(0) (17)

If you were annoyed at the support being shown for state regulation of fashion modelling, check out what they want to do to cheerleading.

Texas Representative Al Edwards wants state funding of schools to be cut for those schools that knowingly permit "sexually suggestive" cheerleading performances. Because everyone knows how hard it is for a bunch of jailbait dancing around in mini-skirts and showing their underwear to be "sexually suggestive," right? According to Edwards:

It's just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they're shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down...And then we say to them, 'don't get involved in sex unless it's marriage or love, it's dangerous out there' and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind of gyrations.

That the state should not be instructing any children when it comes to sex, marriage, and love in the first place would no doubt never occur to this politician. More discouraging is the reaction from constituents.

J.M. Farias, owner of Austin Cheer Factory, said cheerleading aficionados would welcome the law. Cheering competitions, he said, penalize for suggestive movements or any vulgarity.

[...]

"I don't think this law would really shake the industry at all. In fact, it would give parents a better feeling, mostly dads and boyfriends, too," Farias said.

Gosh, if making dads and boyfriends feel better isn't a good excuse to create more laws, what is?

(8) (59)

I am aware of the arguments in favour of home-schooling. The educational standards tend to be higher. Children are usually brought up as reasonable human beings and not part of a pack of savages. In principle, home schooling allows for an upbringing that is tailored to each child. The conscription of children in schools is removed.

And then something like this comes along.

There are two benefits of even the most useless schools. Children meet other children their own age, which is useful if one is not intent on becoming a hermit.

Of course there is plenty of unreported abuse that occurs in full view. In some schools abuse is ignored or even inflicted. But most basically of all, a 12 year-old child turning up weighing 35 pounds with burn marks and bruises in rags might be noticed. So having children turn up somewhere where their disappearance or injury will be noticed is a valuable function of schools. Perhaps they need to open twice a month for roll-call and then let them go home?

(3) (85)

Although I may not live to see it, I am nonetheless very confident that the day will come when the idea of compelling children to attend schools will be regarded with the same contempt and revulsion that is now directed at the idea of slavery.

That day is hastening:

A school in Swansea is considering tagging its pupils because of a shortage of assistants who can supervise lunch breaks.

The idea is for children at Lonlas Primary to wear the tags all day, with a buzzer sounding if they leave.

I welcome this development and I sincerely hope it spreads because it will make it impossible to deny that state schools are anything other than day-prisons.

(1) (56)

I have always endured a distinctly uncomfortable ambivolence on the subject of the physical chastisement of children. My rational inclinations are to disapprove of it as a whole. The law protects adults from being physically assaulted by other adults and I find the arguments that seek to exempt youngsters from this law to be flawed and unpersuasive.

That said, I know that there are many good and loving parents who sometimes smack their children out of frustration or a temporary flare of temper. It may not be beneficial thing but, rarely does this cause any real harm. Consequently, I view the engagement of the machinery of law enforcement with family life with the utmost trepidation:

Parents in England and Wales who smack children so hard it leaves a mark will face up to five years in jail under new laws in force from Saturday.

Mild smacking is allowed under a "reasonable chastisement" defence against common assault.

The purported distinction is not one in which I have any degree of confidence. Law enforcement in this country is often patchy, capricious and incompetent. I expect that truly serious abusers will slip the net while normally conscientious parents who lash out once in a moment of uncustomary anger will find themselves facing a custodial sentence and ruination.

Even if that were not the case (and it is very much the case) the new laws will result in an entrenchment of a culture of fear and suspicion. Children contrive to harm themselves all the time by flying off of their bikes, falling out of trees and sticking themselves with sharp implements. I have already heard far too many plausible accounts of parents who are scared of taking their wounded charges to a hospital in case they are accused of abusing them

In another age and in different political and legal circumstances, I would not be too concerned about these new laws. I may even (cautiously) approve. But it is not possible to see these developments as anything other than another step in the process of the gradual nationalisation of the family.

Nor will anyone's life be improved by this legislation. It is enacted, in part, because it serves the interests of the professional welfare classes whose wealth and status is entirely dependent on this kind of state activism and partly because of the unfortunately fashionable view that people cannot be trusted to arrange their own affairs in a satisfactory manner without the external discipline of regulatory control.

None of this means that I necessarily approve of parents who smack their children. Generally, I do not. But just leaving matters be is probably the least worst solution. Over the coming years, that object lesson will be driven home.

(0) (24)

Of all the criticisms of the War on Terror (and there are many legitimate ones), at least there appears to be no intention on the part of the prosecutors to deliberately target children.

Alas, the same cannot be said for the War on Drugs:

PUPILS at a secondary school will undergo random drug testing when they return from the Christmas holiday next week in what is believed to be the first state scheme of its kind.

Students as young as 11 at The Abbey School in Faversham, Kent, will have mouth swabs taken to detect the use of drugs including cannabis, cocaine and Ecstasy, Peter Walker, the headmaster, said.

Oh but why settle for all these namby-pamby, milquetoast, half-measures? There is only one sure way to stop children taking drugs: kill them.

Yes, that's it! Kill the little bastards. Think of all the valuable police and court time it will save, not to mention precious and overstretched NHS resources.

Kill them all now. You know it makes sense. If it saves just one child from a life on drugs it's worth it. It's for their own good. It's called 'tough love'...etc...etc... (adding shopworn cliches infinitum).

(1) (15)

I have always liked J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (though I must confess I have only seen the movies and not read the books). She writes about wizards and magic and yet the world she creates is populated by characters who still act like real people.

Moreover she is the anti-thesis of the sugar coated Disney pabulum of recent years. Not only do her characters act like real people, when the story calls for it, they die.

l have long loathed Disney for presenting some of the classic children's stories of Western literature in such a sanitised and castrated form that Disney's use of the titles is close to being fraudulent (such as the completely inverted 'Little Mermaid'). J.K. Rowling is made of far sterner stuff and she realises what the focus-group addled hacks at Disney do not... children are also made of sterner stuff.

(1) (13)

It is so bloody infuriating when some ungrateful, selfish kids simply refuse to acknowledge the fact that they are 'disadvantaged':

Scientists have witnessed the birth of a new language, one invented by deaf children.

A study published today shows that a sign language that emerged over two decades ago now counts as a true language.

It began in a school for the deaf in Managua, Nicaragua, founded in 1977. With instruction only in lip-reading and speaking Spanish, neither very successful, and no exposure to adult signing, the children were left to their own devices.

Preposterous nonsense. They must be making it up. It is totally beyond question that things like this can only happen by means of an appropriate legislative framework, an appointed governing body and generous levels of public funding.

(0) (24)

Newsflash time, people: Little girls like to play with makeup. Shocking stuff, at least if you read yesterday's Guardian.

The inappropriate sexualisation of young children is, of course, nothing to encourage. But the predictable calls for government intervention to prevent female children from being exposed to the radical ideas that girls often like to make themselves look as pretty as possible and girls often like boys that way are as ludicrous as they are predictable. Once again, we are told, it is not acceptable to entrust parents with the care of their children - we must step in and make new laws to restrict commerce. The likes of Bliss magazine should only be purchased with proof of ID and age. If we can just keep these magazines out of the hands of our (and other peoples') daughters, we can raise a generation of females who do not think about their physical appearances or their feelings for the opposite sex. And if we can achieve that, then we will be a little closer to "equality".

The Guardian also files this first-person account of a 10-year-old's experiences with cosmetics and perfume. All of it is the same standard stuff that I remember from my childhood in the '80s: hijacking mummy's lipstick, ill-advised experiments with blue eyeshadow, spending pocket money on pink nail varnish and playing beauty salon with friends. Perhaps not finding any of this quite shocking enough to spur Guardianistas into joining the fight against big, bad commerce, the piece concludes with little Joanna's confession that:

I like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears and I'd like to be one of them. I like the way they dress. I'd like to walk down the catwalk. I've got Christina Aguilera on my wall.

Finally, something truly disturbing - and yet also not up to the state to control. Even if the idolatry of trashy pop stars or the normal, healthy female enthusiasm for boys and lipgloss could be legislated against, who would dare suggest that we should do so? Scarily enough, more people than one might think. In a nation where parents do not think it unreasonable to demand the state foot the bill for their child's minding, healthcare, and education right through university, is it any shock that even those who themselves have no children expect the government to do yet more to raise them outright?

(2) (13)

Today's edition of Britain's Sun tabloid features five readers who demand: "End our childcare misery, Mr Blair". That so many middle and working class people in this country turn to the state to solve any challenges they face in life is, if depressing, unsurprising when one considers the prevailing British attitude towards government's role in individuals' lives. This comment from PM Tony Blair sums it up succinctly enough:

Some mothers will want to stay at home and look after their children, and that’s fine. But if they don’t we have to support them.

Actually, Mr Blair, we do not have to support financially any person who chooses to have children and then chooses to rely on others to look after them while they go out to work. (You may feel you need to 'support' them in order to be re-elected, but let us not confuse what you do in the interests of your career with what is right.)

I understand the dilemma - one may want to have children but not be able to afford to do so without earning a certain income, which may require full- or part-time work - but one makes such choices and then deals with the consequences. I doubt seriously that any of the women in the Sun asking Mr Blair to 'end the misery' of having to struggle to raise children on limited budgets, whose ages range from 31 to 39, went into parenthood without realising that making ends meet would be a concern. Kids are expensive, and although there are ways to make them less expensive (even the wealthiest parents I know buy and sell baby gear and other children's stuff on eBay or in consignment shops or at NCT sales), people decide to have them with the full realisation that this life they are creating will need to be looked after and cared for. With that comes expense, and the need to work out how to meet that expense. All pretty basic stuff, one would think. But reading the complaints of parents who think that the state should be easing their burdens - brought about by choices they have made - with other peoples' money, it becomes clear that we have in this country bred a population of adults who think and behave like children. I will do what I like - it will be fine! (But somebody better be there to rescue me and kiss my boo-boos better if it is not.)

Perhaps it is a shame that life is not so easy that we cannot always have everything our hearts desire (children, enough money in the bank, personal fulfilment outside of stay-at-home parenthood, trendy, slightly politically subversive t-shirts for our babies), but that is not a situation that the state can change with any amount of money they may take fom you and me.

"But think of the children!" comes the usual plaintive wail. To do so is terrifying: a nation of babies raising babies can only end in tears. How much will we be expected to spend on cleaning up this spill before the idea that individual choices matter ceases to be answered with a "Yes, but..." and a tax demand?

(0) (5)

From David Carr's posting (quoting the Independent newspaper):

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

I have a cunning plan.

Immunisation is crude and easy to avoid, especially for immigrants and people who move. What is needed is a form of treatment that is visible and difficult to fake. Vaccines can be expensive and there is a whole problem of producing and storing them. The paperwork involved in ensuring that all children have been vaccinated is complicated and errors can creep in.

So the obvious solution is a full frontal lobotomy with a tatooing on the forehead. Consider a few benefits of such a scheme.

1. The pharmaceutical companies lose some business, but they avoid being associated with any screw-ups from the scheme. (This could be spun as an anti-corporate greed measure)
2. No more juvenile delinquency, except the occasional suicides. (Blamed on tobacco companies)
3. No more worrying about education standards: all children will be morons.
4. Arguing about teaching methods will not matter. (Peace at last!)
5. Parents no longer need to pretend to raise their children.
6. The law can be changed: leaving a child alone at home will be no more dangerous than leaving the television switched on.

What is a little puzzling to me is how many schemes are being done to children which would be considered highly objectionable if applied to say 'black people'.

Part-birth abortion is virtual infanticide, we have NHS doctors calling for premature children not to be incubated. We have conscription into schools, prohibitions of all sorts, cameras in classrooms to allow parents to watch, ID cards for children. Child rapists and killers can get shorter jail sentences than a child has to spend at school, (and they sometimes gets jobs in schools). Child criminals are effectively told to "do it again, you have to kill someone before we do anything", so the honest children get preyed on.

The only short-term way of preventing this sort of abuse would be if children had the right to vote. Would four-year olds come up with worse lunacy than that which they have to endure?

(0) (16)

I think I have settled on my nomination for Most Frightening Story of the Year. Given the current political climate, the competition for this prestigious title is ferocious but, having carefully assessed the many excellent candidates, I have to put this one forward as the front-runner:

A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.

What they mean is that it will be shuffled in under the same 'health' rubrics.

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

Note the use of the word 'protection'. As if emotions are an affliction from which we need to be spared. I wonder what else can be neutralised? Hate? Love? Anger? Curiosity? Rebelliousness? Will this herald the age of 'Stepford' kids?

The Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special project to investigate ways of using new scientific breakthroughs to combat drug and nicotine addiction.

To add to all the carnage already caused by the psychotic Conservative drug war, it has now provided a legitimising ideology for these fantasies of chemical zombification.

(0) (10)

In common with many classical liberals, I find the case against allowing the physical punishment of children by their parents to be a compelling one. After all, if assaulting an adult is wrong then why is it any less wrong to assault a child? In fact, it is arguably a greater wrong to assault a child since an adult (well, any adult outside of the UK at any rate) can at least make a decent fist out of defending themselves, whereas a five year-old has no such capability.

I am also aware that most parents who resort to physical chastisement do so by means of a light smack on the rump and therein lies a whole world of difference from that tiny number of parents who hospitalise or even kill their children by the application of sustained and quite brutal force.

In other words, the whole issue is messy, complicated and shrouded in grey arears. However, and that said, I do not approve of state intervention:

Ministers are preparing to help outlaw smacking in return for guarantees that parents are not prosecuted for giving children "a playful tap".

The Government is desperate to avoid defeat at the hands of a powerful cross-party alliance building behind moves for an outright smacking ban.

Without having had an opportunity to peruse the proposes legislation, I am already deeply sceptical about the claim that 'playful taps' will not be acted upon. As with most law enforcement, it is rarely the most heinous that are punished but rather the most vulnerable and, therefore, the easiest targets.

The Association of Directors of Social Services recently wrote to its members supporting the proposed change to the law. "We believe children can and should be disciplined and made subject to clear parental controls but that this can be achieved without inflicting violence."

However, the organisation did admit that the introduction of a smacking ban would have "resource implications".

Yes, those old "resource implications". Therein lies the key. For it is all very well to announce that assualts on children will no longer be tolerated but the real questions are, who enforces this measure and how?

The answer is, who else but for Social Services, the Police and the various child-welfare agences? Provided the "resource implications" are addressed to their satisfaction it will be up to these newly-appointed Guardians to investigate claims of child-assault and prosecute the offending parents.

This is a very bad idea. Quite aside from the extra powers that will be granted to these agencies (and they already have a cartload), the implication behind that investment is that thse public servants are wiser, more relaible and and more humane that those dreaful abusing parents. The record does not bear this out.

Because I live in a nation without memory, I very often find myself reminding people of what happended in the late 1980's when all of the above agencies became convinced that parents all over the country were engaged in serious child abuse as part and parcel of 'Satan-worship' rituals. It was a flagrant and rank absurdity but nonetheless this hysterical fabrication shot through the entire public sector and fourth estate like an outbreak of the plague.

Eventually, (and only after these fictions became unsustainable) calmer heads prevailed and 'Satanic child abuse' canard was quashed. But nor before several families had been effectively destroyed by what was, to all intents and purposes, a witchhunt.

Far from being infallible, or even reliable, the agences of the state have proved by their track record that they are mendacious, self-serving and pernicious. To hand them even more power over family life than they have now is to invoke a 'cure' that will prove far worse than the disease.

(1) (21)

Here, a story on how refusing to medicate your child can be deemed child abuse.

So Taylor took Daniel off Ritalin, against his doctor's wishes. And though Taylor noticed Daniel was sleeping better and his appetite had returned, his teachers complained about the return of his disruptive behavior. Daniel seemed unable to sit still and was inattentive. His teachers ultimately learned that he was no longer taking Ritalin.

School officials reported Daniel's parents to New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth and Families.Then a detective and social worker made a home visit.

"The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect," Taylor said.

One hardly knows where to begin. The bogus "medicalization" of behavior? The all-too-common abdication of parental and teacher responsibility in favor of the easy fix of medication? The heavy hand of the state telling a man he has to drug his child for the convenience of public employees, even though the drugs are causing sleep and appetite problems.

(0) (2)

What is the difference between a headline and a story?

Well, in this case, a whole world of difference. The headline to this item on the BBC (where else?) spells out in big, bold type:

Calls for tax rise to help children

Ahhhhhh...children. Itty-bitty, helpless, doe-eyed, little moppets. Who can refuse a plea to help the little children? What kind of greedy, stone-hearted monster would vote against the opportunity to bring a ray of sunshine to their adorable, chubby faces?

Spare yourself the struggle with your conscience for only in text of the story does the actual identity of the proposed beneficiaries become clear:

Scotland's new children's commissioner has called for a penny on income tax to pay for improvements to child protection agencies, which she claims are badly overstretched.

So the extra tax money is not for children at all but to create more public sector jobs for functionaries.

The only things that are 'overstretched' are the public heart-strings they keep tugging on.

(2) (12)

In my usual stupor, this morning, before all the drugs in my constitutional cup of tea kick-started my ageing brain cells, I watched a snippet of the popular BBC children's programme, Blue Peter.

This is a perennial of tax-funded British programming, imbibed with your mother's milk, which delivers a twice-weekly compendium presented by a rotating set of three bright young things, who tour the world looking for informational opportunities for five to 15 year olds.

When I grew up with the programme these were the splendidly quirky John Noakes, the woodenly hip Peter Purves, and the prim but smouldering Lesley Judd. Ah, the things Lesley could do with a hot wet bucket of clay which would warm the confused cockles of a 12 year old boy.

So I watched this morning's programme with interest. A fresh-faced pretty female presenter wandered around a cocoa plantation in Africa explaining the cocoa pod origins of chocolate production. 'Fascinating,' I thought. There was plenty of factual information and so far a distinct lack of anti-capitalist agitation. 'What is wrong with the BBC, this morning?' I wondered.

Alas, I think the presenter could feel my disappointment at her failure to take a regressively tax-funded opportunity to try to brainwash British children into becoming politically correct. So just to make me happy she moved up into the BBC's more usual anti-capitalistic gear. This is the essence of what she said next, in front of a group of happy smiling African children:

Now this cocoa farm worker, Mary, only has primitive tools [including a machete and a pole-handled knife] to collect her cocoa pods, which I do find puzzling, but she is happy because she belongs to a co-operative. All the workers here share the co-operative's profits and are funded by the 'Fair Trade' organisation. This means that they have enough money to pay for a water pump and a school for their children. So please make sure that when you buy chocolate it is covered by the 'Fair Trade' logo, to help people like Mary, her family, and all the children you can see here.

Absolutely shameless. Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud of her. The subtext message is, of course, very clear:

Collectivism is good. Free markets are bad. Feel guilty if you buy free market chocolate.

At the end of this bright young thing's piece to camera there was a big smile and then a 'Fair Trade' photo plug for their supported brands of chocolate. This was followed by words of hearty support from an even prettier himbo back in the studio. In fact it seems the Blue Peter report is part of a concerted BBC effort to help the 'Fair Trade' cocoa campaign. That I am coerced into funding this anti-capitalist rubbish is one thing, as hopefully being over 18 years of age I can make up my own mind about such matters, but broadcasting this anti-free market poison to five year olds is morally outrageous.

So just to preserve a smidgin of balance I thought I would try to improve on what the Blue Peter presenter said this morning, particularly as she seemed so genuinely puzzled as to why Mary had nothing more than iron age tools to cut down her cocoa pods:

Now this cocoa farm worker, Mary, only has primitive tools, such as her machete and a pole-handled knife, which at first I found puzzling until I thought about it. I then realised that Mary and her family are kept deliberately poor at a bare subsistence level by two different sets of collectivists. The first corrupt set of thieves are the tyrannical political classes in Africa who routinely steal from their governmentally-controlled populations, via taxation, import tariffs, and export license corruption, to help finance their personal purchases of Swiss gold and to fund their governmental purchases of arms, which they need to keep their own people down. This deprivation by taxation, inflation, and regulation, means that African farmers are never able to save enough re-investment capital to improve their farm production methods beyond subsistence or to increase their revenue to create better lives for themselves and their families. The second group of corrupt collectivists are the politicians in the protectionist blocs, like NAFTA and the EU, who do everything they can through taxation, subsidisation, and import controls, to increase food costs for their own populations and to protect their rent-seeking farmer clients. The resulting western tax revenue is used to give large numbers of these western parasites comfortable secured incomes and to help African tyrants buy even more western weapons systems to further suppress African people through the arms supply mechanism known in these parts as 'international government aid'. So all you five year olds out there, if you really want to decrease poverty in Africa, always try to see beyond the immediately obvious problem and try to discover the underlying causative factors, which will almost always be some kind of government intervention. Free markets feed. Collectivism starves. And now back to the studio.

Now if the BBC were to broadcast that kind of propaganda, though only to adults of course, then even I would be willing to pay the BBC television license fee.

(0) (10)

One of the many perils associated with declining birthrates is that it makes it much easier for the social-working classes to nationalise children:

Every local authority in England will be required to appoint a director of children's services in a bid to improve child welfare under legislation due to be unveiled by the government.

An "information hub" will be set up in 150 local authorities to record details of all the children in the area. Each child will have an electronic file - including their name, address, date of birth, school and GP - that states whether they are known to social services, education welfare, police, or youth offending teams.

Other measures expected in the bill include the creation of a children's commissioner for England, who would protect the rights of children and young people, and statutory children's safeguarding boards, responsible for coordinating local child protection work among social services, the NHS, the police and other agencies.

Only they don't call it 'nationalisation' any more. Now they call it 'protection' but it amounts to same thing.

Sometimes, just occasionally mind, I actually quite miss the old-style firebrand lefties and their revolutionary rhetoric. At least they were honest and open about their ambitions and, in many ways, that made it a lot easier to tackle them head-on.

(2) (9)

'The state hates competition... this is why it tries so hard to stamp out organised crime'

So goes the old joke. Yet there actually is more than a little truth to it. As someone who views conscripting children against their will into vast 'educational factories' as institutionalized child abuse, the fact that members of the state's educational conscription elite should pick on a few isolated cases of private sector child abuse to justify moving against home educators surprises me not one jot.

(2) (24)

Madonna was wrong. We are not living in a 'material world', we are living in a 'managerial world':

A planned children's pancake race has been dropped because of spiralling insurance costs.

Children at Okehampton Primary School in Devon had been looking forward to the annual event on Shrove Tuesday next week.

But the 80-yard run in the town's Red Lion Yard has had to be cancelled because a risk assessment had revealed that 25 marshalls would have to line the race route to ensure public safety.

What good are marshalls? Ban this kind of thing altogether I say. What if a six year-old with a pancake, hurtling around the track at mind-numbing speeds, spins out of control and veers off into a crowd of helpless onlookers, leaving a trail of carnage and devastation in his wake?

No, no, no. Too terrible to even contemplate.

(0) (9)

Sitting here in London, I am horrified at the decision by Coca-Cola to remove its brand logo from drinks dispensers (which sell Coca-Cola) in English schools, afraid of being branded (!) exploitative.

It must therefore be all right - according to les bien-pensants - to prohibit freedom of commercial expression in England and Wales, but it is not all right to keep religious bigotry and bullying out of school in France?

Let us be clear, if wearing a scarf were no more than a style preference or an expression of belief, it could only be objected to on grounds of taste, which is something that bureaucrats and politicians collectively, are not known for having. However, the scarf is too often the product of beatings, threatened rape, and patriarchal oppression, with state schools juggling the demands of children's rights versus political correctness.

If Coca-Cola were truly capable of using the illuminated front of a drinks-dispenser to brainwash children into switching from Pepsi, vodka and crack cocaine, then there could be a case for the school's prohibition of the display. It is rather strange to assume that children would naturally rather drink soy milk. I would find it odd to go to a school where girls were beaten by Islamic bullies with impunity for not wearing modest clothing and where children were harangued by teachers about the evils of Coca Cola.

The next time that I hear French Imams condemn the use of compulsion against girls who dress according to Western norms, I shall withdraw my support for the headscarf ban. In the meantime, in protest against spineless Coca-Cola, I shall make a point of ordering Pepsi.

(0) (34)

Government-fetishists are always trying to justify their demands for ever-bigger state by claiming that only the state can ride to the rescue of the public to correct what they call 'market failures'.

So, who is going to come riding to the rescue to put this right?

Thousands of parents who had children taken away from them on the evidence of the controversial paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow will not have them returned.

Ministers are to review as many as 5,000 civil cases of families affected over the past 15 years by Prof Meadow's now-discredited theory of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. This accused mothers of harming their children to draw attention to themselves.

Many mothers say that they have been vindicated in their insistence that they were wrongly accused and now want their children back. However, Margaret Hodge, the minister for children, has ruled out any widespread return.

Mrs Hodge said that the exact number of civil cases where Prof Meadow's theory had been used to remove children from mothers was unknown, but could run into "thousands or even tens of thousands".

She added, however: "If a miscarriage of justice was made 10 or 15 years ago, what is in the child's interest now? If the adoption order was made on the back of Meadow's evidence and that was 10 years ago, what is in the real interest of the child? If they were taken as babies the only parent they know is the adopted one. It is incredibly difficult. It is a really tough call to make.

"The sort of families that are coming forward are heartbroken families. But if the child was adopted at birth the sensible thing to do is to let it stay. As children's minister my prime interest has to be the interests of the child."

I would be willing to wager that the 'prime interest' of Margaret Hodge is Margaret Hodge.

As for the thousands of parents who may have had their children abducted by the state, well, tough titties. Live with it.

What the government puteth asunder, let no man join together again.

(0) (45)

I've just read an article in Fox News which has left me both speechless and in a fury:

A 14-year-old New Jersey schoolboy — whose dad and stepdad are in the military — was suspended for five days because he drew a "patriotic" stick figure of a U.S Marine blowing away a Taliban fighter, officials said yesterday.

It further notes:

Scott Switzer, of Colts Neck, was sent home last week from Tinton Falls Middle School after a teacher saw the image on a computer and described it to the principal.

Scott, who turned 14 Tuesday and was headed back to school Wednesday, said he was unjustly disciplined for his sketch of "a war scene."

This sort of treatment of a young lad for simply being a young lad is incredibly destructive. You can't repress the natural expression of, well, being a boy. Boys like imaginary wars and fighting battles in the back yard, climbing trees, hiding under porches, jumping off porch roofs and playing 'paratrooper' by swinging as high as they can before letting go. You can't stop them from going bang-bang at passing cars - transmogrified by imagination into Russian or Nazi or Jap or Iraqi tanks, depending on the generation.

If you were to succeed, you would destroy them as thoroughly as if you'd taken them in a backroom and buggered their wee bottoms. Worse, actually. One can recover from mere physical abuse... rape of the soul is forever.

I used to draw all sorts of battle scenes when I was 14. Lots of aircraft diving and strafing, even an imaginary Nazi Spaceship after reading Robert Heinlein's "Rocketship Galileo". I'm sure these morons would have loved me.

At one point we had a long running series of water gun 'assassinations' in the halls of Coraopolis Senior High School. One group of us were the "Nazi's" and another were "Codename Jericho" and "Operation Bluelight" from the TV series of the time. This included secret coded messages being passed around and sometimes captured and passed on to me as the senior Herr codebreaker. I'd just gotten my first book on Codes and Ciphers through the Scholastic Book Service. Since both 'sides' were working from the same book, it was fairly easy to crack them!

We finally caught a 'double agent' and surrounded him in the basketball court bleachers during some ceremony in which a Pennsylvania State official presented our school a State flag. When it ended, our target tried to run for it, but we surrounded him. The 'we' being all of us zombies who'd already been watergunned over the last few weeks. The rules were that those already 'dead' weren't allowed to take out anyone else.

Our designated assassin then emptied the watergun on him.

These politically correct fruitcakes in New Jersey would simply have adored us. They would probably have sent me and the others in for Indoctrination and Re-education.

(0) (34)

The improbably named UK Home Office Minister Paul Goggins, with the even more improbable title of Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Correctional Services, has defended the lack of strict definitions in a proposed new Internet grooming law. This is designed to prevent the entrapment of young children by older sexual predators. However, the proposed law, as it is currently drafted, could theoretically see a 15-year old boy-and-girl couple, who have mutually consenting sex together, being prosecuted, and sent to jail for five years alongside a 45-year old man who has sex with a 13-year old girl.

On the BBC Today program this morning, Mr Goggins said that the government could find no way of wording their new legislation to include the older predators, but to exclude the under-age couples. However, he said this would be alright, because the Crown Prosecution Service would receive the correct legal guidance on when to and when not to prosecute, to avoid imprisoning sexually adventurous youngsters. Which of course begs the question, why aren't they clever enough to frame this splendid new legal guidance in the new law?

It also begs the question of how many Samizdata readers would be criminalized if this new law were to be retro-actively applied to them, and only kept out of jail via the masterly whim of any future Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Correctional Services? As our socialist lords and masters wrap us in ever more legislation, to criminalize us, in order to control us better, their excuses and deceptions for this cacophony of intrusive legislation grow ever flimsier. I'm confident they'll soon make it illegal to walk on the cracks in the pavement, in a loud shirt. But don't worry, I'm sure Mr Goggins will be kind enough not to bang us away for this heinous misdemeanour, unless of course we do something else much more serious to annoy him, such as calling him a very rude name. Mr Goggins, you are an idiotarian.

(0) (9)

Our government is determined that we shall be numbered and identity carded no matter how long it takes or how much opposition has to be ground down, and if they can't do it by persuading adults, they'll do it by habituating (and I can think of ruder words than that) children.

Every child in England is to be given a credit card-style ID number in reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the murder of Victoria Climbie, the Government has announced.

The long-awaited Green Paper on children's services also included a proposal to create a Children's Commissioner for England, whose job it will be to speak up for under-18s and ensure their views are "fed into" Government policy.

It set out a large number of changes to the structure of children's services, which will see education, health and social care combined and dispensed from neighbourhood schools.

Tony Blair said the proposals were a "significant step" towards ensuring there was no repeat of the Climbie case.

One thing is very certain about this new ID numbered world which they are determined to create. It will still contain outbursts of evil like Victoria Climbie's murder. ID numbers won't stop that.

This is but one more example of what the Telegraph's Christopher Booker has described as the "Hidden Europe" effect. What this means is that every major political decision in Britain these days is (a) aimed at bringing our institutions and legal procedures in line with those of the rest of the European Union, but (b) never justified as being done for that reason.

It has reached the point where, if you are puzzled by any item of political behaviour, you simply ask yourself: how does this fix Britain more firmly to Europe? Usually there is an answer. And if there is such an answer, that's why they're doing it.

I get the definite impression that about a month or two ago, the pro-EUnionists in Britain decided that they had had enough of Mr Blair's simultaneous apparent enthusiasm for their cause with his demonstrated enthusiasm for continuing close ties between Britain and the USA, and they decided that they would dump him. I further believe that Mr Blair is now doing as much for the EUro-cause as he can, in order to try keep his job. Things like this ID numbering system for children, which is just the sort of thing that politicians normally steer clear of because it could prove so very unpopular and unwieldy and expensive and pointless, are, I believe part of this kind of process.

If you read "Christopher Booker's Notebook" (just type "Christopher Booker" in the Telegraph search engine) you are bombarded with a steady stream of this kind of stuff. I can't read Booker too often, because I find what he reveals too depressing.

As for the idea of having a Children's Commissioner, if the government is so keen to be influenced by the opinions of children, why don't they just give children the vote? Well, no, that wouldn't be good, because it might get out of control. What might they vote for? What if they were not pro-EU in sufficient numbers? Best to have a Commissioner, to "feed" children's ideas into government, in the desired manner. Besides, EUro-kids don't have votes, so ours shouldn't either.

(1) (31)

There is probably a drop-dead serious point to be made here about the gradual 'feminisation' of boys but, for now at least, I am content just to publicly guffaw at this latest forlorn attempt to make the world a safer place:

Children in Melbourne have been banned from dressing up as Batman, Superman and the Incredible Hulk because schools say the action hero costumes encourage aggressive behaviour.

At least 10 childcare centres have declared themselves "superhero-free zones", claiming that youngsters who don capes and masks are more likely to end up wrestling, punching and karate-kicking unsuspecting classmates.

Lex Luther take note: all their childcare centres are belong to you!

The head of one childcare centre, Madeleine Kellaway, told the Sun Herald newspaper: "There is a lot of violence involved, where you get wham-bam aggressive behaviour."

Perhaps the kids just don't like her very much.

She said banning the superhero costumes had encouraged more creative play.

'Okay children, today we're all going to dress up as Outreach Co-ordinators and play a game of who can get most money from the government in order to implement a policy framework for achieving diversity in local authority management structure. Hooray!'

(1) (0)

There are times when I compare 2003 with the Orwellian world of 1984. In one respect at least, the fictional Airstrip One was far better than present day Britain: kids could have more fun!

Consider this report, that children are being harrassed by intolerant adults into staying locked indoors. Of course we live in an age where most children are treated at best as designer lap dogs or fashion accessories and at worst like punchbags or sex toys. So that actually letting children run around parks, fall in streams, get muddy and avoid obesity and truancy by burning off their excess energy in creative or harmless pursuits are not an option. The streets where I grew up have too many cars parked in them to play football, never mind the traffic.

The contrast with the Orwellian child utopia of Airstrip One is amazing: kids can run around as they wish, there is no shortage of activities for them to enjoy, from attending public executions, to outings in the countryside. But the real fun is in the "spies". Children are actively encouraged to look through keyholes, snoop into the affairs of adults and they can earn plaudits for exposing corrupt and treasonable behaviour. So when that nasty Mrs B. at the corner of A***** Rd and M****** Rd would should at my friends and I for kicking a football outside her house, we could pick up the phone and denounce her to the Party as an agent of Emmanuel Goldstein!

I wonder if there are any equivalent means for children today to get even with bossy and intolerant adults? They could try this phone number: 0800 11 11 (Airstrip One only).