So it’s not enough that they’ve banned guns, self defense, swords, extra sharp knives, teeth (or at least good dental hygiene, or so it seems), and anything that can possibly cause you harm. Now the British nanny state is intruding in the lives of its sheep… I mean citizens.
No, really! I’m not even kidding! CCTV cameras inside private homes of those whom the nanny state considers “bad parents.”
THOUSANDS
of the worst families in England are to be put in “sin bins” in a bid
to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday.
The Children’s Secretary set out £400million
plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in
their own homes.They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.
Private
security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while
parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.
The fact that this guy’s name is Ed Balls is definitely an extra chuckle, but what’s pathetic… or amusing… or pathetically amusing, I’m not sure which, is the cost to the taxpayer for this ridiculous invasion of privacy.
But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with
each costing between £5,000 and £20,000 a potential total bill of
£400million.
Didn’t Britain used to be a great nation once?
A friend of mine at work put a Newsweek article on my desk this morning about “Great” Britain and its demise from world powership (yes, I just made that term up). The article describes in great detail how a once powerful nation is falling victim to a recession, running record deficits of more than 14 percent of GDP and a debt of 100 percent of GDP, while unemployment skyrockets.
Meanwhile, the nanny statesmanship continues, with the nanny state proving its nanny statehood with bans on everything from sandwiches to swimming pool goggles to “bum smacks” as corporal punishment.
It’s over for Great Britain. We might as well adopt them as our 51st state in a bizarre reversal of the 1700s, and be done with it.
Aug 05, 2009 @ 00:54:27
are you out of your cottonpickin’ mind?Adopt them? Don’t we have enough pansy s.o.b.’s here already who love being chained? We need more?C’mon Nicki. I know you didn’t mean it, please.
Aug 05, 2009 @ 11:55:26
ROFL!!!! I thought you’d like that idea! *ducks and runs*
Aug 05, 2009 @ 13:49:04
This is closer to home than you think. Houston’s police chief also wants to put cameras into people’s homes, and has tried on several occasions to get it done.
Aug 07, 2009 @ 03:51:57
Ed Balls. Why do so many people have such…”funny” names? I digress. This is an outrage and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. While a thoughtful concept, this has not been a concept which has been thrououghly thought through. The monitoring of such an endeavor requires hiring more people. Will credible, social worker types be hired for this monitoring work? Will they even aply? Ummm….not thinking so because how can it pay any more than minimum wage? So, they rely on…do I really need to answer this? For the love of goodness, sweet Britain, THINK ABOUT IT! That’s just one issue, but I have a short attention span, much like most people. I’m bored. I’m moving on. I’m on my cell. Or asleep. Or playing pong. Am I really monitoring what’s going on in those multiple houses? Please.And legally, how will this be persued? Any competent lawyer will be able to beat the hell out of this in more ways than one.Ah well, again we see the ineptitude of a govt’s programming. This is a concept developed from a shoot from the hip strategy…not one which takes the time to develop real and viable solutions. Child abuse and neglect are horrendeous, unpalatable crimes which no society should tolerate. But in order to completely combat such crimes, all people would have to lose their civil liberties. Collectively, is that what we want? To lose our rights because of the crimes of only a portion of our population? There has to be another way.Point is, this is not a winning strategy. It will not keep drunk ass idiots from comming after their kids. It will not deter idiots from having children. It will improve nothing. All it will do is waste money; money which could be spent on programs which could actually help these families…really, these children, educationally better themselves. Because, the more educated the women of a society are, the less likely there is for that society to suffer disfunction in its family units. I read that somewhere, by the way…
Aug 07, 2009 @ 05:53:34
The only way you can make sense of this is that God is testing Winston Churchill the same way he tested Job. When Winston refuses to curse God and requests eternal damnation rather than see his country ruined, God will put sense back into the Brits and they will experience a resurgence of national rationality and success.What we have to worry about is that Winston will throw up his hands and simply damn them all.