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When, as a go-ahead government minister, do you get the first inkling that your whiz-bang new scheme to protect children from the number one menace of our time might have gone a bit too far?
I'm no expert in these matters, but I reckon there must be some sort of tipping point when you get the head of the NSPCC petitioning you for less child protection, and Esther Rantzen piping up to demand, for once, not that Something Must Be Done but that Nothing Must Be Done.
The Vetting and Barring scheme —making it compulsory for anyone involved so often as once a month in childcare to register with an Independent Safeguarding Authority — is popular, by the look of it, with nobody at all. Just the reason to press ahead. Look at all these people objecting: they must be paedophiles!
Barely is there the need to rehearse what's wrong with the idea in practice and in principle. It is draining a swimming pool with a leaky sieve to find a contact lens. Quite takes the breath away.
This illiberal government loves databases, but it is hopeless at building them, hopeless at keeping them secure, and hopeless at getting the information on them right. Remember the NHS computers that cost £20 billion rather than the £2.3 billion initially budgeted?
Remember the DNA database, which had half a million wrong entries on it? In this instance, “wrong” will be a moot point.
The ISA will be checking not just the criminal records of its 11 million customers but also an undefined —history of or potential for “harm” gathered through hearsay.
The Paedo Files, as they will undoubtedly be called, promise to become an unprecedently efficient machine for churning out smeared names, expensive civil actions, fugs of mistrust, and unintended consequences yet to be imagined.
And once the ISA has shut down every after-school club in the country, left parents housebound, children locked in cellars for safety, and the victims of clerical errors fleeing for their lives from baying mobs, there will be new hills to climb.
The database will have made it — at least in theory — impossible for paedos to get their evil crab-like claws on your children. So what will the fiends do? They will breed their own, obviously.
The next logical step will be to ensure all parents, prospective parents or pregnant women register with the ISA. If your checks come out negative, sorry love — it's a termination. Thanks a bunch, Ian Huntley.
Conjuring up sour grapes
Glass of what appears to be Um Bongo in hand, Paul Daniels sallies out of his magical tent to give the verdict on Derren Brown's Lottery prediction stunt. After noting that the show pulled in a disappointing three million viewers — “I would have expected a lot more” — he writes on his blog: “What a kerfuffle over a magician doing a trick.”
He tells an interviewer that not only does he know how Brown did it, but he knows “99 other ways” to do it too, and that years ago — years ago! — he suggested the exact same stunt to the BBC and was turned down on the grounds that “the public would think it was all a fiddle”.It was all a fiddle, he adds, in casual capital letters: “IT IS A TRICK. OF COURSE IT IS A TRICK.” Sounding more and more like the King Lear of the rabbit-and-hat world, isn't he?
Hello! to a new social order
It is an unworthy thought, I know, but I wonder if it was someone in Princess Michael of Kent's circle who leaked to the press the fact that her son Freddie Windsor and his bride, Sophie Winkleman, turned down £600,000 to let Hello! photograph their wedding.
It would be too tempting a piece of one-upmanship for most of us to resist, particularly when Princess Anne's son was offered £100,000 less … and accepted!
There are only two slight dents in this social triumph. One is the shame of £600,000 being described as a “life-changing amount” by one's own servants.
The other is having Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine — whom they let photograph the whole shebang for free — describe it with ungrateful haughtiness as “not a massively significant wedding — along the lines of the Duke of Gloucester's kids, I suppose”.
Still, the principle is established. Celebrity magazines have become the most exact guides to the social hierarchy.
The new class system goes, in order, like this.
1) Turns down lots of money from Hello!
2) Turns down less money from Hello!
3) Accepts money from Hello!
4) Not offered money by Hello!
5) Reads Hello!
Reader views (2)
Paedophiles are devious and clever , but most of all patient when it comes to grooming a target for abuse.
I imagine that there are more paedophiles who have never been caught, or even reported for their perversions, than those who have been convicted. So play safe by making all adults who come into regular contact with children in professional or volunteer positions join a data base to show their good character.
BUT!! If a paedophile has no convictions, or any other criminal record, he can(will) apply and be accepted into the scheme.
He will then have a government backed certificate to enter any child-oriented activity and practically a licence to take as much time as he likes to groom as many children as he wants.
Bit sick really, another great New Labour scheme launched without any foresight of the consequencies.
- Ronnie, Billericay England, 14/09/2009 13:15
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As most cases of child abuse are from within the family shouldn't anyone having a child be vetted to see if they are a suitable parent and if not ban them from having any, or take them away?
i suppose this means that my children cannot go for sleepovers with their friends now, unless the parents have been vetted, or vice versa of course.
- Kerry, purley, 14/09/2009 12:55
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