Bishop Hill Soft totalitarianism
Nov 24, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Corruption Liberalism UKIP The news this morning that a couple in Rotherham had their foster children removed from them because they were UKIP members almost defies belief.
It seems to me to be symptomatic of a much wider problem with soft totalitarianism. There are now an enormous number of views the holding of which will lead to immediate retribution from left-leaning bureaucrats, not the least of which is global warming scepticism.
In his book The Real Global Warming Disaster, Christopher Booker quotes Richard Lindzen on Carl Wunsch as follows:
[He] professionally calls into question virtually all alarmist claims concerning sea level, ocean temperatures and ocean modelling, but assiduously avoids association with sceptics [because] if nothing else he has several major oceanographic programs to worry about.
Get that? If you even associate with sceptics there will be consequences. You will find yourself defunded. You will be ostracised. Is it any wonder that there are, quite literally, no climatologists in the UK who will profess themselves sceptics? When NERC has activists like Bob Watson and even a representative of the Green Alliance running it?
And quite rightly so, I hear the upholders of the global warming consensus say. Sceptics are at best crazy and at worst in the pay of big oil and we should remove them from respectable scientific circles.
Which is the nub of the problem. Totalitarianism, both in its soft and its hard incarnations, is born of the very best of intentions. I read somewhere that Stalin died thinking that sending dissenters to the gulag had been an unpleasant but necessary step on the road to socialist heaven. He was doing the right thing.
So I'm sure the council workers in Rotherham did what they did for the very best reasons. That doesn't stop their actions being part of a vile and dangerous trend in public life in the UK.
Reader Comments (104)
"A bit worrying that. I mean the idea that, with a story such as this one, it must be so indefensible that even the BBC felt compelled to report it."
The timing that this arrived in my in-box with that of mine getting approved in pointing out the BBC was now censoring further public comment was, I feel, neat
Nov 24, 2012 at 3:56 PM | Dung
"It is just possible that Thacker was not someone who had any great interest in politics and who therefore easily mixed up UKIP and the BNP (who would IMHO be unsuitable foster parents)."
Good points, but "it is just possible" you that are being very generous to think that Thacker was not interested in politics! :)
Rotherham’s UKIP Child-Catcher Joyce Thacker Follows Common Purpose’s Progressive Agenda
http://order-order.com/2012/11/24/progressive-culture-war-caused-rotheram-ukip-child-catcher/
The important part here, to me, is Andrew's comments on creeping totalitarianism. He is absolutely right. It is very worrying that there is really no choice in who to vote for, when it comes to the most important questions - particularly when those that we can vote for have their hands so heavily tied by Europe.
The simple reason we have carbon trading in Europe and the Americans don't, is they have at least the semblance of a democracy. The senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto. We have to do what Europe decides.
Do I look right wing in these jeans ?
I've said before that I am evidently a lot less bright than I once thought. Perhaps it's an age thing, in which case ignore me.
If these children are "European migrants" I assume — absent evidence to the contrary — that they are "ethnically" European. So in what way their "ethnic needs" are not being met is a mystery to me. (Come to that I'm not all that sure what a European's ethnic needs are.)
Again making an assumption, if the parents chose to migrate to the United Kingdom, are the children's "cultural needs" not being met by living with a British family especially one —it appears from the BBC report — to have gone out of its way to encourage the children to continue to use their native language and to follow their family's religious beliefs by attending an appropriate school.
Or maybe that's the problem. Perhaps Ms Thacker would rather they went to the local secular state school and were kept as far away from religion and their natural roots as possible.
In my (fairly limited, admittedly) experience of dealing with hard-left bureaucrats two things that they fear above all else are foreigners and religion. Which explains why they are so useless whenever they get involved with either.
For Martin's concerns...
Without wanting to become a UKIP ad,this was from the Telegraph's updated article:
Responding to Mrs Thacker the couple said: "Joyce Thacker referred to us as carers not being able to meet the cultural needs of these children in the long-term.
"We feel that we were meeting the cultural needs of these children. We were actively encouraging these children to speak their own language and to teach us their language. We enjoyed singing one of their folk songs in their native language.
"Having been told of the religious denomination of these children, we also took steps to ensure that a school of their denomination was found."
I'm currently searching the (new) kitchen for tin foil, having seen the supposed Common Purpose link on order-order.
There is a very odd racism in the adoption business which those involved would be appalled to have called by that name.
We start with the idea that children have a certain culture because of their origins, and have to be matched with parents that have the same one.
So, they have black skins. Well clearly, this fact about them determines their culture, so we have to find parents with the same culture, and we'll know when we find them because.... their skins too will be black.
Then we have a Polish child. That is, a child born to parents who were ethnic Poles. Well not quite. They were born in and speak Polish? Anyway, we obviously have to match them with Polish parents.
Otherwise it would not be in their best interests, which are to be matched with parents who share their culture.
We end up with a sort of weird attempt to enforce a weird sort of segregation based on a concept of determination of people's characteristics by some crazed concept of a totally imaginary sort of 'race' or 'ethnicity' with absolutely no scientific or moral basis.
All in the interests of the children, and cultural and racial sensitivity....
We appear to have the needs of the social worker placed ahead of the needs of the child. Who guards the guards?
Dung
"OK so why didnt she just say so? Well it seems to me that a very large percentage of the population are genetically programmed to deny any action, fact or point of view of their own which subsequently becomes embarrassing, in which case she needed an excuse/cover story. I would not personally have used the one she did but then she does indeed seem to have very little brain."
You've got that exactly right, unfortunately it's a lesson never learnt. Early in my working career I make a relatively expensive mistake in calculating the amount of foil required for a particular capacitor. Being a greenhorn I just said yes I got it wrong which turned out to be the best course of action in the end. Perhaps my mother's often quoted doublet had something to do with this.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive.
Just saying yes we got it wrong and appologising to the various parties would be so much easier. Someone involved in a cover story is likely to say something which blows the cover in order to cover their own backside.
Sandy
One wonders about the culture of an institution where this kind of action -- removing children from adopted parents based on "wrong-thinking" -- can even be deemed to be acceptable by an alleged civil servant.
SandyS
But social workers never get it wrong. Haven't you understood that yet?
And one of the reasons why they never get it wrong is because if they do they will get sued. Or they will get fired. Or they will get pilloried by the media.
I have little sympathy for social workers as a breed; I think they are under-qualified and over-endowed with a sense of their own importance. But the general public bears a degree of blame. We are the first to scream when we think they've got something wrong and the last to give them their due when they get something right.
It's hardly surprising they don't 'fess up in a hurry!
Yes, I noticed that there were a lot of "censored comments" (now missing') throughout the legacy media. No doubt we will have a beeb funded poll published soon proving once and for all that this was just an (82% agree) 'localised problem' - nothing to see here - move along.
I guess that when one is in a position, as is the Beeb, to censor the news (for 60 million people) and any comments concerning your censorship of the news then ... 'The World Is Your Oyster'. Defence of "Jimmy" err .. defence of Rotherham - all the same s*** to a beeb employee.
Presumably a meeting with "Scientific Experts" (Social Workers from Rotherham) would seem to have us in line with 'the consensus' that the monkeys in Rotherham we 'justified' in their actions. When the documents (AGW, Child molestation - all the same to the Beeb) are actually made public (if ever they are - and they won't be). They will simply claim that "scientific" experts told us that there was nothing to see in Rotherham (or Jimmy or AGW). We simply didn't feel that exposure of alternative views was 'appropriate in this instance'.
We really need these people, BBC, Rotherham and the rest, hauled before a court of law at some point. Let them face 'a Jury of their peers' tasked with judging their activities under the stark light of real evidence in a real court room. What's the betting that "delete everything concerning X" will be the last e-mail these tossers send as it became obvious that they are to be hauled before a court? Never going to happen of course. But we can always vote in hope.
It is well beyond the point where 'the state broadcaster' was removed from the tax bill (what are we? The Soviet Union?). They have clearly been exposed as the 'tractor production is up 20% on the year - Government mouthpiece suggests" sock puppets we all knew they were. Time to go.
Seriously - "Global Warming" ('scientific experts' (Greenpeace) told us) is 'worse than we thought' and "Child Molestation' is OK too because our internal enquiry will say so (when we get round to it). Forget a referendum on EU membership - how about referendum on the BBC?
Tick,Tock Beeb.
> Yes, I noticed that there were a lot of "censored comments"
My comment was censored. Since the article mentioned that the Labour Party had called for the Labour run Council to investigate itself I asked why Milliband hadn't called for a public inquiry which is his usual answer to everything.
The BBC decided that the comment "broke house rules"
Nov 24, 2012 at 7:02 PM | Mike Jackson
Why not? They are needed in advanced society I propose.
What distinguishes advanced societies is the ability to afford a class of people who can look at aspects of society at a level of management of the problematic fringes which most of us may wish to ignore. Social working has a bad name but is not a bad concept.
Simply saying Thacker is in a class of people who should be ignored is wrong to my mind it should be better framed as Thacker has hijacked a role in a class of people she doesn't deserve to occupy.
Looking back at Roger Carr above I respect his point of view. I can respect him taking an instinctive initial position to not join a group in condemnation of the council - I think an instinctive start point is essential myself too - but his selection of this quote from Thacker isn't a great help for a defence of his reasoning I think ;)
I have followed the issue and listened to interviews recommended here and elsewhere and Thacker clearly has nothing more than this as a summation of her justification.
It is pitiful.
I mean for Gods sake - the chances children who are in care have some history of care is surely a simple minded truism - that isn't a justification in itself
- in fact it argues against arbitrary messing them around further - it has all the hall marks of scratching around for excuses.
I will go out on a limb here and say I detect a passive aggressive attitude in the method of Thackers's defence - It seems Thacker has had a history of judicial correction that surely must mean that she has a history of cases that have got to a stage where it needed law court interference and now she is passive aggressively pre-emptively making a point by interfering before it gets that far (in her mind)
The points that Mike and TLITB cover about the council having to concern itself with the children's ethnic and cultural needs is interesting, particularly since I gather (and may be wrong) from other sources that the children in question were Polish Catholic in 'ethnicity'. The problem the council seem to have is the difficulty in finding 'appropriate' placements for the children which would adequately allow for their cultural requirements. I refer the honorable members to the politically inspired wholesale closure of the Catholic adoption agencies a few years back, which agencies were extremely successful at placing ' hard to place' children, and provided foster homes as well as adoptive parents.
(P.S. I hadn't really thought of white european Catholics as being a particularly 'ethinic' group in need of having their cultural sensitivities looked after. there are rather a lot of them in this country - myself and Mike J included I think).
Like a few others here - I joined UKIP recently.
I've never been a member of a political party before - although I've campaigned for a couple from time to time.
I'd met a few UKIP members over the years and written them off as an odd bunch. Often tetchy, opinionated, inconsistent and disorganised.
Then I took a hard look at the alternatives. A tripartite, contrived, Green/EUcentric/Soft Left consensus of professional political apparatchiks - mainly interested in keeping them, their friends & family and their media groupies on the political gravy train for as long as possible.
I came to the conclusion that maybe a party made up of an inhomogeneous group of people with differing views, opinions and aspirations, mainly united by being pissed off with the current situation might not be a bad idea.
When you think about it - that's proper democracy.
Perhaps the kids are Bosnian Muslims or similar, which may have caused this ghastly piece of social engineering gone mad.
This business of matching up children in care with the putative ethnicity/religion of their parents has led to some terrible outcomes in Australia. Aboriginal kids in care are almost never placed with non-Aboriginal families. As there are not many suitable Aboriginal families around, kids have been placed with unsuitable Aboriginal families, including into homes that are every bit as deprived or depraved as the ones they were rescued from, or even worse.
As for the social worker, it seems that she has been identified as incompetent in the past, so has gone on to further demonstrate her incompetence in this case. What do these people have to do to get sacked?
Mike and others:
The big problem with all three so called major parties is that they encourage the idea that if you have a problem then the state (national or local) can and will fix it and that idea is poisonous, that idea is a lie.
The governments of all shades pretend to be caring by creating lots of posts for people to fulfil the needs of its citizens. Think of what would be required of a person in order to make sure they were compentent to make decisions about the fostering of a huge number of children, all of whom have different backgrounds and problems. My own view is that there are very few people who could do that job however much training they received (and who would train them??).
The reality that people should get back to is that the only people who really care about you are YOU and some of your family, if they can not or will not help then you are screwed so just get on with it.
Some people never even try to solve their own problems.
My support for UKIP was originally based on just one belief but now UKIP is anti CAGW so I have 2 reasons these days.
Nigel Farage is a great charismatic leader but he spends too much time trying to answer criticisms and not enough time putting over his party's main message. People need to be told DIRECTLY that they do not live in a DEMOCRACY, that our troops are sent overseas to create or protect DEMOCRACY but we do not have it in the UK. They need to be told that neither their MPs nor their MEPs can propose European Legislation and that only unelected beaurocrats can do that. Millions died in wars to protect our freedom and DEMOCRACY but Heath and successive political leaders have given it away or refused to take it back. Thought of in those terms it really does not matter if UKIP is a one issue party with only one real charismatic member because that one issue is the most important issue of all.
Er ....um....all of the above should be prefaced by "In my opinion" ^.^
It could be worse- the nanny state has yet to remand any kids into UKIP custody.
Councils were originally formed by the residents and their businesses in order to provide the services the residents required.
Residents “employed” councillors, through the ballot box, who were charged with employing “officers” of the council to provide services the residents required.
Now we are told what we must do in order to reside in “their” area!
It is not their area, it is ours, it is yours and mine, time to remind our elected representatives of their responsibilities. Look up your local councillor and have a chat, just to let them know that we do care and that we fully understand their responsibilities.
I decided to take the plunge - and joined UKIP today! Their stance on climate change is magnificent!
Green Sand...maybe it is different in the UK than here in Ireland with councils and councillors.
Here the councillors are elected but they have no power.
The unelected management and staff of the County or City Councils are the ones who make and enforce decisions.
PW
Nov 24, 2012 at 10:45 PM | Russell
Well yes Russell the concept of partie conformetie is the idea here - how would you like it sweetheart?
The accidental placing of children with
"These carers I should stress were providing good quality care there was no issue about the
quality of care providing"
These are Thackers words.
Russell has Partie purity in mind but I think he wants something pure that he can't enunciate properly. So he is ... well because he is shy...;)
[snip - manners]
I thought we had recently come to the conclusion the multiculturalism is a bad thing?
Why is it being brought back to life?
All it guarantees is that children will end up with no culture to call home. They will not belong to the host culture, and will find that the ghetto they grew up in is not the culture of where their parents originated. Hardly surprising that they become alienated.
The people pushing this filthy species of apartheid (because that is what it is) need to be swept from any position of authority, and placed under close surveillance.
Immigrants need to be encouraged, and give every assistance to assimilate their new culture.
peterwalsh
"Here the councillors are elected but they have no power.
The unelected management and staff of the County or City Councils are the ones who make and enforce decisions."
Peter, exactly my point, that is what is happening here, but only because the elected Councillors let it be so.
Hence my suggestion "Look up your local councillor and have a chat, just to let them know that we do care and that we fully understand their responsibilities."
Responsibility is an interesting word, it means the ability to respond, by electing representatives, we give them, and have the right to expect them to have the ability to respond.
Ask your local Councillor about the ownership and responsibility for the council area, usually receives interesting answers.
David, UK, writes 3:49 PM - 24th): "Maybe Roger Carr could elaborate as he seems to know more about this case than the rest of us."
No, David; I don't... but at times the scent of a witch hunt taints the breeze and I feel that unease I've noted. It is a very subtle scent; but I always try and puzzle when it comes, and with all the commentary here on the Hill and in the UK press to the contrary I remain unconvinced it has not been blown way out of proportion to its importance due to its being held on a course which is not its true direction.
I see no indication the children have been harmed. They have simply been moved along more quickly than was planned; but the move had always been a set event.
This topic should have been about political activism on a far broader scale. There I would have been baying with the hunt.
Mike sums it up nicely for me:
Mike Jackson writes (7:02 PM - 24th): "We are the first to scream when we think they've got something wrong and the last to give them their due when they get something right."
I do not believe that in this case they got something right. But I do not believe they got something wrong, either; and certainly not as wrong as the outrage would indicate.
Leopard in the Basement
Well said, the spotty beast under the floorboards. And maybe we could also afford a class of people to provide some intellectual backing to their actions - let’s call them social scientists.Foxgoose I expect Karl Marx had the same mixed feelings when he, George Odger (who he?) and a few others formed the International Working Men’s Association in 1864. Social action of any kind is always a complicated, frequently uncomfortable experience, particularly when conducted by people of a libertarian bent who have been imbued with the idea that “there is no such thing as society”.
It's coming to a pretty pass, when Britishness, British ethnicity is so hard to define but where your personal choices limit your ability to give and to care and where everything must conform.
Thacker and people like her infest the corridors of civic halls up and down the country, they get up the ladder by toeing the line and walking the walk and most importantly talking the talk - this woman has few if any specialised skills but she is good at interfacing and glad handing the right people, was in the right place at the right time and knows how to play the council games.
Now if you are a bit thick, you do not surround yourself with geniuses, so what we get is institutionalised inferior recruitment - where the boss chooses people who will fit in but not outshine the leader.
Social workers ain't usually the sharpest tools in the box but with councils employing senior people in positions like Thacker - the chances of a well run and efficient social services department full of hard working, conscientious and caring staff are low to non existent.
Toeing the line, staff and senior bosses are committed to putting dogmas before caring and people, this is the ethos of public sector employees and employers - as a NHS hospital worker so succinctly put it, "this would be such a good place to work, if it weren't for the patients"
So to Rotherham council, in a Borough which returns a labour MP who had his nose in the trough but eyes elsewhere for as long as he was sitting in Westminster, a fine upstanding example of oblivious self regard with scant attention paid to his constituency.
Then, a council steeped in Socialist ideology, existing solely to implement multiculturalism and diversity - all cant, full of common purpose and highly paid apparats - and yes it's money for old rope - nobody is going to complain and call them to account in Rotherham are they?
"The Labour party has never let them down has it - they're fighting for our corner aren't they?"
Brown's client state and throw in a sizeable Asian population who are allowed to do as they please with the local social charges and Thacker turning a blind eye to it all, up pops a UKIP couple and someone at last to turn her guns towards.
Cumbrian Lad
I'll pass on the adoption agency can of worms if it's all the same to you!
Another aspect of modern Britain is the distortion of freedom in the name of a sort of pseudo-equality. It also involves a slavish obedience to the Law of Unintended Consequences, a marked ability for organisations to shoot themselves in the foot, and an acceptance that the minority (provided it is approved by the politically correct - ie the Guardian, the BBC, and other 21st century descendants of the Fabians) is permitted to persecute the majority.
Religion and Child Care are probably the biggest sufferers institutionally with — as ever — the least able to defend themselves most likely to be victims.
Rotherham is just the latest example.
Mike Jackson
Sorry for late response, I wasn't feeling well enough to look at much yesterday. Although I'm not quite as hard on social workers as you, I do feel that we've allowed them too much power. Perhaps we've (as nation) let too much power go to the government in all its guises. It seems beyond doubt that children in care are far worse off and have a poorer start in life than those fostered or adopted. Even in the bad old days of the 50s and 60s when there were no PC considerations this was true. Like many aspects of life those who think they know best and are doing the right thing usually end up making a hash of it all. It's one of the failings of homo sapiens that we don't recognise this.
Sandy
Ah, back to the good old Satanic Panic days of the 80s! Heads of social services desperately trying to defend bonkers decisions made by social workers, that they'd heard nothing of till it blew up in the press.
Must keep the kids away from the demon-worshippers of UKIP!
Coming soon: the return of the Phantom Social Worker. A bit of rumour/folklore from those days, demonstrating that parents felt that their kids were more at risk from social workers than Satanists...
The people who made this decision are trash.
They need to be attacked verbally and not reasoned with.
If a child from another country is orphaned or put forward for adoption what they need are parents who will help them to assimilate and who recognise their culture. The very thought that a decent person could not do this is absurd.
SandyS
No need to apologise. I wasn't feeling all that great yesterday either. 21-15 at the hands of Tonga is a bit much for the stomach acid to handle!
Social workers have never been the same since the 1969 (or thereabouts) Social Work Acts invented the breed and effectively "paid off" all the volunteer organisations and church groups that carried much of the burden.
Then they "professionalised" themselves and in effect told the rest of the world that it knew f*** all about child care or how to deal with the elderly or the mentally ill and that they were the experts.
Then they became politicised and that is where the rot really started to set in.
Even if you take Booker's articles with a pinch of salt — and as one of his resident critics, cartimandua, points out with some justification, some parents can be extremely manipulative and their pleas are not always to be taken at face value — there is something rotten in the whole system of child care in the UK.
His article in today's ST really is frightening. Justice and the rule of law are both being undermined by the very people charged with upholding them. Read it and weep.
If our host cares to start a campaign to highlight these abuses on a wider scale I'll be first in line to back him!
I do not believe that in this case they got something right. But I do not believe they got something wrong, either; and certainly not as wrong as the outrage would indicate.
Nov 25, 2012 at 4:17 AM | Unregistered Commenter Roger Carr
It doesn't matter what you or I "believe" Roger. Belief is not a requirement. Evidence is all that matters. Still; you can lead a horse to water...
"Evidence is all that matters"
--
Could not agree more, David.
However 'belief' can form the bedrock of many a system now, as any attempting to navigate such as the BBC Complaints system up to Trust level will, to their cost, appreciate. After that, there are always a half dozen FoI exclusion lawyers and a judge with interesting legal views if all else fails to make things go away.
We appear to be heading back in time, at least as far as the politico-media-judicial establishment is concerned.
I have to wonder if a ducking stool may soon enshrined in the statutes as an assessment of guilt tool.
DavidUK
The trouble is that neither you nor I (nor Roger) have the "evidence".
My initial reaction was that we were talking about Romanian gypsies as the likeliest "ethnic group" that could be identified as in need of some sort of politically correct "protection" from the depradations of evil UKIP voters.
Then Cumbrian Lad thought it might be Polish Catholics which seems to me possible but less likely since Poles are pretty good at integrating in the UK (they have been doing it since 1940!) even though they are very good at maintaining their own traditions.
Then johanna opined Bosnian Muslims, another group that the bien pensants would want us all to "do good to" (see my comments about Latter-Day Fabians!).
But if the EU means anything then where is the justification for Rotherham Social Services concerning themselves with the ethnic and cultural needs of these children? Surely their ethnicity and their culture is pan-European? Aren't we all to become van Rompuy clones and subscribe to the new Euro-culture?
Admittedly, my answer to that is "please God, no!" but then I'm not a social worker (or a supporter of Common Purpose!)
Mike Jackson, I agree that handling child protection requires wisdom greater than that of Solomon. It is certainly true that horrible parents can come across very persuasively, and that loving but sometimes hopeless ones can be victimised.
But, throwing in claptrap like matching foster kids and adoptees to their presumed 'racial'/cultural/religious background over and above the capacity of people to give them a loving home leads to even greater abuses and injustices. Now we have political correctness being thrown into the mix as well.
Those poor kids.
I read a great quote in a book by Peter Temple yesterday (Bad Debts). Our hero was complaining about the traffic in Melbourne, which had been screwed up by putting a pedestrian mall in the middle of the main thoroughfare. He said something like "Urban planners know what is best for us. They should all be forced to marry social workers."
David, UK
At this point in the drama, or melodrama, David, "believing" is still the requirement.
Evidence only enters the arena when there is something more than a news story.
I'll stand aside now, acknowledging you have influenced my thinking, though not changed my basic opinion.
SandyS onNov 24, 2012 at 6:24 PM
"Just saying yes we got it wrong and apologising to the various parties would be so much easier."
If the original procedure was more in line with your (political) agenda, there would be every reason to not apologise as it would acknowledge changes that others wanted: power would be flowing away from you and, in many circles, that is all that matters!
"At this point in the drama, or melodrama, David, "believing" is still the requirement.
Evidence only enters the arena when there is something more than a news story."
---
Roger, I commend willingness to reconsider.
But you raise an interesting point, and that is you appear to view what is conveyed in 'news' as distinct from 'evidence'. The MSM may need to reflect on that, and with each other. I certainly share that notion.
In this case, as it 'broke', I had occasion to challenge SKY, whose less than impartial newsreader (her interview with Nigel Farage was a professional, actually-racist disgrace) was grudgingly reading out the clearly stated evidence of written confirmations of who had said, done or issued what, while her ticker tape was still running the plain and simple facts from the vindicated witnesses as 'claims'.
The 'news' now is pretty much just 'views', and mostly either woefully ill-informed by incompetence, ratings hunger or simple perverse desire to propagandise.
Thanks to certain activities in complement, my licence fee DD hangs by a thread, spared only by family pressure on music vids, docos and US comedy and drama series.
SKY News and its efforts may see that thread severed. £142.50 + £30pm can ease the separation in other ways.
It goes a bit further than ethnicity. They are very reluctant to place children with foster parents who do not belong to the same percieved social class. This is similarly seen as protecting their "culture".
Anyone who has tried to get something done via a local councillor knows who is really in charge - they just pass the matter back to the same unelected officials you are having the problem with. Many of them will refer to "the council" as if it was some independant entity which does things they don't agree with but can't do anything about, even when they are senior members of the ruling party.
It's interesting that the Social Services spend so much time vetting potential foster parents. Now there are some good reasons for this, and I'd not like to see an absence of checks, but consider for a moment the general qualification for being a parent. Most frequently it is a rather straightforward case of physical capability, nothing more. Given that, should the rules on fostering/adopting be such that it can take over 3 years before a prospective parent is accepted? For natural parents, not all are 'good' parents, but they can be supported. Perhaps the emphasis should not be on vetting, but on supporting. If the rules for acceptance were a lot more straighforward (e.g. no (major?) criminal convictions, stable and adequate finances, appropriate accomodation, etc.,) then the focus could be on supporting after the fact, rather than trying to second guess the ability of people to manage. It would then be much easier to place children, and they'd be a lot better looked after than they are in the care system, (which I think statistically gives the very worst outcome for children).
"It is just possible that Thacker was not someone who had any great interest in politics and who therefore easily mixed up UKIP and the BNP (who would IMHO be unsuitable foster parents)"
IMHO anybody who says somebody would be unsuitable to be foster parents on purely ideological grounds, rather than anything they have actually done, is ispo facto unsuitable to have any role in deciding on child care, or any other government function, in a free society.
That goes more than double if the person's excuse is that she is an ignorant cow who knows absolutely nothing about the political opinions she is castigating, except that her political masters don't lijke them. Such a person would put Jews into ovens on the grounds that she knew nothing about Jews, but they were allowed to, indeed such people once did. Anybody involved in this decision at any level can never have any role as a public emplotee in a non-fascist country.
Neil
You are assuming that Britain is a non-fascist country.
Find a proper definition of fascism and its attributes (as opposed to the knee-jerk definition of the militant Left which can be summarised as "anything we disagree with") and then tick the boxes 'yes' or 'no'.
You might be surprised.
Kevlar jacket - check
Protective helmet - check
Key to shelter -check
To those who think there may be shades of grey in this story, I'd like to point out that everyone here is surely aware of the way officials try to manoeuvre themselves out of tight corners by verbal slight of hand. Think for example of the bogus idea that climate skeptics were overwhelming the scientists at the UAE with FOI requests!
The point is surely that if there were valid reasons to remove those kids, these would have been quoted - not a purely bogus reason. This incident forms part of a pattern. A couple were interviewed on the radio recently about their experience of the adoption process. In addition to the sheer length of the process - even for second adoptions - the man complained at how staggered he was to be asked, as part of the assessment process, which of them normally initiated sexual activity!
I have pretty much lost faith in mainstream democratic politicians in Britain, and like several others here, I have joined UKIP because they seem to be the only (non-racist) party in Britain who are willing to speak up for common sense on climate, as on many other issues.
"the way officials try to manoeuvre themselves out of tight corners by verbal slight of hand. Think for example of the bogus idea that climate skeptics were overwhelming the scientists at the UAE with FOI requests!"
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David... many tx for that! Just what was needed for a small letter being written to the BBC Trust to help appeal a banning (7 months guilty until confirmed guilty) by BBC Complaints.
Their main logic was that they couldn't be expected to cope with having to deal with legitimate concerns on things they kept getting wrong, so decided the best thing to solve it was remove the person pointing their errors out.
A very British Public Sector Coup.
I used to think Common Purpose allegations were pure conspiracy theory but I've spent enough time with climate scams and groupthink not to dismiss this any longer. They are a subversive left freemasonry - they exist, advertise their 'training' and, to a large extent, don't focus mainly on politicians but on other people who have 'leadership' roles in broader British political life. People like Thacker. Am I crazy? No. Here's a link to a pdf of an enterprise she was involved in:
http://www.ocvs.govt.nz/documents/publications/newsletters/2168-networks-local-communities.pdf
The CP involvement is openly stated and her name appears on the last page as one of the Project Advisory Members. CP are a group who are undoubtedly involved in promoting climate ideology and we should be paying a great deal more attention to their broader role in British public life - their influence is almost certainly involved in the BBC's conditioning and stance as in 28gate. They are pernicious and prevalent and are one of the major drivers of the kind of 'bien-pensant' thinking 'we know best' agenda that we see being enacted across the country.
'We want our foster children back' (Lead story in the Telegraph, 26 Nov.)
Exclusive: Couple at centre of Ukip fostering row speak to The Telegraph about their desire to have children returned to them.
Mmm... this is confusing the story; and rather isolating me, as in the beginning the couple were only an emergency stop-over for these children in transit, and accepting of that fact.
My first comment was:
Mike Jackson called me on this, and I did my best to justify my feelings of concern, and on the level I was issuing that caution I do not feel I was wrong. However... (there is always an "however") Mike saw further than I had -- or at least deeper -- and the comments stayed on this other, and in fact more important, tack, summed up by:
There I am in full agreement with both Mike and lapogus.
Summing up: I feel it is unfair to cut down the tree (Joyce Thacker), but not to go for the entire forest. Cut it all down (and recycle through a biomass burner...).
p.s. and hoping, with you all, the kids make it through and on to life.
I wonder how the move from what appears to have been a particularly empathetic household (to what - a care home?) was presented to the children. They must be utterly bewildered.
WRT thoughtless council decisions, it reminded me of this girl, bless her.
The Swedish Tourism Authority coined the experssion "Sweden ia amazing" long time ago, and I have always believed that we were No.1 on being amazing.
If you support the Sweden Democrat Party you always face this kind of treatment, and the left wingers even refer to us as nazis. This is particurlary "funny" since among them there is a lot of people who feel sorry that Hitler didn´t finish the job.
I think this is the last desperate outburst of communism. They have finally realized that they have lost.