That's fucking stupid

Archive for the ‘Daily Mail’ Category

From today’s news headlines:

OMG KIDS TAKING MORE DRUGS. EVERYBODY IS ALARMED!!!

Let’s take a look at that a bit more closely, shall we? Here’s the text from the actual report:

Police recorded drug offences increased by six per cent compared with 2007/08, following an increase of 18 per cent between 2006/07 and 2007/08. Increases in recent years have been largely attributable to increases in the recording of possession of cannabis offences… In 2008/09 possession of cannabis increased by six per cent compared with 2007/08. This increase continues an upward trend in recent years, with possession of cannabis offences recorded by the police rising by 90 per cent since 2004/05. This rise has been largely associated with the increased use of powers to issue cannabis warnings.

and

The [British Crime Survey] is also used to monitor trends in drug use and the figures are published annually. The BCS shows that overall illicit drug use among 16 to 59 year olds decreased from 11.1 per cent in 1996 to 9.3 per cent in 2007/08 and it is now at its lowest level since the BCS started measurement. This decrease is mainly due to successive declines in use of cannabis since 2003/04… This suggests the increase seen in recent years in police recorded drug offences is likely to be due to increase in police activity rather than in drug use.

Just thought I should highlight that. Once again: usage hasn’t risen: police have just been reporting it more.

The Press Complaints Commission (whose Code of Practice Committee is headed by Paul Dacre), has kindly decided not to censure Jan Moir for her article in the Daily Mail (whose editor is, erm, whassisname? Paul something?).

Which is nice.

Full commentary, by the way, at the excellent Tabloid Watch.

It’s a little quiet on the news front today. Well, it is in some papers. It’s mainly quiet in the scaremonger press because the big news story of the day is something they don’t want to shout about. So this one’s for all the parents who still think that the MMR jab is linked to autism: Yes, you lot. People who say stuff like:

‘I feel the children are being used as political pawns – it has not been about protecting the children. It is about protecting MMR.

‘I firmly believe these doctors are going to be hung out to dry because they dared to question MMR.

‘Dr Wakefield and his colleagues are the only doctors who ever really listened to us. I fear now that no doctor will want to have anything to do with helping any child that is harmed by any vaccine in the future.’

She said that after Michael had the MMR jab when he was 14 months old he began ’screaming and making a high pitch screeching like a cat’.

She added: ‘He was like a wild animal he was in so much pain.’

Shut the fuck up already.

I’m not normally one for reading the Daily Mail but I will make an exception for Kelly Rose Bradford. First let’s get the full disclosure out of the way: I *like* Kelly Rose Bradford as much as it’s possible to like a person you’ve never met. I keep my relationship just on the healthy side of stalking with a casual interest in the adventures of her and ‘Boy’ on twitter and although I have never met her, and no doubt never will, she seems like the sort of person that I’d get on with OK in real life. I don’t always agree with what she’s written but then she writes for the Daily Mail so I’d have to take a good long look at myself if I did.

Her latest chunk of wisdom in ‘the Heil’ is a rather heart warming insight into the guilt felt by ordinary good parents trying to do the right thing by their kids while getting judgemental glares from the tofu eating, Prius driving tossmonkeys that have those awful kids who never do as they are told because they have ‘a free spirit’ and an ‘unoppressed personality’. The question of if it’s right to give your kids a little wallop is one that is a burden to many but in reality it can be answered with a very quick question: is it in the best interest of the child?

Many years ago while I was young and stupid I worked as a residential social worker in a privately run kids home in Herefordshire; I went their as a rather naive chap right out of Uni and came away from there with my eyes opened to the evils of the world. The kids there had been subjected to some truly terrible abuses and I remember after first reading a kid’s file I rang both my parents, neither fine examples of parenting, and thanked them for being an awful lot better than they could have been. We were sat down for several weeks before being released onto the shop floor so that we could have numerous workshops covering various situations so that we could learn where to draw the line if we ever had to make a judgement call. Within the social care system there is a fear of using any sort of physical restraint on a child in case you get branded a paedo or a child beater and lose your career along with it; this was something that the management of the center wanted to equip us to face up to. The overall message was ‘in the situation you are facing, ask yourself what’s best for the kid’.

My first real test of this was when I was escorting a 12 year old girl on a home visit. She had a history of making a bit of side cash in the employ of Walsall’s finest pimps and I had to make sure she spent a couple of hours with her mum under supervision before returning to Hereford. She did the visit and on the way back we stopped for fuel in a services; this was too good an opportunity for her to miss and she tried to do a runner. I had to instantly weigh up the risks to her (if I was too heavy handed) and to myself (if  member of the public saw me restraining a young girl who would no doubt be quite vocal and decided to ‘help out’) against the risk that the girl would no doubt place herself in if she escaped from our care and made it back to the streets of Brum.

I grabbed her, stuffed her back in the car and then waited while she calmed down. No harm was done although the things that came out of her mouth would make anyone blush.

At the other end of the scale we had another young girl, 14 years old, who was in care because she was awaiting trial for assaulting her dad. He was a slight man who had doted on her for her entire life and worked hard so that the family could live in an area where she could go to a nice middle class school. There she’d met a bunch of better off kids who were also spoilt by their parents but the difference was that their parents were a lot better paid. Our girl wanted to keep up with her friends in terms of material possessions and freedom to go out to pubs and clubs and when the cash for her aspired lifestyle was not available she had turned violent towards her parents who were too scared of the repercussions to do anything but take it on the chin. Finally at the end of their tether they had made a complaint to the police to have her arrested and she had been taken into care for their safety. It took a lot of time for her to realise that we weren’t going to bend to her will on every occasion, and were prepared to deflect her blows when she started punching and kicking. She spent many an hour being restrained from hurting herself or others during her numerous hissy fits that lasted for hours but finally she fell into the structure and routine that the other kids enjoyed. When I took her on a home visit her parents were amazed that she had turned into a really pleasant girl who lived within a set of fair and reasonable boundaries.

The application of the ‘is it in the best interest of the child’ can flow into any area of parenting. Is it better to keep a kid happy by letting it have a happy meal or is it better to force them to eat sprouts. With a considerable amount of obesity in the UK I would judge that it’s in the interest of the child to force them to eat their greens every now and again or deprive them that extra helping of chips they crave. The problem is that this is all stuff you can’t legislate for, no matter how much Labour want to control every aspect of our lives. Back in the childrens’ home I was witness to a colleague who restrained a child more to exercise his own dominance and control rather than because it would be of any benefit to the child. In this case a colleague of his made an complaint and he was disciplined for it.  Making a hard and fast rule of ‘no restraining kids’ would have meant that a young girl would have ended up spending a few weeks renting her body to middle aged men but would have saved a young lad from an angry colleague getting all ‘PE Teacher’ on him.

So back to Kelly and her son, William. In both the cases she mentioned her utter shock and horror at smacking her own child which suggests she did not do it for personal pleasure or gain and in both cases it achieved a goal which was ultimately beneficial to the lad. In the comments section there are numerous comments from people either stating that smacking is fine and the PC left should STFU or there are those calling all smacking barbaric and wrong; quiet is the voice of reason and common sense.

So here’s my advice, the advice of someone who’s spent a lot of time rearing kids: don’t think about what you’re doing and if it’s right, think about why your doing it. If you are smacking a kid because a short sharp shock will instil a sense of discipline in the kid or stop them from doing something that is harmful then go for it. If you are smacking the kid because it makes you feel more in control, more able to deal with the lot that life had dealt you or makes you feel more powerful then maybe you need to think about if raising kids is something you’re emotionally ready for.

Smacking may not be something you want to do with your kids but make sure they learn where the boundaries are, a kid that is not prepared for life is far more abused by that neglect than a kid who is smacked occasionally for the right reasons. If you choose not to smack your kids then don’t judge those who do, judge why they are smacking their kids and ask if it’s in the best interest of the kid that they not turn out a spoilt brat.

I had the misfortune to have to listen to LBC last night while running my hands over an oily teenage girl and was amused at their response to this “story”.

The presenter, whose name I have thankfully repressed, kept going on and on about how this was a knee jerk reaction to (and she kept mentioning it over and over again) the tragic but statistically insignificant Baby P incident. Her logic was that social workers are so scared not to be seen to be ticking boxes that they now investigate everything and have accused this woman of being a poor parent without any reason.

Now let’s just dissect that a little bit at a time eh?

1. It was a police officer who made the referral; social services have to, quite rightly, check out every referral. If anyone was unnecessarily arse-covering it was the copper and not the social workers.
2. The papers do not give an even two sided view of the story so we can’t judge if this was justified or not. There may have been other factors which raised concern such that the police officer thought it prudent to refer the issue.
3. A social services referral is not a judgement, it’s an offer of help. I have had the good fortune to see social work from both sides of the fence and their primary goal is to offer support and assistance and taking kids away is an absolute last resort where the safety of the kid is in danger. Working with them will almost always bring positive results.
4. If there is any arse-covering culture it’s because there is a media witch hunt going on at the moment. Social workers (along with doctors, nurses, policemen and everyone else) make mistakes. They don’t always fix everyone but in general they do their best, and those who don’t do their best or who are malicious are weeded out. This means that sometimes people die on operating theatre tables because the doctor fucked up, sometimes people are arrested because the policeman made a mistake and sometimes kids get abused because social services fail to spot the signs. Oh, and sometimes the well meaning Prime Minister will make some spelling errors on a note he grabs a minute to write to a grieving mother. THAT’S ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE ARE ONLY FUCKING HUMANS. Tearing them to shreds and destroying their career for the one or two fuckups they make in a really difficult job is not going to help anyone in the long term, is it? Is it, Mr Tabloid hack? Yes, I am looking at you.

Can we start burning newspaper journalists on a giant flaming stake every time one of them makes a spelling, grammatical or factual error in an article? Stuff like that can have tragic results too.