We Are a Nation Confused - Boot Camps and Child Protection

Have your say on the BBC website today postulates the question should the young unemployed go to 'boot camp?'. Not literally of course but for "re-training". I am singularly unimpressed with any of the replies so far but it does tie in nicely with some reading I was doing yesterday about an organisation called the The Manifesto Club.

A number of luminaries make up this organisation (Frank Furedi being one), and a quick scan through the website reveals a quite interesting selection of ideas all of which have a distinctly humanist flavour.

The Have Your Say piece is saying that if the Tories get in, the unemployed under 21's are likely to be forced into some sort of training plan if they cannot get work.

Sounds like a neat little package and may be ok for those 19 and over but is highly unlikely to help those below that age. The child protection industry has seen to that with their latest vetting regulations endorsed fully of course by the labour quizzlings.

The Manifesto Club point out quite correctly the dangers of such vetting. especially when it goes beyond sense and seriousness

Under the new vetting regime a charge of £65 or thereabouts will be made for the necessary checks and balances to stop the ever present "vile perverts" from getting their grubby hands on the nations children and/or vulnerable people.

So far so "have to agree if not to be labelled a pervert yourself".

What the general public seem blissfully unaware about in regards to vetting is the sheer size of the net that is about to be cast over the UK. In essence, any business, organisation, charity or educational establishment that has people 18 and under will have to vet all staff in the organisation. So an employer with 35 employees at one site will have to vet all 35 people if 17 year old johnny is given a job there.

The cost, approximately £2275, no small amount to any business.

The cost to society, enormous and climbing. This is the end of work experience, jobs at weekends for younger people and any chance of 16 year olds getting an apprenticeship at a given firm. Imagine the cost for a large department store with 350 employees.

Then we have the distrust this harbours and the damage to relationships that are intergenerational. Who can young people now trust?

Another knock on effect will be the outing of those with a criminal record who did not tell their employer. They will simply have to resign, adding to the ever burgeoning underclass of the criminalised. To not tell ones employer is an offence, it shouldn't be I suspect and there are those who would say that this is a bad law that deserves to be broken. Personally I would like to see it taken to the court of human rights as a violation of privacy. Until then, the principle of you have done the time and should now be allowed to get on with your life is a dead one.

This is a desperately sad situation, compounded by the continual bleating of a child protection industry that wants to extend vetting to the entire country. How will Cameron's plans help 16-18 year olds if the financial cost is to great or organisations simply say, and it would be sensible to do so in my mind, "we will not have under 18's on the premises."

I read somewhere that Cambridge University has already done that. In my work we have a strict policy of not working with under 18's or vulnerable people, under any circumstances whatsoever and have turned down contracts because of this. With the current climate no one in their right mind would spend any time alone with anyone under 18 or vulnerable. The risk is far to great.

I should say (imagine the e-mails if i didn't?) no one wants dangerous people working with kids or vulnerable people, but the vetting is so broad it is unable to distinguish between gradients of offending and as such is virtually useless. And in the particular case of sex offences, there are so many false allegations and miscarriages that the government and the child abuse industry fails to recognise that the innocent are being penalised along with the guilty.

The answer to ending all this nonsense is easy. Unfortunately there is not one person in power with the guts or the gumption to stick their political noggin above the parapet and announce the reclassifying of the age of adulthood to 16. In one foul swoop we can alleviate the cost on businesses, open up the gates of universities to talented youngsters and send the message that at 16 you are expected to make your own decisions, live with them and learn to interact in an adult world.

Providing they are not breaking the law, what and where a 16 year old person decides to be is nobodies business but their own. It's time to stop infantilising an entire generation at the pyre of abuse, just simply because we are scared of our own shadows.

Young people must be able to experiment, learn and interact with all types of people, but most of all they must be able to fail in their own right and then learn how to pick themselves up without the clammy hand of child protection clamped firmly around their necks.

I can see the usual suspects lining up to say "but the young people welcome the protection" and I have no doubt many do, who wouldn't? It allows them to shirk responsibility, blame others for their own mistakes and treat the older generations with the disdain and disrespect that being so protected and "iron clad" as the law now allows.

I am sure many of them would like an ounce of dope if you gave it to em, doesn't mean its a good thing does it, likewise this overprotection is not a good thing either.

In essence at one end we have Mr Brown, the NSPCC et al wrapping cotton wool round responsible 16 year old men and at the other Cameron and his Tory cronies promising that if they get in, we will send you away for re-education because you are obviously incapable of sorting yourself out.

Two polar opposites to me, and a disaster for young people either way.


Obviously we are a nation confused.

For more in formation on The Manifesto Club and vetting click here.