The United Kingdom, already one of the most heavily surveilled states on earth, has decided that spying on its citizens with street cameras, shop cameras, cell-phone software, GPS tracking, email snooping, financial audits, welfare agency monitoring, and neighborhood snitches is simply not enough.
It wants to poke its nose into family life.
As usual, the pretext is a humanitarian one – the protection of children from abuse at home.
But child protection laws already punish physical/sexual violence and neglect of any kind severely.
So what’s left?
Now, parents face jail-time for convictions for emotional abuse, which can be anything from fighting in front of their children, blaming their children, being cold to them, or not paying enough attention to them.
Emotional abuse is real. And it is damaging.
But it’s also dynamic, complex and definitely not something a government official should meddle in.
Imagine the thousands of decent, loving families that are going to be ripped apart and destroyed by this malign law, as The Independent rightly points out:
“These days, parents who smoke or drink alcohol in front of children risk being characterised as child-abusers. Opponents of the tradition of male circumcision condemn Jewish and Muslim parents as abusers of children. Health activists denounce parents of overweight children for the same offence. Mothers and fathers who educate their children to embrace the family’s religion have been characterised as child abusers by anti-faith campaigners.”
Educating people about family interaction is one thing.
But there’s already plenty of that going on.
What this law does is empower yet another empire-building department to pile up parental scalps in its quest for budgets, clout, and public profile.
Meanwhile, kids who tattle on their parents are losers too. They face the trauma of losing their parents to jail; losing their family life to endless days in court; and losing their own selves to a web of foster homes and government offices.
This isn’t a Cinderella law.
It’s a Cruel Step-mother (government) Law.
“Changes to the child neglect laws will make “emotional cruelty” a crime for the first time, alongside physical or sexual abuse.
The Government will introduce the change in the Queen’s Speech in early June to enforce the protection of children’s emotional, social and behavioural well-being.
Parents found guilty under the law change could face up to 10 years in prison, the maximum term in child neglect cases.
The change will update existing laws in England and Wales which only allow an adult responsible for a child to be prosecuted if they have deliberately assaulted, abandoned or exposed a child to suffering or injury to their health.”
Once again, this is not about protecting children.
It is about giving the government the tools to intervene on behalf of the “politically correct” agenda, which is the mask under which censorship of potentially disruptive political speech takes place.
It’s not about protecting a child who has sexual identity (or other) problems from harassment and cruelty.
Laws against physical abuse already do that.
It’s about using the accusation of “bigot,” “homophobe,” or “sexist” to jail human beings who are otherwise law-abiding citizens.
It takes no great imagination to see how universal surveillance plays into this.
Surveillance allows the government to surreptitiously target the people it wants to harass through analysis of their online activity, cell phone conversations, purchases, and social networks.
The guidelines for what constitutes a public threat have already been drawn up.
Provocateurs, agents, and civilian snitches, embedded in schools and welfare agencies, will then monitor the child of the targeted person for investigation, coercive interviews, and direct threats. Few children can stand up to such tactics.
Whatever they admit under pressure then becomes the platform for a full-scale intervention into the targeted family. Then follows jail-time, shrink sessions, and re-education camp for the unlucky parent/s, whose entire private life now becomes public criminal record.
Criminalizing ordinary behavior and intimidating law-abiding citizens with an amorphous and expansive law is as good a way as any of politically gelding a large chunk of the population, hitherto beyond the reach of the criminal justice system.