The Nationalisation of Children

The Spectator Leader this week makes a cogent and powerful attack on the increasingly authoritarian approach that this government is taking in the realm of private life, and all this without a single mention of the word database.

Just in case the Speccie site starts demanding a sub...here are a couple of select quotations:

"The philosophy of the present government is that while parents should generally be allowed to bring up their off-spring, they can never make as good a job of it as trained health professionsal can. Therefore it is in the interests of child welfare that the state intervenes in child-rearing wherever it can. We disagree absolutely with this philosophy. There are, of course, some bad parents, some so very bad that it is necessary for their children forcibly to be removed from them. But given the appalling record of abuse and neglect in state-run children's homes, we suspect the evidence points the other way: that the state generally makes a much worse job of raising children."

Apart from merely inserting state-run schools after the children's homes, we would concur entirely.

"Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown we won't see the nationalisation of shipbuilding or steelmaking but the nationalisation of children is fully under way.