Death and destruction on the roads.

As I have said before - what has the title got to do with the content?

As one delves the mysterious depths of officialdom one find the most remarkable monsters from the deep.  On the surface the clear waters of the tropical lagoon gently reflect the sunlight and all seems well.  But lurking just beneath the surface there are a myriad of dangers.  To the unwary the scene seems harmonious and at one with the universe but predatory creatures patrol the waters seeking easy targets and nourishment for their own survival.  The deeper you go the weirder and more alien the life forms become.  The same seems true of the Children Services in Britain.

I have encountered many stories of intimidation, cruelty and child abduction by officialdom.  Like many people I happily imagine that they are the exception.  But my own experience is suggesting that although the serious incidents may be rare they are enabled because of the mode of action of the social services.

I recall many years ago working out why the two policemen had planted cannabis on me.  It was a cruel and relatively insignificant event but why would they be so arbitrarily unkind?  If you like drugs there is a way to be involved with a degree of impunity.  Join the security forces.  Join the police and join the drug squad.  Then you get to meet all the pushers and you get some degree of power and control and a reasonable supply of illicit drugs for your own recreation.  So when you are tasked to attend the Reading pop festival as an undercover cop you get paid to do what thousands pay for.  You get to go to the pop festival.  You also have the added benefit of a free supply of drugs from pushers who you effectively blackmail.  Part of the deal is that you don't shop them.  So how can you go back after the weekend and tell your chief inspector that you couldn't find any drug users at a major pop festival?  You don't.  You simply use some of your superfluous supply to plant on innocent victims and arrest them.  Your superintendent is pleased with your haul and you get to go next year too.

I knew a psychopathic murderer once.  He was a very nice bloke.  Seriously folks, he was.  But there was something amiss.  Now the funny thing about humans is that they are multifaceted and diverse.  This bloke, the psychopath (and I've known a few who don't kill), was afraid.  He wouldn't admit it (like so many of us) and so he became 'brave'.  One way, he divulged to me, was that 'out there' there are monsters and so what you do is become a monster.  That way you are the monster and you no longer have to be afraid.  Neat little trick.  Philosophically a little suspect but neat all the same.  I tried it once until I scared someone and felt sorry for them.  I soon realised it wasn't for me.

Now if you are afraid of authority one thing you can do is to join an authoritarian organisation.  If you feel, perhaps, that someone should have rescued you from your parents, you may feel all sympathetic for all those kids who have oppressive parents and you may want to rescue them.  Wow!  Become a social worker and work for the Children Services.  How very benign you must look to yourself.  But how could you possibly survive if you couldn't locate those children who need rescuing?  You wouldn't keep your job for long if all the poor and degenerate families that you visited happened to be law abiding and reasonable parents.  You wouldn't feel satisfied in yourself either because you might just have to face up to your own problems.  So it is simple and it is called prejudice.  Those lower class people are cruel to their children.  It is so easy to find fault with people in general and it is probably even easier to find fault with parents.  But as that little chap Jesus suggested, perhaps the one with no guilt should cast the first stone.  Let's just forget about him for a moment or we wouldn't get any bloody stones thrown.  And anyway how would we save the children then?

I have a take on unemployment that I sometimes explain.  If there are 100 people and 80 jobs then 20 people will be unemployed.  Those 20 people are not going to be the sharpest tools in the box.  So when prats come along and try to assert that it is their fault because they are not sharp that they don't have a job they are simply, and conveniently, missing the point.  Incidentally people like that should be given a lobotomy and put at the end of the job queue.

So having joined the Children Services for all the right reasons you find yourself conveniently supplied with a list of families to investigate by malicious and vindictive reports from nasty resentful people.  There may even be some legitimate concern.  But the point is that you get to visit a lot of people who have some faults.  All you have to do is concentrate on the faults and one way or another you will expose some very distasteful traits.  In some cases (not all because that would be just silly) you find justification for nicking the kids.  It's that simple.  Once you have nicked them though you do have to defend your position.  It is not going to look good if you keep saying "Oops sorry" and handing the kids back.  Thereby lies the collusive culture in the Children Services.  And necessarily it spreads through the other services like the police and the judges.  They cannot be seen to be wrong because just look at what happens to people who are wrong.

They are not only their own worst enemy but more importantly they are societies worst enemies.

I came across the case recently of a couple who had their 5 year old child taken from them.  In the course of the fiasco of the arrest the mother also had a miscarriage.  According to some that could be deemed murder.  But the issue of the abducted child is where the focus remains and so the murder of the unborn just sinks into oblivion.  The case was reported by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph on 18 Jul 2009 entitled 'Evil destruction' of a happy family.  The way I came across this is interesting because I was on the BASW (British Association of Social Workers) web site looking into some Children Services workers who happen not to be on the 'regulated' membership list of this private limited company posing as a professional regulatory body.  I was browsing around when I found an article entitled BASW condemns Sunday Telegraph's discrediting of child protection social workers.  This little article was full of pompous indignation.  But on reading it all I could glean was an arrogant condemnation of an irresponsible journalist who had dared to suggest there was anything wrong with the social services.  There was no rational argument and no counter evidence, just supercilious, self-serving, high and mighty condemnation and an over bloated smug assertion of the good work of the social services.  It sounded guilty to me.  So I looked into it a bit more and came across the aforementioned article by Christopher Booker.  But to my surprise, this was not the article to which the BASW referred.  That article had been written several years ago.  So I tried to find the referenced article.  I thought a good way would be to look up a quote from the article on the internet.  In the BASW article it states "BASW condemned Christopher Brooker’s article, in which he claimed that 'children are torn from their parents with no good reason'. A senior BASW official called the piece "irresponsible" and "simply untrue." (they have misspelled the journalists name).  So I cut and pasted the phrase "children are torn from their parents with no good reason" and put it into a famous search engine.  To my surprise out of the only five pages returned four were from the BASW web site and the last one was another web site reporting on the content of the BASW web site.  The plot thickens.  So I went to the Daily Telegraph and searched through Christopher Booker's latest articles.  There I found one entitled "Child protection system tears two more families apart".  I read the article.  So the BASW have misquoted Booker.  But I will leave that alone for the time being because it is possibly an insignificant misquote.  Worth noting though that they misspelled the name of the child and misquoted her.  But the article read perfectly well.  The journalism seemed responsible and is severely questioning the authorities in a right and proper way.  So what are BASW so afraid of?  With no more ado I will simply point out that these are the tactics of Colonel Gaddafi's security forces.  Work it out for yourself.

Advice for the Prime Minister:  Austerity measure number 1:  Dismantle one of the most expensive internal security bureaus you operate, namely the Children Services Directorate;  Prosperity measure number 1:  Fund parenting groups across the country at a fraction of the cost of the Children Services Directorate.  Result = Wealthier country with healthier kids growing up in it!  Simples - you prat.