(19)

Every child should have authoritarian parents, because then they'll grow up to be libertarians.

-Oddball Australian journalist Paddy McGuinness, as recounted at his funeral this week by Bill Hayden.

(42)

A long time ago, when I was a wee nip of a lad, my parents would keep me quiet by turning on the television and having me watch such classics as Sesame Street. Little did they know that what I was watching was not suitable for children! I know that now, because the early seasons of Sesame Street have come out on DVD and they have been given a parental advisory, no less.

The first few seasons have just been released and come with, of all things, a warning.

"These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grownups and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child," the warning reads.

"Sesame was created in the '60s, and it was a bit edgier, if you will," said Sherrie Rollins Westin, executive vice president of Sesame Workshop.

What parent today would want their child to see kids running through a construction site or jumping on an old box spring? Scenes like the ones included on the new DVD would probably not make it into today's program now.

"We wouldn't have children on the set riding without a bicycle helmet," Rollins Westin says.

And what's that little girl doing with that man?

"In the very first episode, Gordon takes a little girl's hand who he's just met on the street, befriends her and takes her into his home to give her ice cream," Rollins Westin said. "That's something we wouldn't do on the show today."

And rightly so. You wouldn't want your kids to turn out like us dreadful Generation X old fogeys, after all!

(62)

I am prepared to believe that there may be some things (though not many of them) that are of such public benefit that they should be provided at the general expense. That is not to say that I think that if something is good it should be compulsory. Let alone that if it sounds like a good, that is justification for its being compulsory.

But when you are dealing with the state, "free" does not mean 'free as in free speech', nor does it mean 'free as in free beer'. It means 'compulsory'. If the government is advertising free beer, it wants everybody drunk; prepare to have your head held under if you don't feel like a tipple just now.

Hence this Guardian headline, a classic of pusilanimity against spin:

Plan to give every child internet access at home

The actual story is somewhat, er... more nuanced:

Parents could be required to provide their children with high-speed internet access under plans being drawn up by ministers in partnership with some of the country's leading IT firms.

[...]

The initiative is part of a major push which could also see the parents of every secondary school student given access to continuous online updates on their child's lessons, performance and behaviour as early as next year. So-called "real-time reporting", which was first mooted in the government's children's plan last month, could be extended to primary schools within two years.

A sub less versed in the cult of the benign state might have abstracted that as:

"Big business bonanza: Parents must pay for children to be watched at home by online officials."

(9)

Further to my recent post about new measures from our Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. Foreign readers may be surprised that we have a department for children schools and families (sic). I, on the other hand, am alarmed: even the name indicates the totalitarian intent of the New British state.

Prompted by a clip on TV news, I have now found the full text of Ed Balls's speech given to the Fabian Society yesterday. Didn't the resolution to announce new policy to parliament, not outside bodies - in this case a para-Party body - last a long time? It bears close reading:

Excerpt I:

Our ambition must be that all of our young people will continue in education or training.

That is what our Bill sets out to achieve - new rights for young people to take up opportunities for education and training, and the support they need to take up these opportunities; alongside new responsibilities for all young people - and a new partnership between young people and parents, schools and colleges, local government and employers. ....
But it is important to make clear that this is not a Bill to force young people to stay on at school or college full-time. They will be able to participate in a wide range of different ways through:

* full-time education, for example, at school or college
* work-based learning, such as an apprenticeship
* or one day a week part-time education or training, if they are employed, self-employed or volunteering more than 20 hours a week.

But the Education and Skills Bill is a bill of responsibilities as well as a bill of rights.

Because if young people fail to take up these opportunities, there will be a system of enforcement - very much a last resort - but necessary to strike the right balance between new rights and new responsibilities.

Phew - not necessarily locked up in schools then, but on probation otherwise (as will of course any employers be - they'll have to have enhanced CRB checks, of course). This is enlightening as to what Mr Brown means when he talks about a Bill of Rights and Duties, "building upon existing rights and freedoms but not diluting them - but also make more explicit the responsibilities that implicitly accompany rights...". It confirms what many listeners will have guessed: you have the right and freedom to do exactly what the big G tells you to. This is the traditional line of Calvinism and Islam, is it not?

Don't you love that "our young people"? Völkisch, nicht wahr?

Excerpt II:

The second building block [after mucking around with exams and the curriculum some more - GH] is advice and guidance - so that young people know and understand what is out there, and can be confident that they can make choices that will work for them.

First, this means local authorities taking clear responsibility for advice and guidance as part of the integrated support they offer to young people – making sure that youth services, Connexions and others who provide personal support to young people come together in a coherent way.

Second, clear new national standards for advice and guidance.

Last week my colleague Beverley Hughes set out clearly what we expect of local authorities as they take responsibility for the services provided by Connexions.

Third, a new local area prospectus available online, already available from this September in every area - setting out the full range of opportunities available, so that young people can see the choices available to them clearly in one place.

So not only will whether you do something state-approved be checked, but what you do will be subject to state advice and monitoring and made from a menu provided by the state. For the uninitiated Connexions is a formerly semi-independent, and notionally voluntary, database surveillance scheme for teenagers set up under the Learning and Skills Act 2000.

(23)

Exciting news for British schoolchildren. Early leavers 'will not be jailed' (PA). Except of course they will be under control orders, in effect; incarcerated and enslaved part-time. "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance," ran the old slogan. This policy is pretty clear evidence that what's offerred to many in the state school system is not education. If you have to force people to take something, then it is not plausiible that it is of use to them. There is no problem selling education and training to those who want it. Even very poor parents in London often find money for extra lessons or private day-schooling on top of the taxes they pay to imprison other people's children. The prison function of the system reduces its value to others.

Put aside for the moment whether it should be paid for from taxes or not. How much more cost-effective would state education be if it were voluntary, and the classes were full of eager participants and even the grumpiest teenagers present were those whose parents or peers had persuaded them it was worthwhile? How much better would the curriculum be if it had to attract an audience by being interesting or useful, rather than prescribed by bureaucrats? How much better would teachers feel about their work if it didn't include the roles of commissar, bureaucrat and gaoler?

Teenagers who refuse to stay in education until they are 18 will not face jail, Schools Secretary Ed Balls insisted ahead of new legislation to raise the leaving age.

The reform - hailed as one of the biggest in education for half a century - will be included in the first Queen's Speech of Gordon Brown's premiership on Tuesday.

Mr Balls said the legislation, which will raise the age to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, will be backed by a "robust regime" of support and sanctions including spot fines and court action.

Since if you are at school you are barred from employment without the permission of the authorities, I imagine they will pay the fines with the proceeds of robbery and prostitution. Well done, Balls!

(11)

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is like a compass-that-faces-south... always wrong but useful nevertheless because as long as he is dependably wrong, he can still be used when plotting a course.

His latest pearl of wisdom is the solution to reducing the numbers of children acting irresponsibly by engaging in violent crimes: Stop holding them responsible. His logic is hard to fault. If you deem than a child cannot be responsible for their actions, clearly they cannot therefore be irresponsible... voila... less children acting irresponsibly. In fact by definition no children can be said to have acted irresponsibly because the very notion of judging responsibility is disallowed. In a political and law-enforcement culture in which 'that which is not measured never happened', I can see the attraction of this approach. But then again Britain's welfare state treats everyone regardless of their age like an irresponsible child, incapable or unwilling to look to their own pensions, medical care, etc. etc, so perhaps there is a bigger meme at work here.

It's not to weaken the seriousness of what they do

... the Archbishop says, and then promptly weakens the seriousness of what they do by suggesting a child can cause the death of someone and get away with it, whereas an older person cannot. So how is that not weakening the seriousness of what the child has done? Also I am curious, how is taking away responsibility going to encourage more responsibility? Perhaps the following is what the Plod will be told to do:

PC Dixon of Dock Green: "Now look here, Little Timmy, it is very bad throwing rocks at people and killing them. If you do that when you are older, we will be very cross."

Little Timmy from the Bedlam Estate: "Oh, okay then, I'll just get it out of my system now while it doesn't count."

PC Dixon of Dock Green: "It's a fair cop, Timmy, just don't do it after you turn sixteen, okay?"

Little Timmy from the Bedlam Estate: "Nice hat, Copper. Hand it over."

Oh, and mothers too, they also should not be held responsible for some reason. It is all down to too many bad movies and Britain's 'gun culture', whatever the fuck that means in a country which probably has less civilian guns in total than almost any single US state other than the very smallest ones. I wonder of God's Idiot would describe a nation without much in the way of musicians or musical instruments as having a 'musical culture'?

However would we manage without the Church of England to guide us, eh?

(22)

The plans by the state to extend the period of educational conscription in Britain could well be the issue that helps radicalise future generations in a most useful way, at least if you see the world the way I do.

“Here is a Government that has toyed with the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 in order to promote a greater sense of citizenship amongst our young people. Yet it proposes to extend compulsory education or training to 18, to compel the already disaffected to, in their perception, prolong the agony.”

She said that making teenagers “conscripts” was likely to “reinforce failure, leading to even greater disaffection. Enforcement could lead to mass truancy, further disruption to other learners and staff, maybe even needless criminalisation if ‘enforcement measures’ are imposed,

I am also delighted to see someone in the mainstream media making the self-evident point that state education is indeed conscription. The absurdity of trying to teach children who are determined to not be taught is evident at sinkhole schools across the country so why the state thinks digging the same hole deeper is going to solve anything is not obvious to me. Still, never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake as there is a clear upside to all this. What the government intends to do will engender disaffection and hostility to the impositions of the state at an early age, and without doubt mischievous political activists will fan the flames by pointing out to the internet savvy blog reading schoolyard conscripts of the future that they are not wrong to feel angry and they are not wrong to refuse to cooperate. Excellent.

(28)

Alice Thomson has writen an interesting article called Be a 'bad' parent and let your children out in which she decries the enervating risk-averse trends in which parents, with the encouragement of our political masters, try to supervise and regulate every aspect of their children's lives.

The comments are also quite interesting. One of them , calling herself 'Mum', bristles at the suggestion Thomson makes:

People who don't have children are always telling those of us who do what we are doing wrong. I also had a free and easy childhood, but got flashed at, followed home twice and had numerous near misses at being run over. I don't let my child play out, although she has the run of the garden where she can make camps, climb trees and do all the usual outside things, and usually has a number of friends out there with her.

Well 'Mum', I do not have any children either but I am very happy you were not my 'Mum. Moreover I, like everyone else, am fully qualified to have on opinion on how children should be raised because believe it or not, I and everyone else was once a child.

I agree totally with Alice Thomson and think it is time people stopped indulging their neurotic need to control everything and just let children grow up without panoptic supervision.

(27)

I would like to suggest that Jonathan's "Missing the point over grammar schools" below, itself misses the point. I am as in favour of grammar schools as anyone. But I do not think Cameron's decision is any more than another piece of political pragmatism (read my comment on Jonathan's piece for the rationale.)

I agree the new Tory policy does nothing significant for education. But I suspect Jonathan's policy prescription - compromise vis-a-vis properly voluntary schooling it may be, is doomed. Introducing vouchers now would be worthless and the Tories are sensible, therefore, not to tie themselves to that. Not least they would risk discrediting vouchers: vouchers could be a move in the right direction, but not yet.

This is why. Here is a sensible lefty, Jenni Russell, reporting in the Guardian's bloggish Comment is Free:

[A] father with an 18 year-old daughter at one of London's famous public schools is shocked by her fear of anything beyond her narrow syllabus. She pleads with him not to tell her anything he knows about history or classics or literature, because she understands by now that knowing anything beyond the points on the examiners' mark schemes will jeopardise her chances of getting top grades. She has learned that education is not about discovery, but the dutiful repetition of precisely what you have been told.

However good the school, however motivated the pupil, there is no choice to be had. There is a chemin-de-fer, directions predetermined, signals to be passed at the prescribed speed. No entry to university at 16, Mr Brown. No ignoring unutterably tedious and repetitious schoolwork and passing the exams at the end on the basis of your own reading. Step off the lockstep elevator once, and you are out for ever. (Mr Fry, the University regrets that we require a clean Criminal Records Bureau certificate.)

All Britain's education is under the supervision of a suffocating bureaucracy, that serves itself and its conception of proper development. There is small choice in rotten apples; the sadly pocked sharecrop goes to uniform damp barrells.

Who is to blame? The conservative defenders of both grammar schools and 'family values', that is who; and the utilitarian industrialists who now complain workers can't read or count. It was they who sought to save the population from indoctrination by radical Local Education Authorities, so delivered the entire population into the hands of pseudo-progressive educationalists by creating the National Curriculum; they who worried that universities could not be trusted to set sufficiently 'practical' exams, and did the same with syllabuses.

My modest proposal for English education:

Scrap the National Curriculum. Do not replace it. Scrap league tables and DoE "Key stage" testing. Do not replace them. Scrap rules on school admissions and allow schools to exclude or expel pupils as they choose. Scrap the QCA. Do not replace it. Scrap the Teacher Registration Regulations. Do not replace them. Scrap the office of the Access Regulator. Do not replace him. Wait five years, continuing to run and fund schools otherwise the same, which means a mix of Local Authority, central government, voluntary aided, and private schools. Only then, when people have got used to making their own decisions again, consider vouchers.

(23)

Nice piece in Wired magazine by Clive Thompson coming to the defence of video games, frequently a target for the culture scolds ("Quake made my boy a killer!"). This gives me the perfect excuse to remind readers of this fine book, Killing Monsters, which shows the beneficial side of playing such games for children's development. Come to think of it, children - and not just boys - have played rough-house games since the dawn of time, so I do not quite see how computer games represent a major step towards cultural depravity. As a boy I played all manner of war games, not to mention staple favourites like chess.

Of course, in the case of chess, there are other considerations.

(31)

Had the defendant actually murdered the children whose images have (presumably) given him so much furtive pleasure, would he be any worse off now?

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal by a high school teacher from Arizona sentenced to 200 years in jail for possessing child pornography...

If the 52-year-old had been tried in a federal court or lived elsewhere he would have received a lighter sentence.

190 years tops. With good behaviour he could have been out and about in, say, just over a century.

Indeed, the prosecutor had asked for a 340-year sentence but the trial judge imposed the minimum of 10 years for each of 20 images - to be served consecutively for a total of 200 years without the possibility of probation, early release or pardon.

So he gets what amounts, for all practical purposes, to a death sentence for possessing vile and twisted photographs. I wonder if there is a historical parallel here? Or does it set one?

(4)

Labour MP Tom Watson is undecided as to whether or not vein scanning and other biometric technology being forced on Britain's schoolchildren is a good or a bad thing. Perhaps you can share your views on the matter with him. Please note that Watson told me a couple of years ago that his view on ID cards was actually changed by the persuasive arguments he read on various blogs, so this is a man who is willing to listen to reason.

(36)

Mary Ann Sieghart has written an interesting article about the rush to subject more or less everyone who comes in contact with children to checks by the state. She rightly points out what a paranoid example this sets by presupposing that people are pederasts. I heartily agree with her article and see this as one of the more extreme examples of the state replacing social interactions with politically mediated ones.

One of the nicer aspects of being a child used to be the random acts of kindness offered by adults outside the family: the friendly shopkeeper who ruffled your hair and gave you a sweet; the enthusiastic PE coach who gave up time after school to help with your gymnastics and was constantly - and wholly innocently - adjusting your body position to get the moves right. These adults were generous with their time and their affection. We knew who the pervs were and took pains to avoid them. Now all adults are deemed to be perverts unless they can prove that they are not. Most will now avoid contact with other people’s children and will refrain from touching them for fear of the action being misconstrued.

And then, in the next snippet by her, she writes lamenting the fact more people do not join political parties. Tellingly she mentions the two main (and largely indistinguishable) political parties.

Labour has a leadership contest coming up, in which members have a vote. Wouldn’t it be fun to cast one? And my local constituency is being split into two, so there will be selection processes for both new seats. I would love to have a say in the candidate selection, especially for the Tories. Having lectured them for years about the importance of choosing more women, it would be great to be able to make a difference.

What puzzles me is that so few people do want to join parties these days. Voters are always complaining about feeling disempowered. Here’s a chance at last to exert some power. Why not stop whingeing and take it? What puzzles me is that so few people do want to join parties these days. Voters are always complaining about feeling disempowered. Here’s a chance at last to exert some power. Why not stop whingeing and take it?

I find that interesting as on one hand she clearly laments the destruction of civil society by the regulatory state and on the other, she urges people to join the institutions who are responsible for doing precisely that. In effect she might just as well be saying: "it is terrible that gangs which threaten people with violence are invading our neighbourhoods and fostering a climate of fear... I wonder why more people are not empowering themselves over other people by joining a gang?"

(8)

The threats to liberty in Britain are too numerous to keep track of. Thanks to Josie Appleton on Spiked! for this, which I had entirely missed before now:

The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill, due to return to the House of Commons next week, will mean that 9.5million adults - one third of the adult working population - will be subject to ongoing criminal checks.

It is a House of Lords Bill, but has Government backing.

The Bill would create an Independent Barring Board (IBB), which would maintain "barred lists" preventing listed individuals from engaging in "regulated activities". "In respect of an individual who is included in a barred list, IBB must keep other information of such description as is prescribed." [cl.2(5)]

As the Bill was originally presented, you would have no right to damages if you were mistakenly or maliciously included in a barred list, and nor would anyone else. And the IBB would have been an absolute finder of fact, with appeal allowed only on a point of law. So among the things the IBB would have been independent of is responsibility for its actions.

Now things are slightly better, but there's a cunning pseudo-compromise. You can sue. And you can now appeal the facts. But the criteria applied in the application of policy to an individual case - the core of what the IBB would do - is expressly (with a shade of Guantanamo) deemed not to be a matter of law or fact, and are therefore not to be subject to examination by the courts [cl.4(3)].

The schedule of "regulated activity" is 5 pages long in the printed copy. So you'll have to look it up yourselves if you are interested.

The practical effect? Well, as an example, as I understand it, if the Bill were currently law, I would be committing a criminal offence in paying someone I trust to look after my elderly mother, who is currently convalescing from an operation, without both of us being made subject to official monitoring first.

Once it is in force, if you wish to be self sufficient - even if you don't value your privacy, and are confident that theree's nothing about you to which an official could possibly have objected in the past, and that you might not be confused with anyone else - you'll need to know if a family member is going to be ill in sufficient time to fill in all the forms and wait for them to be processed. Better leave it to the state - which is of course always perfect.

(3)

Roy Hattersley, in a short piece in the Guardian today commenting on this story, illustrates how the fundamental difference between Old Labour and New Labour, is not in their attitude to governance. It is the willingness of the former to express themselves clearly, and their angry confusion at the rhetorical deformations that New Labour uses to lead the public by the nose:

How likely is it that a mother who (whatever her motives) insisted on her son having unhealthy food will be either willing or able to ensure that he is educated at the right school or treated at the best hospital? The Rotherham sausage makes the government's "choice agenda" look rather overdone.

What Lord Hattersley does not get is that the government is equally contemptuous of people's ability to make 'the right' choices for themselves and their families. That is precisely why the Rotherham sausage smuggling is taking place. Government has removed choices that it does not approve of from the school menu. The 'choice agenda' is a three card trick. The method is misdirection; the effect is dirigiste.

(26)

Riding the 211 bus from Hammersmith to Chelsea yesterday, I was in a good mood, anticipating a tipple or two with Samizdata Overlord Perry de Havilland. As the bus drew up beside Borders, though, my mood took a significant tumble upon spotting this:

Paperchase is a British stationery chain which also operates within Borders stores, having been acquired by Borders Group in 2004. If you click on that link, you will see that the "Top Marx" line of back to school supplies is the central feature of their new season's products. The product descriptions refer to the red stars and other iconography as "Chinese emblems". I suppose that is true, much in the same way that the swastika became a "German emblem".

It was only a few months ago that a number of people decided to boycott Borders, due to the chain's decision not to sell the issue of Free Enquiry magazine which featured the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammad. The reply I got to my complaint letter to Borders about this was exactly the same as the one Dale Amon received. It read, in part:

[W]e place a priority on the safety and security of our customers and our employees.

So is it safe to presume that Borders would cease to carry the "Top Marx" line if they were subject to sufficient threats of violence over it? Is it possible that no Paperchase or Borders employee voiced concerns about the wisdom of this line at any time? Or is it more likely that the people at Paperchase and Borders are really that ignorant of such recent history? I am curious what Samizdata readers think of this one.

(20)

It is the duty of the local authority looking after a child to advise, assist and befriend him with a view to promoting his welfare when they have ceased to look after him.

Section 19A in Part II of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989 - as inserted by the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000

(26)

A victory in the Netherlands for freedom of expression:

A political party formed by paedophiles cannot be banned because it has the same right to exist as any other party and is protected by democratic freedoms, a Dutch court has ruled. The Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity party (PNVD) was launched in May to campaign for a reduction in the age of consent from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals, provoking widespread outrage in the Netherlands.

The Solace group, which campaigns against paedophiles, sought a ban on the group, asserting that the party infringed the rights of children, and that its ideas were a threat to social norms and values in a democratic state. But a court in The Hague held otherwise.

Good for the court. Even easy-going Dutch society is prey to populism, it seems. Without constraint on 'democracy', then eventually non-majoritarian views will squeezed out; not defeated in argument, but denied even consideration.

Worth noting (1): Solace [can anyone find a web-site? I will link it if so], who would rather nobody hear the views of the PNVD, made their claim based on some putative 'rights of children'. I would like to know quite how it enhances anyone's rights to exclude from the political sphere discussion of policy on the age of consent, pornography, the treatment of animals, or the use of drugs - those questions that have aroused populist ire. Have any actual children complained? And if so, how have they been injured by ideas?

Worth noting (2): What is causing most frothing at the mouth both there and here is the idea of lowering the age of consent from 16 to 12. But that is the most plainly arbitrary, indeed vapid, of all the fringe policies on offer. While opponents can not bear the idea of even discussing a change, the precise age (unlike in Britain or the US) has not been agressively and rigidly policed in the Netherlands, and prosecutions of cases without actual rape or breach of trust are very rare. Those exceedingly law abiding teenagers who can not wait until they are 16 can hop on a subsidised train to France (15), Germany (14), or Spain (13) for a dirty weekend.

(His Most Catholic Majesty's Kingdom of Spain is not generally pointed out by moralitarians as on the brink of social collapse - but then 13 is a rise from the Franco era, so perhaps it is more democratic...)

(20)

Overseas readers often scoff at my pessimism about the state we are in in Britain. Scoff may be the wrong word. Scoffing is now under close supervision:

David Ashley, headmaster of Greenslade primary, says that pupils who bring in packed lunches “are allowed chocolate on a biscuit but not a Mars bar”. If such sweeties are spotted, parents are called in for a quiet word.

At Charlton Manor primary, the head, Tim Baker, says: “Children get stickers for healthy boxes . . . If a child brings in a chocolate bar, we take it out of the lunchbox and give it back to the parent at the end of the day.” Pupils give each other away, he confides: “They say, ‘Miss, he’s got sweets in his box’.”

Perhaps the scariest thing about the article from which that comes is the vaguely approving tone. Here is information about what is being done, no questioning that it needs and should have government attention.

(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?

(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?

(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.

(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.

(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).

(17)

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.

(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.

(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?

(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?

(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?

(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.