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.”

New Labour's Child Catchers

The UK Orwellian NewLabour state is desperately rolling out the quite sinister National Children's Database designed to contain details of and track everyone in the UK under 18.

One wonders how long it will be before they decide to keep the details for life...

The alleged reason for it is to enable "more co-ordinated services for children" and of course to ensure none slips through the net like Victoria Cimbie.

It is questionable if such a database would in fact have prevented her death, or that of baby "P", local co-ordination, lower case loads and effective working practices would almost certainly have far more impact and cost far less.

In the same way they try to uses the fear of terrorism to justfy a national ID database. It is well known thatID cards would never have prevented the London Tube suicide bombers. Or those who attempted to bomb busy London clubs and attacked Glasgow Airport.

This governemt though seems to have only one kneejerk reponse, cataloguing, regimentaion and control of the ordinary citizen - and it seems their children too.

It is terrifying to think of the numbers of people who will have access to what should be private details of our children. Will all council employees be vetted in the same way as youth workers? No. The potential vulnerability that access to this data lays children open to is truly concerning.

Then there is the potential to just loose the details releasing them into the public domain.

The way local councils have misused anti terrorist laws gives an indication they are not to be trusted with our children's details, that are effectively also our details. How long before they routinely check them to establish where you live for instance?

Those who take comfort that these are the twilight days of New Labour and hope the scheme will die a death with their electorial demise are probably fooling themselves. Once rolled out could an new incoming governemnet be trusted to remobve such a big state friendly tool of control?

Maybe the economic facts of life might make a difference. The database is currently slated to cost £224 million, as with all such things this will be underestimated by a whole order of magnitude. Perhaps in the end it will prove to be too expensive.

Repent at leisure?

Apparently the Government are going to rush through legislation to ensure there will never be another “Baby P” case.

Ed Balls the “Children's Secretary” is planning to put forward legislation make local services more accountable forcing them to chart their progress in intervening at an early stage.

Now any right thinking individual would wish to prevent any such dreadful thing ever happening again. But one fears hurried I’ll considered legislation is not the solution.

It is almost certain there is perfectly effective legislation already in place that would be adequate to the purpose - if only it had been used. Similarly there was an enquiry after the last dreadful failure of Harringay Council with Victoria Climbié. An enquiry made recommendations, were they ever actually implemented properly? Were all existing guide rules adhered to?

One suspects not.

The last thing this country needs is yet another piece of New Labour legislation that only does what other legislation, if actually enforced, already does, or invents new subdivisions of existing offences.

You can be sure it will not be any better and will almost certainly eventually be found to have unexpected and detrimental consequences, in this case probably to ordinary families.

Herodotus (484 BC - 430 BC) observed “Haste in every business brings failures.” This seems to have entirely escaped the attention of the current government, with their hatred of any history not post 1945 and not spun.