Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Philip Pullman delivered a concise and damning rebuttal of the increasing use of fear by the government to encourage suspicion about the motives of adults visiting schools describing the measure as "dispiriting and sinister".The government recently introduced a new procedure that forces any adult visiting a school to pay a fee of £64 so the government can pronounce them as safe to visit (i.e. not a kiddy fiddler).
Of course, as Philip Pullman so concisely put it this morning, the knock-on effect of this is that it is now creating a culture of distrust amongst adults and children in the most insidious way. Why should authors such as Pullman and others who have spoken out have to prove that they are not paedophiles? It now seems the burden of proof has been turned completely on it's head, and I would say deliberately so.
Once again we are seeing the malignancy of the Labour government and their agents of change. Is this really the kind of country we want our children to grow up in where every visitor to their school has to be vetted? How long until all parents who drop off and pick up their kids have to have a similar certificate just to enter the school grounds? Think I'm kidding?
*Read more at the Daily Mail where Pullman describes the scheme as 'corrosive and poisonous to every kind of healthy social interaction'.
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No, I don't. It has already begun :
16 July 2009 at 09:27To ban parents from their children's sports day is an abuse of risk assessment
Good for them! Especially as they are probably paid for these readings, so they are actually putting their money where their mouths are...
16 July 2009 at 09:47If more people stood up and told them where to shove it, it might force a rethink.
Thanks Sue for the link (now added).
16 July 2009 at 10:01I wonder if Labour darling JK Rowling will join the fight?
Agree entirely. Fear is the totalitarian's favourite tool.
16 July 2009 at 10:01We have to ensure that as many people as possible (particularly the gullible and trusting) are awakened to the fact and do not succumb to the fear of the useful idiot bureaucrats who execute the government's fear policies.
Malignant is the word.
16 July 2009 at 10:54You have to pay to prove your innocence.
16 July 2009 at 11:07Just exactly when was the last time a visitor to a school abused a child?
Philip Fuller will be interviewed by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 at lunchtime for those that are near a radion.
16 July 2009 at 13:15"Philip Fuller will be interviewed by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 at lunchtime..."
16 July 2009 at 13:52I'm listening now, and he's holding his own against his Maude Flanders-type ('For the chiiilllddreeen') opponent.
And no, I don't expect JK Rowling to join in them! She has always struck me as someone who knows where her bread is buttered...
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