Monday 20 March 2006

DBP wants to tag your kids

Speaking of absurdities (as I was in the post below this one), the Dom's front page had a doozy this morning:
The Government is examining a proposal to have children tagged and numbered in a central database to stem abuse and failure at school.

Personal details of every New Zealand child, including welfare and health concerns, would be entered into the database, to be shared by schools, social agencies and health authorities... Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, who travelled to Britain last year to study the programme, welcomed the move to consider her proposal. "It's not just about kids who are falling through the gaps, though obviously they will be a key concern and a major beneficiary, but it's about every child and making sure they are doing better."
Frankly, I don't want the Government "making sure children do better." The standards by which I and parents and bureaucrats judge "better" are not the same, and I for one am firmly opposed to the state imposing their own standards on children and their parents, for which this is simply a pre-cursor. To say that all children need to be numbered because some children have been beaten by their parents is not just disingenuous, it's downright insulting to the vast majority of New Zealand parents.

As if to concretise the problem with the proposal, David Benson-Dope declares as Minister in charge of floating the proposal: "I am interested in ensuring that ... that our monitoring of young people is as coordinated as possible." Frankly, I'm interested in ensuring that the state's "monitoring" of families and their children is as non-existent as possible, and if it does exist that it's as un-coordinated as possible.

Cindy Kiro, meddler-in-charge of this particular trial balloon, was kind enough to opine airily that," though there were legitimate concerns about privacy, these could be overcome." It would seem to me that this is a failry fundamental concern, and given that lack of privacy is inherent in any such monitoring programme, one "overcome" only by opposition to its introduction.

Those who do still advocate a state-supplied safety net might wish to reflect however that this kind of programme is the inevitable flip-side of cradle-to-grave welfare... Microchips in your children in ten years time? With no opposition to proposals such as these, don't bet against it.

LINKS: Plan to give kids ID numbers - Dominion-Post

TAGS: Politics-NZ, Bureaucracy

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

By 'tagging' children did DBP mean spraying them with fluorescent paint, putting plastic tags through their ears, or chipping them as his govt wants to do to the nations dogs (in which case, will Helen Clark be chipped as well?)

This whole business brings to mind the quote from that 1960s TV series The Prisoner that PC has used on occasion - "I will not be numbered, processed, tagged, chipped, etc."

Libertyscott said...

and the sheeple aren't outraged I gather? Strip searching convicted child murderers in prison breaches their rights, but hey tracking and monitoring everyone's kids is ok for their "safety".

I'm ready to chip in for Kiro to move to Belarus where her ideas are consistent with state philosophy.

Oswald Bastable said...

A simple number tattooed on the arm should suffice...

Anonymous said...

Indeed, Oswald. The old ones are the best.

Cindy Kiro is a statist monster. A dyed-in-the-wool socialist who's been brainwashed to the max.

Anonymous said...

Notice how conservatives have picked this up, and used it to trumpet the stability of marriage as an antidote to at-risk children. Not just here, but in the US. Take this from World Net:

Liberals often pretend that divorce is a minor surgical procedure. It is not. Abortion of marriage is often a very serious and messy procedure. When one is faced with complete loss of life savings and children in the combative and expensive divorce system, serious conflict can be easily predicted.

If we would not stop forest fires by dumping gasoline on them, we must not pretend we can reduce violence by destroying families as a matter of presumed public policy.


So divorce is 'abortion of marriage' now. I'm starting to think women are doomed.

Anonymous said...

I heard the plan was to insert the microchips into tennis balls and the tennis balls into the childrens' mouths...

Anonymous said...

But the stability of the family unit *is* an antidote to at-risk children, Ruth. Jeez, it ain't rocket science!

But surely the point is that both left *and* right play games with people's lives - because both seek to control in their own insidious ways.

Women (collectively) are 'doomed'? Bollocks. I'm certainly not. But give either the left or the right the green light and I fear for us all.

Male and female.

Libertyscott said...

Well stability of a *good* family unit is an antidote to at-risk children, though not guaranteed. The big mistake of conservatives and some socialists is thinking that always keeping families together is preferable - usually it is, sometimes it is not. There is nothing healthy about making children live with a couple who loathe each other.

Anonymous said...

Scott: 'nothing healthy about making children live with a couple who loathe each other'.

Oh, for sure. No argument. I was stressing the 'stable' family unit; a family unit where Mum & Dad detest each other is not stable, IMO. Far from it.

I was pointing toward the couples with kids who break up because one doesn't like the way the other makes the toast.

I remember a young woman in California telling me that she and her boyfriend were getting married .. from memory they were seniors in High School .. 'and if it doesn't work out we'll just get divorced'. (Much like removing your earrings if your lobes get infected, eh!)

She couldn't wait to start a family, and I asked how she could be so cavalier about the impact upon any kids if she could be so flippant about the possibility of leaving Dad.

She looked at me as if I had two heads. Which I probably did.

Oy vey.

An interesting aside:

General Western stats on divorce, from a US psychologist specialising in relationship counselling (who's name escapes me right now):

Approx:
50% of first-time marriages
60% of second-time marriages
75% of third-time+ marriages

Now ~there's~ a topic for discussion! Financial, social, personal & mental ramifications ...