Supernannies in the Nanny state

The Prime Minister has announced today that £4million is to be spent on the provision of 'Supernannies' to be located in the worst areas for juvenile misbehaviour in England. The idea is that, first of all on a voluntary basis, these child psychologists will assist hapless and hopeless parents in the task of bringing up their children.



The United Kingdom has already been labeled, by the Institute for Public Policy Research, as the worst country in Europe for juvenile misbehaviour - not necessarily serious crime, but 12 year olds drinking in the street, wrecking fencing, damaging cars and so on.

The Government has intimated that at first the scheme will be voluntary but that if bad anti social behaviour continues then parents may be compelled to attend parenting courses.

I have to admit this is an area that makes me see red and I have every sympathy with the Prime Minister's intentions though I don't know if compulsion will work.

I try hard to be so liberal in most of my social attitudes but then I see the behaviour of many kids, even in my own reasonably affluent area, and I find myself shamefully thinking that maybe compulsory sterilisation for some young men and women would be money better spent. The product on Britain's streets today is obviously not an overnight phenomenon. It's the product of a successive generational decline in the degree of responsibility parents have accepted for raising their children, the parents themselves being products of irresponsible parenting and so the vicious spiral has just become worse and worse.

I know its not the done thing to say but we have Europe's biggest problem in single mothers matched by our singular success in having the highest rate of below legal age pregnancies too. We are told that it's 'bad form' to condemn the changing sexual attitudes and that nobody should suggest that being a single mom is a stigma. Well I don't want anyone to be stigmatised but I would like to see some emphasis being placed on a return to the conceiving of children within a stable, preferably marital, relationship.

We have practised and indulged the liberal creed of 'anything goes' to the point where, in many areas, there is no sense of responsibility about sexual coupling, or taking precautions, or what happens as a result because pregnancy is a way of jumping up the housing queue for the estate girls who just want to get away from home. What happens to the progeny is an afterthought. It doesn't matter, the state will clear up the mess, pay the benefits - ignoring the fact that unwanted little Johnny probably grows into mean minded and vindictive little Hoodie because his stupid parents have no time for him and little ability to cope with their own lives let alone his.

The consequence of course is the ASBO generation we have now (for non Britons an ASBO is an Anti Social Behaviour Order designed to curfew troublesome children) and the fact that they revel in being so 'honoured'. Its a mark of toughness to get an ASBO.




Now we have the latest state designed attempt to get our society back on the straight and narrow - the Supernanny who will show all these parents how to do their job. I admire Mr Blair for trying but I wonder if its just a gesture like the little Dutch boy trying to block the leaks in the dike - just a sad, flailing gesture when what is needed is a whole shake up of our attitudes towards sex and parenting. We should be handing out some stick with all the welfare carrots and compelling some of these morons who think having kids is 'just a laff' to face up to their responsibilities right from the off.

I don't know why this issue makes me so angry. Maybe it's because I was not brought up in riches and neither were my neighbours' children but we never went off the rails like this. If we did we got a good hiding and I know thats an AWFUL thing to say to todays liberals who, in my opinion, are partly to blame for the crisis we now have among our youth. If kids have no discipline in their lives they have no focus -and that has been the problem for at least the last two generations.

I watched the news broadcasts of 17 year old Sandra in Bristol with her out of control 3 year old and I could have thrown something at the set! These people are just so irresponsible and so patently unfit to be parents that you really fear for the future.

Maybe we need to forcibly take these kids away from their totally inadequate parents and bring them up in state homes like they do in China. OK OK I have gone completely over the top - but when one sees some of the people who are responsible for the next British generation, one is driven to extremes of authoritarian fantasy!!