4 thoughts on “Interesting articles”

  1. Warning: I’m in a ranting mood.

    I see this Times article actually comes from the Taxpayers’ Alliance. I’d trust the so-called “Taxpayers'” Alliance more if all their directors were actually British taxpayers and they seemed a bit less obsessed with big business and the Tory party. Plus, of course, these people who hate big government here and in the States are quite happy for billions of tax money to be spent on wars – presumably because somebody has to make money out of manufacturing guns and bombs and the arms trade seemed to be a strange exemption to the Tories’ killing off of manufacturing industry the last time they were in power.

    Sorry to weigh in, but the Taxpayers’ Alliance does annoy me – and of course it always gets good coverage in Murdoch’s papers. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/09/taxpayers-alliance-conservative-pressure-group for an alternative account to the sort of thing one finds in Murdoch’s Times et al.

    The story actually says that where children are already known to be at risk the state might do something about it. I know we differ in our situations regarding the state’s input to our children’s education, and I know Health and Safety is one of the easy targets for the Jeremy Clarksons of this world, but sometimes other people do have to take responsibility for children who might not be being brought up by responsible loving adults.

    Oh, and I found it very amusing that that page on the Times website links to another retired-general-gets-pink-face-at-the-commies-running-the-country story about the Scouts banning knives. If anyone cared to check with the Scout Association (http://scouts.org.uk/news/225/campfirecircle), they would find the story wasn’t true. But printing the truth wouldn’t make Murdoch his money.

    Must stop ranting now, but here’s an executive summary:
    (1) don’t trust the Taxpayers’ Alliance
    (2) don’t trust Rupert Murdoch

    (in both cases because I think they’re dangerous for democracy in this country).

    I’ll shut up now, sorry.

  2. No need to be sorry! I hadn’t spotted the Taxpayers Alliance link, but tbh would probably still have posted the article on the basis that I take everything I read with a pinch of salt. It isn’t so much this article in particular that has me worried, as that this is the culmination of lots of other things I have seen, starting with scapegoating home educators and going on to list home educating as a welfare red flag – by the first lot of HE stuff we would be okay as we are “known” and regularly inspected. We would need to alter our style somewhat and become more regimented and less free-flowing than we are if we were to put into practice a yearly plan for everything rather than just for Maths and English but we could probably manage that. What worries me is the combination (even taken with a large pinch of salt) of the increase in state interference alongside the insinuation (and unofficial statement – would have to hunt but it’s there) that HE children are perceived as being at risk – ie as well as having our children’s education regulated and inspected to see if we are meeting some nebulous standard, and as well as allowing unknown officials to interview our children without us being present so that they can assure themselves that we are not mistreating them (because clearly they are so hidden from the world that we could be doing anything to them!) we are also now likely to be under suspicion of not providing an adequate home environment – simply because we HE and are therefore automatically flagged up as potentially at risk. I shouldn’t have linked only to this article – sorry, I was being lazy but wanted to put it somewhere I can find it again easily – without the other things which go with it to cause me concern. Just now I need ot go and educate my children, though, so I’ll have to come back to it later…

  3. I can’t see how social services could possibly manage to implement this in any case, given that they already have a whole raft of powers which are not effectively used due to lack of funding, lack of personnel (they have 60% unfilled vacancies in this area; even before Baby P etc it was 40%) and lack of joined-up thinking between Govt depts.

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