Daisy Waugh on the Nanny State

I managed to work my way through a pile of Sunday papers in an hour of insomnia last night and found the following, by Daisy Waugh:

"Since this government seems to know so much better than we do about how to bring up our own children, you might think, when it comes to those children for whom it is solely responsible, that it could provide us with a shining example of how to do it right.

But no. While ministers jostle to keep our children longer at school, while the government prosecutes us for taking them away on foreign holidays during term time, while it legislates on whether or not we should smack them, constructs databases on how we are feeding them, weighs them and fingerprints them, advises Muslims to report on them, and finally tells us how to seat them in the back of the car, we discover that of all the parents in the land, the government is the least doting and the most incompetent.

A shocking report into the state of the care system revealed last week that half of all prisoners under 25 have been in care, that a third of all homeless people were brought up in care, and that a quarter of all girls in care have fallen pregnant before they leave.

There were no figures provided regarding their intake of vegetables, but no doubt that is pretty lamentable, too. "

Seems as if Daisy has got the drift.

Sunday Times link here.