We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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What is the difference between a headline and a story?
Well, in this case, a whole world of difference. The headline to this item on the BBC (where else?) spells out in big, bold type:
Calls for tax rise to help children
Ahhhhhh…children. Itty-bitty, helpless, doe-eyed, little moppets. Who can refuse a plea to help the little children? What kind of greedy, stone-hearted monster would vote against the opportunity to bring a ray of sunshine to their adorable, chubby faces?
Spare yourself the struggle with your conscience for only in text of the story does the actual identity of the proposed beneficiaries become clear:
Scotland’s new children’s commissioner has called for a penny on income tax to pay for improvements to child protection agencies, which she claims are badly overstretched.
So the extra tax money is not for children at all but to create more public sector jobs for functionaries.
The only things that are ‘overstretched’ are the public heart-strings they keep tugging on.
In my usual stupor, this morning, before all the drugs in my constitutional cup of tea kick-started my ageing brain cells, I watched a snippet of the popular BBC children’s programme, Blue Peter.
This is a perennial of tax-funded British programming, imbibed with your mother’s milk, which delivers a twice-weekly compendium presented by a rotating set of three bright young things, who tour the world looking for informational opportunities for five to 15 year olds.
When I grew up with the programme these were the splendidly quirky John Noakes, the woodenly hip Peter Purves, and the prim but smouldering Lesley Judd. Ah, the things Lesley could do with a hot wet bucket of clay which would warm the confused cockles of a 12 year old boy.
So I watched this morning’s programme with interest. A fresh-faced pretty female presenter wandered around a cocoa plantation in Africa explaining the cocoa pod origins of chocolate production. ‘Fascinating,’ I thought. There was plenty of factual information and so far a distinct lack of anti-capitalist agitation. ‘What is wrong with the BBC, this morning?’ I wondered. → Continue reading: What are your kids watching?
One of the many perils associated with declining birthrates is that it makes it much easier for the social-working classes to nationalise children:
Every local authority in England will be required to appoint a director of children’s services in a bid to improve child welfare under legislation due to be unveiled by the government.
An “information hub” will be set up in 150 local authorities to record details of all the children in the area. Each child will have an electronic file – including their name, address, date of birth, school and GP – that states whether they are known to social services, education welfare, police, or youth offending teams.
Other measures expected in the bill include the creation of a children’s commissioner for England, who would protect the rights of children and young people, and statutory children’s safeguarding boards, responsible for coordinating local child protection work among social services, the NHS, the police and other agencies.
Only they don’t call it ‘nationalisation’ any more. Now they call it ‘protection’ but it amounts to same thing.
Sometimes, just occasionally mind, I actually quite miss the old-style firebrand lefties and their revolutionary rhetoric. At least they were honest and open about their ambitions and, in many ways, that made it a lot easier to tackle them head-on.
‘The state hates competition… this is why it tries so hard to stamp out organised crime’
So goes the old joke. Yet there actually is more than a little truth to it. As someone who views conscripting children against their will into vast ‘educational factories’ as institutionalized child abuse, the fact that members of the state’s educational conscription elite should pick on a few isolated cases of private sector child abuse to justify moving against home educators surprises me not one jot.
Madonna was wrong. We are not living in a ‘material world’, we are living in a ‘managerial world’:
A planned children’s pancake race has been dropped because of spiralling insurance costs.
Children at Okehampton Primary School in Devon had been looking forward to the annual event on Shrove Tuesday next week.
But the 80-yard run in the town’s Red Lion Yard has had to be cancelled because a risk assessment had revealed that 25 marshalls would have to line the race route to ensure public safety.
What good are marshalls? Ban this kind of thing altogether I say. What if a six year-old with a pancake, hurtling around the track at mind-numbing speeds, spins out of control and veers off into a crowd of helpless onlookers, leaving a trail of carnage and devastation in his wake?
No, no, no. Too terrible to even contemplate.
Sitting here in London, I am horrified at the decision by Coca-Cola to remove its brand logo from drinks dispensers (which sell Coca-Cola) in English schools, afraid of being branded (!) exploitative.
It must therefore be all right – according to les bien-pensants – to prohibit freedom of commercial expression in England and Wales, but it is not all right to keep religious bigotry and bullying out of school in France?
Let us be clear, if wearing a scarf were no more than a style preference or an expression of belief, it could only be objected to on grounds of taste, which is something that bureaucrats and politicians collectively, are not known for having. However, the scarf is too often the product of beatings, threatened rape, and patriarchal oppression, with state schools juggling the demands of children’s rights versus political correctness.
If Coca-Cola were truly capable of using the illuminated front of a drinks-dispenser to brainwash children into switching from Pepsi, vodka and crack cocaine, then there could be a case for the school’s prohibition of the display. It is rather strange to assume that children would naturally rather drink soy milk. I would find it odd to go to a school where girls were beaten by Islamic bullies with impunity for not wearing modest clothing and where children were harangued by teachers about the evils of Coca Cola.
The next time that I hear French Imams condemn the use of compulsion against girls who dress according to Western norms, I shall withdraw my support for the headscarf ban. In the meantime, in protest against spineless Coca-Cola, I shall make a point of ordering Pepsi.
Government-fetishists are always trying to justify their demands for ever-bigger state by claiming that only the state can ride to the rescue of the public to correct what they call ‘market failures’.
So, who is going to come riding to the rescue to put this right?
Thousands of parents who had children taken away from them on the evidence of the controversial paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow will not have them returned.
Ministers are to review as many as 5,000 civil cases of families affected over the past 15 years by Prof Meadow’s now-discredited theory of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. This accused mothers of harming their children to draw attention to themselves.
Many mothers say that they have been vindicated in their insistence that they were wrongly accused and now want their children back. However, Margaret Hodge, the minister for children, has ruled out any widespread return.
Mrs Hodge said that the exact number of civil cases where Prof Meadow’s theory had been used to remove children from mothers was unknown, but could run into “thousands or even tens of thousands”.
She added, however: “If a miscarriage of justice was made 10 or 15 years ago, what is in the child’s interest now? If the adoption order was made on the back of Meadow’s evidence and that was 10 years ago, what is in the real interest of the child? If they were taken as babies the only parent they know is the adopted one. It is incredibly difficult. It is a really tough call to make.
“The sort of families that are coming forward are heartbroken families. But if the child was adopted at birth the sensible thing to do is to let it stay. As children’s minister my prime interest has to be the interests of the child.”
I would be willing to wager that the ‘prime interest’ of Margaret Hodge is Margaret Hodge.
As for the thousands of parents who may have had their children abducted by the state, well, tough titties. Live with it.
What the government puteth asunder, let no man join together again.
I’ve just read an article in Fox News which has left me both speechless and in a fury:
A 14-year-old New Jersey schoolboy — whose dad and stepdad are in the military — was suspended for five days because he drew a “patriotic” stick figure of a U.S Marine blowing away a Taliban fighter, officials said yesterday.
It further notes:
Scott Switzer, of Colts Neck, was sent home last week from Tinton Falls Middle School after a teacher saw the image on a computer and described it to the principal.
Scott, who turned 14 Tuesday and was headed back to school Wednesday, said he was unjustly disciplined for his sketch of “a war scene.”
This sort of treatment of a young lad for simply being a young lad is incredibly destructive. You can’t repress the natural expression of, well, being a boy. Boys like imaginary wars and fighting battles in the back yard, climbing trees, hiding under porches, jumping off porch roofs and playing ‘paratrooper’ by swinging as high as they can before letting go. You can’t stop them from going bang-bang at passing cars – transmogrified by imagination into Russian or Nazi or Jap or Iraqi tanks, depending on the generation.
If you were to succeed, you would destroy them as thoroughly as if you’d taken them in a backroom and buggered their wee bottoms. Worse, actually. One can recover from mere physical abuse… rape of the soul is forever.
I used to draw all sorts of battle scenes when I was 14. Lots of aircraft diving and strafing, even an imaginary Nazi Spaceship after reading Robert Heinlein’s “Rocketship Galileo”. I’m sure these morons would have loved me.
At one point we had a long running series of water gun ‘assassinations’ in the halls of Coraopolis Senior High School. One group of us were the “Nazi’s” and another were “Codename Jericho” and “Operation Bluelight” from the TV series of the time. This included secret coded messages being passed around and sometimes captured and passed on to me as the senior Herr codebreaker. I’d just gotten my first book on Codes and Ciphers through the Scholastic Book Service. Since both ‘sides’ were working from the same book, it was fairly easy to crack them!
We finally caught a ‘double agent’ and surrounded him in the basketball court bleachers during some ceremony in which a Pennsylvania State official presented our school a State flag. When it ended, our target tried to run for it, but we surrounded him. The ‘we’ being all of us zombies who’d already been watergunned over the last few weeks. The rules were that those already ‘dead’ weren’t allowed to take out anyone else.
Our designated assassin then emptied the watergun on him.
These politically correct fruitcakes in New Jersey would simply have adored us. They would probably have sent me and the others in for Indoctrination and Re-education.
The improbably named UK Home Office Minister Paul Goggins, with the even more improbable title of Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Correctional Services, has defended the lack of strict definitions in a proposed new Internet grooming law. This is designed to prevent the entrapment of young children by older sexual predators. However, the proposed law, as it is currently drafted, could theoretically see a 15-year old boy-and-girl couple, who have mutually consenting sex together, being prosecuted, and sent to jail for five years alongside a 45-year old man who has sex with a 13-year old girl.
On the BBC Today program this morning, Mr Goggins said that the government could find no way of wording their new legislation to include the older predators, but to exclude the under-age couples. However, he said this would be alright, because the Crown Prosecution Service would receive the correct legal guidance on when to and when not to prosecute, to avoid imprisoning sexually adventurous youngsters. Which of course begs the question, why aren’t they clever enough to frame this splendid new legal guidance in the new law?
It also begs the question of how many Samizdata readers would be criminalized if this new law were to be retro-actively applied to them, and only kept out of jail via the masterly whim of any future Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Correctional Services? As our socialist lords and masters wrap us in ever more legislation, to criminalize us, in order to control us better, their excuses and deceptions for this cacophony of intrusive legislation grow ever flimsier. I’m confident they’ll soon make it illegal to walk on the cracks in the pavement, in a loud shirt. But don’t worry, I’m sure Mr Goggins will be kind enough not to bang us away for this heinous misdemeanour, unless of course we do something else much more serious to annoy him, such as calling him a very rude name. Mr Goggins, you are an idiotarian.
Our government is determined that we shall be numbered and identity carded no matter how long it takes or how much opposition has to be ground down, and if they can’t do it by persuading adults, they’ll do it by habituating (and I can think of ruder words than that) children.
Every child in England is to be given a credit card-style ID number in reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the murder of Victoria Climbie, the Government has announced.
The long-awaited Green Paper on children’s services also included a proposal to create a Children’s Commissioner for England, whose job it will be to speak up for under-18s and ensure their views are “fed into” Government policy.
It set out a large number of changes to the structure of children’s services, which will see education, health and social care combined and dispensed from neighbourhood schools.
Tony Blair said the proposals were a “significant step” towards ensuring there was no repeat of the Climbie case.
One thing is very certain about this new ID numbered world which they are determined to create. It will still contain outbursts of evil like Victoria Climbie’s murder. ID numbers won’t stop that. → Continue reading: ID numbers and Hidden Europe
There is probably a drop-dead serious point to be made here about the gradual ‘feminisation’ of boys but, for now at least, I am content just to publicly guffaw at this latest forlorn attempt to make the world a safer place:
Children in Melbourne have been banned from dressing up as Batman, Superman and the Incredible Hulk because schools say the action hero costumes encourage aggressive behaviour.
At least 10 childcare centres have declared themselves “superhero-free zones”, claiming that youngsters who don capes and masks are more likely to end up wrestling, punching and karate-kicking unsuspecting classmates.
Lex Luther take note: all their childcare centres are belong to you!
The head of one childcare centre, Madeleine Kellaway, told the Sun Herald newspaper: “There is a lot of violence involved, where you get wham-bam aggressive behaviour.”
Perhaps the kids just don’t like her very much.
She said banning the superhero costumes had encouraged more creative play.
‘Okay children, today we’re all going to dress up as Outreach Co-ordinators and play a game of who can get most money from the government in order to implement a policy framework for achieving diversity in local authority management structure. Hooray!’
There are times when I compare 2003 with the Orwellian world of 1984. In one respect at least, the fictional Airstrip One was far better than present day Britain: kids could have more fun!
Consider this report, that children are being harrassed by intolerant adults into staying locked indoors. Of course we live in an age where most children are treated at best as designer lap dogs or fashion accessories and at worst like punchbags or sex toys. So that actually letting children run around parks, fall in streams, get muddy and avoid obesity and truancy by burning off their excess energy in creative or harmless pursuits are not an option. The streets where I grew up have too many cars parked in them to play football, never mind the traffic.
The contrast with the Orwellian child utopia of Airstrip One is amazing: kids can run around as they wish, there is no shortage of activities for them to enjoy, from attending public executions, to outings in the countryside. But the real fun is in the “spies”. Children are actively encouraged to look through keyholes, snoop into the affairs of adults and they can earn plaudits for exposing corrupt and treasonable behaviour. So when that nasty Mrs B. at the corner of A***** Rd and M****** Rd would should at my friends and I for kicking a football outside her house, we could pick up the phone and denounce her to the Party as an agent of Emmanuel Goldstein!
I wonder if there are any equivalent means for children today to get even with bossy and intolerant adults? They could try this phone number: 0800 11 11 (Airstrip One only).
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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