I may have to take back that hope about Britain

When I posted about that nursery school, the Panday pointed me to this absolutely horrific article.

This autumn is likely to see an extension of parenting orders that can force parents to attend parenting classes so that they can be used on the say so of local councils against parents.

For the first time, parenting orders are likely to be directed against parents whose children have committed no criminal offence.

The threat of action against parents who fail to sing nursery rhymes was unveiled by Mrs Hughes as she gave the first details of Mr Blair's 'national parenting academy', a body that will train teachers, psychologists and social workers to intervene in the lives of families and become the 'parenting workforce'.

Not enough?

The call for state intervention in the minute details of family life followed a series of Labour efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve educational standards by imposing rigorous controls on the lives of the youngest children.

Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.

Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth.

Tony Blair has backed the idea of 'fasbos' - efforts to identify and correct the lives of children who are likely to fail even before they are born - and new laws to compel parents to attend parenting classes are on the way.

The polite response delivered:
Critics of Government family policies condemned the 'nursery rhyme' intervention plan as intrusive and arrogant yesterday.

Jill Kirby of the centre right think tank Centre for Policy Studies said: 'This is the micro-management of family life.

'They have told us the books that our children should read and how to brush their teeth. Now they tell us what we should sing to them.

'This is what happens when a government has failed to do anything at all about the real problems of family breakdown, fatherless families and neglect of children. It is setting about wasting its time and our money.'

The proper response would be more on the line of "You socialist bastards have screwed things up enough. We're getting the pitchforks, tar, feathers and rails."

Or just shooting them. 'down to how they brush their teeth'? Good God.