There is news from the Beeb that "Police in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, have joined forces with a local school to try to reduce truancy. Officers and members of Beaufort School have launched an initiative where local shops will not serve school-aged children during lesson time. A police spokesman said the initiative was aimed at reducing the number of truant pupils and tackling the nuisance behaviour that goes with truancy. Posters have been placed in shop windows warning of the initiative."
Depressing news in several ways, personal and political. Quedgeley touches on the outer edge of the radius to which we travel for our HE meetings. We do go to Quedgeley fairly frequently. What to do? Leave the kids in the car when we pop into the shops? Spend some time explaining basic human freedoms to shopkeepers? Spend even more time writing to the papers, the Chamber of Commerce, or get embroiled bringing a human rights action and attempt to bring down this fascistically-inclined government? Well the latter sounds good!
If it were me (and it's not yet, as R's nowhere near school age), I'd write loads of letters (maybe I will anyway!) and, in the meantime, ignore the restrictions. It's not a law, so you're not doing anything wrong, and if you're in there with the children, then they're serving you, not them! The only way people are going to learn that HE is something that really does happen is by being open and obvious about it IMHO.
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This is so awful it's unbelievable.
ReplyDelete*goes to bathroom and cries*