More News From The Place Where England Used To Be

~or~ Whistling Past The Graveyard of Civlization, Until The Revolution Finally Comes.

The Nanny State has officially Run Amok.

Because it causes environmental harm, you may not idle your car's engine while you scrape the ice off your car's windscreen. No matter that some ice won't ever come off if you don't heat the bottom of it through the window. No matter that people die from having ice fly off on the roadway at speed. No, you might hurt precious Gaia.

The rules dealing with all things not-the-State's-business (child safety among other things) in UK are called OFSTED rules. The rules are based, apparently, in no small part on the emotions of children. Seriously. The OFSTED rules are what prohibit parents from babysitting each others' children on alternate days so the parents can go to work. The OFSTED rules prevent parents going in to parks and watching over their own children. But the subjects in UK have allowed the outrages to continue.

Now, they are going to run background checks on homeschooling parents. There are still some people with some sense over there. At least (for now) they still have the right to say things like this:

Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust said: "It is sheer madness for Ofsted to suggest that parents should be required to undergo CRB checks to be with their children between the hours of 9am and 3pm from Monday to Friday during term-time. If it is deemed unsafe for children to be with their parents during normal school hours, it is equally unsafe for them to be with their parents in the evenings, at weekends and during the school holidays. If Ofsted are calling for CRB checks for home-educating parents now, how long will it be before they are demanding that all parents are CRB-checked?"

Not that the government of UK would have a problem with background-checking all parents. I mean, why would they consider that a step too far, when families are already being broken up because they are Average American-sized too fat to properly care for children? I mean, fat people really should just be made to deliver babies at home anyway, because they might burden the NHS unduly.

What the hell have you allowed to happen to you, England? When will you wake up and start rattling the cage in which you sleep?