Family life faces State ‘invasion’
This is utterly chilling! The UK is moving toward something worse than what happened in the 3rd Reich, or in the bad old days of Stalin’s USSR. Another chilling thought: what if some of the flaky US judges look at THIS as an example of foriegn law that they want to unconstitutionally “import”?
Government surveillance of all children, including information on whether they eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, will be condemned tomorrow as a Big Brother system. Experts say it is the biggest state intrusion in history into the role of parents.
I guess it “takes a village”, and a supercomputer:
Changes being introduced since Victoria Climbié’s death from abuse include a £224 million database tracking all 12 million children in England and Wales from birth. The Government expects the programme to be operating within two years.
But critics say the electronic files will undermine family privacy and destroy the confidentiality of medical, social work and legal records.
No shit, Sherlock! What was the first clue!
Doctors, schools and the police will have to alert the database to a wide range of “concerns”. Two warning flags on a child’s record could start an investigation. There will also be a system of targets and performance indicators for children’s development. Children’s services have been told to work together to make sure that targets are met.
Fortunately there is at least some voice of sanity remaining over there:
Child care academics, practitioners and policy experts attending a conference at the London School of Economics will express concern about how the system will work.
Dr Eileen Munro, of the LSE, said that if a child caused concern by failing to make progress towards state targets, detailed information would be gathered. That would include subjective judgments such as “Is the parent providing a positive role model?”, as well as sensitive information such as a parent’s mental health. “They include consuming five portions of fruit and veg a day, which I am baffled how they will measure,” she said. “The country is moving from ‘parents are free to bring children up as they think best as long as they are not abusive or neglectful’ to a more coercive ‘parents must bring children up to conform to the state’s views of what is best’.”
This is just too creepy for words. The Chief can hardly believe that things have gone so far over there that this sort of scheme can be seriously proposed. If this is (God forbid!) actually emplaced, it will be Amen to the existance of Britain – they might as well go the rest of the way and just call it “Airstrip One” and get it over with.