UK State encroachment backs off, but not far enough

The UK's New Labour Government seem to have backed off slightly from their frankly crazily draconian extremes of their criminal records check system after public outcry.

As usual the public are far too reasonable and don't complain nearly enough, about anything like enough.

The legislation was supposedly brought in to prevent another “Soham” child murder and essentially tries to and succeeds in treating practically any adult who may anything to do with children as a paedophile unless proven otherwise.

In practice this amounts to, effectively, a licensing system the individual must pay for themselves to be allowed to interact with the young.

The ludicrous - and typical for the New Labour State - thing is that there were perfectly good existing systems in place that, if they had actually been followed, would almost certainly have prevented the Soham murders.

Rather than address the failure to follow the existing system, New Labour rail-road through new, hastily and ill conceived authoritarian legislation. Legislation, that it is difficult to imagine would ever have been acceptable to previous generations, who had a greater respect for our historic ...and rapidly becoming just historical traditional liberties.

All of this is the New Labour states instinct to legislate and the ostensible reason is to protect children Ahhh. And with New labour there is always a subtext and one suspects layers of agenda.

The sub text will be “So it can not be a good thing to resist it can it?” It is there to keep children safe. In the same way as their National ID scheme is always to “fight organised Crime and Terrorism”. Speak out against it and you are “soft on crime”.

Despite the state's tactical withdrawal on some of the more draconian aspects of the legislation and the insane consequences that come from it the legislation is still Owellian.

It also, most dangerously of all in my opinion, establishes the precedent that the State rules who may interact with the young not the citizen.

Before the clime down it was seriously preventing job sharing friends looking after each other's children by private arrangement. May still impact of what mutual arrangements parents are allowed to make amongst themselves to drive their kids to school.

In the case of the women they were both police officers so were presumably subject to vetting anyway when they joined up. Insane. If this was not deliberately intended to result by the legislators then it was a piss poor piece of legislation. But then that is par for the course with the current government that apparently does not do thinking things through or joined up thinking.

As I mentioned what is being slipped in without anyone seeming to be aware is the precedent that the sate rather than the parent decides who is allowed to interact with and influence the citizen's child.

The State distracts like a grinning performing magician. “Look at my hand nothing up my sleeve Ladies and Gents, Girls and Boys.”