21st century child abuse

Well, profuse apologies but I’m still too bogged down with real life to get back to serious blogging.

But I couldn’t go without noting the kerfuffle this week when Tynwald approved the merger of the Isle of Man Adoption Society (still better known locally as the Manx Churches Adoption Welfare Society) with the Isle of Man Children’s Centre, thus also amalgamating the island’s fostering and adoption services (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/53740/bishop-s-concern-at-closure-of-iom-adoption-society and http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/bishop-doubts-over-charity-merger-1-5517942 ).

As reports say, it only squeaked through after the Bishop (who is honorary president of IOMAS/MCAWS) complained the Society’s directors had not consulted him and so the Tynwald vote was the first he’d heard of it. In turn, our Minister of Social Neglect was keen to point out that MCAWS management themselves had requested the handover of functions in order to close the society.

The immediate problem with this version of events is that, by law, the directors must formally announce the proposed closure meeting by public notice, and simultaneously give written notice to all concerned parties at least 21 days beforehand, so that the Bishop should have known of the meeting and resolution to close. Any ordinary member of the public who worries about such matters would have known, as it appeared in the local press in the public notices – where corporate crooks bury the other evidence of international scams being closed down if anyone can be bothered to look.

There is also the control of MCAWS by the Anglican Synod. In theory, any interested person of good character could offer their services as a director: in practice (and I have this from past attendees of such meetings) a private Synod meeting chooses suitable candidates. ‘Volunteers’ are ‘coincidentally’ proposed and seconded at the AGM and an election follows, conveniently never with more candidates for office than posts. How, then, could a MCAWS board exist unless very much under the thumb of the Bishop?

Another issue is the reasons for the closure.

Insiders suggest the government discreetly told MCAWS it would no longer fund separate adoption and fostering charities. This seems likely as the Minister for Social Neglect (another religious zealot, of course, though in his case a devotee of Rome’s new link to 1980’s Argentinean fascism) clearly demonstrates he believes there are ‘deserving’ and ‘feckless’ poor, and is gradually depriving all such sinners (be they old, disabled or simply too badly educated for employment) of the public support expected in a civilized society.

Then there is the matter of a Catholic adoption agency in Leeds, whose continued refusal to allow gay couples to adopt has been vetoed by the courts at every level of appeal. Following our Civil Partnership Act, MCAWS (one suspects with gritted teeth and rictus grins) have duly made it known that applications from straight or gay couples, divorcees or single people would all be considered without prejudice. Again, I’ve been discreetly told that gays and other such delinquents might have to have their applications considered by the island’s  moral guardians of religious rightness, but in practice would never be successful.

Sadly, though, this may not be quite the victory for common sense it appears.

Partly because from the 1980’s (when Manx government childcare was noticeably ‘dumbed down’ by cheap evangelical alternatives to trained professionals) through to recent years (with seminars being led by new age charismatics with no academic or professional pedigree) childcare on the island is itself something of a foster home for wacky ideas. 

Partly because the Children’s Centre is yet another ghetto for the ‘ladies who lunch’. You probably know the score here. Committees are formed by bored rich women whose husbands spend their days diverting foreign aid from the poor towards the offshore accounts of developing world dictators in return for control of natural resources by Western corporations. Funds get raised at glittering social soirees, and, inevitably, are spent with more regard for the latest fad than solid academic research.

Hardworking parents of lesser means find it ironic that while these legends in their own lunchtimes harangue the rest of us about raising children, their own offspring - deprived of parental attention - become the best customers of drug dealers or the first in line to hand their bank accounts to the venal leaders of dead-eyed cults. I say this having personally helped several Manx ’trustafarians’ (in the absence of parental support – or even interest) to escape such fates.

So, the failure to help troubled kids find loving families passes from religious flat-earthers to the kind of vacuous trophy wives who take horoscopes and new age twaddle seriously.

And this is progress?

Pay back time

Sometimes (but not often) that nonsense machine that some call the Manx media throws up some genuine good news. And so it was when I read on the Energy FM website that: “This year's Firestarter Festival has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.”

Yes, I also had problems believing that hardcore evangelical tub-thumpers can ever admit a plain truth, but go to http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_228203.html if you want to see for yourselves.

Even better is the final sentence of a short and unhappy press release in which the organisers promise that:  “Those people who have bought tickets will receive a full refund.”

So, it seems to be official then. Manx fundamentalists are admitting that - even with many wealthy and unscrupulous friends - they cannot round up enough kids to voluntarily attend their annual weekend prayerfest. Even worse, it seems they no longer have enough friends in the social and probation services to drag some along involuntarily, then send the government the bill.

I wonder which realisation hurt most. The one that no amount of pleading from the pulpit or promises of free sweets in ‘educational support groups’ was going to harvest enough victims (sorry ‘visitors’), or the really frightening one to any evangelical - that they actually have to pay back money received for services they were never going to deliver.

Despite the brave talk, I also doubt they will ‘Do a Terminator’ and come back next year twice as big and twice as ugly.

Gone for good, I think……. and forget about ‘The Rapture’.

Totally.

Beware of unsolicited texts from pestering pastors

I really feel sorry for folk around Port St. Mary.
There was a famous TV advert a few years back in which a small girl had to choose between ‘Daddy’ and ‘Chips’, and chose the chips. Sometimes I think it could be revived for unfortunates around the island’s answer to an Alabama trailer park, except in their case it would be ‘Jesus or Heroin?’
Seriously, have you SEEN Port St. Mary since Living Hell (‘Living Hope Community Church’, to give them the current trading name) set up shop and anyone who could spell their own name tried to sell up and move out?
Which brings me to this week’s Manx Indifferent and an article under South News about a ‘community choir’ being formed to have fun and raise cash for charity in the process. Given that Living Hell are involved any sane person will disregard such myths as the ones about choir members choosing the music or the charity. Forget it, that money has a US bank account's name on it already, however many 'religious charities' it has to pass through to get there.
But a more serious word of warning – especially if you have a daughter who is slightly under the age of consent but could (especially in dim lighting) pass as older. In the near future your daughter may start to receive texts ‘inviting’ her to join the choir. These could become persistent, and will emanate from adults who have obtained the number via Education Department staff, though neither the Education Department staff nor the persistent pests they passed it to obtained it by legitimate means.
If this happens, also be aware of several other things.
Firstly, this has happened before, and even though one culprit was identified and an official complaint made to the school it was not investigated. The culprit continues to roam schools preying on under-age girls under the pretence of ‘mentoring’ and the Education Department staff member who illegally obtained the child’s mobile number and passed it to him was never reprimanded, or even questioned.
Secondly, as long ago as 1999, other individuals involved in the project helped cover the tracks of a Ramsey evangelist, also with an unhealthy interest in girls in their mid-teens. Though he was eventually charged over one incident of many alleged to have taken place in Ramsey, Douglas, Peel and Port St. Mary it was only due to the persistence of a family who later left the island to avoid the backlash. Other incidents were simply never investigated, due to the collective refusal of the church venues involved to cooperate and the lack of will on the part of appropriate government staff to make them (including, to my certain knowledge, at least one church elder).
Should a young relative be pestered as the result of the current project, my advice would be report it to the school and the Education Department, but before either of those to the police. Mud sticks eventually, and while evangelicals hold key positions in the Education Department and Police Consultative Forum thankfully they no longer do so in the police force itself.

DHA, more danger than strangers to kids

If I haven't blogged for a while, it's because I'm trying hard to stick to my post-holiday policy of only spreading positive vibes - poking fun at a few local windbags and drains on the rates along the way but in general trying to cheer up decent folk just trying to get by on the Rock rather than add to their woes.
But this (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_170178.html) is worrying news.
It isn’t just that a government department is wasting public time, money and resources indulging the prejudices of some of the island’s least responsible, self-pitying bigots. It is also the bigots who government will use or employ to ‘look into’ the matter.
Given that the Manx government already wastes far too many public facilities to tittle-tattle about the rest of us and screw up our personal and family lives, I would also be surprised if they choose to share their toys with any unskilled, tabloid-reading (and believing) inappropriate morons who don’t already draw a government salary.
I definitely don’t think the government wants anyone with an ounce of sense knowing the ill-informed ‘intelligence’ they share freely about the rest of us, and I doubt if the worst offenders are on their radar anyway, given that Manx ‘childcare professionals’ never look at unpleasant stuff involving fellow fundamentalists when reported by concerned relatives and neighbours.
But what really worries me is that if it has got as far as this, then someone in either Social Services or the DHA has already formulated a policy and a way of pushing it through a bogus ‘public consultation’, just as they did with homelessness.
Having once wasted an extremely unpleasant evening with some civil servants from the DHA, DSS and various puppet charities, I’ve been through something similar to what is (in theory) supposed to happen here but (in practice) will not.
The official agenda at that meeting was to decide the format for an information-gathering exercise into the scale, nature and causes of Manx homelessness, in order to help government develop strategies to need it. Amongst the things I quickly discovered were:
(1) It doesn’t matter what it says on the agenda of such a meeting or who drew it up in theory. In practice both the agenda and the decisions the meeting will rubberstamp are set in advance by a DSS executive on a £100K+ salary, who will not actually bother to turn up to the meeting.
(2) I, the token ‘member of the public’, had more facts and figures at my fingertips, and knew more about the issue in general, than a group of people who, collectively, cost the public about £500,000 in salaries each year.
(3) Government employees don’t bother researching for meetings like this, and may even turn up not knowing what the meeting topic is, but happily put in claims for overtime anyway.
(4) Slum landlords and the DSS get along just fine, and the DSS are not about to allow any evidence to appear in a government document which would break up that cosy relationship.
(5) Nobody with dark skin or a foreign accent is safe in the care of the DHA, but if the DHA can find a way to blame all Manx social problems on such folk they will.
(6) Some key government staff not only go to the same fundamentalist churches which produce the homophobia, sexism, racism, physical, mental (and in some cases sexual) abuse which in turn is the primary cause of Manx teenage kids leaving home, they are also involved in the fundamentalist bogus charities which the DHA and DSS proposes to use to counsel and rehouse them.
So, in brief, nothing will emerge from this mess but more trouble for ordinary parents. If you really want a list of people who are a danger to children, you should start with the staff lists of any government department, bogus charity or government advisory body which gets involved in such a pointless exercise.

Sarah's bores

You have to laugh at this story (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_158966.html) on the latest in a halfwitted campaign to introduce ‘Sarah’s Law’ to the island.
“Over 20" campaigners?
So that’s a maximum of 10 once you take away the police, the media and the only MHK desperate enough to back you. Or less, if (as I suspect of anyone dim enough to want it) you cannot count higher than your fingers.
And considering the core audience for this nonsense, the organisers really should have worked out that the very worst time of day for such a ‘protest’ is when Jeremy Kyle is on.

List of 2,000 child health problems

This (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_158602.html) must be a worry to any responsible parent.
2,000 ill informed bigots on the island, and once the last edition of News of the World hits the dustbin tomorrow nothing left to distract them.
The first local witterings of this appeared in the press a month or so ago. From conversations with workmates it quickly became apparent that the campaign was driven, not by concerned parents, but a loose network of welfare dependants messing about on Facebook at 3 AM while the plant food wears off.
Now, as a principled libertarian, it is simply not my concern if these dullards get off their faces every night. And anyone who has worked with such wasters probably prefers it if they stay on benefits and away from work environments, where their inability to concentrate while operating machinery or office equipment could take an innocent life - or at the very least inconvenience it while the clerical error is corrected.
Ordinary, self-disciplined people in a small community do not need to check with the police if a potential father (or a temporary sex partner and potential passport to more years on benefits) might be a sex offender. Because they would know him from schooldays, work or leisure interests, or at least have talked to the man long enough to know something of his history.
In fact, anyone who has even tried to bring a genuine sex offender (or even a parent who needs some support) to the attention of the relevant Manx authority knows how child abuse is covered up when the offender disguises it as 'church work' (and almost every Manx sex offender I know of has), while parenting problems which reflect on the failure of social services to do anything except keep two 'executive' parasites in their £100K+ jobs will simply be ignored.
To be blunt, most local parenting problems are not rooted in the wilful neglect of individual parents, but in the failure of public services, the superstition and bigotry of the ‘third sector’ which is being talked up as a stand-in, or just the callousness of many local employers towards parents working to provide what their child needs most.
The other night we were joking that perhaps we need to petition to know who has petitioned to introduce Sarah’s Law. With these loons presenting their petition, I suppose at least we can now note the signatories, and their desperate political sponsors, then keep such sad and silly folk well away from our nearest and dearest.

Who needs a Manx 'Sarah's Law'?

I was amused to read that there has been yet another call to introduce ‘Sarah’s Law’ here (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/campaign_starts_to_bring_in_sarah_s_law_here_1_3425237 ).
Apparently there are parents who would like to know about any dubious character who “poses a potential danger to their children”.
What on earth are these herberts on about? Those details have been on public record for some time, courtesy of the Manx government.
Just go to http://www.gov.im/education/support/ and http://www.gov.im/education/department/board.xml for names , addresses and pictures of the guilty.

Save the Children

I must be just one of many Manx parents relieved that the Department for Miseducation and Child Abuse have dropped a controversial attempt to introduce a ‘Children's Bill’ which would have given numerous halfwits carte blanche to snoop, tittle-tattle in secret and in general screw up the lives of Manx children even more than they do already.
In a press release put out last thing yesterday in the hope nobody will read it until next week (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/childrenbillwill.xml) we learn that:
“The then Department of Education consulted the public over the Bill last spring and there were 76 responses, with views submitted by Tynwald Members, Government Department and Boards, local authorities, teachers and teaching unions, church groups, organisations and individuals.
Eddie Teare MHK, Minister for Education and Children, who extended the consultation period when he took over at the Department midway through the exercise, today announced that with 76 per cent of those who responded against the Children Bill, and a further 10 per cent having reservations about it, he wouldn’t be proceeding with it.”
The thing that hacked most off – which we only found out about due to the efforts of a determined local civil libertarian, Tristram Llwellyn-Jones - were the plans for a secret database to log information about children, which would have been comprised solely of contributions from cretins who no sane parent would allow in the same room as a child. This database, linked to sweeping new powers which social workers and other, equally unschooled, busybodies intended to award themselves, had the capacity to break up families and put kids in care, yet no child or adult mentioned on the database could have challenged the information - or even discovered what lies had been spread about them.
Sadly though, this is not the end of the matter. What the Manx Kinderstasi cannot get by public consent, they still intend to get by a legal process which none of us will have the chance to object to.
There is a hint of this when the press release mentions, almost casually, that:
“..the Department of Education and Children will, via a new Education Bill, proposed for some time after September’s General Election, establish an alternative to the Safeguarding Board, if it’s considered appropriate, and may use the Bill as a vehicle to establish a post similar to that of commissioner to look after the rights of children.”
Actually, given their past record for ‘protecting’ children so well that a double murder took place in a state children's home (run on the cheap by criminally incompetent godbotherers, which they dealt with by appointing another bunch of even less competent godbothers to take over the contract, for even less money), the only serious thing the Manx government could do to protect local children is to issue a shotgun to every parent. Then they could give a legally binding pledge that if a politician, civil servant or any other drain on public funds comes within a mile of a child parents can blast away with impunity.

Foul-mouthed pervs strike in Manx schools

Just when you think the number of Christophiles crashing into Manx schools and wrecking young lives has peaked, you find more evidence of our public servants colluding in such attempts to drag kids back to the Middle Ages.
For according to the March edition of Together, the IOM Diocesan newsletter:
“Open the Book is an assembly scheme designed to enable every child to hear the story of the Bible at school in their primary years. Ordinary people like you and me from local churches come together as a team of storytellers and deliver 10 min assemblies where Biblical accounts and stories are retold. Open the Book is providing a vehicle to help churches build a bridge to 99% of the primary age population. That’s potentially 99% of the primary population moving on to secondary school having heard at least 33 Biblical accounts or stories…”
Now, to me, that’s clear evidence of institutional child abuse, so as a concerned parent I just want to know when someone at the Department of Miseducation will be sacked, or even prosecuted, for allowing it to happen. Either that or an equal opportunity for, say, fans of the Brothers Grimm or Terry Pratchett to introduce kids to some far better tales of fantasy and myth.
Scripture Union Ministries Trust, an organisation which really should be proscribed for the sake of all our children, do not see it quite like that. They do admit they’re doing “serious damage”, but only to “a 20 yr decline in Biblical literacy”.
So there’s our child protection services, on the one hand, indulging in tabloid fantasies about 8 year olds checking out online donkey porn or something. Meanwhile, as the headteacher looks on benignly, some semi-professional perv is reading aloud to the whole school from the world’s best known one-hand mag.
So far only two teams of SUMT yawn-troopers are being let loose in three schools. But apparently, later this year, our clueless government will allow four gangs to practice their potty-mouthed antics in between four and eight more primary schools. As they boasted openly of this in a publication that is, theoretically, available to up to 5,700 locals it is only reasonable to expect the police should act before more young lives are destroyed.

All over bar the touting

Apparently some major cult leader or other has just had a UK holiday courtesy of the taxpayer. Now he’s gone home again.
The papers and TV stations have been so full of pointless twaddle about it (and resolutely blocked every attempt to question it) that there’s really little more to say or little point in saying it.
So I’ll confine myself to two observations.

(1) Aren’t Susan Boyle gigs getting more surreal? Who on earth was that odd old tranny in the ruby slippers warming up for her at Glasgow last Friday?

(2) Some people might think £10 Million and a disability scooter with bulletproof windows is far too much public money to spend protecting UK children from one German pensioner. But as anyone with kids knows, NO amount is too much to keep our little darlings safe from dangerous freaks.

Of course, it is inevitable that the Deluded Herd will try to make a few bob locally on the back of it all. It’s even more inevitable that at least one politician who’s a complete waste of space will jump on the bandwagon too.
This, in short, explains an upcoming disaster known as Back To Church Sunday, which you can read about in original form, untouched or unclaimed by our local press as their own work, at http://www.manx.net/default.asp?id=18&articleid=11478 .
Oh dear!
Energy FM, to their credit, at least attempt to put their own spin on it at http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_117762.html . I suspect when it comes to other media outlets, all those years of IOM Steam Packet advertising put their way by Mr Corkish before he ‘retired’ and became an elected layabout will have their price.
But as the zombie worshippers are trying to play us for a bunch of poor misguided kiddies who ran away from home and might be made to feel guilty about it, let’s stick with that analogy and hoist them by their own petards.
As the late Quentin Crisp so sagely remarked, the problem with all those teary-eyed tales of teenage runaways is that, in nearly every case, absolutely the worst thing anyone can do is send them back home. There are good reasons why kids run away, just as there are good reasons why most people (once they’re big enough to say ‘No’) refuse to go to church.
Let’s see… sexism, racism, homophobia, child abuse, fraud, dishonesty, bullying, sheer stupidity, boredom…..
Need I go on?

No rights, just fairytales, colonialism and tourism scams

I raised an ironic eyebrow the other day at the news that Manx National Heritage is seeking UN World Heritage Status for Tynwald Hill and the Laxey Wheel. You can find the orginal government press release (later creatively ‘reinterpreted’ by journalists) at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/mnh/isleofmanbidforw.xml.
Other than noting some obvious myths (e.g. Laxey Wheel wasn’t a tourist attraction until the 1930’s – I know this as in 1989 I interviewed the local builder who bought and restored the wreck – and the myth of Tynwald Hill as a place where annual national gatherings have been held since the dawn of time only dates from the early 19th century. Various Edwardian histories of the island say a local landowner was quite impressed by Stonhenge, and redesigned what is now the walk from hill to St. John’s church in an attempt to replicate it), it all seemed a bit too sad to comment on.
Which is why I didn’t.
Even if I had, what is there to say apart from suggesting it would be more apt to twin Tynwald Hill with Culloden? Both are the site of national disasters where English colonialism trampled over Celtic dreams of nationhood.
The difference is, Culloden only happened once, while Tynwald Day replays the tragedy annually, complete with our ‘elected leaders’ fawning hopelessly around whichever drain on public resources the English monarchy deigns to send us. Even the fair field behind the ceremony – where by tradition all Manx people have the right to put up a stall – is only open to selected charities, as decided by application to a minion in the Chief Secretary’s office.
So it was a relief to see that at least Bernie Moffatt, our longest established thorn in the side of anti-democrats, militarists, royalist apologists and other Manx lowlife, was willing to point out some hypocrisy.
At http://www.agencebretagnepresse.com/fetch.php?id=18436 you can find Moffie, in his role as information officer for the Celtic League, noting that the IOM Government’s ‘commitment’ to childrens rights is still as hollow as, say, the day a double murder happened in a badly run governmental secure unit for disturbed kids, or even the days when, for example, Moffie told European prison inspectors about kids being locked up in adult cells in the old Victoria Road jail, then also the last prison in the British Isles where prisoners slopped out.
When Moffie, more recently, pressed our misrulers over recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (calling for the involvement of NGOs in the reporting process), the Chief Secretary, Mary Williams, said in her written reply: “Notwithstanding the comments from the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2000, the Isle of Man Government does not consider that it is necessary to establish specific conduits of communication with NGOs for human rights reporting.”
Wary Mary also added that: “Whilst countries to which UN conventions, such as the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC), apply are obliged under international law to comply with the provisions of the convention, it is not uncommon for those countries to dispute or disagree with the comments from the Committee which monitors the convention.”
In other words, disregard all the horlicks you’ve read about the Education Department and their dimwit spookchasing allies trying hard to introduce policies and legislation to ‘protect’ children. The simple truth is, the Manx government will never introduce any safeguards for kids which meet basic UN Declaration of Human Rights standards.
Because the religious zealots guiding them would be the worst offenders against such legislation, and they know it.

A Very Manx Fascism

I wish I could have got to the Positive Action Group meeting last Monday on the upcoming Children’s Bill (see http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=207:children-bill-2010-why-all-parents-should-be-concerned-&catid=113:children-bill-2010&Itemid=132 to get the basic idea).
Tristram Llewellyn Jones has had some excellent letters in the local press about this ugly bastard offspring of Big Brother and small town fundamentalism, and I would have liked to see him speak. Ironically, the reason I couldn’t was because, being a serious parent, I have other duties in the evening!
I’m not sure what annoys me most about this dim-witted law. Is it the Big Brother aspect, is it (as Henry Porter of the Guardian pointed out last year) that the UK blueprint is more to do with depriving kids in secure care of any rights than it is with protecting any vulnerable kid, or is it just the gobsmackingly mediocre intellect of most of the people who would gain more legal rights to snoop and comment on my family life?
I have absolutely no hesitation in stating that the biggest danger to children on this island comes from Social Services, the Education Department, the Department of Home Affairs and, in particular, the moronic fundamentalist groups whose members have first dibs on any job with the above. By comparison, I've met smack dealers with more socially responsible attitudes and long term mental institution inmates with a firmer grasp on reality.
It is nothing less than a sick joke that the excuse offered by the Manx government for a further intrusion on family life is that they don’t want another double murder in a kids home – a tragedy caused by the sheer amateurism of the very government agencies which now want to pry and report on, and impede, the capable and self-reliant even more.
It reminds me, too, of the cultural critic Jon Savage’s early 1980’s prediction of what might, in this particular example, be dubbed A Very Manx Fascism.
As Savage quipped, German Nazism at least had great architecture and well tailored uniforms. But if a British variant ever evolved it would be from a dowdy collection of mean-minded, parochial know-nowts. Sad, inadequate nobodies who would turn everything social and joyous into a beige wasteland because they can’t bear to see anything good, any sign of intelligence or people creating things because it might be fun, or useful, or make us happy.
Remind you of anyone we know locally?
I will probably ignore this Bill (if it passes) just as I have (at best) been mildly amused by most efforts of the various incompetent legislators and other control freaks I’ve outlived, side-stepped and generally ignored since I was a child. A ten year old with learning difficulties would have little trouble outwitting such simpletons, so I have few fears for kids, like mine, who have been taught since birth by decent parents to think, ask pertinent questions and stay away from slack-jawed lunatics with mad-eyed stares who talk to invisible friends.
For those of more serious demeanour, take a look at Llewellyn Jones’s contribution to the debate at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=209:should-they-tell-you-how-to-raise-your-child&catid=113:children-bill-2010&Itemid=132 , and also some thoughts of Iain McDonald, the gent with the ill-fated job of Data Protection Supervisor to the Manx government, at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=213:children-bill-and-data-protection&catid=113:children-bill-2010&Itemid=132.

Dangerous, deluded, and coming for our kids

I was too busy last week to pose a child protection warning up here, after I noticed something worrrying on the government website about some imbeciles called Northern MAT.
Apparently:
“Established by the Isle of Man Government last year to bring about closer co-operation between agencies working with children and families, the Northern MAT meets in Ramsey once a fortnight.”
And from http://www.gov.im/lib/news/youth/northernmatdraws.xml we also learn that:
“The Northern MAT’s 11 members represent various groups in the north, including social services, police, health, primary and secondary schools, the prison, local authorities and charity/voluntary organisations.”
Oh dear. I think we can guess which ‘charity/voluntary organisations’, and hope we could agree that village idiots capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast are not what we want around children. The fact that, due to that charming Manx mix of incest, racism and superstition, such loons also get first consideration for posts with the government agencies involved doesn’t really help matters either.
Northern MAT’s lynchpin, Tracy Power, helpfully explains that:
‘We aim to provide services and support to people before things go wrong for individual children or families, based around the five outcomes determined by Government that should be attained by all children – staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, prospering and making a positive contribution.’
Yes Tracy, but the last time the Manx government tried to do that two kids in a government care home got murdered due to the negligence of the fundie freaks given the contract to run it. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t exactly whoop with joy now you’re coming after everybody’s kids, not just the ones most obviously damaged by local Christo-fascism.
And this week things got worse when the buffoons at Northern MAT tried to give us advice that watching too much TV is bad for kids.
They posted http://www.gov.im/lib/news/youth/northernmaturges.xml , which has a link to http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/youth//childrenandtv.pdf . Even by the usual standards of the fairy-fanciers and aromatherapists now ‘advising’ on child care this has to be the most cretinous piece of junk science I’ve seen published yet with Manx government funds.
For the record, the last academic attempt to show a link between kids, TV and anti-social behaviour was in the 1970’s and so full of holes that it became a byword for sloppy research. It was discredited entirely when, on top of everything else, it became obvious the evidence was also falsified.
From time to time it still appears, uncredited, in the likes of fundie Christian parental literature. This is because it is the only scrap of ‘research’ such spookchasing throwbacks can muster to pamper their delusions, but to the civilised world it’s on the level of nutters who used to tell us that playing heavy metal records backward revealed secret messages from Satan.
Knowing that Manx government departments are still using bilge like this to formulate policy means all reasonably serious parents need to be further on their guard.
Manx child protection services have always been a haven for idiots, superstitious halfwits and the generally deluded. On the evidence of this........(holds head in hands and groans).........
I know it's harmless, I know I shouldn't give it a second thought, but somehow the antics of these chapel-going simpletons just get to me!

Christmas matters

Ah well, new school, new annual ritual.
Christmas is coming, so the light of my life came home with a note asking us if we want to attend the afternoon or evening performance of the carol concert, as space is limited. Fair enough, though as our daughter can’t negotiate major roads full of Chelsea tractors driven by slobs who never walk more than 100 metres, we have to deliver her to and pick her up from both anyway.
And as the last school’s head teacher always ‘forgot’ to tell parents when a vicar was involved, we thought we’d get ahead of the game this time and ask, which we did yesterday.
So, is it a Christmas concert or a religious ceremony?
Not a hard question, we thought, even for an employee of the Manx Education Department. If it’s a selection of seasonal songs, some of which happen to be traditional carols in obscure language nobody understands any more than references to incest in folk songs, it’s a Christmas concert. If some herbert with his collar on backwards mutters incantations at the audience it’s a religious ceremony.
But apparently no-one at the school knows the difference, as a one minute silence to my wife’s phoned question, followed by some vague comment about it being a shame for her to miss the fun, doesn’t constitute an answer in our book.
So we have one of our own. The wife will turn up to the afternoon session and walk the nipper home afterwards. If there’s a clergyman there, we won’t bother rushing or delaying tea when I get home, as our daughter won’t be going to the evening session.
Because the inclusion of a godbothering parasite in the show makes it an act of worship, not a school concert. And I no more want my child present at those than I do at a BNP rally, the local Rotary Club or a crack-dealers convention.
No doubt some religious rentagob will see this as a PC ‘anti-Christmas’ thing, especially as their sad whinges about such issues are now the only Christmas comment they can even persuade tabloids to print.
But it won't wash, because my family’s Christmas is the nearest thing you’ll see to the Hollywood original on this island. And as far as I’m concerned the deluded herds can dance backwards round a standing stone, naked, burn their lowest tithe-payer at the stake…whatever, and I care not a fig. Just as long as they do it in their own time, and at their own expense.
What they CANNOT do is abuse my child, on the rates, on public property, and at a time of night when she could be doing something useful, educational or just fun instead.
UPDATE
And as if to prove my point, Bill Henderson, who lacks political responsibility for North Douglas and can be guaranteed to jump on any bandwagon going - especially when race is involved - wants to know if 'PC' values are ruining traditional Christmases. He's so worried he's going to ask a question in the Keys next Tuesday. Hear him rant pointlessly on Radio Cowshed at http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=40687 .
Ho-hum, another grandstanding bigot living off public money who needs to get a life.
School nativity plays....kids up chimneys....what's to miss?
It's all child abuse.

Write off

I’ve been involved in other things for a few days so missed the row Philip Pullman has kicked off over writers needing police checks to go into schools (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/10/authors-vet-school-visits). So when, while driving home, I heard him stoke it up on the radio today (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8153251.stm) I almost crashed the car laughing.
The thing is, while I can’t speak to the situation in UK schools, I do know how badly such checks fail in Manx schools, and also have a fair idea why.
Take a child evangelist posing as an ‘author’ who’s been reading his work in some of them, for example.
Over a decade ago a clergyman (and close friend of this so-called author) was witnessed behaving inappropriately towards a young, non-English speaking girl at a charity event in a Manx school and his behaviour reported to police. An interpreter offered her services to help, but the police and the charity involved were strangely unconcerned and the girl was unable to tell her story locally. In fact, very quickly afterwards she and other potential victims of the scuzzbag were rushed off-island and home.
Nothing, so I was assured at the time, to do with the personal friendship of a senior police officer with the perpetrator of the attack, or other links between the Department of Home Affairs and the charity. They were just trying to prevent a ‘misunderstanding’ brewing up into a major incident which might hurt the island or the ‘well-meaning’ clergyman.
A year later the clerical kiddie fiddler was successfully prosecuted anyway for an unrelated offence, despite intimidation of witnesses by evangelical thugs which meant other rumoured incidents never got to court. One curious thing is that a vulnerable relative of his was amongst those ‘persuaded’ not to give testimony, and that at the time she was trying to gain employment with an evangelical outfit which, then and now, sends unwanted missionaries into Manx schools. Even more of a coincidence, that outfit was then being run locally by the guy now pimping his Jesus stories to tiny kids.
I should say the author doesn’t seem to share his fellow godbotherer’s interest in abusing kids – at least not sexually. Still, it does suggest that our kids might be in more danger from the hypocrites responsible for such checks than from decent writers who just want to awaken an interest in literature.

Homelessness whitewash

I was frustrated this week to read the report of the AGM for one of two Manx government misrun homelessness pseudo-charities (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Govt-offers-homeless-charity-new.5272498.jp).
I was on the steering committee that set up Kemmyrk around two years ago. I was so involved I even named the charity (‘Kemmyrk’ is Manx Gaelic for ‘Shelter’), so my sorrow is well informed.
I am saddened because I know how much public good will there was to solve the problems and how it has been utterly betrayed, mostly by government staff on six figure salaries who are, in effect, employed only to come up with bogus solutions while avoiding government expenditure or effort to eliminate absolutely solveable and particularly Manx problems. I am also saddened because I know the few genuine good guys involved in Kemmyrk, and therefore that they mean well but are fighting with their hands tied behind their backs.
Right from the start it was obvious Social Services and local evangelicals were pulling the strings. Suggestions and comments we made at the steering committee meetings never even made it to the next meeting, and at each new meeting we arrived to an agenda set elsewhere.
People who didn’t attend the meetings mysteriously became officials, and an agreement by steering committee members not to stand for membership of the official charity committee was forgotten on election night, when evangelicals none of us had met appeared out of the blue with a crowd of supporters and got elected.
Then there’s the laughable comment in the story that: “Information and statistics on homelessness can be difficult to obtain because the problem is often hidden”, and further that: “A homelessness database was established in May 2008 and all agencies likely to come into contact with the homeless were asked to put details on this anonymous database. The statistics will be collated and analysed at the end of the 12-month period.”
That is utter tosh, and whoever at Social Services supplied the story to IOM Newspapers to reprint verbatim knows that.
I and one other steering committee member, along with Fiona Robinson, attended the meeting of government agencies at which the database details were to be thrashed out. A two page questionnaire provided by Shelter was offered as an ideal template . The public sector time wasters who could be bothered to turn up and claim overtime disliked that so much they reduced it to a ‘manageable’ 14 questionnaire, then took it away and further reduced it to 10 questions.
Curiously, most of these were directly or indirectly about racial origin. Even curiouser, none of the questions left would produce evidence of the major problems which cause Manx homelessness, such as the racism, sexism and homophobia of evangelical Christians and relevant public sector staff (some are notoriously both), their unavailability for advice or help at key crisis points, slum landlords and in particular properties run by front companies for local politicians, the absurd qualifying rules for local government housing which mean, in effect, you can only join the long lists after 10 years island residence and 5 years continual residence in one town, and so on, and so on.
Then there is: 'A multi-agency housing option programme will include input from health professionals, guidance on housing issues, benefits and finance, assistance in funding and job careers advice and training in basic maths, English, IT, social and life skills, designed to improve opportunities for funding and sustaining accommodation.'
Actually that already exists – twice!
It exists once as a program at David Gray House, the local bail hostel run by the Salvation Army. As the chairman and secretary of Kemmyrk are, coincidentally, the local Salvation Army officer and the manager of David Gray House you would think they had noticed.
It exists again as a service run between the probation service and the prison and based at the Department of Home Affairs. That is also run in conjunction with David Gray House, and the relief family liaison officer at the prison is one of the key figures at Graih, the other government run homelessness pseudo-charity.
Finally there is the worrying news that: “To try and reduce the number of young people leaving home, Kemmyrk is working with St Christopher's UK and the Department of Education on a peer education scheme.”
For the benefit of off-island readers, St Christophers UK got the contract to run secure accommodation for Manx kids after the previous service provider, also faith-led, lost it because of a double murder at a kids home. They put in by far the lowest bid and it shows. The local youth professionals I talk to, without exception, regard them as worse than useless and warn that it is now a matter of when, not if, another death or serious tragedy happens in a Manx government run care facility for kids.
In short, the Manx government are paying or taking advice from the very people abused kids leave home to avoid in the first place.
In addition, the only database capable of getting to the root of Manx homelessness has been doctored. When it first reports - which will not be to the general public - no evidence of the cause of the problem will be found, because those who know they are to blame have ensured any relevant questions cannot be asked and that evidence gathered.

Watch out, watch out, there's a cult about

I had to smile at the idea that a local school is tackling phone pests who pick on kids. Or rather, given that the Education Department has had complaints about an evangelical halfwit pestering kids with text messages there, I am amused that they’re ignoring that but paying someone from a pseudo-charity to help kids deal with a threat which, by their own admission, does not even exist in the school. Look at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/south-news/Turning-tables-on-cyber-bullies.5263487.jp and you might see what I mean.
Remember, this is the school which not only let a ‘youth pastor’ troll for victims, but where one of the staff must have passed confidential details about a girl who refused his advances. How, otherwise, did he get her confidential cell phone number and text her at home?
Amazingly, though at least one complaint (possibly several) was made by parents and guardians of pupils affected I hear he is not only still pestering but has opened a branch in a Douglas high school too. Thankfully, talk is rife amongst parents of that school’s first year intake, and even those due to start in September, about ‘some Moonie cult’ running a bible club there.
One quite decent, religiously inclined, parent summed up his dilemma to me the other day. He hasn’t forced his views on his children, but thinks it OK that adolescents ‘explore their spirituality’ at school as they explore everything else – with a bit of responsible adult guidance. Only they cannot get that.
Teachers don’t get involved in lunchtime or after-school clubs any more unless there’s a career advantage. And kids can’t even leave school premises or go home before working parents get there, because of police clampdowns led by panic stories about teenagers wandering the streets at lunch, or misguided safety nazis who think they’ll smoke crack or burn the house down. Then, smelling fresh victims and public money, in come the evangelicals to run extra-curricular ‘activities’.
Having seen these freaks in action when he collects his kids, my fellow parent, like others I’ve spoken to recently, says he is not about to lose them to a deranged cult which operates with Education Department approval, and possibly even public funding. If it means breaking the law or tangling with interfering ‘child protection agencies’ so be it. We at least expect our kids to be safe in school, and we don’t see some Education Department staff protecting them while they attend the same churches as those our kids are most in danger from.

Pest Control

My good mate Roy, who also worries about his kids being abused in the classroom by totally inappropriate adults, suggests we go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpuYoK6wv_Y.
The answer to every concerned parent's dreams, I'd say.
So only one question left.
Why isn't this available in Tesco yet?