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What the GIRFEC? I am not even completely sure this is really a thing. Surely Andrew Duffin is having a big laugh at my expense. That has to be it.
The Scottish Parliament has passed legislation to appoint a ‘Named Person’ for every child in Scotland.
How bad can it be? Says a leaflet: “Being responsible means things like…Your child says sorry when they do something wrong…People who work with your child will check your child is responsible.”
Just take that in for a moment.
“Being respected means things like…Your child gets a say in things like how their room is decorated and what to watch on TV…People who work with your child will check your child is respected.”
How are they taking this over at Netmums?
I understand some could think it was intrusive, but I suppose the answer is if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. This country has nearly 70 million people in it now, but if this scheme saves one single child from abuse – then it has to be worth it.
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“If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” is the one rejoinder that’s never permitted when it comes to government secrets. That’s the only place it should be required.
We need to keep pointing that out.
I wonder whether all those girls in Rotherham who were in the ‘care’ of the Social Services would have benefited from having a ‘Named Person’ assigned to them? As the revelations continue to come out, and multiple police officers and senior officials in local government are now being accused of complicity and participation in their abuse – obviously, all of this could have been avoided if a social worker had simply been ‘Named’.
/sarcasm off.
Look, this is nothing more than a full-employment program for social workers. There will be no reduction in the amount or quality of abuse that’s visited on innocent children. From my own observations of the UK ‘caring professions’ in action, the only negative effects will be upon innocent natural parents, foster parents and adoptive parents who are trying to help those innocent children. The only things that are important to UK social workers are ‘social justice’, identity politics and class warfare – as we see in Rotherham. They’ll let hundreds, maybe thousands of children be horribly, serially abused for years at a time, rather than allow a single member of an ‘approved’ identity group be accused of wrongdoing.
llater,
llamas
“if this scheme saves one single child from abuse – then it has to be worth it.”
Um, no. No, it’s not. Sorry, Snowflake, but that brainless remark is not the ultimate rejoinder that quashes all debate.
The two dumbest arguments in politics in the same paragraph? That has to be a put on.
From the other side, I hear ‘Now ‘zen, now ‘zen, now ‘zen, oo is going to be a Named Person? I would put myself forward, ‘ow’s about ‘zat zen?‘
Have they said who guards the guards?
It certainly is a thing.
Will no-one think of the children?
Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a compilation of interesting policy suggestions.
Mr Ed: http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/teacher-appointed-first-named-person-state-guardian-struck-off-1-4014998
During the Scottish independence referendum, it was profoundly depressing to witness seemingly intelligent folk campaigning for ‘freedom’ by supporting a party that could introduce legislation like this. From the off, the authoritarian Natz have attempted to micro-manage the lives of Scottish citizens. We have a law that criminalises people for singing songs at football matches and the context of whether or not the song you are singing is offensive is ‘at the discretion’ of the officer-in-charge. Which means, more or less: ‘you are breaking the law if I don’t like the cut of your jib’. Creepier still is their plan to appoint a ‘state guardian’ for every child born in our country. This state guardian will have the legal right to ensure that a child is raised in a government-approved manner and can report any issues about their upbringing to the authorities. I recall watching a TV discussion about this, during which Aileen Campbell -the Minister for Children- used this telling phrase: “Of course, parents also have a role in this” (my italics). Parents ‘also’ have a role in bringing up children. Well gee, thanks, Aileen.
If you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about, as long as officials never abuse their power and never make mistakes and are never fooled by malicious accusations and never adopt an unreasonable definition of “wrong”. Since all of these things are inevitably going to happen at some point the innocent do have something to fear from every new power introduced by the state. If more people realised that, they might not be so willing to accept further government intrusion into their lives.
The road to slavery is paved with good intentions.
I have a Scottish client – hard left union rep. He never ceases to complain about this particular issue and his hatred of the Nats. Good for him.
“Oh, wad some power the giftie gi’e us / Tae see ourselves as others see us”
I’ve always been opposed to this (and the song ban, and everything else), but there’s a sort of boiling frog effect that happens when it’s in your own back yard. Sometimes it takes the horror of people from elsewhere for you to realise just how bad things have become.
And I don’t think it was part of the National Party’s plan to find Scotland held up by people around the world as an exemplar of illiberalism. They think they’re good people.
But, as I’ve said all along, this is nationalism. No matter how peaceful you want to be, or how careful you are to avoid accusations of racism, you simply can’t take the conflation of state and people out of it. That’s what it is. Of course, most modern political parties are guilty of it to some extent – it’s a useful tool in promoting state power if you can somehow persuade people that… oh, to coin a phrase, “government is just the name we give to things we choose to do together” – but when it’s actually your core ideology, central to everything you stand for… well, all bets are off. “We” are doing this for “our” kids, as if the nation was one big happy family and Parliament a discussion round the kitchen table at which we all, every last one of five million of us, comes to a consensus.
Nationalism isn’t just wrong; it’s idiotic.
In the case of the SNP, I think it is more accurate to say this is national socialism.
“They can take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!
…Because we’re going to sell it for a mess of pottage.”
It never occurs to Progs that what’s done for the children is done to the children once they’ve grown up. The Progs may eventually discover a lack of gratitude, as East-bloc Communists did.
Leftists are always under the fantasy that an entity formed of people is separate from the people it is formed of. Thus we have “the state” being a living thing that “the people” are subservient to, even though they are one and the same thing. This is what causes the schism and delusional dichotomy that so pervades left wing politics and why they eventually cease to function as anything more than a serf society or police state.
Giving a tag such as “named person”, who, obviously, is a person, is on the understanding that the person is somehow “different” to the person who may or may not abuse the child. This is something that no-one can guarantee, and even if you could, there simply aren’t enough caring, unbiased, irreligious, non-partisan individuals willing to work with small children and abusive parents for little reward.
The dream of collectivists from the time of Plato onwards – the replacement of the family with the state.
Scots are logical people – they take principles to their logical conclusions.
But that is a problem when the principles are terrible.
but if this scheme saves one single child from abuse – then it has to be worth it.
As I said three years ago when Barack Obama trotted out this same argument when he was whining about Congress not passing his gun “control” legislation:
If concentrating the children in camps where only responsible, government-approved adults were looking after them could save the life of even one child, don’t we have an obligation to try?
As said in the previous thread about football chants–if we had a PM who was not a ball-less traitor and upper-class leftist it would be simple enough to put the boot to all the Natzy party’s most cherished plans for tyranny.
Instead the dick will prob try to copy their antics down here.
” ..if you’re not doing anything wrong… ” and who is going to decide what is right and what is wrong? The collectivists I suppose because they always assume that power if we allow them to do so. Normal people will see this named person policy for what it is; a marxist attempt to destroy the family by denying parents their good given right to have custodianship of their own children.
Well said, JiC.
Add to that the fact that there are a lot of “good & decent” people who precisely are not “normal,” like the neighbor who is always on the hop to alert the Authorities to any transgression of The Rules that he or she imagines have occurred. A “normal” person is too busy trying to run his own life to be much occupied with trying to run other people’s.
Even our own police are known to say of these folks that “there’s one in every neighborhood.” They are exactly the sort of people who would be all in favor of having a Named Person to oversee each family’s family life.
Anyway, “who is going to decide?” is exactly the right question to ask. And unless the answer is “the parents” (including foster and adoptive), then the next question is, “Based on what?”
I think there is something rooted in human nature which sometimes grows such rotten fruit, Marxism being one such fruit.
Obviously humans are dangerous creatures who will run amok and spoil the décor if not commit actual mayhem, unless kept on a short leash and closely supervised.
“if this scheme saves one single child from abuse – then it has to be worth it.”
Ergo, if this scheme allows one single child to be harmed it has to be canned. The logic works both ways.
Since they have already had to strike one potential predator off, I would say it has already met the requirement to be canned.