, the health service and the benefits system , but those revolutions belong to Michael Gove, Andrew Lansley and Iain Duncan Smith . Cameron gave permission , he never pioneered . Cameron has also said he abhors "isms" and wouldn't want posterity to anoint him with one . Friends say this makes him a practical conservative of the old school , guided by ancient and uncodified British instincts of decency . His enemies think that is a posh way of saying he lacks principle . With no pattern of belief associated with his name, Cameron's legacy will be a collection of tactical manoeuvres, with as many prominent surrenders as victories . The true spirit of "Cameronism" in education, for example, is better conveyed in the removal in 2014 of Gove to placate the teaching profession than in his appointment to shake up the department in the first place . But in no field is the Tory leader's trademark better defined than in his approach to Europe . If any political manoeuvre deserves to be named after the Conservative leader , it is the habit of trying to sate the appetites of hardline Eurosceptics with morsels that would always leave them hungry . It might be called the "Cameron concession" . Thus has he fed the Eurosceptic pack enough to keep it snapping at his heels and frustrated it enough that his voice was drowned by angry barking . Perhaps the saddest aspect of this spectacle is that it saw a potentially sound policy trampled in the melee . The outline of Cameron's position is that Britain should stay in the EU but under changed terms . They will change anyway because the priority for most other member states is bolstering the single currency . This involves the integration of a euro-core with serious implications for Britain's status one way or another . So the principle of pro- active renegotiation, ratified by referendum, is sound . But Cameron spoiled a plausible position with cowardice : he set his renegotiation up as an empty vessel into which hardliners poured Ukip-ish fantasies of ending immigration . He bought the argument that says the terms on offer from Brussels get better the closer Britain gets to the exit , although that logic is commonly advanced by people who want the negotiations to fail . The deadline for his referendum, the end of 2017, was plucked from thin air without regard for what was diplomatically feasible or economically wise . But the chief reason Cameron's EU policy hasn't worked for him is that voters also consider motive when awarding merit . Those who want a referendum in order to leave the EU mistrust the prime minister because he wants a different outcome ; and pro-Europeans don't trust Cameron to defend Britain's interests in Europe because the whole policy came about as a sop to the sceptics . That doesn't leave many people who think the Tories have the right policy for the right reason . Europe exemplifies the problem , but it runs deeper . Cameron's team are sure they are running on an admirable record: economic growth, rising employment, lower crime, a reduced deficit and reformed welfare . These are things, like the EU referendum, that should make the Tories popular . By the same calculation, Labour, lacking those credentials, should be out of the running . Yet the campaign has started and Ed Miliband is still ahead . Downing Street clings to the now familiar explanation that voters haven't properly engaged with the choice, and that the Tory surge will come at the eleventh hour when the reality of a possible Miliband regime penetrates the national consciousness . But what if Cameron has hit the limit of credit available for five years in charge because even the good bits don't connect in people's minds with decent motives? That is what Labour strategists are banking on . Miliband's personal ratings are bleak, except on measures of decency and empathy . So those are the leadership qualities his campaign aims to project . The contrast they want to draw is between Cameron's ethical plasticity and a challenger who sticks to his beliefs . Miliband will be cast as a man guided by what David Axelrod, Barack Obama's former aide now advising Labour, calls"a north star" - a compass point that tells voters a leader is propelled by something more noble than the salvation of his own skin . Waverers who don't warm to Miliband(and who aren't irredeemably riddled with anti-Westminster rage) might still be persuaded that he is in politics for the right reason . The opposite is true of Cameron . Even those in his own party who like the direction of policy cannot sincerely claim that their leader is driven by much beyond a sense of entitlement to the job . That was less of an impediment in the past . For much of the 20th century, Britain was ruled by Conservatives who thought of political theory as something suspect or vulgar, a folly for continentals and socialists, and no substitute for the innate good sense drilled into English boys at the best schools . The Thatcher revolution disrupted the patrician culture in the Conservative party, but not the underlying belief that Tory rule is a default setting for British politics; the norm to which the country tends . That assumption, more than economic growth, deficit reduction, an EU referendum or any other part of the prospectus, is what makes Cameron think he can stay on after May . It is the confidence that he is an archetypal prime minister and the only credible candidate for the job . Perhaps he will be proved right . He will have money and much of the press to amplify that view . But even loyal Conservatives can't entirely ignore the intellectual void at the centre . The right has decried it as often as the left . The past five years have posed huge challenges for Britain regarding the economy, our place in Europe, England's relations with Scotland, the decline of trust in institutions . But of which encounter with a great problem can it be said the prime minister truly rose to the occasion? Cameron doesn't have big answers , he shrinks questions . And that is how history will remember him, whatever happens in May . He successfully pursued power and spent it without purpose .

A:
the history of David Cameron's time as prime minister is written The government has been ideological, but not in a way that bears an intellectual imprint of the Conservative leader
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