The British government wants to go after 5-year-old future criminals: Why bother, when the NHS is killing off enough of them already?
It is often said that people get the governments they deserve. While you may ask yourself what all those Zimbabwean citizens have done to deserve to be starved, mutilated and/or killed by the Mugabe regime, here in the West this saying makes sense.
When more people vote for Big Brother candidates than turn up to vote in most political elections, you can’t help but think that the ongoing Big Brown show is exactly what the British citizenry deserves.
On the other hand, it is decidedly unfair on the children that they are punished for the sins of their fickle fathers and muddled mums. Of course, those same Zimbabwean people (who are still alive, that is) would be happy to inform us that whatever life may be, fair it ain’t.
Anyway, the British government is at it again. Not merely satisfied enough with the recently gained power to lock up any grown-up they want for 42 days without having to state on what grounds, they now seem to want to use the full power of the state to go after those who show their hardened criminal colours at the ripe age of five:
Children as young as 5 will be identified as being at risk of becoming criminals or troublemakers under government plans to tackle offending and disorder on the streets. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, called for a huge expansion of state intervention in family life as a way of preventing young people from problem families drifting into antisocial behaviour and crime.
You would have thought that the government had more serious problems to deal with. Whatever they touch, in terms of policy strategies, seems to turn to shit. From the War on Terror to the National Curriculum, from national ID schemes to the Olympics. The government sows hot air and seems perpetually surprised that the only things it reaps are astronomically high bills (and lost local and by-elections.)
Still, do they ever stop and reflect on and try to repair the damage all their mad, hubristic schemes have wrought? Of course, they don’t. They just go from failure to failure, from one pathetic plan to the next contemptible con. Why be content with sinking Atlantis, if you can poison and nuke it as it drowns?
So, while I admire the tenacity of the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith: a woman who seems to have vowed never even to take the shortest of naps until she has made life a misery for all her subjects, I’d like to politely suggest to her that while juvenile delinquency might be a growing problem, your average 5-year old in England has more to fear from its government’s mismanagement of the NHS than society has to fear from these toddlers.
These following statements care of this Times article:
It is extremely dismaying that “the UK is much slower in diagnosing brain tumours” and that “delays were occurring because GPs were reluctant to refer children for brain scans or through lack of awareness of the early warning signs”
Or:
The UK also lags behind comparable countries in survival from other childhood cancers, and outcomes for common diseases such as diabetes are inferior for Britain’s children, too.
In other words, the government has no need to go after all those 5-year-old master criminals: the NHS is doing a heck of a job to rid us of this terrible threat as it stands.
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
