Another example of the softening up of the masses to ID cards / biometric grazing etc. at popular tourist destinations. This time you can make an ID card with your suggestions for AGW legislation!

This just in from a lurker:

Fast-track review of home education could cost the taxpayer £500 million per annum according to research for the Home Education Advisory Service HEAS calls for Government re-think and proper dialogue with the home education community to avoid unnecessary burden on the exchequer.

At a time when most independent bodies forecast that state spending will need to be slashed, the Government is planning to make radical changes to home education that could cost it as much as £500m in new spending annually, according to research for the Home Education Advisory Service.

Alarmingly the government appears determined to push ahead without any appreciation of these cost implications. Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Parliamentary Under-Secretary – Department for Children, Schools and Families) said of the proposals: "We do not expect them to place any significant additional burdens on local authorities".

Yet research for the Home Education Advisory Service has quantified major costs arising from Government proposals for a new monitoring and assessment regime for home educated children, including provision of additional services and the inevitable rise in the number of state educated children as the home education population falls in response to the proposals. The HEAS estimates a cost impact of £120-£300m pa. But a worse case scenario sees the state education bill rising by half a billion pounds on an annualised basis.

Michael Crawshaw, who led the research for HEAS, said: "There are tens of thousands of home educated children in Britain. Independent studies suggest that they achieve emotional and educational outcomes at least as good as those of children who attend school with a neutral or positive impact on career progression. These outcomes cost the taxpayer nothing. Home educating parents do this demanding job entirely at their own expense and without any input from the state education system."

Yet now, after a hasty and questionably 'independent' review, the government plans to pull home education under the state umbrella. New spending will come from three sources:

First, a requirement that local education authorities construct a new layer of administration to register, assess and monitor home education.

Baroness Morgan's belief that the LEAs already have the people and systems to do this suggests she has not understood the new requirements outlined in the proposals.

Second, the local authorities will also be instructed to pay for some exams and open up school facilities to home educated children; facilities that are already at full stretch. While this aspect of the proposals would be welcomed by home educators it amounts to just 8% of the new spending.

Finally there will be a rise in the state education population as a number of home educated children are forced into schools.

The research suggests a minimum £60-150m pa increase in state education spending. A central estimate sees a £120-300m pa increase in the state education budget. The report's 'extinction' scenario sees spending rise by over £500m pa if the proposals, which have outraged many home educators, push a vibrant alternative educational approach to the brink. Home Education in Britain could almost disappear, forcing up to fifty thousand new children into state education at a cost to the state of £500m pa.

Michael Crawshaw added: "Why is the government doing this? They say it is to improve educational outcomes and provide a safety net for home educated children. Critics say the proposals are a waste of time and money. They are more likely to harm than improve educational outcomes for home educated children."

HEAS is calling for the Government to think again and engage in proper dialogue with the home education sector before embarking on a programme that will place significant burden on the exchequer for no good reason.

Ends

For further information or a copy of the full report please contact Michael Crawshaw (Tel 07768 177634 or email michaelcrawshaw@ btinternet.com) or Cathy Koetsier of HEAS on cathy@heas.org.uk.

Some points to consider.

Baroness Morgan doesn’t know that if you eat too much you will be come obese over time. She can hardly be expected to understand the implications of the extra burdens their insane plans will put on Local Authorities.

Communists do not understand what money is or where it comes from. That is why they can propose this immoral, reprehensible and unworkable plan without considering what it is going to cost. They think that money comes from government; that government prints money, and that by a form of magic, it has value.

Finally, we have said this before; there is no money for any of this, and the coming economic collapse will put the kibosh on this insanity, Neu Liebour, and the whole rotten stinking lot of these fascists.

Chairman
Home School Legal Defense Association

Introduction

His name is Badman. Graham Badman. His June 2009 “Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England,” which proposes draconian changes in English home education law, lives up to his name.

His core premise is that the current education law does not properly balance the rights of parents and the rights of children.

However, he reaches this conclusion on a faulty basis. Most significantly, he fails to fully and accurately describe the current legal framework that governs home education. He avoids any discussion of the power of local education officials to intervene with the force of law in a situation where they have found a home education program to be unsuitable.

Despite his failure to accurately describe the current situation, he makes a series of recommendations to remedy the problems he has “discovered.” Central to his scheme is the requirement that a government official be empowered to compel entry into the homes of families engaged in home education. Then he wishes the official to have the power to interrogate each child in order to “hear” the child’s wishes and make an independent determination of the suitability of the home education program.

A cryptic quotation appears as a preface to the entire report:

The need to choose, to sacrifice some ultimate values to others, turns out to be a permanent characteristic of the human predicament.

This statement was by Isaiah Berlin in a 1969 work published by Oxford University.

Badman’s apparent meaning is that one cherished value needs to be sacrificed to achieve a different cherished value. From the body of the Badman Report there is little doubt as to his intended application of this principle.

The Badman Report opines that traditional English concepts of parental rights and liberty must be sacrificed to achieve the value of adherence to children’s rights theory—specifically, the theory contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

But as so often is the case with meddlesome interlopers, it is easy to demonstrate that Badman’s conclusions are premised on numerous fallacies.

How the English Legal System Works

Section 7 of the Education Act of 1996 provides the legal framework for home education in England.

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
(a) to his age, ability, aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

Badman asserts that the terms “efficient” and “suitable” are not defined. This is true enough insofar as the statutory language is concerned. However, this does not mean that English courts are incapable of interpreting and applying these terms with common sense. Badman cites and quotes judicial definitions of both “efficiency” and “a suitable education,” but fails to give us the source for the quotation of the suitability determination.¹ Accordingly, it is simply false to say that these terms are undefined in English law.

Section 437 (1) of the Education act imposes a duty on “a local education authority” to give notice to any parent “if it appears that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education.”

After quoting Section 437(1), Badman merely states that local authorities are encouraged to use informal means.

At this point, Badman simply stops reading the statutes and fails to include in his report the balance of the statutory scheme which empowers local authorities to take action to seek remediation if a home education program appears to be unsuitable.

Here is what he left out:

Under Section 437, “[i]f it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education” the officials may issue a notice to parents requiring them, within 15 days, to demonstrate that the education their child is receiving is in fact suitable. If the school officials are not satisfied with the response, they have the ability to issue an attendance order, forcing the child to attend a school designated by the officials. The parents may ask for a lawful alternative school placement. However, there is no lawful option to simply continue a program of home education that had been found to be wanting.

But the law permits parents two paths to seek review of the attendance order.

Administrative review. Under Section 442, a parent may request the local authority to remove the attendance order on the grounds that suitable education is being provided. If the local authority refuses to remove the order, the aggrieved parent may appeal to the Secretary of State who is given wide discretion in fashioning a course of action for the child in question.

Judicial option. A parent may simply refuse to comply with the attendance order. This is an offense which may be prosecuted under Section 443. Parents may raise an affirmative defense in such a prosecution. A parent will be exonerated if “he proves that he is causing the child to receive suitable education otherwise than at school.” Upon such a judicial determination, the attendance order would be vacated.

The Badman Report leaves the distinct impression that there are no effective means available for local education officials to pursue home educating parents who are failing to provide a proper education for their children.

Both the objectivity and the professionalism of the Badman Report are called into serious question by its failure to fully describe the complete operation of current law.

There is nothing ineffective about the current English law when all of the elements are considered:

• Homeschooling parents are under the same educational duty as all other parents.
• This standard has been subject to further definition by English courts.
• Local school officials have both the duty and authority to take action if they have reasonable grounds to believe that suitable education is not being given to any child.
• Parents are given notice and an opportunity to cure any deficiency.
• If the school officials are not satisfied, they may order a cessation to home education.
• If the parents disagree with this decision, they may elect to appeal to the Secretary or make their defense in court.

An Incomplete Comparison

The Badman Report asserts: “International comparison suggests that of all countries with highly developed education systems, England is the most liberal in its approach to elective home education.”

Seven lines of analysis follow this naked assertion. He mentions Germany, “most European countries” (without elaboration), and New Zealand.

The omission of the United States is a particularly blatant error when it comes to the subject of home education. There is little doubt that more children are being homeschooled in the United States than in the rest of the world combined. By comparison, the Badman Report discloses that there are between 20,000 and 80,000 children being homeschooled in England.² The United States Department of Education estimates that there were between 1,277,000 and 1,739,000 (median 1,508,000) being home educated in 2007.³ Independent researchers place the number even higher. “There were an estimated 1.8 to 2.5 million children (in grades K to 12) home educated during 2007–2008 in the United States.”⁴

North Carolina’s Department of Education reports that in the 2007–2008 school year, there were 38,367 homeschools with an estimated 71,566 children being taught in those homes.⁵ A 2008 decision of the California Court of Appeal estimated 166,000 children were being homeschooled in that state alone.⁶

It is important to note that, just as in England, the United States cannot provide a precise count of the number of children being home educated. If the implication that the inability to enumerate home educated children was an indicium of educational failure, it should have become apparent by now in the United States. The numbers are simply too great for the problem to have been hidden.

Moreover, once the United States is brought into play in the international comparison, it is simply unfair and inaccurate to suggest that England is the most liberal in it is approach to home education regulation.

The Education Act of 1996 is similar to some of the older American home education laws. For example, Massachusetts law requires “instruction in all the studies required by law equals in thoroughness and efficiency, and in the progress made therein, that in the public schools in the same town.” Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 76, § 1.

Oklahoma law provides:

It is unlawful for a parent of a school aged child “to neglect or refuse to cause or compel such child to attend and comply with the rules of some public, private or other school, unless other means of education [i.e., home schooling] are provided for the full term the schools of the district are in session.” Stat. Ann. tit. 70 § 10-105(A).

The phrase “other means of education” in the Oklahoma statute is virtually identical to the English phrase “at school or otherwise.” Homeschooling flourishes in Oklahoma with no governmental interference in the ordinary case.

Illinois law provides an example of law with broad, undefined standards for home education. In that state parents must ensure that “children are taught the branches of education taught to children of corresponding age and grade in public schools, and where the instruction of the child in the branches of education is in the English language.” 105 ILCS § 5/26-1.

A summary of the home education law in all 50 American states is attached. It is evident upon review that some states are more lenient than the English system, and some have more specific requirements. None differ greatly from the general approach of English law that parents should be trusted and authorities are empowered to intervene in the extraordinary case.

There is simply no basis for widespread alarm concerning the well-being of children. Freedom works. This is especially true when, as in England, the authorities have the clear statutory power to intervene when they believe that there is a problem.

Badman’s Reliance on The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child

Badman begins his review of the regulatory framework of the current English system by citing Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This Article provides that “in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child [be] given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”

Badman then says: “Yet under the current legislation and guidance, local authorities have no right of access to the child to determine or ascertain such views.”

Accordingly, Badman suggests that Parliament enact mandatory provisions to require parents to have an official enter their home to interrogate their children concerning their “views” and to make an independent assessment of the suitability of the home education being provided.

However, under the express terms of the UNCRC, Article 12 states a universal principle applicable to all children. If Parliament intends to implement the provisions of Article 12 to determine the “wishes” of the child with regard to his education, then this requirement must be imposed vis-à-vis all children in all forms of education. The Preamble of the UNCRC mentions the principle of “equality” in two separate statements. Article 28 states that education decisions for children must be made “on the basis of equal opportunity.”

Moreover, if home education parents are not to be allowed to be present when their children are interrogated concerning their “wishes,” both logic and the principle of equality require that local school officials must be excluded from the interviews when children from such schools are likewise enabled to express their “wishes.”

Reading Article 12 and 28 together, favoritism or selective enforcement is not permitted. If the child’s wishes are to be received by independent reviewers, then it must be for all children and the reviewers must truly be independent.

Obviously, the Article 12 system would vest the independent reviewer with extraordinary power of subjective judgment. Such a methodology is antithetical in any society that places any value on the rule of law, privacy, and liberty.

The Badman Interrogation Program: A Violation of Human Rights

Badman’s key recommendation is that local authorities should be given the power to:

• Compel entry into the homes of families engaged in home education.
• Separate the child from his or her parents.
• Interrogate the child both concerning his or her wishes and to satisfy the interrogator that the child’s education is “suitable.”

This approach flies in the face of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

This Article, protecting the privacy of both family life and the home, has been made binding on the United Kingdom by virtue of the Human Rights Act of 1998. No reservations to this Article were made at the time that the United Kingdom became a party to this treaty. According to the Human Rights Act, it is unlawful for any agency of government to violate these protected rights of privacy.

The privacy provision in the Human Rights Act has parallel provisions in the American system of constitutional rights. Significantly, American courts have dealt directly with the question of whether a compulsory invasion for home education inspections constitutes an unconstitutional violation of family privacy.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts considered the question of the legitimacy of a compulsory “home visit” for homeschooling families. Under the doctrine of family privacy, the highest court in Massachusetts held that “the school committee … cannot, in the absence of consent, require home visits, as a condition to the approval of home education plans.” Brunelle v. Lynn Public Schools, 428 Mass. 512, 702 N.E.2d 1182 (1998). The court also ruled that “the approval of the home school proposal must not be conditioned on requirements that are not essential to the state interest in assuring that all children be educated.” Home visits are not essential for children to be educated.

Similarly, a New York court held In the Matter of Dixon, No. N-37-86, (Fam. Ct, Oswego County 1988), that the school district’s “desired on-site inspection was arbitrary, unreasonable, unwarranted, and violative of the [home school parents’] due process rights….” Slip. Op. at 5. See also In the Matter of Standish, No. N-125-86, Oswego County, Dec. 23, 1988.

Badman believes that unless officials can enter a home, no one can know for sure what is happening with a child. There is a certain truth to this assertion. However, this is true for all homes, not just those engaged in home education. Unless and until the government is willing to install surveillance cameras in the home of every family, there is no way to absolutely guarantee that officials truly know what is happening in each home. Freedom comes with some risks. But, it is generally believed that the totalitarian alternative is far worse in the long-run.

However, the adherence to principles of human rights and privacy does not mean that the authorities are without power to protect a child’s need for a suitable education. It must be remembered that when there is any appearance that the home education program is unsuitable, the Education Act gives local officials the authority to require proof of the suitability of the education and gives them the power to order the cessation of home schooling if they are not satisfied.

In light of this authority, there is utterly no need for an official to compel entry into a home to make an on-the-spot subjective judgment about the child and the suitability of his or her education.

Would Badman’s Inspectors Be Professionally Qualified to Assess the Suitability of Home Education?

Finally, there is serious doubt that such an inquisitor would be qualified to evaluate the effectiveness of a home education program. Any form of assessment (including testing and measurement) is generally required to meet four professional standards for accuracy and reliability. A clear statement of these standards is found in a publication by the British Council describing certain examinations for English proficiency:

Examinations must be “designed around four essential qualities: validity, reliability, impact, and practicality. Validity is normally taken to be the extent to which a test can be shown to produce scores which are an accurate reflection [of the subject tested]. Reliability concerns the extent to which they can be depended upon for making decisions about the candidate. Impact concerns the effects, beneficial or otherwise, which an examination has on the candidates or other users, whether these are educational, social, economic or political, or various combinations of these. Practicality can be defined as the extent to which an examination is practicable in terms of the resources needed to produce and administer it.”⁷

Any assessment by a home inspector/interrogator would need to comply with these accepted professional standards for educational assessment.

An American court used essentially identical standards for the validity of educational assessment to overturn an improper crafted program of home education assessment.

The legislature of South Carolina required that homeschooling parents be subjected to an examination employed for public school teacher candidates. However, the legislature conditioned this requirement on the performance of a professional validation study to determine whether or not the items being tested were in fact valid measurements of the skills required for successful home instruction.

After the validity study was performed, parents sued claiming that the study was done improperly and that half of the panelists in the study were unqualified participants and had no basis for measuring factors needed for successful home instruction.

The parents relied on the expert analysis of Dr. Lawrence Rudner, the Director of Testing and Measurement for the ERIC Clearinghouse (a program of the United States Department of Education).

In Lawrence v. S.C. State Board of Education, 412 S.E.2d 394 (S.C. 1991), the Supreme Court of South Carolina described the panel members that had been assembled to conduct the study:

[T]he Department of Education contracted with IOX Assessment Associates to evaluate the EEE’s suitability to test home schooling instructors. IOX assembled a panel of thirty-three members; seventeen panelists were home schoolers, the remaining sixteen were public school and college teachers.

Panelists who were not home schoolers were given no description of the requirements for successful home schooling. These sixteen panelists were not familiar with home schooling or were never asked if they knew anything about it.

Task-relatedness evaluations required a panelist to judge whether the EEE item tested some knowledge or skill that was “a necessary prerequisite” to home schooling. Sixteen of the panelists were not qualified to make this evaluation since they were given no information as to what the prerequisites for home schooling were.

This is a very important principle. Public school teachers and college professors of education were held to be “not qualified” to evaluate effective home education. The application of professional educational standards to the task at hand demonstrated that there are significant differences in the methods and strategies of successful home education and the strategies employed in institutional schools. Evaluators who have neither professional expertise nor in-depth study of home education simply are unqualified to make valid assessments.

The Badman method of home interrogations fails all four of the criteria outlined by the British Council for proper assessment and measurement:

Validity. The interrogators would have no objective tools of measurement and would lack the proper expertise in home education.

Reliability. Subjective home interrogations of children would never survive a reliability assessment. This method simply cannot produce results that have any semblance of national consistency, accuracy, or fairness.

Impact. The massive invasion of family privacy as well as the contraction of the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights are just the beginning of the negative impact of the Badman home interrogation methodology. The impact on the child must be considered. When a strange adult appears in the home with the announced purpose of interrogating the child separately and apart from his or her parents, a considerable degree of anxiety can be anticipated. Moreover, the long-range impact on the child’s view of a free society is severely damaged. If the government may enter the child’s home, with no requirement of any showing of wrong-doing, the child is left with a residual view toward his government that is not unlike that experienced by children who feared the KGB in the USSR. Even though adults may well be able to distinguish between the KGB and a Badman home interrogator, to a young child all he knows is that a stranger is in his home asking questions of him in private and his future depends on the stranger’s views of his answers. This is an incredibly high-stakes venture with almost no chance of producing results that would survive the other measures of assessment for validity and reliability.

Practicability. The costs for implementing the Badman method of home interrogations would be staggering.

It is once again important to remember that the choices are not between “doing nothing” versus the Badman home interrogation method. The current law has reasonable measures in place. Rather than invading the home, the local school officials may, if they have reasonable grounds to doubt the suitability of a home education program, require evidence of education—not through subjective interrogation of the child—but through the objective method of looking at the work performed by the child.

The Badman method simply cannot survive any review of its appropriateness as a method of educational assessment. The current law does not need fixing. It contains all the tools necessary for a balanced and proper review whenever school officials have reason to believe that improper education is occurring.

The Article 29 Problem

Badman also urges new substantive requirements to be adopted to define what is “suitable” for a child’s education. He cites Article 29 of the UNCRC as setting the standard for guiding such new requirements.

Accordingly, it is crucial to obtain an in-depth understanding of Article 29’s requirements to understand the dramatic nature of the Badman proposal.

Subsection (a) contains little more than current English law requiring a suitable and efficient education. It is sections (b) through (e) that attempt to control the substantive content of the education and require the promulgation of certain worldviews that are controversial, not just among homeschoolers, but among many segments of the population.

In a 2006 treatise entitled The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: An Analysis of Treaty Provisions and Implications of U.S. Ratification⁸, advocates of this treaty make this clear and bold declaration concerning the meaning of these sections: “Article 29(1)(b) through (e) directs state parties to instill particular values in children through education.”

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has issued General Comments concerning the meaning of Articles 28 and 29. This official UN Committee says:

The effective promotion of article 29 (1) requires the fundamental reworking of curricula to include the various aims of education and the systematic revision of textbooks and other teaching materials and technologies, as well as school policies. Approaches which do no more than seek to superimpose the aims and values of the article on the existing system without encouraging any deeper changes are clearly inadequate. The relevant values cannot be effectively integrated into, and thus be rendered consistent with, a broader curriculum unless those who are expected to transmit, promote, teach and, as far as possible, exemplify the values have themselves been convinced of their importance.

The American Bar Association, supporter of the UNCRC, opined that Christian schools, which reject alternate worldviews and teach that Christianity is the only true religion, “fly in the face” of Article 29.⁹

It is not necessary to debate the legitimacy of each of the values enshrined in this list of viewpoints to be instilled in every child in every type of school. A few examples of potential conflicts will suffice.

• Does instruction in “human rights” values require children to be taught the moral legitimacy of homosexuality?
• Does it require the promotion of same-sex marriage to children?
• Does a family that rejects the concept of one-world government violate Article 29? The American Bar Association thinks such views are a violation (see fn. 4).
• Do children have to be taught that religions are equally valid?
• If parents teach and believe that the husband should be the head of the family, does this violate the requirement of equality of the sexes? Any casual reader of the literature surrounding the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women will know that such traditional views are considered a violation of human rights standards.

We need not contemplate an answer to these individual questions. The real issue is: Does England intend to mandate the inculcation of certain “approved” values to children?

England’s current law is clearly on the side of freedom and contrary to any regime of government-compelled indoctrination in any particular system of values.

The Education Act provides in Section 9:

In exercising or performing all their respective powers and duties under the Education Acts, the Secretary of State, local education authorities and the funding authorities shall have regard to the general principle that pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents, so far as that is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure.

Nothing in English law allows government officials to dictate the worldview, opinions, or viewpoints which must be taught in home education. Moreover, before Britain pursues a policy to implement Article 29 to control the content of its education law, it might wish to compare its current educational practice relative to religious instruction (which teaches broad-based Christianity) with the practice of Christian education in the state schools of Norway¹⁰, which was held to be in violation of the UNCRC by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

It would be a violation of the principle of equal protection to impose a duty on home schools to teach the values of Article 29, while the English schools operated by the government were in open contradiction with this same Article.

Conclusion

The Badman Report:

• Failed to give a full, fair, and accurate description of the current law governing home education in England. The system has a comprehensive system of checks and balances.
• Inaccurately claimed (by this failure of complete disclosure) that local education officials are limited to informal methods of seeking remediation. They possess effective and powerful tools to protect children.
• Inaccurately claimed that English homeschoolers were governed by the most liberal laws among peer nations.
• Proposed a method of compulsory home interrogations of children that violates the Human Rights Act of 1998 and Article 8 of the ECHR. This method has been held to be an unconstitutional invasion of family privacy in the United States.
• Proposed a method of home interrogations as a means of evaluation of the suitability of home education which fails the four standards for proper assessment: validity, reliability, impact, and practicability.
• Urges that English homeschoolers be required to comply with Article 29 of the UNCRC, which imposes a regime of compelled indoctrination in controversial values.

The Badman Report should be rejected. He advances no sustainable reason for changing current English law on home education.

Endnotes

1. Badman Report, p. 6.
2. Badman Report, p. 2.
3. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf
4. http://www.nheri.org/Research-Facts-on-Homeschooling.html
5. http://www.ncdnpe.org/documents/hhh233.pdf
6. Jonathan L. v. Superior Court, 165 Cal.App.4th 1074, 1089, 81 Cal.Rptr.3d 571, 582 (fn. 17) (Cal.App. 2 Dist.,2008).
7. http://www.britishcouncil.org/colombia-exams-yle-handbook-2007.pdf
8. Jonathan Todres, Mark E. Wojcik, Cris R. Revaz; Transnational Publishers, Ardsley, New York (2006).
9. American Bar Association, Center on Children and the Law: Children’s Rights in America: UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Compared with United States Law, p. 182.
10. Paragraph 20, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Norway, Committee on the Rights of the Child, 39th sess., U.N. Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.263 (2005).

http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200907130.asp

Since the esteemed climatologist Al Gore declared that “the debate is over,” it seems the number of scientists denying both this fact and the accuracy of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis has continuously increased. Perhaps the “skeptics” have found the courage to speak out at this point when AGW has become universal religion and the movement’s leaders are calling for “global governance.” The threat from this movement is much clearer now and the ultimate goal of the AGW prophets is finally spelled out, which of course has nothing to do with environment or climate.

The “global warming” movement is now calling for enormous “investments” in certain public policies and new political institutions to supervise people’s and firms’ emissions of CO2. To most scientists in climatology this change in the movement’s agenda is most likely unexpected; if you are not used to the political game you are not prepared when your opponent makes his politically obvious (in normal situations denoted “irrational”) move.

Of course, the debate is not primarily between scientists even though such debates do exist. The literature in peer-reviewed journals in the relevant scientific disciplines have since long disproved the politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. It has even been established that the global warming according to reliable data sources ended in 2001, despite the fact that CO2 emissions are greater than ever and continue to increase.

The AGW hypothesis with man-made climate change through emissions of CO2 and other “greenhouse” gasses lives on, however, as politicians and the media find in it an extremely powerful thesis that makes people feel both vulnerable and defenseless and desperate for “help.” Politicians need a threat to increase their realm of power and make the masses cling to their belief in government, and the media needs disasters to attract readers and viewers (selling real news is a long-gone idea in mainstream media). To be honest, climate change is the perfect issue for the fascist state – it is a win-win game for powerful politicians, their buddies in the media, and big business.

Yet more people seem to realize that things don’t add up and that there is another side to the story, which is not generally allowed to be told. Even though most people still believe “we” are to blame, a thesis we are fed from cradle to grave by our all-too-mighty government through public schooling and media outlets, the number of people doubting the truthfulness of the theory is growing. This is why the mainstream posse needed to increase the level of blame in the overall blame game; people doubting man-made global warming were compared with holocaust deniers. People with no connection whatsoever with the study of weather and climate did not hesitate to join their fellow state worshipers, like the ignorant-of-economics-economist Professor Krugman.

Most of us laymen AGW skeptics have been dismissed with the proclaimed truth that “scientists all agree” (which really means “talking heads all agree”), but a lot of people are nevertheless beginning to doubt. We may be approaching a tipping point, at which politicians will be desperate to find another made-up disaster to rally support for their destructive policies. In other words, this may be an opportunity to not only get rid of the climate change scare – but also force the “noble” savages back to their Platonic caves.

One way of doing so is to be ready for and engage in the discussion – and do so wisely. This is the purpose, I believe, of Joanne Nova’s comic-book-style The Skeptic’s Handbook (PDF), in which she describes how to “[r]ise above the mud-slinging of the Global Warming debate.” The book shows how to use the existing and scientific facts properly and how not to accept non-answers such as referring to authority or cheap ad hominems. It also supplies the facts and the only points that matter. It is a short manual for constructively pursuing debates with AGWers and in that sense it is truly a “skeptic’s handbook.”

Perhaps Newton was right in that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” and that this is applicable to public political discourse. There is just a slight delay between the action and the reaction, just like there is a proven time lapse between increase in temperature to increase in CO2.

by Per Bylund

From Lew Rockwell.com

Philip Johnson writes in the Telegraph about ‘the database state’ and how evil it is. It feels like he has had a whiff of coffee and is waking up. What he REALLY needs are some smelling salts:

Beware Labour’s quest for a database state

There’s no reason why the Government should know so much about us, argues Philip Johnston.

By Philip Johnston

Here is a good idea. Instead of handing over personal information to the state, why don’t we keep it and control it ourselves?

Indeed. That is a really good idea. I have another one. Why not, instead of handing over all your money to the state, why dont you keep it and control it yourself Philip? If you do that, then they would not have the means to build the database state that you are so rightly frightened of.

Simple, eh? For a start, it means the state would not be able to get its hands on these data, which most of us would consider a good thing, not least when they get lost. It would also be significantly cheaper than the industrial quarrying of private information to be held on vast central government databases, which is estimated to cost a mind-boggling £16.5 billion a year, a lot of it spent on repairing IT projects that have failed to work properly.

Exactly. And the cost of keeping this data would be spread to each and every person. They would keep what they want, store it how they want (on hardware or on paper or in the ‘white meat’ between their ears), and share it with whom they like on whatever terms they care to agree with.

Anyone who has the temerity to suggest that the database society may have a flaw or two is often accused of neo-Luddism, usually by those who have a vested interest in its expansion. No one is suggesting that we should not exploit the extraordinary benefits of storing data.

I have to say, in the eight years of BLOGDIAL I have NEVER heard people who are against ID Cards or invasive databases being called ‘luddites’. And once again, who is the ‘we’ in this section? Who is it that decides what is or is not a benefit? This is central to the problem; what is the proper role of government.

But there is a similarity here with those who raged against the machines in early 19th-century Yorkshire – a feeling of powerlessness, an inability to control something that can have an enormous influence on our lives.

No, its is not that at all.

The luddites did not understand how business and innovation work. They (and you) would have been well advised to read ‘That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen‘.

This is one of the great subjects of our times because it is the same one that has exercised the minds of political philosophers since Plato: to what extent should the state be able to control the individual?

Ummm, you mean should there be a state at all? Its like asking, “should people be robbed every other day of the week starting Mondays or Tuesdays?”

Doesn’t work does it?

In this age-old battle, one thing is clear – information is power, and the state is now in a better position than at any time in history to possess it and access it easily. It does so, it says, for our own good.

Information is not power. Cooperation transferees the illusion of power. Information by itself is not enough to compel obedience. The fall of East Germany and the Soviet Unions are proof of that. Those were two societies with deeply invasive and all pervasive surveillance systems that could not withstand the pressures that caused them to collapse.

Under Labour, a programme, known as Transformational Government, was established a few years ago to develop the database society and to obtain what the policy papers call “a single source of truth” about the citizen, based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs and rights. Why should the state want to have “a single source of truth” about us?

Links or it didn’t happen.

In a lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, in London this Wednesday, Damian Green, the Tory frontbencher, will tackle this question head on; and it is heartening to see that the Tories, in opposition at least, have understood the dangers here. Government, says Mr Green, can do harm even when it is trying to do good,

Some people say that government can only do harm.

though I am by no means convinced that it really is seeking “to do good”. All states collect information on their citizens.

‘Their’ is used here in the form that suggests that people are the property of the state. This reflexive use of language to describe people as the property of government is everywhere. It is a testament to the effectiveness of brainwashing over decades. Free people are not the property of anyone. Free countries do not have citizens; in a free country, the citizens have a free country, the citizens own the government… etc etc.

However, the amount they are able to collect depends upon the technology, which is clearly available nowadays, and the constraints placed upon its capture by the legislature. Such constraints are remarkably few in the UK compared to other democracies. How have we gone so quickly from being the country you would most expect to resist these tendencies to the one that adopted them so meekly?

It is simple. The abuse of language. Fascism is renamed ‘Transformational Government’. Journalists talk of ‘a country’s citizens’ as if people are the property of the state. They talk of ‘the social contract’ which is a fantasy. They refuse to address the true nature of anything, especially money, self ownership, ownership of property. To sum up, they absolutely refuse to be serious and question the core assumptions of their lives and ideas.

Mr Green has identified 28 state databases on which personal information is kept, from the obviously necessary, such as the PAYE collection system

And here is a perficio exempoator of what I just described above. Philip Johnston says it is ‘obviously necessary’ that the PAYE system collection should exist.

to some that are impossible to justify, like ContactPoint, which will hold the details of everyone under the age of 18 in England.

And again. This description of ContactPoint is very poor. ContactPoint is the compulsory database of all eleven million children in the UK, that will be accessible by over one million government workers from council workers on up. You see? by describing ContactPoint as something that ‘will hold the details of everyone under the age of 18’ you deny access to the true nature of the beast, thus preventing people from the vital starting point that will allow them to come to the correct conclusion; that ContactPoint is one of the most evil things ever created by a British Government.

The Conservatives have promised to scrap or modify many of these if they win power; but they might find in office that the temptation to hang on to the data is too tempting.

True. Nevertheless, whatever government is in place, none of these databases mean anything in the absence of cooperation. This is what Johnston misses entirely. He means well though…

What is needed is a complete reversal of the assumption that our personal data is the state’s to possess.

True.

Why should it?

It should not. And it should not do many of the other things that it does that you do not yet accept that it should not do.

This is the question that should be answered by the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” brigade. It is not as if letting the Government handle all of this information is secure, cheap or efficient. More importantly, it is inimical to any notion of individual freedom that a central bureaucracy should possess so much personal information about us; and, no, giving private data to the state, which has the power to misuse it to our considerable disadvantage, is not the same as having a Tesco Clubcard.

The smell of coffee… finally.

Mr Green puts forward a number of proposals for reform, including US-style security-freeze laws, which allow people to lock access to their data;

The only word that should be applied here is DELETE. No one should have data about them stored without their permission. PERIOD. Just as you should not be compelled to be a party to a contract without your consent, you should not have data stored about you that you do not consent to have stored, or even worse, shared.

an “open source” system which does not dictate the technology adopted by users from the centre;

Nice try, but open source is not the problem here. To collect and store or not to collect and store is what we are discussing. The operating systems and file formats can be discussed later.

and a right to see who has accessed personal information, the so-called audit trails.

Once again, having the ‘right’ (another misuse of English by the way) to see who has violated you and when is not the issue; that you should not be subjected to violation at all is the entire point.

Health records, for instance, would be better kept by GPs and by us as individuals.

True. And despite what Stephen Glover says about Google storing your health records, they would in fact, be a perfect solution.

Google could store your health records, uploaded by you under a pseudonym known only to you and your doctor. Google would know that your pseudonym was a diabetic for example. They would display ads for diabetic related goods and services right in your account, without knowing who you are. You get highly efficient, completely private, secure hosting of your medical records, that you can ‘take with you’ wherever you go, advertisers get highly targeted adverts to precisely the people who need to hear from them… and you have to pay NOTHING for the service.

Sadly, journalists are for the most part computer illiterates. And Stephen Glover really is like the Luddites Philip Johnston describes above in this particular instance; Glover cannot see how Google storing his health records could possibly be a good thing, because he does not understand how Google works, how anonymity works, how the internets work, and he cannot imagine several steps down the line in a hypothetical scenario thanks to this missing information.

Oh yes, and I forgot; with Google, you would be able to delete your medical records with the press of a button and would be able to control with absolute precision, who can and cannot access your medical records.

There are personalised electronic card systems available which can hold our medical details without them being available to government agencies, yet which are accessible by hospitals when we need them to be. This would eliminate the need for the NHS database and be practically cost-free. Instead, we are spending upwards of £12 billion on a centralised data system that hardly anyone wants.

There you go again with the ‘we’.

And BLOGDIAL has been talking about there being no need for centralized databases for some time now.

There is now an assumption that the state should know everything about us and be able easily to access that information.

And this assumption, like all the others, needs to be countered actively. You go second.

This is justified as being good for us because it facilitates the provision of services that may be to our advantage,

It is not good for ‘us’ it is only good for THEM, and it is only to THEIR advantage.

and on the grounds that anyone who is unhappy with the prospect must be concealing something nefarious. It is time we took back control over our own lives.

[…]

Telegraph

True. Next time, watch the pronouns.

Graham Badman’s scandalous, biased, immoral and utterly vile report on Home Education contains a submission from The Church of England. By selectively omitting parts of the entire submission, Graham Badman has engaged in what is called ‘a lie of omission’:

Lying by omission
One lies by omission by omitting an important fact, deliberately leaving another person with a misconception. Lying by omission includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions. If a husband asks his wife if she’s at a bar, the wife may tell her husband she is at a store, which is true, but lie by omitting the fact that she also visited a bar.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

Lies of Omission:

To lie by omission is to remain silent and thereby withhold from someone else a vital piece (or pieces) of information. The silence is deceptive in that it gives a false impression to the person from whom the information was withheld. It subverts the truth; it is a way to manipulate someone into altering their behavior to suit the desire of the person who intentionally withheld the vital information; and, most importantly, it’s a gross violation of another person’s right of self-determination.

[…]

http://www.choice101.com/19-lies.html#LiesOfOmission

It is one thing to give your opinion, and say that you believe that Home Education is not beneficial, or that Home Educated children are not safe, or more likely to suffer abuse (even if that is statistically not the case as this analysis of comparative abuse stats demonstrates), but it is quite another to deceptively misuse the authority of the voice The Church of England by selectively quoting from their submission, which comes to a conclusion that is the polar opposite of the conclusion you want to manipulate everyone reading the report to come to; that the laws governing Home Education need to be changed. Had this been a scientific paper, Graham Badman would now stand convicted of academic fraud, and his paper would be thrown out by peer reviewers, and his reputation permanently tarnished:

Wow, there’s yet more on the dodgy nature of the Badman report.

Well done those HEors who pursued this line; if they end up working for the investigative team on Private Eye, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. You can bet they will go in search of the truth like dog after a bone and won’t be fobbed off with phoney stats, headlines and soundbites.

Reading Graham Badman’s report, you would have thought that the Church of England were fully in favour of clamping down heavily on home educators. Badman achieves this effect by quoting highly selectively from the C of E submission.

From the Badman Review of Home Education, Section 4.8:

…the Education Division of the Church of England states its concern:

“that children and young people not in formal education are missing the benefits and challenges of learning in community with their peers. Children who do not go to school may not experience the social and cultural diversity encountered there; they will not learn how to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life; they may never meet people with different faith and value systems. All such encounters, even the difficult or painful ones are enriching. We are concerned not only with the five Every Child Matters outcomes, but also with the spiritual well-being of all children and young people.

[…]

Spiritual well-being arises not only from being cared for in a loving family and/or faith community, but also in encounters with people of different opinions and backgrounds; in learning to listen to a variety of opinions; to encounter diversity and the riches and life-enhancement it can bring. Spiritual well-being depends on living and taking a full part in community life. Children and young people in schools learn about and from the five major religions. This may be a difficult part of the curriculum for home educators to provide, yet it is vital for the Government’s community cohesion agenda that all children learn in a balanced way about the variety of religious values and practices, and to be encouraged to question their own beliefs and practices.”

Badman however somehow failed to mention that the Church of England actually concluded their consultation submission with the following:

“We have seen no evidence to show that the majority of home educated children do not achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, and are therefore not convinced of the need to change the current system of monitoring the standard of home education. Where there are particular concerns about the children who are home-educating, this should be a matter for Children’s services.”

Home educators have subsequently received reassurances from the Church to the effect that the C of E does indeed stand by the conclusion above.

“We stand by our position as laid out in our original submission and hope that those with an interest in this subject will read our full position rather than relying on selected extracts. We understand that there are a range of deeply-held views on this subject and are grateful for your appreciation that the CofE’s position was more nuanced that was perhaps suggested in the Badman report.”

[…]

Dare to Know

The statement from the Church’s representative is a diplomatic way of saying that Graham Badman’s report misrepresented the Church of England’s position on Home Education.

Graham Badman has demonstrated a totally appalling lack of integrity. What a completely disgusting and insulting piece of trash. This report should not be the basis of new legislation; in fact it should be the basis of an investigation into the low standards of the people who generate reports like this, and that investigation should produce new rules and minimum standards that should apply to the writing of these reports so that they are at a minimum, peer reviewed in the same way that scientific papers are peer reviewed. If this was the standard, phrases like ‘I believe’ would invalidate a report like Graham Badman’s because personal belief is not a basis for scientific understanding of fact.

Every day, thanks to the hard work of Home Educators, this report is becoming more and more discredited. Soon it will be seen for what it really is; a worthless smear piece with no rigor, no peer review, chock full of hearsay, glaring omissions and baseless opinions.

Michael Moore Gets It Wrong
Michael Moore has been working on another documentary. This time, he’s taking on capitalism:

“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money.”

How ridiculous is that? The wealthy, and everyone else, almost always decide that they don’t have enough wealth. People ask their bosses for raises. We invest in stocks hoping for bigger returns than Treasury Bonds bring. “Greed” is a constant. The beauty of free markets, when government doesn’t meddle in them, is that they turn this greed into a phenomenal force for good. The way to win big money is to serve your customers well. Profit-seeking entrepreneurs have given us better products, shorter work days, extended lives, and more opportunities to write the script of our own life.

On Thursday, Moore announced the title of the movie: Capitalism: A Love Story.

It’s a title I might have picked to make a point opposite of what I assume Moore has in mind.

Moore also fails to understand is that it was not “capitalism” run amok that caused today’s financial problems. In reality, it was a combination of ill-conceived government policies and an overzealous Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates to fuel a bubble in the housing market. Then it was government that took money from taxpayers and forced banks to accept it.

Moore ought to understand that, because he makes a good point when he says his movie will be about “the biggest robbery in the history of this country – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.”

That is indeed robbery. It sure doesn’t sound like capitalism.

[…]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/07/michael-moore-gets-it-wrong.html

Let us go further with this.

Michael Moore believes that people have the right to make the movies that they want with their own money, and that they also have the right to distribute them, and that people have the right to watch whatever movies they like, and to pay a price that they are willing to pay to see movies in theaters and buy DVDs of them.

This belief has made him more than one hundred million dollars.

Like all delusional people, he believes, for example, that his morality applies to everyone but him. Its OK for him to make $100,000,000 dollars out of his films, but when someone else makes money from what they do then that is ‘greed’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘fleecing the American people out of their hard-earned money’.

This smells like more than simple hypocrisy; I am guessing that it is something very different, and psychological in nature. This man almost certainly has an autistic spectrum inability to empathize with other people. Other people are not real; only MICHAEL is real, and only MICHAEL is good. When MICHAEL makes a hundred million dollars, its OK because “its ME”, “I am good. I am not a greedy person”. When I sell movie tickets, I am not fleecing the American people out of their hard-earned money, I am ‘just selling tickets’. Selling tickets and making a profit on my movies is not ‘capitalism’ its FAIR…. BECAUSE ITS ME, because I am GOOD and not EVIL and GREEDY like those capitalists.

Look at the last part of this episode of 20/20. Private health care, for profit is EVIL… but if it is ME (MICHAEL) who needs am urgent visit to a private fat farm (health clinic), then it is not evil… BECAUSE ITS ME!

Michael Moore is a capitalist. He uses capital (either his or someone else’s) to make movies, speculating that people will want to buy tickets to see his work in cinemas and buy DVDs of them. If no one watches his film, then he loses his money, his capital investment, and no one is there to foot the bill but him. If many people watch them, then he alone (and his distributors) make a fortune as the same work is played over and over and people pay tickets to see it and buy copies of it reproduced hundreds of thousands of times on DVD.

Michael Moore’s right to make movies and sell them is no different to the right of a farmer to sell his fruit, or a butcher to sell his meat, or of a car manufacturer to sell his car, or a watch maker to sell watches or any manufacturer of goods to sell their goods.

He cannot have it both ways; he cannot say that it is good for him to make a vast fortune out of manufacturing films, and that it is bad for others to interact with people freely with each other.

What these sorts of people never like to look at are difficult subjects like the actual nature of money, and how the American people are being fleeced – literally – by the Federal Reserve and their worthless fiat currency. They are the same types that put the cause of the ‘financial crisis’ down to ‘greed’ and ‘capitalism’ when in fact it has nothing to do with either.

They are the same types that are against war, but who stubbornly refuse to look at the root cause of it. They blame guns for violence, blame businessmen for unemployment, think that wages come from capital and not production and on and on and on.

Appalling!

More lies, deception and this time, maybe a slip up from the liars at totalitarian central known as Neu Liebour:

A Big Brother row erupted last night after the minister in charge of ID cards expressed a desire to load them with sensitive personal information such as medical records.

The Home Office insists the microchip contained on the controversial cards will store only basic details such as name, date of birth, a facial scan and fingerprints.

But Home Office Minister Alan Campbell has told MPs that a ‘future Government’ may want ‘to bring forward proposals to add to the amount of data held on a card’.

In a late-night Commons debate on Monday night he added: ‘Some people, including me, would quite like additional data on an identity card.

‘I am personally persuaded that if there were an ID card and it had scope for further information-some of that information, for my personal circumstances, would be a good thing.’

Opposition MPs accused the minister of inadvertently revealing the Government’s true agenda to store medical and even criminal records on the chip.

LibDem home affairs spokesman Tom Brake said: ‘As soon as this unnecessary scheme is rolled out, the Government will seek to store more and more information on it in the dubious name of security and personal benefit. This illiberal, unworkable and unforgivably expensive scheme must be scrapped immediately.’

Last month Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced the £5billion ID cards scheme would no longer be compulsory.

A plan to force airport workers to carry them was dumped, along with a long-term commitment to legislate to make the cards universal once 80 per cent of the population has one.

But anybody applying for a passport will still have to sign up to the National Identity Register and could be fined up to £1,000 if they do not keep their records up to date.

Ministers insist people will be keen to carry the cards as they will make life more convenient and make it easier to open bank accounts.

Last night the Home Office denied Mr Campbell had revealed a secret agenda.

A spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service said: ‘When we issue ID cards later this year there will be no spare capacity to hold information beyond that already laid out in legislation.’

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1198673/Minister-wants-medical-records-ID-cards.html

Imagine a world where, as is the case with your drivers license in the UK, you can get points on your license to exist: your ID Card.

The police put points on your card because you dropped litter accidentally… actually, it will be a CCTV camera connected to a computer that will scan your face and then put points on your ID Card automagically.

This is what the future is going to be like if ID Cards and the NIR are not utterly and completely abandoned.

Once again, Frances Stonor Saunders is prescient on this:

[…]

There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.

[…]

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1207

That is from famous ‘Anonymous Email’ that we love to quote at BLOGDIAL, and that fascist Andy Burnham said was ‘ridiculous’.

Not so ridiculous now is it?

Of course, what the Anonymous Email says about this insanely evil scheme is true; there is literally unlimited space for extra details to be stored, and when the vicious totalitarian lie machine Alan Campbell says, “there will be no spare capacity to hold information beyond that already laid out in legislation” he knows he is lying. Even if the card had no electronics in it at all, the NIR has the potential to have all the space they need to hold everything about your life from the day you are born to the day you die.

When they swipe your card, your records will come up, including all your medical records, your ‘criminal’ convictions, your bank transactions, the names of your spouse and children, your travel records… EVERYTHING you have EVER done, EVERYWHERE you have ever been, EVERYTHING you have ever bought, and if you use email, write on a blog etc, EVERYTHING you have ever written.

And that is ALL BOMB BAD.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pulled his ‘new world currency’ from his pocket at the G8:

There is a website for this currency. Lets see what its manifesto says:

Manifesto

ART. 1
"Unity in diversity" is the foundation that drives this initiative, which started up in 1996. Its aim is to bring people together and go beyond national stereotypes. Its historical importance is even greater than its economic one; it is a goal built on faith, common hope, and the unification of cultural and spiritual roots.

ART. 2
The relationship between Europe and America, and between the United States and many Countries from the five continents, is based on common cultural traditions and sustained by a parallel vision of the world. It is driven by the highest concepts of brotherhood and peace. These relations are cultivated through global dynamics whose purpose is to fulfill social, political and economic objectives, in full respect of the values and national identities that found countries' respective constitutions.

ART. 3
It is therefore our wish to bring to life the project for a common currency, which has been given the provisional names, "Eurodollar/Dollaeur" (initially), "United Money", then "United Future World Currency". It would symbolize not only the economic, but also the human, social, political, and spiritual bonds between the Nations of different Continents that hold similar ideals.

ART. 4
The common currency project is a highly important step towards bringing people together. It is a means of understanding, provides reference and reinforces different identities that share principle objectives. Competition in respective markets remains free, and the basic principles of participating countries' national identities will be safeguarded.

ART. 5
We are determined to raise awareness of this project among as many people as possible in all Continents. We are focused particularly on the active involvement of young people, especially from schools. Indeed, young people represent the strongest, most concrete vehicle for spreading this initiative. They are also the potential future beneficiaries of this large step forward towards unification and the creation of a world that responds better to the requirements of the new Millennium, as it gradually breaks down social and ideological barriers.

ART. 6
Renewed cultural interest in the Economy comes as a result of shifting perceptions of currency as a whole. This follows on from the debate opened by the introduction of the Euro. Through this Project, students, including from a very young age, can become familiar with basic economic issues. The latter are increasingly important in a new society of widespread wellbeing.

ART. 7
A joint Committee will be selected. It will include experts from a wide variety of disciplines. Everyone will be free to offer their own contribution to the project. This committee will also form the Jury that selects the most interesting ideas, proposals and projects demanded by different initiatives underway.

ART. 8
There will be an information and support campaign to coordinate working groups, committees and clubs, implemented through organizations, bodies and associations. There will be a consideration period for all contributions regarding the expansion, comparison and development of: issues and technical problems; optimizing legislative instruments and procedures; and fulfilling the obligations of the new Currency.

ART. 9
Trials will be carried out at important international events, aimed at awareness, education and promotion. "United Money" currency (banknotes and coins) trials will be entrusted to the best international professionals and experts in the appropriate fields.

Time will be set aside to explore technologically-advanced security and counterfeiting issues, which a future Currency will have to keep in check. This will involve the most prestigious and trustworthy public and private bodies, including universities and companies.

ART. 10
It will be the responsibility of the world's future citizens and the governments they put in place to make our Project a reality. This project is driven by a firm belief in the unification and co-existence of different peoples. It aims to promote an increasingly equal distribution of the planet's resources and human intellect.

Rome and Brussels, March 21st 1996
New York, January 12th 2000.
Milan, February 17th 2009

[…]

http://www.futureworldcurrency.com/

FAIL.

Notice the words and phrases that are missing from this manifesto:

Inflation.
Fiat Currency.
Control of Money Supply.
Hyperinflation
Economics.

and the most glaring omission…

GOLD.

What is this money backed by?
What is it made of?

Unless this new currency is made out of Gold that will be distributed directly to the people who are going to use it, i.e. the public, it will be no better than any of the other Fiat Currencies that are currently circulating. All of them are flawed, all of them rob the people who ‘own’ them by inflation.

They have some interesting crypto enhanced banknote ideas:

but it is meaningless when we are talking about the nature of the money itself. The fact of the matter is that counterfeiting of banknotes is not what causes instability of currencies; it is the printing of banknotes by governments that causes inflation and currency instability. Of course, the government will have the private keys to sign every banknote – an infinite number of them if it wanted to. These notes will have no more intrinsic value than the now totally discredited dollar.

That image is from a page called ‘The Tests’. If this currency is made of 999.9 gold, there is no reason to test anything. I will accept it myself. Why? Because GOLD IS MONEY. Once it is in my hands, it cannot be devalued by inflation. It retains its value. It is, in fact, the perfect store of value. A commenter on a Grauniad article about the ‘financial crisis’ said that, “we need to have a standard of money that we understand in the same way that we understand what a meter is”. DUH Grauniad socialist, that thing is GOLD.

Sadly old ‘Dimi’ and his cohorts didn’t have the balls to simply declare a Gold Ruble and have done with it. The silly name of this currency and all the fluff surrounding it, like that absurd manifesto makes this thing reek of unseriousness. I could be wrong, and this could be the beginning of the restoration of real money. I might have missed the part where it says this is a money made entirely of gold, and where the notes are backed by gold. Lets see.

One thing is for sure though, if it does not conform to the laws of Economics, then it is doomed to fail.

Legislation that will require all authors who visit schools to be registered on a national database has been branded "Labour's Section 28" by bestselling author Philip Pullman. Section 28, or clause 28, a controversial piece of Conservative legislation, aimed at preventing the promotion of homosexuality in schools, was scrapped in 2003.

From November 2010, professional and voluntary staff working regularly with children in sectors including education will need to be registered on the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) database.

Pullman said: "This is Labour's Section 28—the implication being that no adult could possibly choose to spend time with children unless they wanted to abuse them. What will it say to children? It'll say that every adult is a potential rapist or murderer, and that they should never trust anyone."

The His Dark Materials author added: "Naturally I shall have nothing to do with any such 'clearance', and in consequence, I suppose, 
I shall never be allowed into a school again. I shall regret that very much, but I refuse to be complicit in any measure that assumes my guilt before I've done anything wrong. The proposal deserves nothing but contempt."

Trollogy author Steve Barlow branded the legislation "undemocratic", "ineffective" and "in violation of one of the cornerstones of English law—the presumption of innocence until proved otherwise".

Authors will need to register with the ISA through an umbrella organisation and pay a one-off £64 fee. A spokeswoman for the Vetting and Barring Scheme at the Home Office confirmed that specialist children's librarians, and those librarians and authors visiting schools, would need to be registered. Currently, checks are at the discretion of local authorities. Foreign authors visiting UK schools would also have to register, as will booksellers going into schools once a month or more.
Chair of the Children's Writers' and Illustrators' Group of the Society of Authors Celia Rees said: "We have a number of reservations because it is not clear how people will be affected by this, and what the costs and process of application will be. I am sure that, as more people become aware of it, there will be a groundswell of opinion against it."

However, author Gillian Cross backed the new checks. She said: "I understand entirely why people are enraged about the whole child abuse suspicion frenzy, which is particularly hard on men. It is nevertheless true that many children are abused. Theirs is the real suffering, and if checking can help to prevent that, I'm not opposed to it. Though I would be interested to know how often CRB [Criminal Records Bureau] checks have actually prevented known abusers from working with children."

Cross said that the scheme that replaces the current Criminal Records Bureau checks could be better as it is automatically updated rather than being repeated annually.

[…]

The Bookseller

This madness, like all other madness, will one day just go away. People will scratch their heads, and wonder how it was that people went so completely mad.

Thankfully there are people out there who will simply not comply.

If everyone refused to comply, all the schools in the country that rely upon and who enjoy visits would cry out for the system to be abolished.

Of course, Home Educators can group together and invite whomever they want into their homes, without having to consult with or receive permission from anyone.

But you know this!

This is from an article by Lew Rockwell.

If the environmental religion is not stopped in its tracks, you will see all of these steps replicated in the name of ‘saving the planet’.

[…]

Certainly Bush used 9-11 to consolidate his power and the neoconservative intellectuals who surrounded him adopted a deep cynicism concerning the manipulation of public opinion. Their governing style concerned the utility of public myth, which they found essential to wise rule. The main myth they promoted was that Bush was the Christian philosopher-king heading a new crusade against Islamic extremism. The very stupid among us believed it, and this served as a kind of ideological infrastructure of his tenure as president.

Then it collapsed when the economy went south and he was unable to sustain the absurd idea that he was protecting us from anyone. The result was disgrace, and the empowering of the political left and its socialistic ethos.

The talk of Hitler in the White House ended forthwith, as if the analogy extended only when nationalist ideology is ruling the day. What people don’t remember is that Hitlerism was about more than just militarism, nationalism, and consolidation of identity politics. It also involved a substantial shift in German domestic politics away from free enterprise, or what remained of it under Weimar, toward collectivist economic planning.

Nazism was not only nationalism run amok. It was also socialism of a particular variety.

Let’s turn to The Vampire Economy by Guenter Reimann (1939). He begins the story with the 1933 decree that all property must be subject to the collective will. It began with random audits and massive new bookkeeping regulations:

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/headed-to-national-socialism123.html

“This amazing interview was done back in 1985 with a former KGB agent who was trained in subversion techniques. He explains the 4 basic steps to socially engineering entire generations into thinking and behaving the way those in power want them to. It’s shocking because our nation has been transformed in the exact same way, and followed the exact same steps.”

Sound familiar?

Database to track vulnerable children scrapped by Government

A multimillion-pound Government computer system swamped in red tape is to be scrapped after experts said it was a danger to vulnerable children, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

By Heidi Blake

Heidi, how could you…. FAIL like this?!

Local authorities have spent the past four years implementing the Government's £72m Integrated Children's System (ICS) amid threats that critical funding would be cut if they did not comply.

This is fascinating. How much autonomy do these Local Authorities have? If they refuse to implement something dangerous, like ICS, and actually work FOR the residents in the boroughs they run, they are permitted to DO THAT? If this is the case, Local Authorities could bill themselves as proper servants by listing the things they DO NOT DO, like use 'anti terror' laws to spy on the people they are serving, or not interfering with Home Educators, whom they also serve.

Hmmmmm!!!

But the system, described by staff as "an unworkable monster", generated stacks of paperwork 6ins thick for every child, had no way of tracking the siblings of abused children, and absorbed up to 80 per cent of social workers' time.

???!!

'No way of tracking siblings'… this sounds like something another database CAN do that Heidi has, quite inexplicably failed to mention in this article..

ContactPoint.

In response to a damning assessment of ICS by a group of Government-appointed experts, Baroness Morgan, the children's minister, has written to councils telling them they can abandon the controversial record-keeping system. She has left the responsibility for its replacement in their hands.

This is the dictionary definition of Disingenuous:

dis·in·gen·u·ous   (d?s’?n-j?n’y??-?s)   
adj.  

1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who … exemplified … the most disagreeable traits of his time” (David Cannadine).
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
3. Usage Problem Unaware or uninformed; naive.

dis’in·gen’u·ous·ly adv., dis’in·gen’u·ous·ness n.
Usage Note: The meaning of disingenuous has been shifting about lately, as if people were unsure of its proper meaning. Generally, it means “insincere” and often seems to be a synonym of cynical or calculating. Not surprisingly, the word is used often in political contexts, as in It is both insensitive and disingenuous for the White House to describe its aid package and the proposal to eliminate the federal payment as “tough love.” This use of the word is accepted by 94 percent of the Usage Panel. Most Panelists also accept the extended meaning relating to less reproachable behavior. Fully 88 percent accept disingenuous with the meaning “playfully insincere, faux-naïf,” as in the example “I don’t have a clue about late Beethoven!” he said. The remark seemed disingenuous, coming from one of the world’s foremost concert pianists.

Baroness Delyth Morgan KNOWS that ContactPoint is planned to be unleashed, and that the capabilities of ICS are a sub set of what ContactPoint will be able to deliver. To say, "you can do what you want" is simply absurd… its a sort of sideways lie. Absolutely disgusting.

Officials last night raised fears that vulnerable children were still at risk because it could take years to build a working alternative.

Heidi, are you COMPLETELY MAD? How can you write an article about this without at least Googling children database vulnerable UK many results about ContactPoint come up… for heaven's sake, BUY A CLUE.

Tim Loughton, shadow children's minister, said: "Ed Balls has finally had to admit what front line social workers have known all along – the Government's Integrated Children's System was at best a waste of money and at worst a danger to children.

And the same can be said of ContactPoint, only magnified to include EVERY CHILD in the UK.

"This system wasted more than £72 million of taxpayers' money, but the human cost to child protection and to the social work profession has been much higher."

ICS, which stores case records about children at risk of abuse, was introduced in the wake of the Laming report which revealed that information-sharing failures at Haringey Council led to the death of Victoria Climbie in 2000.

It is not information sharing failures that lead to the deaths of children. Databases cannot save children, or stop crime or prevent anything bad from happening. All they can do is put money in the pockets of contractors and take away the privacy of the people who are put in them.

Social services, when they have information about children at risk, should act on that information; sharing it with other people who also fail to act means that nothing is done. Its hot potato protection.

But the Social Work Task Force appointed this March to review child protection practices after the death of a second child in Haringey, Baby P, issued a damning verdict on the Government system.

In a letter to the Department for Children, Schools and Families this May, the Task Force called ICS a "burdensome process" which kept social workers "tied up in bureaucracy" and away from their duties on the front line.

And now, magnify that bureaucracy by the total number of people in the country who are going to be on ContactPoint, ELEVEN MILLION and you begin to get an idea of what a nightmare they are in for. ContactPoint is going to make people less safe, from the statistically insignificant number of people who are actually at risk to the vast, completely safe majority, who are now going to have their personal and sensitive data exposed to all and sundry, should ContactPoint go online.

An Ofsted report published last Friday found that Haringey council was still failing to protect vulnerable children and identified faults with ICS as part of the problem.

Blame the database? What did these people do BEFORE they had computers? Were people more safe before or after the implementation of databases? Are these tools actually getting in the way of people doing the real work that they are meant to be doing?

It stated: "The risks arising from these system dysfunctions are that data are unreliable, managers cannot easily track progress on cases and in some cases professionals… do not have access to critical child protection or safeguarding information."

And ContactPoint is going to magnify this exponentially. Also, the database tables for ContactPoint are going to need to be expanded dramatically in order to store all the information that is mentioned in that last blockquote and more. This means that ContactPoint as it is designed now, is just the skeleton of an even more intrusive monster system that is going to develop incrementally.

KILL IT WITH FIRE.

In her letter to councils, Baroness Morgan told councils she was "making it clear that local authorities will not be required to comply with the published specifications for ICS in order to receive capital funding".

Because ContactPoint is around the corner. Pure EVIL.

She added: "ICT systems which support children's care should be locally owned and implemented within a simplified national framework".

Called ContactPoint. There cannot be any social workers who do not know about ContactPoint. They must be scratching their heads at why she is not referring specifically to it in this communication. Perhaps she did. Heidi has not let us know. She failed to mention ContactPoint at all ini this article. Absolute unmitigated FAIL.

Local authorities had previously been forced to use Government-authorised computer systems, known collectively as the "Integrated Children's System", in order to qualify for crucial funding.

Blackmail.

But despite telling officials they could abandon the Government model, the children's minister denied that ICS was effectively being scrapped.

Illogical.

She said in a statement: "Part of developing a highly skilled and professional workforce is ensuring that the IT system social workers use is accessible, workable and secure.

Databases can never be secure. Highly skilled workforces existed before databases. This is nonsense on stilts.

"The Social Work Task Force agreed that ICS is the right system but made a number of recommendations. Today we are driving this change forward."

How can it be the right system, but be optional, and now abandoned? Oh yes, hot is cold, day is night, and 2+2=9.

Council officers said they would have to "junk" the Government's specifications and start again from scratch.

Whith whose money? And what this will do is put massive pressure on government to expand the capabilities of ContactPoint; why have lots of little unconnected databases when you can save money with economies of scale by rolling out ContactPoint 2 that has tables for everything everyone could possibly need?

This is the chess game that this dying bunck of Aparatchicks is playing. If they scrap ICS now, they believe it will be harder for the Tories to scrap ContactPoint since the Local Authorities up and down the country were told to destroy their bespoke systems. The Tories will also be forced to expand ContactPoint to save money as I described above.

Sadly for Mutterschwein of Drefelin ContactPoint is being scrapped because it is dangerous and immoral. No matter how much efficiency it provides or what its capabilities are, it should be scrapped because its existence is an affront and danger to all decent people in the UK.

No matter how difficult you make it with these pre death of Neu Liebour moves, nothing can change this. Your police state apparatus is going to be dismantled and you are already disgraced for overseeing and agreeing with its implementation.

Andrew Christie, Director of Children's Services at Hammersmith and Fulham, said: "The Government has left social workers and vulnerable children at the bottom of a black hole that it will take years to climb out of.

Actually, this is an opportunity for you to build something clean and decent that does what it needs to do without being immoral or dangerous.

"We have already spent a huge amount of time and money implementing this labyrinthine system and now we will have to spend more time and money unpicking it and retraining staff."

But you MUST do this to be a moral person, so GET ON WITH IT and don't complain.

Staff at Kensington and Chelsea council, which had its funding cut for refusing to implement ICS in 2005, said they were being "inundated" with requests from other councils wanting to buy the alternative system they have built.

I wonder how it works?

RBK&C is also the council that publicly voiced skepticism about ContactPoint and offered shielding to whoever wanted it:

The Council has reservations about the scheme. These include concerns about the lack of publicity surrounding it and about security and confidentiality issues.

There are 33,000 children in Kensington and Chelsea. The Government expects their details to be included on ContactPoint and has made the Council responsible for the upkeep of that information.

The Government wanted the first 17 councils that are introducing ContactPoint to be using it from April 2009, with other councils – including Kensington and Chelsea – following in due course.

Although glitches in the system may delay the start date, the personal information of children living in the borough will be available to those first 17 councils as soon as they ‘go live’. Information on ContactPoint will include name, address, gender, a unique identification number and name and contact details of the child’s parent or carer. It will also show the child’s GP practice, health visitor, school and school nurse but not the detailed information that a GP or school would have.

Access
The Government currently estimates that around 390,000 people who work with children will be able to access the database nationally. They will be fully trained and follow strict confidentiality guidelines.

Safeguards and confidentiality
Although the Government maintains that the security of ContactPoint is of paramount importance and that it has been rigorously tested, Kensington and Chelsea Council is concerned about security issues and the ability of the database to keep information about children who are adopted confidential.

At the time of writing representatives from the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) were still trying to remedy security issues that had been identified in the system.

Shielding
The Government has proposed something called ‘shielding’ as an extra measure to protect children and families from harm. Shielding means hiding details of the child’s, young person’s or family member’s whereabouts and reflects the fact that the Government accepts that a small number of children, young people and their parent(s) may be put at significant risk if their whereabouts become known. If a child is shielded, only their name, date of birth, gender and unique number will be visible.

The Royal Borough is encouraging parents and carers to consider shielding for their child or children. The Council will deal with each request for shielding individually and according to its shielding policy. Parents or carers who want the Council to exercise its discretion regarding their data should get in touch as soon as possible. Children and young people themselves can also apply for shielding.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is determined to support the best interests of its children and to address the understandable anxieties of parents/carers. Any request to ‘shield’ a record should include the reason why ‘shielding’ would safeguard the child. The Council will need to verify the applicant’s relationship to the child.

To enquire about shielding contact the CAF and Integrated Working Team on 020 7598 4694 or email: contactpoint@rbkc.gov.uk

What do you think?

[…]

http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/RBKCDirect/rdcouncilpriorities/cp0904_contactpoint.asp#shielding

I think you should not be implementing it at all. I think you are morally obligated to refuse it. I think ContactPoint is going to be scrapped.

In November 2008 millions of people came out on to the streets of America for freedom and an end to the Bush regime. Whilst the November election was a pretext for the protests – elections have never been free or fair in America – it has opened the space for people to come to the fore with their own slogans.

The world has been encouraged by the protestors’ bravery and humane demands and have been horrified by the complete betrayal they have faced. It was hoped we would see a different image of America – one of a population that refuses to kill even after 30 years of living under Fascist rule.

The dawn that this movement heralded for us across the world was a promising one – one that aimed to bring America into the 21st century and break the back of the political American empire internationally. They never had a chance.

This is a movement that must be supported.

Declaration

We, the undersigned, join America Solidarity to declare our unequivocal solidarity with the people of America. We hear their call for freedom and stand with them in opposition to the Fascist regime of America. We demand:

1. The immediate release of all those kidnapped and imprisoned during the recent, bogus ‘War on Terror’ and all political prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

2. The arrest and public prosecution of those responsible for the torture, rape and atrocities and for those committed during the last 30 years

3. Proper medical attention to those wounded during the illegal invasion of Iraq and treatment for the ill-treated and tortured in prison. Information on the status of the dead, wounded and arrested to their families. The renditioned must have access to their family members. Family members must be allowed to bury their loved ones where they choose.

4. A ban on torture and kidnapping

5. The abolition of the death penalty and prohibition. The end of regime change, assassination and military invasion and color revolutions as a tool os foreign policy. The withdrawal from every corner of the world of american troops, and the closing of all american military bases world-wide

6. Unconditional freedom of expression, thought, organisation, demonstration, and strike

7. Unconditional freedom of the press and media and an end to restrictions on communications, including the internet, telephone, mobiles and satellite television programmes

8. An end to compulsory schooling and gender apartheid

9. The abolition of discriminatory laws against home educators and the abolition of the department of education

10. The complete separation of the state from the monetary system, restoration of the independence of the judiciary, religious freedom and family organization as a private matter.

11. The complete restoration of all articles The Constitution of the United States of America (except Article 1, Section 8 and Amendment XVI) and the restoration of Gold backed Dollar

Moreover, we call on all governments and international institutions to isolate the United States of America and break all diplomatic ties with it.

We are opposed to military intervention and economic sanctions because of their adverse effect on people’s lives.

The people of America have spoken; we stand with them.

[…]

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/07/07/iran-solidarity/

A lurker sent this in; it is from ‘Barefoot Social Worker a radical social work perspective’:

Growing calls for greater regulation of home education need a social work response. Social workers are being asked to exercise greater controls over families who reject state education and keep home educated children under closer surveillence. This move is authoritarian and inconsistent with social work values and should be strongly resisted.

[…]

Apart from the threat to civil liberties there are serious questions to be asked about whether local authorities should be taking on additional responsibilities at a time of financial cutbacks. There is a workforce crisis in child protection social work and many frontline workers are already struggling to cope with large caseloads. Extending the social work role with home educators is definitely not a priority while high-risk cases go undetected.

Hilary Searing

http://www.radical.org.uk/barefoot/heducation.htm

Hmmmmmmm

It seems that there are some social workers who are against the Badman and Balls show.

Good.

The fact that there are SOME against it makes the problem just the same… if you are unlucky. If you fail to win a home in a decent place, you will be subjected to a ‘post-code lottery’ for Home Education where if you live in a place where there is naked hostility to HE, you are going to be brutally harassed, whereas if you live somewhere else, you might never be troubled at all. Clearly this is unacceptable; you cannot leave to the judgment (or lack of judgment, or prejudices) of individuals wether or not a family’s way of live is ‘acceptable’ or not. We have just seen what happens when the completely insane are let lose to exercise their power, judgement, mad appetite for destruction on people that they do not like for whatever reason. The future will be one of a wide spectrum of abuse like that, from ambushes and kidnapping down to incessant nuisance letter writing and everything in between. The law must not be altered to allow ANYONE to harass or interfere with Home Educators. Period.

It would be nice to hear social workers saying, “this is a step too far, we will not cooperate with the Badman and Balls proposals”. Teachers are already refusing to operate the levers of the police state; its up to professionals to refuse to destroy Britain by pushing back from their side.

Please read this article in the Telegraph, which describes how a father was ambushed in front of the school his children were attending by social services:

[…]

Details of yet another shocking case, which comes to its climax in a county court in eastern England this week, have recently been placed in the House of Lords Library. This follows a comprehensive investigation carried out on behalf of the family by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, who, as a hereditary peer, does not sit in the Lords, but has passed his dossier both to an active life peer and to this column.

Until six weeks ago, Mr and Mrs Jones, as I must call them under reporting restrictions, lived happily with their three young children, two sons and a daughter, aged under 13. Mr Jones, a business consultant, is related to various European royal families and his brother is a senior Army officer seconded to the UN. If he has one weakness, as he admits, it is to refer to these connections, as he did to the heads of the schools attended by his two older children, saying that he was particularly concerned for their security. He asked that he could be allowed to drive into the school grounds when picking up his daughter, because he did not want to leave her waiting, potentially vulnerable, in the road outside.
The headmistress agreed to this, but, concerned about other children's safety, contacted the local police, who in turn passed on their concerns to social services. The result of this was that, on May 18, when Mr and Mr Jones, accompanied by their younger son, arrived at school to pick up their daughter, they were met by a group of strangers, one as it turned out a female social worker. She asked, without explaining why or who she was, whether he was Mr Jones. When she three times refused to show him any ID, he was seized from behind by two policemen, handcuffed and put under arrest.

He was driven by a policeman to a nearby mental hospital where he was told that, because of "a number of concerns", he was being detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act and "sectioned" under S.2 as of "unsound mind". His wife, it turned out, had been similarly arrested, for loudly protesting at the handcuffing of her husband and the forcible seizing from her arms of her young son. The three children had been taken into care by social services.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

This is a comment from this blog post about this deeply disturbing story:

I too was shocked by this latest example of State terror. I agree with everything Gareth says. But what's happened here is no different from the post-Stalin Soviet Union. There, people who, it was decided by some lowly apparatchik, were "insane" because they had criticised the state implicitly or explicitly in some way were routinely sectioned, their children sent to orphanages and their futures wrecked.

They were forced to put all their energies into clearing their name, but they often never saw their children again regardless of whether they achieved this, or not. And "common sense" was regarded as a bourgeois concept. Apparently, that's exactly how it's regarded in socialist Britain, too these days.

The comparison between the UK and the Soviet Union of 1955-85 is not just some convenient satirical device for political point-scoring, it now must be viewed as a genuine one.

Personally, I think just before the social workers and their bosses, the police and theirs, the magistrate and the psychologists who with an abusive diagnosis "sectioned" this man and forced him into the British equivalent of a Psikhushka, and the government who created this climate of justified fear in its ongoing war on the middle classes, are all summarily fired, the headmistress who started the whole process should be. She's the worst of the lot.

None of them is fit to sweep our streets. They are the real danger to society. They should be treated as such.

What the hell is a ‘Psikhushka’?!

Punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, psychiatry was used for punitive purposes. Psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture.

Psikhushka (Russian: психушка) is a Russian colloquialism for psychiatric hospital. It has been occasionally used in English since the dissident movement in the Soviet Union became known in the West.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

Unbelievable.

What this story means is that no one is safe in Britain. You can be picked up at any time for merely saying something that an apartchick does not like. You have no avenue of redress, no court to appeal to and no way to fight back.

Another blogger chimes in BLOGDIAL style:

That gives us ground to lock up and remove the children of all those MPs who voted for their children, and the children of celebrities, to be exempt from the child database then, does it?

[…]

http://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/2009/07/child-snatching-it-really-happens.html

Actually, no it doesn’t, because THEY say what reality is, NOT YOU.

What should happen is this:

The magistrate (who is on the board of governors of the Psikhushka where this man was held, i.e. totally corrupt)
The ‘social workers’
The police officers who ambushed him
The school head who made the call

Should all be named.
Should all be prosecuted for aiding and abetting kidnap.
Should all be fined and or imprisoned.
Should all be fired and lose all benefits.

Everyone involved in this should be tarred and feathered. It should happen immediately, and not after a long procedural delay. An example must be made of them to strike fear into any ‘social worker’ or the people they swirl around who thinks that they could do this to another single person in this country.

If that does not happen, every other ‘social worker’ will take this as a message that they can do anything they want with a guarantee of complete immunity.

The question is, who is next, and under what trumped up pretext are they going to snatch some children and lock the parents up? Just when you thought it could not get more insane, it does.

South Carolina, it seems, is finally beginning to see sense. When the police start talking like this, its clear that we are post tipping point on this subject, and that the age of, or should I say, the second age of prohibition is nearing its end:

Dillon – State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) agents, flanked by police chiefs from the state’s largest cities joined 16 elected sheriffs today at South of the Border to announce their support for legalizing and taxing marijuana.

“Weed is good. Weed is right. Weed works,” said Dorchester County Sheriff B.D. Squire, spokesman for the group.
The event marks a turnaround for the state’s law enforcement officers who have counted on weed-related fines and confiscated drug money to fund their militaristic uniforms and ‘SWAT’ like attitude towards the state’s marijuana users and sellers. The officials would like to see South Carolina enact legislation to legalize and tax weed and corner the southeastern market in a way similar to the way Georgia’s lottery siphoned valuable revenue from the state’s coffers and in a way similar that our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax brings customers all the way from the northeast.

Democratic and Republican leaders from the general assembly are intrigued by the idea.

“This is perhaps one of the no-brainers in terms of bringing us back to fiscal health,” said Hugh Leatherman, the senate finance chairman.
“There was a half-million dollar bust a couple weeks ago in Berkely County,” said state Agriculture Secretary Hugh Weathers, “if that pot was taxed at anything near the rate of tobacco… well that would be about $500 million straight into the state coffers. Can you imagine what kind of income we’d pull in if it was planted on proper farms and not just in little patches in the woods? We wouldn’t be having a ’stimulus’ debate because we wouldn’t need the money.”

“The effects of this would be enormous,” said University of South Carolina Economics Professor Lester Nestman. “Obviously tax revenue would be huge, but we’d likely also see a surge in tourism all over the state, you’d have all manner of stores springing up at every border crossing, and I can’t even imagine how popular farmers’ markets would become. On a related note, just the mention of this possibility has caused an overnight jump of 38% in undergraduate applications to the university.”

Reactions in the business community were mixed. Cigarette executives were outwardly dismissive of the idea, but a source at RJ Reynolds speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the company was actively looking for land to build a Marijuana packaging facility outside of Latta, near the North Carolina border.

Gregg Propps, a Charleston-area distributor for Little Debbies brand snacks was less reserved in his response.
“Are you kidding me? Holy crap, this is awesome. This is going to put my kids through college… but maybe I’ll send them to school in another state.”

http://thediscust.com/?p=573

Now that really is astonishing news. After all that wasted money, all the people put in gaol for no reason, people killed, lives ruined, the police say, “we are bored with playing SWAT, lets make some money!”.

We call it ‘Idiocracy‘.