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A Room 101 in every home
16 years ago
General
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view.....worst-families
Well holy shit.
"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.
Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far."
Yeah, we have social problems in the UK. Should government provide help and rehabilitation to those who need it? Probably yeah. Should we be okay with government agencies putting 24hr monitoring into private homes? How about fucking nooooo? Prisoners get better treatment than that! Knowing your every move is being scrutinised by a very literal Big Brother? Has that ever encouraged good behaviour or has it, say, caused resentment anger and lashing-out against the omnipresent authority?
I'm sure there's folks out there that need help, but if family's are really bad enough that you need to hire private security to visit them then it's not the job of government to try and teach them to be some idealised family unit. Get the kids out of there instead of using them as an experiment in social engineering.
There are already agencies in place that are supposed to deal with this. Social services, the police. But instead of fixing the flaws in procedures, the habit of a new expansive/expensive plan to go on top of it is thrown out instead.
2000 families have already gone through this process? Did it actually WORK on them? And yes, there's the ever-present Slippery Slope argument. The next logical step to me would be "offering" people in high crime areas to have their homes tied into a government run security/alarm system including internal CCTV. I say "offer" because if you go with it you'll get a discount on that nasty high house insurance! Who could refuse in a high crime area?
And once this new agency exists, it has to fight for it's survival like all others. What if it's a wonderful success? Great huh? Well then suddenly there's noone for it to look after! They put themselves out of a job! No, what happens is if their project works or they otherwise start running out of family's to target, then they'll have to change their parameters. They'll start taking on the less-bad family's to keep their numbers up. Or hell, do it anyway and your budget gets increased because there's "more demand"!
At what point do these Family Intervention Projects start acting on smaller and smaller problems? Child played truant and are on an SSRI? Sounds suspicious to me, better check in on them. Or christ, what if they're home-schooled?? Their parents could be doing anything to them!
"Mr Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt lessons.
Pupils and their families will have to sign behaviour contracts known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, which will set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework."
Holy brainwashing batman! How many times have we heard of kids being "disruptive" by questioning or disagreeing with a teachers opinions? Or wearing a political Tshirt?
Agree with everything the teachers say and do or you're not allowed to complain about other students? Tow the party line or you will SUFFER! Or can you imagine the kid who acts out because other kids pick on him? But his parents can't complain because he's acting out because of it?
These are impressionable kids we're talking about here, and the only purpose this can serve is to indoctrinate kids from an early age to know that you don't act out against the powers that be.
"Think of the Children!"
Think of them growing up into voters who won't question anything those in power tell them to.
One day you too could be making unknowing amateur porno for some sweaty CCTV operator.
Also someone notes this is against Article 8 of the European convention on human rights. Well it would be if they weren't getting them to sign a contract which I presume will state they give permission for the surveillance. Letter of the law's more important than the spirit of it.
S'cuse me, I'm going to go back to building a big fucking robot.
EDIT: An additional note, they'll be checking for bed-times and proper meals? So if you're a vegan, what, they'll force you to feed your children meat? If you practice polyphasic sleep, they'll insist on giving you tranquillisers? At what unannounced point does "different" become "bad" in the eyes of this government agency? And what unspoken norm will they try to mould you into?
Well holy shit.
"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.
Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far."
Yeah, we have social problems in the UK. Should government provide help and rehabilitation to those who need it? Probably yeah. Should we be okay with government agencies putting 24hr monitoring into private homes? How about fucking nooooo? Prisoners get better treatment than that! Knowing your every move is being scrutinised by a very literal Big Brother? Has that ever encouraged good behaviour or has it, say, caused resentment anger and lashing-out against the omnipresent authority?
I'm sure there's folks out there that need help, but if family's are really bad enough that you need to hire private security to visit them then it's not the job of government to try and teach them to be some idealised family unit. Get the kids out of there instead of using them as an experiment in social engineering.
There are already agencies in place that are supposed to deal with this. Social services, the police. But instead of fixing the flaws in procedures, the habit of a new expansive/expensive plan to go on top of it is thrown out instead.
2000 families have already gone through this process? Did it actually WORK on them? And yes, there's the ever-present Slippery Slope argument. The next logical step to me would be "offering" people in high crime areas to have their homes tied into a government run security/alarm system including internal CCTV. I say "offer" because if you go with it you'll get a discount on that nasty high house insurance! Who could refuse in a high crime area?
And once this new agency exists, it has to fight for it's survival like all others. What if it's a wonderful success? Great huh? Well then suddenly there's noone for it to look after! They put themselves out of a job! No, what happens is if their project works or they otherwise start running out of family's to target, then they'll have to change their parameters. They'll start taking on the less-bad family's to keep their numbers up. Or hell, do it anyway and your budget gets increased because there's "more demand"!
At what point do these Family Intervention Projects start acting on smaller and smaller problems? Child played truant and are on an SSRI? Sounds suspicious to me, better check in on them. Or christ, what if they're home-schooled?? Their parents could be doing anything to them!
"Mr Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt lessons.
Pupils and their families will have to sign behaviour contracts known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, which will set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework."
Holy brainwashing batman! How many times have we heard of kids being "disruptive" by questioning or disagreeing with a teachers opinions? Or wearing a political Tshirt?
Agree with everything the teachers say and do or you're not allowed to complain about other students? Tow the party line or you will SUFFER! Or can you imagine the kid who acts out because other kids pick on him? But his parents can't complain because he's acting out because of it?
These are impressionable kids we're talking about here, and the only purpose this can serve is to indoctrinate kids from an early age to know that you don't act out against the powers that be.
"Think of the Children!"
Think of them growing up into voters who won't question anything those in power tell them to.
One day you too could be making unknowing amateur porno for some sweaty CCTV operator.
Also someone notes this is against Article 8 of the European convention on human rights. Well it would be if they weren't getting them to sign a contract which I presume will state they give permission for the surveillance. Letter of the law's more important than the spirit of it.
S'cuse me, I'm going to go back to building a big fucking robot.
EDIT: An additional note, they'll be checking for bed-times and proper meals? So if you're a vegan, what, they'll force you to feed your children meat? If you practice polyphasic sleep, they'll insist on giving you tranquillisers? At what unannounced point does "different" become "bad" in the eyes of this government agency? And what unspoken norm will they try to mould you into?
This program is as scary and offensive as the latest version of the Obama health care plan, where the 'society cost' of a procedure is the dollar cost divided by the number of years you're expected to benefit from it (aka, an estimate of how long you'll live), so as you get older, it'll get more likely that any treatment will be denied as you're nearing your 'expiration date.' According to the wording in the plan, your doctor is supposed to start 'end of life' counseling with you at age 65. 65?!?!?! You're not even old enough to get your full social security benefits and the administration is getting impatient for you to die.
At least here, we can expect the congressman to get the mountains of angry mail from the AARP crowd (the over 65 people) who will demand that this plan be banished. After all, in America, every voter who turns out to the polls is counted, and here the retired people are the largest demographic to hit the voting booths. If Congress passes this big mistake, it'll be the last term they spend in DC.
What is it with all the 'free' governments trying to take away everyone's rights 'for their own protection.' I feel sad for you guys on the island, since you don't have guns to defend yourselves from the increasingly oppressive government.
Wait a minute.
I live in Chicago, which is tying up the attempts to remove the blanket gun bans in the convoluted legal system here. I can't get my hands on any guns either.
Crap.
I will say though that I'm under the impression that there's nothing to keep you from keeping health insurance and going to a private doctor instead if you want to avoid the waiting lists/get better treatment. Like the UK's health service.
I do worry that a lot of you Americans who worry about these things do rely too much on having guns. On an individual level they're probably very good for defending yourself against others, but as far as defending yourself against the government it seems it falls down. Communication and monitoring is too prevalent. Guns against a government means going up against the police or military. In either case you'd need a lot of other folks with you in an organised fashion, and the act of organising would not be instant. That's weeks or months of work, and whatever form it assumes you'll be identified as a terrorist group long before you're in a position to do anything. So in short my worry is that having guns, beyond home/personal security, simply provides a false sense of security regarding action against government powers.
If there were to be a violent revolt in the UK, we'd have to get more creative. And I like to think that it's harder to fight someone if you don't know what their weapons are.
Free governments also tend toward complexity. As things settle, get peaceful, they get into more make-busy projects and micromanagement. And with modern IT infrastructure we have no comparable model of just how complex it could get before getting totally knotted up. And making things simpler of course means forcing people out of jobs and more fuss dealing with issues of former administrations. Difficult and unpopular choices internally which would loosen a leaders control over their own government.
Un-knotting it is not a trivial task it seems.
Yes, but you'd be amazed how pesky that ol' squirrel gun can be against revenooers.
The true mark of how much fear an armed populace causes would-be dictators is how strenuously they attempt to unilaterally disarm private citizens...
The consent of the governed is the only true source of political power. As long as the governed are armed, it allows for consent to be governed to be revoked if the government starts to believe that they rule the people instead of serving the People.
I generally refuse to sign anything. And the wax seal stamp helps avoid them faking it.