I wonder how many of our readers went to see the film ‘Minority Report’ and came away thinking, ‘Hey, what a great film’?
Contrast this with one of HMG’s advisers who went to see the film and cam away thinking, ‘Hey, what a great idea!:
Tony Blair is to announce plans to put up to half a million children deemed at risk of becoming criminals or getting into other trouble on a new computer register.
Teachers, family doctors and other professionals working with youngsters will be asked to name potential troublemakers whose personal details will then be placed on the database.
The new “identification, tracking and referral” system will allow the authorities to share information on vulnerable children, including their potential for criminal activity.
Alright, let’s get the obvious question out of the way, such as, exactly what does ‘at risk’ mean? What constitutes a ‘potential troublemaker’? Who decides these things and on what basis? Who guards the guardians?
Oh I daresay that there are answers (or, rather, great globs of state-management gobbledekook that purport to be answers) but they will almost certainly remain occluded behind the volumes of policy documents that filter through the ziggurat of state agencies charged with enforcing it all.
For the record, I denounce this but I do so merely as a matter of form. My stores of furious indignation have all but dried up leaving a residue of doleful resignation. And, to be fair, we’ve always had mechanisms for controlling the poor; this is merely the latest manifestation, albeit dressed up in the fashionable terminology of ‘caring and concern’.
The chink of light (well, a fissure really) is that this grand plan may not get off the ground at all and, even if it does, it will probably be a shambles. HMG already has far more laws, regulations, rules, plans, initiatives, schemes and regimes that it can possible see through or enforce and nothing they announce nowadays is likely to work as intended or at all.
Still, it will keep a few state bureaucrats busy for a few more years and that is probably enough.
It dovetails nicely with the Connexions scheme recently highlighted by Brian, doesn’t it? Sign up now kids to have your private lives monitored by the authorities and get FREE record tokens!
Now where else have I heard something like that recently? Ah yes, here. And here.
Another giant Blair bite into CONTROL. Micromanaging the entire population of Britain. Once a child is on this digusting register, is that it? For life? Will it ever manage to get off?
Also, what does it mean, “Blair is to announce plans to put up to half a million children …”? It’s already been announced. Right here. I just read it. Is he going to announce it again? If you announce what he is going to announce, then we don’t need him announcing it, do we?
BTW, will Ewan Blair be on the list? For public drunkenness and lying in his own vomit in Leicester Square? (Next stop, a Greek resort.) Jack Straw’s son, for dealing in drugs? Derry Irvine’s son for being convicted for stalking? Maybe if these troubled kids had been on the list since they were four and been brought up by caring social workers, they wouldn’t have been engaging in anti-social behaviour?
No I saw the film and said what a pile of cack. It was sci-fi at its worse and casting that plank actor Cruise in the lead role made it much worse.
I hope Jack Straw’s boy is the first in line.
Then Prince Harry.
Then Euan(?) Blair.
Then Brooklyn Beckham. He’s BOUND to turn out a real twat.
Then I reckon I should read the previous comments more closely.
I’ll just be going then.