Big Brother parenting in Scotland

Talk about nanny state. [Link]

Imagine the very worst home a child could grow up in: No food in the fridge, parents strung out on drugs, the children covered with scabs and beaten regularly. You would want someone to step in and save the kids.

And then there's Scotland.

Scotland wants to treat all families as potentially abusive and appoint a "named person" (that is, a guardian) as soon as the child is born and up through age 18 to oversee the parenting. This "shadow parent" would be empowered by the government under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, which will take effect in 2016.

As Josie Appleton, founder of the U.K.'s Manifesto Club, writes in SpikedOnline:

It is based on the idea that a person who has been named by the state, touched on the shoulder, has a superior authority and insight to others. Those who have been ‘named’ are seen as better qualified to ‘safeguard’ the wellbeing of a whole nation’s children. Therefore, concern for children’s wellbeing becomes a state-appointed position.

...This is a new kind of parenting-by-surveillance.

The day-to-day role of a named person is to follow ‘reports’ about a child, to keep an eye on their files. They will have rights to see private medical reports, and to request information about that child from other agencies (there is a legal ‘duty to help named person’).... The other aspect of a named person’s role is to propose ‘interventions’. They will have a role in drawing up a ‘child’s plan’ if a child is found to have a ‘wellbeing need’: this plan will outline the ‘targeted intervention which requires to be provided… in relation to the child’.

No satire allowed here

You can go to jail. Who is the threat? [Link]

But who poses more of a risk to us, and to our children: the Justin Carters of the world, or the state that will file dishonest and misleading warrant applications against him, the state that will confine him to be beaten and stripped naked in a cell, the state that will confine him for a crass joke?

The state tells us that Justin Carter or Cameron D'Ambrosio are threats, and that we must trust the state's special powers to see danger behind teen bluster and dipshititude, and trust the state's choice to employ force against them. Is that rational? Carter and D'Amrosio haven't used force wantonly or recklessly or against children. The state has. The state actors we are supposed to trust have. The state, not D'Ambrosio or Carter, tase a naked autistic 11-year-old wandering confused on a roadside. The state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, smother a man with Downs Syndrome to deathfor trying to watch Zero Dark Thirty twice. The state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, will beat, tase, and pepper-spray your child when they mistake his speech impediment for "disrespect." The state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, will tase your 86-year-old bedridden grandmother because she may pose a threat from her bed. The state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, willarrest you for videotaping in public and then harass and threaten you for talking to the media about it. Violence against animals is often identified as a tell of pathological violence and dangerousness; the state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, mow down dogs like Autumn wheat. The state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, will confront you in the street if your child is the wrong skin color and bark at you when you don't grovel thankfully. If you criticize Carter or D'Ambrosio, they will subject you to trash-talk; if you criticize state actors, they will put up wanted posters of you or send police to knock on your door in the middle of the night or serve you with a search warrant. The state, not Carter or D'Ambrosio, thinks that concern for Constitutional rights is evidence of criminality. The state — through judges and prosecutors — lets armed state agents indulge in this behavior with impunity.

Lt. John Wells, defending the prosecution of Justin Carter, tells us that we need to act, that we need to take threats seriously, that we need to protect the general public, that we need to protect schoolchildren. I agree.

But if we are rational — if we look at evidence — then who represents more of a threat to us and our children? Is it Justin Carter's community, or John Wells' community?

I think my children and I are more at risk from the state than from Justin Carter — particularly because I choose to criticize the state.