Politicians: The Real Stranger Danger For Kids

There are some things we subversively discuss here which are very irritating, but still others which are so obscene that it makes me weep for the future those younger than us will be forced to live in.

It's taken me a while to properly catch up on Lenore Skenazy's recent articles, but this kind of perverted attitude really grips my shit, so it's worth reproducing it in full.

I was accused of abusing a child when I rescued him from drowning. I was swimming on beach and I noticed a 8 or 9 year old kid come off his little surf board and he sunk straight to the bottom, about 10 feet deep. I swam down and rescued the kid and swam him back to the beach.

As soon as I got the child to the beach he was crying and coughing up water, his mother ran down screaming to leave her boy alone. She was screaming at me so loudly that people were crowding around to see what had happened. At this time the life guards turned up and I advised them what happened as I could not talk any sense to the mother. The life guards took the boy and mother to the life guard hut and I went back to my towel on the beach.

One of the life guards came back to me 10 minutes later and ask me to stay where I am because the police have been called and the mother wants to press charges. The cops turned up 20 minutes later and interviewed me and at that time another lady came up to the police and corroborated my story. The cops let me go, no apology from mother who was marching off the beach arguing with the cops after they told her what happened.

If it was not for the other lady I believe I would be sitting in a police cell for rescuing a kid.

"Leave her boy alone", she said. Great, so there'd be a possibility of his being a dead boy.

This is a story from America, but you just know that the scenario is equally likely to have happened here. The first I noticed this pathetic parental attitude was back in around 1990 when - with my partner of the time - I attempted to soothe a child who had lost her Mummy in Sainsbury's. When the daft cow turned up, she yanked the kid away and gave us the filthiest look I've ever seen.

This, of course, two decades before the hysterical paedohysteria we see now with the entire population being condemned as kiddie-fiddlers until they are proven otherwise. In fact, nowadays, just a wild accusation can land you with a record which makes you unemployable.

It's part of a vile underbelly of filthy distrust which I have touched upon regularly on this blog, and which leads inevitably to childhood self-reliance being curtailed thanks to the selfishness of idiot elders.

All encouraged by politicians who are blindly ignorant to the nasty society they are creating with kneejerk policies which create child harm from an almost non-existent threat.

In 2008, a report for Civitas, a think tank, said the increasing use of such checks had created an atmosphere of suspicion among parents, many of whom were volunteers at sports and social clubs, and who found themselves regarded as "potential child abusers".

I don't use the term 'child harm' lightly, either. There is ample evidence that such hysteria leads to everyday situations where kids suffer real harm over fears of a risk so vanishingly small that it is literally one in a million.

On average 11 children are killed by a stranger each year in the UK (and there are more than 11 million children in the UK), a figure that has not increased since the 1970s. Statistically children are more at risk of abuse from someone they know. Of course the murder or abuse of any child is a tragedy but the actual statistics do imply that our parental anxieties about stranger danger are misplaced.

Conversely, a population scared to step in for fear of being branded a sex pest contributes to tragedies like this, not to mention the numerous lives destroyed as a result of a society obsessed with dirty-minded suspicion.

As a nation, we have shifted from a position where it is a moral imperative to look after kids where one sees them to be in trouble, to one where it is far wiser to look the other way.

Spineless politicians did that. Hurried into it by pathetic idiots who see non-existent paedos behind every hedge and - indeed, on every public beach - thereby contributing to a culture of irrational fear which destroys us all, along with communities which for centuries have been naturally disposed to looking after them.

Would you, for example, come to the aid of a kid in the current atmosphere of stranger terror?

I know I'd think long and hard before doing so.

Don't They Grow Up Quick?

An Aurora elementary school student has been suspended for three days after quoting this line from an LMFAO song: "I’m sexy and I know it."

Forms from the school indicate the [6 year old] first-grader was suspended for sexual harassment, which the school district's discipline code says has "negative affects of the learning or work of others."

Some grown-ups don't half have filthy minds, eh?

The boy little P tells me that if the same rule applied over here, all the boys in years 4, 5 and 6 at his school would have been at home playing on their Wii machines for the past couple of months.

You see, the song is more than a little popular. I wonder where that leaves the pop music stations who have been playing it dozens of times a day all over the United States, presumably they will be hauled up in front of a beak for sexually harassing all listeners 6 years old and over? Mind your playlist, BBC Radio 1.

I'd like to say that our educators aren't as daft, but I just know you lot will point to the same kind of idiocy this side of the pond. Daily Mail links don't count.

Anyway, altogether now, "Everyday I'm shufflin".

H/T David M

Man Speaks Common Sense, Gets Slated

It's not often I excitedly applaud an article at the BBC, but this is one such piece.

[...] it offends my sensibilities as a professional social researcher, but it also offends me as a parent. With my wife, I have raised three boys in south London, and I think it is disgraceful that such a range of people - organisations, politicians and journalists - use terrible evidence, or in many cases no evidence at all, to perpetuate negative myths about the state of childhood and family life in the UK today.

I am also dismayed by how readily we as a society choose to believe them.

Oh this is so true. How, for God's sake, can anyone truly believe that kids are having a terrible existence in the modern world when, in the modern world, adults are increasingly having to engineer their lives around kids?

For example all the best evidence shows that parents now devote more time to caring for their children than ever before, and in particular the current generation of fathers has massively increased the amount of time they spend with their children compared to previous generations.

Demonstrably so. The experience of anyone who has kids will tell you that modern parenting is now almost a competitive sport. Mums and Dads of the late 20th and early 21st century are replaying the 'keeping up with the Joneses' battles of earlier times by trying to show how much more perfect they are than parents of their offspring's friends.

It's a pan-national race to the top, with kids being the undeniable winners.

Nor I would argue are our kids passive victims ripe for commercial organisations. They are actually rather savvy, and I think understand very well what commercial organisations are trying to do when they communicate with them, particularly when it comes to engagement online.

Hmm, I wonder which clowns are promoting such concepts, eh? Vested interests who are looking only to their next pay cheque, perchance?

So why is such a misleading picture being painted? Well first of all I think I have to point the finger at my profession. Quite a lot of bad social research is done, and people draw conclusions from their research that really it is not fair to draw.

You're preaching to the choir there, sunshine.

Another contributory factor is that the media love a bad news story, and reject good news ones. And of course the plethora of children's charities, competing for headlines and donations, understand this.

He's not ... he's not going to say the unsayable? Is he?

Those headlines, for example, were reporting views and research from the likes of Save the Children, the Children's Society and Barnardo's. These charities ratchet up the emotional ante, and I think as they do so their voices become ever more shrill, and reason disappears from the argument.

Yes, he is! Hallelujah!

A man after my own heart as I believe we've covered that kinda thing here before.

Academics feel the same pressure - to accentuate the negative. Their next research grant may depend on getting media coverage for their research, which is greater if the story is negative.

So there are real vested interests driving this.

At this point, I had to pinch myself to believe I was still reading the BBC.

My own children have all lost friends from their homes in south London when the parents, wanting to do the right thing, take them away from the city amid fears of violence and knife crime.

They take them to the countryside, where of course all the statistics show that they are far more likely to be run over in a rural road traffic accident than they ever were to be a victim of knife crime in south London.

The same risk-petrified mindset which encourages paedohysteria like this, in fact.

So the next time you read or hear about social decline, simply ask yourself what evidence do they have, and then ask whether it is really getting worse.

You may find that things are much better than you thought.

And wild applause as he nails the dismount.

So how was this received by the great British BBC reading public? Well, with derision and denial, of course. Commenter after commenter queued up to advance the ideas they have had implanted by decades of drip drip media and vested interest misinformation.

Just as readers here will all have been ridiculed for, at some point, explaining facts to their friends and colleagues such as alcohol consumption has been declining for years, or that obesity isn't really any kind of problem if one looks at the figures instead of the Daily Mail.

Because we are living in an age where myth has been installed as fact, and many incontrovertible truths are dismissed by a majority who trust people who simply don't deserve it. 'Jamie Oliver said it, so it must be true' syndrome.

The Heresiarch pointed to just such an example between Christmas and New Year.

"Britain’s problem with alcohol is not due to price, but a culture of excessive consumption," says the Telegraph. Actually, excessive consumption isn't the problem (by European standards, it is not excessive). Culture, though, is. What causes the Hogarthian scenes that disfigure town centres of a Friday or Saturday evening? Not alcohol, but rather a set of cultural beliefs about alcohol that produces (prompts, encourages, excuses) loutish behaviour. Read Kate Fox's Watching the English if you don't believe me. She discusses psychological experiments that show people will get drunk on placebos while staying sober on alcohol that they believe to be water, and notes that "many other nations manage to consume much larger quantities of alcohol without becoming rude, violent and generally disgusting." She writes:

These basic facts are, among my fellow cross-cultural researchers, so obvious and commonplace as to be tedious. We are certainly all very weary of repeating them, endlessly, to audiences who either cannot or will not accept their validity. Much of my professional life has been spend on alcohol-related research and my colleagues and I have been trotting out the same irrefutable evidence for over a decade, every time our expertise is called upon by government departments, police conferences, worried brewers and other concerned agencies.

Everyone is always highly surprised... and politely determined to let nothing shake their faith in the evil powers of the demon drink. It's like trying to explain the causes of rain to some remote mud-hut tribe in thrall to the magic of witch-doctors and rain-makers.

For 'mud-hut tribe', substitute Westminster, and for 'audiences who cannot and will not accept validity', how about your friends, acquaintances, and neighbours who are so easily hoodwinked by professional liars?

A well-respected 'expert', pictured yesterday

It's not like they're even making life easier or more enjoyable either. I suppose yer average bread and circuses engrossed human just feels comfortable being shat on.

Such a shame that so many are happy to abrogate their time on this Earth to self-serving people who care nothing for them, and never will.

14 Million Random Acts Of Unkindness

Over at The Manifesto Club, Josie Appleton continues to diligently discuss issues of liberty which obviously don't concern our idiot politicians. With reference to two recent cases where adults were castigated for helping children, she concludes.

These are simple acts of human kindness. That they are punished as unprofessional or risky shows how everyday and normal caring has become contaminated.

Effectively, decent adults are abandoning children because it is too risky to help them.

These proceedures encourage child negligence. In the name of child safety!

Quite. As this high profile case tragically proves.

Neglect ruling in girl pond death

Two-year-old Abigail Rae disappeared from the Ready Teddy Go nursery in Lower Brailes, near Shipston-on-Stour.

She was found an hour later when her mother Victoria pulled her from the weed-covered pond.

During the three-day hearing at Stratford-upon-Avon Town Hall, the court heard how a bricklayer had passed a toddler, believed to be Abigail, walking alone near the nursery.

But he did not stop to help in case he was suspected of abducting her.

OK, that's admittedly an extreme example. However, I'll bet that a vast majority of people with a heart who read this blog have been in a position - at some point - where a child could have benefitted from some help, but where you either thought twice about it, or just walked on by. As Josie highlights, the potential consequences nowadays are just too dangerous.

Multiply that over a population and it's clear that millions upon millions of acts of kindness are prevented by an over-reactive climate of mistrust and suspicion, to the detriment of society as a whole.

And for what? Even the hyper-sensitive NSPCC are unequivocal that 'stranger danger', as opposed to abuse from family, friends or those of their own age, barely registers.

Violence: a family affair

The survey results have identified the extent to which violence towards children is primarily a family affair. The only arena outside the family where it occurs with any frequency is between age peers at school or in other settings where the young congregate. Violence by unrelated adults, including professionals, is rare.

In fact, well before Labour's knee jerked to introduce the concept of guilty until proven innocent by the Criminal Records Bureau - and before post-Huntley moral panic had embedded itself - there were signs that society was curing itself without government interference

A Glasgow researcher, Stuart Waiton, has produced compelling evidence that counters the fear that children are at greater risk than in previous times. According to Waiton, between 1988 and 1999 the number of children murdered between the ages of [5] and 16 decreased in England and Wales from 4 per million to 3 per million. The total murdered under the age of 5 dropped from 12 per million to 9 per million. Cases of abduction in which the offender was found guilty dropped from 26 to 8 over the same period.

Of course, the 'if just one child' mantra drives politicians on, despite the fact that CRB checks continue to fail in preventing the most egregious abuses.

Apart from the high profile cases we see screamed from the media, there is no evidence that paedophilia or abductions are any more prevalent than they were twenty, thirty, forty, or even a hundred years ago. The perceived threat, however, is so great that no politician has the guts to come out and say otherwise.

So we carry on with this societally damaging regime which some analysts have estimated could result in up to 14 million people being CRB checked in the future. Each of which is another small brick in building a society which is fearful of any interaction with kids; which diminishes the social well-being of the country; turns us all into uncaring introverts; encourages enmity and suspicion; and arguably detracts from the overall safety of the majority of children.

We've heard big noises from the coalition about how regulations are going to be scrapped or toned down, but little on the CRB car crash. Quite simply, I don't think they have the balls to even try.

They want to promote a 'Big Society', but how can one even begin to do that when almost all voluntary projects are bound to have some involvement with, or be on behalf of, children? The buzz derived from spontaneously volunteering is dimmed somewhat by being delayed by the CRB, and any feel-good factor disappears once viewed as a criminal and being forced to undergo the rigmarole of being checked to see if you're suitable, being charged a £60+ fee, then waiting up to three months before getting clearance.

We all want kids to be safe, and a society which facilitates that. Sadly, the hysterical situation we currently have is horribly counter-productive without actually doing much to mitigate one of life's incontrovertible truths.

Shit happens.

Behind Every Lamp Post

Via Josie Appleton, this truly makes me weep.

‘Our two boys attend a grammar school in Devon (every possible Ofsted accolade) where they were told in assembly that with the construction of a new block they were not to speak to any builder, and that no builder must speak to them or he will face dismissal. How can we possibly hope to build any kind of better (or 'big') society with such an frightening lack of trust, not to mention courtesy? The school's instructions sound like something out of a 1950s sci-fi nightmare.’

Indeed.

This is something I've experienced first hand, or at least Mrs P has, and I sincerely feel for the kids who are forced to suffer the filthy-minded fears of petrified adults.

A few weeks ago, Mrs P was driving home in the rain, and saw one of the little Ps (the girl) walking back from school with her two friends. She stopped and offered them a lift the short distance back to our house and theirs, we're talking three quarters of a mile at most.

Little P jumped in, as did one of her friends, but the third declined. Mrs P pointed out that she was getting drenched and that it was no problem, but the girl refused by explaining that her parents had told her she wasn't allowed to get into a stranger's car.

Now, that's good advice usually, but only if coupled with common sense. Her friend getting in with her Mum - a woman she sees every morning when she knocks at the door for little P - should surely not set alarm bells ringing very loudly at all.

Now, one could say that she's just a bit thick, but when an 11 year old is surrounded by constant hysterical warnings of imminent danger - despite the almost negligible chance of it actually happening - who can truly blame her for being so confused?

The case above is hideous for the awful grounding it gives the adults of our future, as Josie rightly conveys.

And the fact that this Devon school prohibits any interaction between contractors and kids – even a ‘hello’, which is surely just good manners! – shows how ordinary interaction between adults and children has become contaminated.

More than that, it shows that those who worry to the extreme about dangers that are largely in their own mind, are actively harming the development of their own children.

And that's the very evil part of this. That because of the parents' entirely selfish approach of eliminating all possible risk - for their own peace of mind - their kids must be scared at every turn and instructed that the world, and everyone in it, is just out to abuse them.

The school in question should be educating children that, you know, not all adults are potential child molesters (in fact, a negligible minority are), and that speaking with strangers is a common aspect of everyday life which one must learn at some point. It should also be part of their remit to teach that manners are extremely important, and that ignoring - or even not being allowed to hear - a friendly hello, is rude and anti-social.

Why should our kids grow up fearful of the world at large because of the selfish risk-terrified minority who see sex and molestation in even the most innocent of interactions.

Sexting And Legislative Idiocy

Time to pop across the Atlantic for some more crystal ball paternalism, because this development looks nailed on for replication over here at some point.

Children who create and send sexually explicit messages of themselves electronically will be breaking the law in Rhode Island, after a new Bill was signed this week.

Under the new measure, anyone below the age of 18 who creates and sends a sexually inappropriate image of themselves can be charged with a “status” offence.

Such offences are acts which are only considered criminal when committed by a young person.

Even tougher penalties can be handed out to those who possess or forward sexually explicit images of another young person.

Such an action can be prosecuted under the state’s child pornography laws and if convicted the person may have to register as a sex offender.

Got that? To protect children from sex offenders, it's necessary to label children as ... sex offenders.

If you've ever laughed at one of those articles listing hilarious US state laws which are still in force - you know, like it being illegal to look at a moose from the air in Alaska; or forbidden to stroll down the street playing a violin in Maine (both real, btw) - this measure illustrates exactly why they occurred.

It's a combination of the authoritarian eagerness to be seen to be doing something in order to bolster their political ego (1), an over-estimation of their powers (2), and the belief that the public are unable to look after themselves without state interference (3).

On all three fronts, just like the return to prurient treatment of lifestyle choices, we are seeing a return to the stupid governmental habits of a century ago.

1) In the case above, the problem of sexting has prompted Rhode Island politicians' knees to jerk as they proudly puff out their chests and boast of finding a perfect solution.

2) Except that it's not perfect at all. How they can possibly believe they are capable of stopping the practice simply by declaring it a crime, one can only imagine. Perhaps the plan is to routinely spot check the personal mobile phone photos of underage kids? Yeah, I think there are any number of privacy and property conflicts with that idea, let alone moral concerns.

3) The state increasingly believes that the public are entirely incompetent. Otherwise this law wouldn't exist while, instead, parents were educated in how to tackle issues with sexting and given help should they request it. Incredibly, Rhode Island have still gone ahead with this law despite admitting that they really don't possess the powers to fully do the job.

[Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said] “Talking to children early and often will help to protect them from the dangers that can lurk in cyberspace.”

And the Attorney General continued that parents should also discuss their expectations for their children’s behaviour, and “discuss the consequences” for failing to meet those expectations.

Well exactly. In other words, this is a parental task and there is absolutely nothing the state can do about it without becoming hideously intrusive and - as they often do - making things several times worse.

And I'd call having underage kids on a sex offenders register for life classes as pretty bloody damaging for the kids they profess to be protecting.

So Westminster will no doubt be tabling a bill along the same lines very soon ... the idiots.

Loitering With Potential To Commit Thought Crime Now An Offence In New York

Perhaps because New York is such an astoundingly illiberal place these days is the reason that this three week old story didn't attract much worldwide attention. It just doesn't come as much of a surprise anymore.

The police may not be ticketing for smoking in the parks, but they are still ticketing parker visitors for crimes like...eating a doughnut in a playground. Yup, this weekend the police gave two young women in Bed-Stuy summonses for eating doughnuts in a playground while unaccompanied by a minor.

"This cop attempted to be sympathetic. He proceeded to tell us that he was trying to be a gentleman by just giving us summonses instead of taking us in for questioning, because that was what “they” wanted him to do.

Finally, we were given our summonses and were free to go. Because we hadn’t been drinking alcohol or urinating in public, we do not have the option of pleading guilty by mail. Not that I am planning on pleading guilty. But either way, we have to show up in court or a warrant will be issued for our arrest."

It's incredibly sad that the main objection in the linked article is that the police should have just 'moved them on' instead of issuing a ticket. Not that the law itself should quite simply not be in place at all!

There was a time when one of life's pleasures for many was sitting in a sunny park taking in all of the relaxing atmosphere. The open space, breeze, birds, greenery, and yes, the sight and sounds of kids happily playing. Now it is an offence in New York, punishable by a fine and - presumably the next step if one refuses to pay on principle - imprisonment. And don't ever think the same can't happen here, either.

The only 'crime' or misdemeanour committed in this case is to have contravened an ordnance constructed by the state to tackle a problem that simply doesn't exist. Punishing people for sitting watching kids playing is dangerously legitimising 'thought crime' as a concept - the criminalisation of someone having mucky thoughts while in a park.

In this case, however, it goes even further than that. The women in question were punished because there was just the potential for them to have mucky thoughts; that they might commit a thought crime so they must be moved to a place where that temptation doesn't occur.

Because, you see, every adult - male or female - has this uncontrollable urge to fuck an 8 year old if they see them having fun on a climbing frame, don't they?

The only disgusting people I can see in this story are the filthy-minded perverts whose imaginings default to paedophilia over something as innocent as just enjoying a coffee and a doughnut while watching kids play.

And before anyone pulls the puerile "how would you feel if it were your kids" argument. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if someone watched my two in the park then went home and emptied a box of kleenex at the thought. If for no other reason than I would be none the bloody wiser, as would the little Ps.

If they attempted to abduct them, on the other hand - an occurrence so rare that I'd be just as likely to win the lottery - that's when I'd cut their balls off.

H/T FRK

The Downward Spiral Of Childhood Self-Reliance

For someone who regards Lenore Skenazy as one of life's true idols, what I am about to recount is deeply depressing.

A colleague was explaining the hassle he is experiencing over the decision to allow his 11 year old daughter to travel to and from school on her own from the start of this term. The journey involves one bus trip which she boards on the main road, 100 yards from his house in a quiet suburban side street and terminates, 3 miles further on, about 50 yards from her school.

He and his wife are both agreed that she is more than mature and responsible enough to take on such a simple journey, but they have received nothing but irrational panic about the idea from his mother-in-law. At first, she was disturbed that this was going to be every day of the week (as if paedos and thieves only work part time or something), but after inspecting the route herself (yes, I laughed too), he said that she seemed satisfied.

It appears he was wrong as, a week after the term started, she is now insisting that the girl is picked up from two after-school club she attends, on the basis that it is starting to get dusky at around 4pm, and she read somewhere of a 15 year old boy being attacked by a group of kids on a road near his home. As such, his wife is now feeling pressured and wavering on her confidence in their decision.

Now, I don't know the age of the grandparent, but one assumes that it is almost inconceivable that she wouldn't have travelled to school unaccompanied herself at that age, or even when a few years younger than that.

[...] in 1971 eight out of ten eight-year-olds were allowed to walk to school alone. Now it is fewer than one in ten.

What, then, has happened in the intervening decades which convinces her that 11 year old kids are no longer responsible enough to cope with a 10 minute walk and bus journey?

Is the bus's on-board CCTV not as good quality as 40 years ago? Perhaps there isn't the same level of surveillance now that they had in the 50s. Not enough street furniture or road signs/pelicans/zebras anymore? Or maybe people were far more meek and terrified of the state and it's laws back then.

No, of course not. We are living through some of the safest years this country has ever seen. Kids, especially, are treated as preciously as fine crystal; every odd behaviour is monitored to the point of paedohysteria; everyone and his wife is CRB checked; and should a kid be harassed in plain view, the torches and pitchforks would be out in seconds.

But while the above has made our reality safer, it has also rendered the perception of our safety totally unrealistic.

In pursuit of comprehensive safety, we are bombarded with life-strangling rules on how to stay risk-free; health & safety and litigation prohibits even mildly risky behaviour; 24 hour TV eagerly fills hours earnestly furrowing brows about the very few truly horrific incidents; scare stories make great copy for lurid press headline writers desperate for sales; rent-a-quote politicians convince us there are drunks/paedos/gangs lurking behind every lamp post and under manhole covers just waiting to attack us; something must be done, so over-reactive laws are passed because the public - who have swallowed all this nonsense whole - demand it ... for the chiiildren.

Result? A climate of fear which keeps an entire generation insulated from any form of self-reliance and personal responsibility until secondary school or beyond.

And so it spirals downward. For risk-terrified children grow up into risk-terrified adults, and where the aforementioned grandparent is worried about her grandchild travelling on her own three years later than she did herself, one wonders how old the kids of 25 years hence will be before being allowed out on their own. Anywhere.

What makes one weep, though, is that there doesn't seem to be any way - or will, even - of reversing the process. We are destined to be forever frightened of state and media-created bogeymen - which actively derogate our lives - for the foreseeable future.

Now that is really scary.

NSPCC Render CRB Checks Pointless

The NSPCC's rent-seeking MO of painting everyone with the paedophile brush continues apace, I see.

Via the Manifesto Club comes this prime example of normal adult/child interaction being presented as potential kiddie-fiddling (pun unavoidable in this instance).

As teaching musicians point out in this forum discussion, not only is the video a 'caricature' of their usual (and in no way sinister) instruction methods to elicit the correct creepy response, it is also unhelpful to the student.

Teachers note that touch essential - it is the simplest way to straighten backs, reposition hands, or deal with all the myriad errors in technique reproduced in every young player. They also note that no-touch policies make everybody anxious, and make the whole thing into a big (and potentially seedy) issue.

Indeed.

The Musicians Union, who collaborated with the NSPCC in this dirty-minded effort, say that the kids being taught may feel 'uncomfortable' but - anecdote alert - my only uncomfortable moment when being taught the cello in my youth was when the handlebar-moustachioed teacher loudly farted in the middle of a mock grade 3 exam, thereby right putting me off (perhaps that was the point, I never asked). His moving my fingers up and down the strings never raised any thought in me except that I was ballsing things up.

That aside, what I find quite extraordinary about this is that it would appear to suggest that the system of CRB approval is entirely useless. Here we are, as a country, suspiciously checking up to 14 million people in order to ensure they are safe to work with children yet - even after being cleared, as every personal music teacher will have been before holding lessons - any touch is still automatically considered to be grubby and assumed as a precursor to abuse.

The NSPCC are very good at spreading such irrational fears, which have led to sports days excluding parents, grandmothers being banned from taking pics of their grand-kids swimming, and friends being barred from looking after each other's children. But then, if they didn't, donations may suffer and their consultants wouldn't be able to sell as many books.

Oh yeah, and without such funds (£157m last time of asking), they also wouldn't be able to produce scaremongering videos about music teachers, or loan employees to political election campaigns.

If you ever wondered how we came to be in the position where parents aren't allowed to take photos of a nativity play; where mothers require a CRB check to help out on school day trips; and where voluntary theatre groups deem it not worth their while to accommodate kids, you should look carefully at the NSPCC and their self-serving scaremongery.

Call me old-fashioned, but people who see filth in every natural life situation used to be derided as 'sex cases'. Now they are respected and given money.

That's progress, I suppose.

Allowing Kids Independence Is Not Child Abuse

As anyone who has ever scrolled through the overwhelmingly turgid drivel at CiF will tell you, it's the cyber equivalent of wading through waist-high treacle. So when an item of dazzling enlightenment pops up there, the joy at finding it is all the more intense.

Apparently, this article from Leonore Skenazy was requested by a regular reader, suggesting that there are some who aren't yet fully assimilated into the joyless, self-righteous, risk-averse navel-gazing enjoyed by your average Guardianista. And the Guardian should be congratulated for commissioning it.

Why does 'go play outside' sound crazy?

The safer our society becomes, the more we – and the media – feel compelled to ramp up fears about unlikely dangers

"Why would you want to put children in harm's way?" That, put simply (and minus a lot of the yelling), is what I have been asked on 10 TV shows, 31 radio interviews, and an avalanche of blogs for about a week now – ever since I declared last Saturday "Take our children to the park … and leave them there" day.

I'd come up with the idea as a way for neighbourhood children (including mine) to meet each other, and even be forced to entertain themselves.

It's not the first time Leonore has lobbed a mentos mint in the fizzy pop of righteous helicopter parenting. A couple of years ago, she left her own 9 year old son in New York's Bloomingdales with just $20, a travel card and a map of the subway system, and let him travel home on his own.

Predictably, she was accused of child abuse, and when Vanessa Feltz applauded this parenting decision on her radio show, she herself was roundly attacked by British listeners too.

But, as Skenazy said at the time.

“It’s safe to go on the subway,” Skenazy replied. “It’s safe to be a kid. It’s safe to ride your bike on the streets. We’re like brainwashed because of all the stories we hear that it isn’t safe. But those are the exceptions. That’s why they make it to the news. This is like, ‘Boy boils egg.’ He did something that any 9-year-old could do.”

Indeed.

There is an incomprehensible attitude towards parents who allow their kids some kind of self-reliance, and one which I've experienced myself. The little Puddlecotes have just turned 9 & 10 respectively, but have been sent to the local Co-Op on their own on numerous occasions for anything from eggs and broccoli to washing liquid and kitchen roll, but tell that to a school gate parent and they look at you aghast.

"But they have to cross two roads!", they cry. Yeah, and so what? They not only know how to cross roads, they are hugely more wary of them than I was at the same age.

The reason being that schooling in my 70s childhood was about educating kids and that's all. Apart from the odd Green Cross Code ad and Charley the cat, how to avoid trouble in life was left to the parents. Yet now we have schools teaching about every danger it is possible to encounter, along with largely lower crime rates, safer roads, and CCTV which monitors every move, everywhere, of everyone. Kids have, quite obviously, never been safer to run such errands.

Despite this, the age at which they are allowed to do so by parents is increasing, and the idea of encouraging small elements of independence in kids is frowned upon, or condemned, more than ever.

There is simply no logic to that.

Surely, if we wish to have a more roundly educated, confident, self-reliant, and yes, healthy future for our kids, this is exactly what all parents should be doing. Far from being tarred as irresponsible, a liberal approach to easing kids into the world should be the norm, and those who insist on wrapping their offspring in bubble wrap until they're 18 should be the ones who attract the horrified looks.

Considering the unarguable facts on increased safety for kids, and their better education about danger, there is only one explanation, in my humble opinion, for why that isn't the case.

It's selfishness on the part of parents, pure and simple.

Because, you see, when mine leave my sight I'm worried. It may only be a mild worry, but it's there nonetheless. My parents were worried when they let me do the same (they told me) but it was a rite of passage that they realised was necessary. Modern parents don't want to suffer that worry, however slight, so they prefer instead to eradicate it entirely. And, I'd argue, it's an attitude that is not only harming society, but also damaging the future life awareness, independence, and well-being of the children they think they are protecting.

And, as Leonore Skenazy points out, all because of risks which are mostly non-existent.

But how common is it really? Warwick Cairns, author of How to Live Dangerously, crunched the numbers, and now asks: If, for some strange reason, you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped, how long would we have to leave him outside, unattended, in England, for that to be statistically likely to happen?

About 600,000 years.

It doesn't matter that those are about the same odds as death by lightning. All that matters to the media is scaring us. Result? We keep our kids inside. We stay there too. Then we turn on the TV and look! "Up next: is your toothbrush dangerous?"

Funny she should mention that.

Sigh.

Thanks For Your Kindness, Pervert

Last week, the boy Puddlecote's school e-mailed their regular newsletter. At the end of the sterile but cheery message was a plea for parent participation.

"The children are always pleased when parents hear them sing at our assembly shows, so please come along if you can. Remember to bring your CRB checks with you"

Now, I'm CRB checked but was working. However, there are plenty others who would be able to attend but have never required clearance from the CRB in work or voluntary activities. And seeing as the process, in my experience, can take up to three months, anyone without clearance who wished to attend was effectively barred on the remote premise that they might be a paedophile.

Sorry if that appears simplistic, but how else can one view it? Guilty until proven innocent by the state machine.**

Even if I had been able to turn up, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done as I don't like the implication that I am required to produce documents to prove I am safe to watch my child at his school.

Similar requests for help at school events have carried the same eligibility criteria, which is why they struggle to stage the fucking things at times.

Imagine a scenario where you see an old lady struggling with heavy shopping bags and decide to offer your help. You don't have to, but are a kind sort and feel that it's the community-spirited thing to do. Then imagine she says she would very much welcome a hand but she wants to see proof that you're not a criminal first.

I don't know about you, but I'd bid her a polite good day and leave the ungrateful bitch to wear her old bones out dragging her kippers and lard home. Likewise if I offered someone my seat on a bus and they sniffily asked to see my medical record before they risked it ... they would remain standing for the rest of their journey. In fact, considering I'm fit and well and able to get myself home by any means, even jogging if I feel like it, I might even pass my stop just to keep the anti-social bastard on their feet longer.

Tim Gill, writing at CiF, encapsulated all such thoughts of mine with this.

All the fundamental questions remain. [...] most profoundly, about the wider implications of living in a society in which casual, freely given offers of help are met not with appreciation but with deep suspicion.

This is where Labour have taken us. To a very dark place in which kindness is frowned upon unless given with government sanction; where we are all encouraged to view others as criminals and perverts unless a piece of paper says otherwise.

If the next government is serious about repairing the broken respect for others in this country, they should start by scrapping the CRB system entirely. It might also stop the rest of Europe laughing at us (because they do) for treating everyone as a potential pervert.

It's a good piece by Gill, well worth a read in its entirety if you haven't already.

** Even though one of the vilest child abusers of recent years was cleared by the CRB.

Pump 'Em Up Or Put 'Em Away, Sheila

If you visit the Angry Exile's place, you will see a pop-up protesting the forthcoming censorship of the internet in Australia. Additionally, I've mentioned previously the predilection of upside-down legislators to ban, well, just about everything, but they are truly excelling at righteous overthink now ...

... by banning itty bitty titties**. For the sake of the chiiildren, natch.

The Board has also started to ban depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint’s Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications. “We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size”, she said. “It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator’s actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late”.

Has some brain-eating virus been unleashed on an unsuspecting world in the past half decade? It is increasingly becoming a plausible theory.

** Yes, Australia really does have a political 'Sex Party'

What More Proof Does One Need?

Never a truer word spoken by Andrew Alexander in the Wail

Alas, there is something about smoking which damages the mind - of anti-smokers. Normal as they may be in other respects, they rave and rant about tobacco.

And never again will he be proven so spectacularly correct in as short a period of time as today. Evidenced by mouth-frothing from psychopathic smoker hater, Duncan Bannatyne, whose Twitter feed seethes with righteous anger at the impudence of a writer expressing his view that tobacco can be a pleasurable pastime.

Here is a selection of level-headed comments retweeted by Bannatyne, which are obviously not posted by anti-smokers having a rave and a rant about tobacco. Not at all.

"All I can say is good luck to his children in trying to avoid lung cancer"

"What an imbpcile. It's, without doubt, a form of child abuse"

"thats disgusting, weve just stepped forward with the smoking ban and he wants to go backwards!"

"Why does the Mail editor let this tripe to be published!?"

"the man is a idot when i wasa kid my dad smoked in the car he has stoped now the smell made me sick"

"I think people who smoke in cars with children should have their licences taken away. Child cruelty!"

"People like that should be castrated for the good of all children."

Right. So that's thinking of the chiiildren, smoking in cars, and the smoking ban in workplaces covered, with a sprinkling of gagging free press thrown in, gratis. Why? Alexander's article didn't attempt to touch on any of that.

Nope. But the perfectly calm and reasoned Bannatyne did.


Really, Duncan? Where was that bit? I read the whole article but must have missed it. Don't come near your children? Is Alexander a predatory paedosmoker for penning an article in the Wail? Good grief.

Hilariously, Bannatyne chose to post an erudite response (or two) in the article comments. He's rather miffed at being misquoted.

"Mr Alexander has invented what he says 'I look forward to' it follows therefore than nothing he says can be believed. The man has no concept of the damage he is doing to children who need to be protected from hie views on smoking"

Err ... what children, Duncan? Or are you seriously saying that kids should be protected from the written word? I know that is a very emotive angle for anti-smoking nutters, but it's not a catch-all for active smoking. It just doesn't work on that level. To argue against Alexander's wish to enjoy his right to peaceful enjoyment of tobacco, you're going to need to use a bit more imagination than merely regurgitating ASH tear-jerk targeted soundbites.

"Mr Alexander has mis quoted what he calls my wishes and it is therefore not possible to believe anythinbg he says. Children are being damaged by the inhalation of smoke and to back that is a form of chiled abuse"

Again, Alexander didn't back that at all, but hey ho. The misquote is that Bannatyne didn't say he was looking forward to it. Merely that he thought kids should be able to report their parents.

Smoking should be banned in cars, and particularly any vehicle with children in it. On a school visit I met a 12-year-boy who wanted to be an athlete who told me that every morning his mother lit up when she was driving to school, even though he'd begged her to stop. He should be able to report her to the police.

A subtle difference, but one which, according to Bannatyne's logic, means that Alexander's entire article should be ignored.

By the same token, one must assume that wilfully misrepresenting an entire opinion piece, by insinuating that the author is advocating smoking in front of children when he wasn't, renders everything Bannatyne says irrelevant too.

Nice one, Duncan. We've sort of known that for a while, but you can't beat Dragons Den approval for ignoring hysterical anti-smokers. It's the Gold Standard.

So, to recap, Andrew Alexander writes an article labelling anti-smokers as normal people who mutate into Tasmanian Devils when the subject of smoking is raised, at which Bannatyne and pals respond with misdirection, hysteria, ad homs, wild accusations, mistruths and general tearing out of hair.

QED.

When A Policy Is Not A Policy

A quick revisit of the much discussed Watford Council ban on parents at a kids play centre.

Liberal Conspiracy triumphalism looks to be set in clay, as Charlotte Gore has mentioned.

However, let's just point out one further inconsistency in Watford's rebuttal.

Mayor Dorothy Thornhill said:

At one playground a few parents started to stay around for all the sessions, this increased to the extent that staff felt they were spending more time worrying about what the parents were up to rather than watching and supervising the children! They should not have been allowed to stay that’s never been the policy

Yet the last OFSTED inspection stated:

Children under the age of five are welcome if they are accompanied by an adult.

That would appear to be a policy, no?