The sheer horror I felt at reading this news article surprised me. Yet half way through it I could literally feel my skin crawling and scalp tightening in revulsion. There have been few real life things which have filled me with revulsion as visceral as this “nice” article.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/115736/Sin-bins-for-worst-families
It seems harmless enough, another initiative to “save the chiiiildren”, but its state control overtures must be resisted by all right thinking people, whatever their political leanings.
SIN BINS FOR WORST FAMILIES
The last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions...
More below the fold
The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.
So a bunch of people will be “supervising” others to see they behave? Just out of interest are these people given the same right to privacy as others? Will the cameras check their undies are clean, their arses wiped properly? Will underground tapes surface “Best of 15 year old Tina giving it up to the boys at 21 Cromwell place”?
They arent meant to be instruction books you know..
They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.
Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.
All sounds so nice doesn’t it? Sort of like a big benign supernanny here to help with the kids… What I haven’t seen is what happens if someone doesn’t comply, if the kids are unruly, or someone comes home drunk/drug affected…
Also how can the cameras detect drug use unless they are in every room in the house, again bootleg tapes of “12 year old little Sallys toilet fun” spring to mind.
Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.
Brilliant, I had thought for a brief shining moment that this madness was just a proposal, instead its an expansion of an existing totalitarian scheme
A street named in Orwells honour in Barcelona, with spycams....
But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000 – a potential total bill of £400million.
Being government does anyone really think this amount is anything approaching the real monetary cost of this scheme? Not to mention the evilness of 24 hr a day surveillance on people whom, apparently, haven’t committed a crime bad enough for incarceration?
Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless.
Hint: Shameless is a TV show which takes the worst stereotypes and writes them large. I know the difference between fantasy and reality are difficult to grasp when your a polly but still..
Chavscum, not really worth losing your liberty over.
Sin bin projects operate in half of council areas already but Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund them.
I know why not round them up and concentrate them in old camping areas…if only we could think of a catchy name for these areas…. maybe some fences on the outside, and some guards to keep order…
He said: “This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support.”
“Tough and non negotiable support….” Orwell is vomiting at your weasel words you sickening puke. Compulsion isn’t the same as support. I dislike scalies and scum as much as the next person, but forcing non-criminals to undertake government improvement is evil in concept, nature and reality.
But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: “This is all much too little, much too late.
So much for hoping the Tories would see this as a evil idea, no for them the problem is the evil isn’t satanic enough…
Mr Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt lessons.
I think they were called the STASI in old East Germany, feel free to pick your own name for your “citizen informers”.
Pupils and their families will have to sign behaviour contracts known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, which will set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework.
Or what exactly? The whole newspaper article reports this as though its a self evident good. Its not, its wrong, and it treats citizens as no better than convicted criminals in their own homes.
I think Ill finish with a few Orwell quotes, he seems the most appropriate really.
In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
George Orwell
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
George Orwell
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
George Orwell
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
George Orwell
Big Brother is watching you.
George Orwell
Welcome to England
The Tizona Group 
August 3, 2009, 10:25 pm at 10:25 pm
That’s really, really fucked.
Instead of wasting more money on trying to sort these bludgers out, why not just cut off their welfare benefits, turf them out of their government housing and tell them to get a haircut, get a suit, get a job and get on with life?
August 4, 2009, 11:22 pm at 11:22 pm
Well, Boy, apart from being logical and obviously the most beneficial in the long run, that would also remove the bludgers off the public teat and out of (putative) reach of teh authorities.
An example of this sort of busybodying is with centrelink here. I have to go in for an interview for an “Employment Pathway Plan”. This is where I sit down with them and we work out how I’m going to get employed.
Of course, I’m permanently employed, and have been for the last 2 years. They know this, as I had a meeting with them back in Feb and gave them copies of several months’ worth of payslips and my employment contract.
Each fortnight I fill in my earnings and submit it to centrelink’s perusal and approval, and every few months they want hard copies of my pay dockets.
When I phoned them up to ask about this Employment Pathway Plan, I had to give them my reference number, my full name, address, date of birth, phone number, daughter’s date of birth and her name.
I also volunteered that I was wearing green socks with multi-coloured spots. (True). The woman on the other end wasn’t impressed with that and informed me that they ask all of those questions for my own good.
Never mind that any of my friends could answer those questions apart from the reference number.
No matter, I still have to go in for the meeting.
So now, I’m going in to make a plan to get me fully employed that is going to consist of me going into an office with copies of my employment contract, rental agreement and payslips, copies of which are already in their possession from 6 months ago.
But it’s for my own good, you see.
Not sure how that is.
Reckon that stuff won’t happen here?
August 5, 2009, 2:47 am at 2:47 am
Do what you have to but do whatever you can to cut ’em loose, mate.
August 5, 2009, 2:59 am at 2:59 am
I’m probably going on too much, just like this time last night.
There was this old Billy Connelly skit, aired years ago. And loosely quoted, he said, in reference to the government, “let go of the rope, then you’re free”.
He was talking about how government offers you a rope to hang onto (dare I say a noose?) and how people desperately hold/hang onto that, thinking that if they let go, they’ll fall, fall into an abyss.
But that isn’t the case. You won’t fall. That’s just what they want you to think. Instead, you’ll be free.
By nature, governments will hold people in bondage. By their nature, they need to control.
Well, there’s also the concept of self control.
August 4, 2009, 2:27 am at 2:27 am
It’s so totally fucked.
Just look after your family, Mole.
It’ll get worse before it gets better.
August 4, 2009, 4:37 am at 4:37 am
Tar/Feathers… or, alternately, rope.
August 7, 2009, 1:33 pm at 1:33 pm
Public cameras recording public activity is the same as outsiders spying on you in your home. Right, and government run health care is a good thing.
There is no expectation of privacy in a public place.