Let's start a mass campaign of disobedience

Neater and Neater

I've been disobediently civil for years, but no one noticed.

Peter from Maidstone

It requires the people of Watford to come out onto the streets en masse with their children and invade their own parks with their own children.

Celina

Ridiculous, we have become a nation of disrespected sheep being told what to do, filmed, penned, and fleeced for our troubles.
I don't think you need to call for civil disobedience, it looks like its knocking on the door at any moment. People are furious.

Bill Kristol-Balls

Refuse to pay your council tax until every single local government official has had their computer hard drives and credit card statements checked so that taxpayers can be sure they are not indirectly funding any illegal or immoral activity.

The definition of morality to be whatever the person checking feels like on that particular day.

Cyclefree

Well, the obvious thing to do - though thoroughly nasty - would be to make an accusation against the "play ranger". That way they would be barred from supervising anything and the accusation would remain on their record forever under the ISA rules so they would never get any sort of a job again. But as I say it would be utterly spiteful and wrong but no more than they deserve.

On a more serious note, I am quite sure that what Watford is proposing is illegal. So someone should sue them or find the half-witted councillors who voted this through and make accusations against them then vote against them.

Bill Rees

Rod, it's hard to know what the answer is, but every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton used to say.
The other day I discovered how some kids are going to use this PC mindset to their possible advantage.
I was driving at dusk in a suburban street when I turned a corner into a minor road and saw three kids. One of them was lying on the edge of the road, and the other two, when they saw me, motioned for me to stop the car and said their mate had had an accident.
They asked me to have a look at him and to call an ambulance. Looking at him, although he was lying still I decided he didn't look as though he'd had an accident, while the other two were encouraging me to touch him.
I decided it was a set up, and said to the kids that they were playing a dangerous game. I got back into the car and drove off. Looking in my mirror I saw the kid who had been lying in the road get up and laugh with his mates.
At one time I would have gone back and told them off for behaving stupidly, and perhaps even maliciously.
But now?
I don't really know what their game was, but the idea that we are all now scared of our kids was a thought that I went home with.
The atmosphere being created in this country is, frankly, horrible.

John F.

Stop Paying Taxes,income tax, council tax, TV licence etc,,,
If a million quit paying these taxes, what can they do,, how can they arrest 1 million people, take them to court, jail them.
Same if millions take to the streets, riot, terrorise the local and central governments, what can the police, army etc do about it,, shoot millions,, they would run out of bullets.

On this the anniversary of the berlin wall coming down, people power pulled it and the rest of the socialist scum governments of the old eastern Bloc down.

Frank P

Yes: we should all stand outside our municipal HQ's with banner's inscribed, "What about Neather's fucking allegations!"

(Bad ploy Pete! - "Now children, go over and play with Rod, you really mustn't keep stamping your feet and complaining about Narky Neather's faux pas to Mr Nelson. He's really upset."

Artwell

Rod,

I reckon we should decide on a day and then subject the Council Chief Executive. The Leader of the Council and as many councillors as we can target with a day and night long telephone canvassing campaign.

If sufficient numbers can be organised we can give these people a day and night to remember.

OR.

Everyone turn up with their children/grandchildren/next doors kids etc with as many of your friends and completely pack the park with placards. JUSTICE FOR PARENTS. OUT WITH THE FACIST COUNCIL.

Then invite the Leader of the Council and the idiot that devised this madcap scheme to come and address all the people. Democracy at work. Because we would chase them our of the park!
a peaceful protest, of course!

Frank P

Oh my other solution is to get a posse together, round up all the apparatchiks from Town Hall and feed them through one of the Green Waste crushers at the local recycling centre. Is that disobedient enough?

And of course, leave a poster on the crusher marked "This was for Neather - he's next!"

Nele Schindler

I like it nasty, too, in view of this outrage:

How about going to the Town Hall with your sprog? Find out beforehand who the most deserving a**hole is, then when (s)he comes out of their office, send your kid over with a bag of sweets and a stern instruction to hug the idiot's leg.

Take a camera with you. Make a racket, print, sit back & smile!

Ian Walker

Despite my hatred of all local government wastrels... http://www.watford.gov.uk/ccm/content/strategic-services/home-page-content/statement-about-harwoods-and-harebreaks-adventure-playground.en

Ben Gardiner

I guess the good people of Watford could approach this either of two ways.

They could boycott the parks, then ask why their council tax is being wasted on child supervisors with no-one to supervise.

Or they could take advantage: en masse descend on the parks, informing the "Play Rangers" that "I have a bit of shopping to do, thanks for the free child minding, I'll be back in 4 hours".

Sir Graphus

And the council tax is going up in Watford by how much? Hanging around a playground with kids is the easily most boring part of parenthood. This seems like another damn good reason not to get CRB checked.

Not sure about your masturbation idea; could be a bit of a long shot (I thank you). I think you knocked that one out without thinking too hard. You ought to stop watching Frankie Boyle for a while.

A blanket refusal to sign up for the son-of CRB database would be sensible, though not the amusing one that will win the bubbly; every voluntary activity will ground to a halt. Sad for the kids, but it'll all start up soon enough, when the govt relents.

dcw

Photograph the totalitarian swine, and set up a "hall of shame" for the most unflattering photographs?

Richard Nabavi

Ask for a copy of an up-to-date CRB check from every bureaucrat you come in contact with.

Traffic warden giving you a ticket? Point to the 'baby on board' sticker and demand to see his or her CRB certificate.

Taxman asking for information? Say you can't divulge it because it might include details useful for paedophiles.

VAT inspection for your home-based business? No chance - there might be children in the house, you'll need advance copies of their CRB documents, in triplicate and signed off as certified copies by a senior police officer.

Paul Owen

What about a mass child swap? Parents all over the country start taking each others children to school, nursery etc not because of lack of time but to be bloody minded. If you really want to create official apoplexy then let it be known that this is a reciprocal arrangement and thus a form of payment.

presterjohn

chain yourself to the playground railings. language they might understand

philip walling

Mr Liddle is quite right to be incensed. But there is so much to rebel against it's hard to know where to start. I've tried rebelling in little ways and people tend to side with authority against me because they seem to want to obey rules simply for their own sake.
Might we all refuse to pay our inflated council tax? Tax rebellion is unfeasible because most people pay PAYE. Or the television licence?
Or bombard your local councillor with complaints?
In the end I think we're doomed. Nobody under the age of 50 has an instinct for freedom.

Lupus Lungfish

Watford Council Mayor Dorothy Thornhill reliably informs us "Sadly, in todays climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults".

I think Dotty should sit down and have a long hard look at her statement scribed in black and white. Perhaps whilst sitting at home with a glass of sherry far away from the lunacy of her council colleagues. Maybe then she'll realise she has entered a strange land beyond temporal boundaries- the land of local government.

Adrian

How about every single parent of every single child in Watford decide on a day when they all take their children to Social Services and hand them over in protest? After all, if the parents can't be trusted with their children in public, they certainly can't be trusted in private. So everyone should just descend on Social Services and hand all children into the State and watch the chaos ensue.

dominic lennon

How about a day when those beleagured fans of our Judaeo-Christian and Humanist traditions reclaim the streets and say enough is enough! No more Islamisation, No more political correctness and three cheers for freedom of speech! Failing that, how about a national procession of the relics of Bernard Manning to be accompanied by mass viewings of highlights of the Comedians, Dick Emery and the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club?

Wrinklybutnice

Rod - I think we have a new route to oust this crazed march into the Wilder Fringes of Bonkerdom, and let the world know that Britain has finally succombed to Political Dementia.

My husband - a codger of 68 with an eye for a pretty girl - often shops in Waitrose. Quite often, and always at the weekend, the tills are hosted by very pretty 17 year old female 6th formers. (Really annoying, because if you want to buy a bottle of best Waitrose plonk, you invariably have to hold up the impatient queue behind you, while a supervisor checks that you the purchaser are not younger than 21. Obviously something a 17 year old can't decide.)

It strikes me that if parents can't go to the swing park with their own children without a CRB check, my husband shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a Waitrose till, especially on weekends, without the same. And presumably that goes for all the rest of their customers, even me - a female codger of 60 something.

And I've already been CRB checked - first by my school, and secondly by the voluntary organisation I do talks for in schools. (Because every organisation that allows you out there amongst our children, has to get you checked.)

Come to that, my husband also shops in Tesco and Sainsbury, who also seem to have 17 year old girls working at the tills. That suggests he needs to get more than just one CRB check done and recorded.

Is it just me, or has everybody else come to the conclusion that the Legislators have totally lost the plot (at our expense, as usual)and are in need of sectioning?

I'm thinking of emigrating to North Korea. Has to be easier.

Iceman

Tell you what you should all do. Have a cold shower, listen to some soothing music, imbibe a drop of whisky or whatever. This idea of civil disobedience’s just bonkers to the power of two at least. Masturbating? Good grief, Rod, you’ve had far too many, for you just the shower. The other extreme, stopping paying taxes would truly hurt, but the self-righteous pseudo-liberal loonies would hire lawyers, judges from as far as Zimbabwe, and prosecute 24/7 the 1mn well meaning burghers, who will then have a criminal record, and be unable to have a holiday in Florida.

I was hoping that the financial meltdown will put an end to the army of outreach this and outreach the other, but it seems the No 10 is happy to cut funding for the Armed Forces probably on the basis that those facing the Taleban may lose their lives, and hence the expense’s a waste. Could there be any other reason to deprive of funds those whom we ask to make the ultimate sacrifice, but keep the superfluous play rangers going?

We’re truly stuck, and nothing short of implosion of this mad system inimical to human nature will save us. How the hell did we get here?

Dixon

Dcw has a point. The web is the key.
Anyone can set up a diy web-site in a few minutes ( ive loads of them, so many that I literally cannot remember the actual number or where they are, let alone the passwords or, in some cases, why I even set them up ). It costs absolutely nothing and you get free adverts on the page to all sorts of posh looking stuff like cars and airlines.

On these web-sites it is for all practical purposes possible to say anything you damn well like about anyone as nobody vets it. The "target" may want to complain, but who to? Play your cards right and you cannot be identified ( use a pay as you go wifi "dongle", they cost £30 ) and your websites will be on geographically remote computers owned by subsidiaries of other companies in other countries, themselves represented as in third countries, in a diaspora of responsibility and attribution ending in places like Russia and the Ukraine. No, really, its true, you would have a hell of a job getting one of these sites shut down...just who do you contact? In what jurisdiction?
Then you are ready to do as Dcw suggests. Covertly photograph councillors and jobsworths or just get their piccies out of the papers or off the web. Connect them with their culpability in the scheme of things and then post it all on your web-site. Put a bit of thought into it and your handiwork will show up every time someone googles the persons name.

When they eventually block the site, if ever, you just start another one on another host and post up exactly the same material all over again.

Whilst thats going on, the sites themselves can be publicised by distributing flyers all over your eighbourhood.

If the internet has put the wind-up the Chinese government, it could easily do the same four our little Hitlers.

Colin

No need for mass disobedience.

Just get them to jump through hoops, in the form of a Subject Access Rights notice, under the data protection act 1988. Getting them to provide you with ALL the information they hold on you is both time consuming and costly. Imagine the effect if a large number of us indulged in this sport. It may cost you tenner, but believe me, it's the best value for money you'll ever get from £10.

It works a treat on TFL as well. Especially if, like me, you drive into central London regularly.

The sound of an overworked data protection officer, pleading to be given more time to comply with the law is such sweet melody.

It gets even better when they break the law, by failing to comply with the process.

Wilhelm

''Any suggestions for a mass campaign of disobedience''

I have refused to pay my BBC tax for years, whys that then ? well I'll tell you.

The thought of me paying for screeeching harpy, full of her own self importance,
narcissistic, egotist, Kirsty Squawk of newsnight wages so that she can wear short skirts to the
Caan film festival, makes me want to vomit.

its mutton dressed as lamb, she's a 56 year old woman pretending to be a 18 year old, for Gods sake.

Kirsty Squawks voice is like across between someones fingernails scratching down a
windowpane and a pneumatic drill on full speed drilling into ones skull.

Rod

Have a word in the BBC corridor the next time you see Kirsty and just say '' your passed it luv.''

She'll understand.

Richard

Whilst not a suggestion for civil disobedience people might like to read this essay by Louis Amoss on leaderless resistance.

http://www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm

Richard Holloway

Using Mumsnet/Facebook etc parents from all around Watford need to descend onto a single park on the same day at the same time. Invite the press and march on the park on mass. Invite the policewomen who were told they couldn't look after each others' kids without being checked to lead the march and let the kids run free!

James Murphy

The answer is simple: as a grievously maligned sex, we men - and let's face it, it IS men that the PC brigade are really targeting - must take a leaf our of Euripides playscript 'The Birds" and refuse to have sexual intercourse with any women, be she wife, girl-friend, sister, mother, etc, unless or until these PC fascist, mainly women-run council committees are forced to confess the vile misandry that underpins their entire political philosophy. Men! Bring the PC world to its senses - say 'no' to sex! (I claim my Dom Perignon).

Nele Schindler

God, I really, really want that bottle of champagne ... so here's another one:

Stage a 'Meet your Councillor!' day at the local school / kindergarten. When these muppets turn up, ask them for their CRB check.

Oh, and if they happen to be all white/Asian, make a massive scene because you wanted ethnic diversity.

Same goes for when they're all blokes. That kind of sets a bad example for your kids in terms of gender equality!

And offer them a massively hot vindaloo! If they politely refuse second helpings, accuse them of cultural discrimination.

I can taste the bubbly already ... make it M&C please.

Lungfish

Maybe we could ask A.A.Gill to shoot a few Playrangers - just so he could see what it was like etc etc

HairyNoddy

- Dob in the local council jobsworth/social worker as a welfare cheat/child beater.

- Run over a lollipop lady

- Pull your license plates off your car and park where you feel like.

Tiberius

As most of the tenants are council officials, I'd send a poison pen letter to the town hall, threatening to nick all the vegetables from the allotments next to Vicarage Road Stadium AND threaten to make Graham Taylor Watford's manager again.

John

Rod - I suggest posting turds to to those concerned. In all likelihood it'll do fuck all to help but could be strangely satisfying. Especially given that the postal backlogs would give the little presents time to mature. I'm not a well man.

Champagne please?

Chris W

I would propose that the blogocracy and media should force the launching of a Clegg and Kelly type purge on the troughing and hyper-inflated salaries in local government. let the tumbrils roll through the streets of our market towns!
This has worked well with the parliamentary robbers.
The type of civil protest that you suggest won't come, owing to the fact that we are all knackered from trying too hard to just to stay afloat.

Nele Schindler

I'm a girl who likes her champagne and I shan't give up that easily.

AA Gill? Pull the other one sweetchops.

Let's use that mighty weapon in the fight against Most Everything that is - George Monbiot.

Drop him an innocent note on recycled hemp paper stating that you suspect the guilty (T)Watford councillor to be guilty of war crimes.(Invent a state or indigenous tribe if you have to.)

He will no doubt drop everything, come a-cycling and make a CITIZEN'S ARREST!

Bottoms up!

Alexandrovich

This is the headline on the relevant page of Watford Council's website:
"Contrary to reports in the media, Watford Borough Council
has not banned parents from public parks and playgrounds in the town!"
Their repudiation then goes on to say:
"...parents/carers of children and young people who visit these play sessions
are not able to stay on site with their children during play sessions."
Is it me?

Richard

refuse both to fill in the forms and to pay the fines for failing to do so

Adam

The mass campaign of disobedience should take the following course:
Parents should stop taking their children to the (Play session sites). They should demand that their children are transported to a Kindergulag for their entire childhoods. It is the only way to be safe.
T-Shirts bearing the motto "Please banish me to the Kindergulag" should be distributed for the kids.

A brief introduction to the Kindergulag system:

The staff that operate the Kindergulags will be psychologically screened intensely. As soon as it becomes technically possible the Kindergulags should be operated by Artificially Intelligent Robots.
Kindergulags should be established in bracing environments where the public sector predominates anyway: Scotland, Northern Ireland, places like that.

Grant Philpott

Hang all the "Play rangers" from the monkey bars by their underpants while parents go down the slide backwards!

Paedophobe

We could march through Watford with everyone carrying a copy of the Blind Faith album cover.

Dixon

I have a book..."Civil Resistence In Kosovo" ( Howard Clarke, Pluto, 2000 ). Eye opening stuff. They were civilly disobedient for over a hundred years. See where it lead...had to get Bill Clinton to bomb themselves in the end.

Bill Clinton has moved on now. So what hope is there for us?

BTW, having read the book I realised that I had been wrong to support the bombing. Turns out the Serbs were justified after all!

My mind is now open on Kradjic.

The Masked Marvel

Get every family in the area to take their children to the park en masse, except don't go into the park. Instead, everyone should have a grand old time with their kids all up and down the road alongside it. Take your town and your children back from these dangerous fools.

GeoffM

You are like Gulliver, tied down as you are by red tape, laws, punishments, PC brainwashing, Marxist denunciation and cries of "Fascist", "Islamophobe", "Homophobe", "Paedophile" etc.

But you did vote for it didn't you! You had been warned....

It's going to take some getting free folks. Only by voting Labour out and then eradicating ALL Socialist influence from public life could it be done.

I think its way too late.

I will get much worse before it gets better. The lessons of history tell us that but, then again, history isn't really on the curriculum now is it.

I took the radical action and migrated to France but it's hard to escape the programming.

Every time a French child smiles at me or, worse still, presents him/herself to me for the obligatory kiss I have a minor panic attack.

On the plus side I can have as many guns as I like, eat cheese, hunt/shoot/fish and experience feminine women who actually like like men rather than the slappers/laddetes/feminazis that define British womanhood.

It's really all too depressing - but but distance does make it easier.

David

Action for Fathers (or whatever they're called) provide sound examples of civil disobedience that works (i.e it gets your issue reported on the telly, with Sky News leading the way via a hysterically-delivered "live" report fronted by an attractive, pixie-blonde reporter.)

I suggest clambering up Big Ben in child-catcher fancy dress (refer to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), and unfurling a banner that cryptically states: "Harriett Harman is a loony."

jon ryan

Next time any MP visits anything where a child is to be seen, demand that the MP produce a current CRB certificate. MPs ALWAYS want to be photographed with kids. Is YOUR MP SAFE? CHECK NOW - DEMAND TO SEE THEIR CRB CERTIFICATE!!!!!

Michael Booth

Another example of the world we have walked into...blindfolded. What beats me is how we take all of this crap, all the jobsworths and petty bureaucracy, all the diktats from Brussels and Health and Safety, all the balls from Balls and sheer madness from the Mentalist. What really gets me is the bunch of venal, mendacious fuckwits in Westminster get to prance on the moral highground telling the rest of us how to live our lives.

Radders

Which poses the greatest danger to children - a lone paedo parent, or a paedo Council boss or councillor who makes policy and who has unquestioned access to places in which children are concentrated?

The answer is clear; all Councillors and Council bosses must immediately undergo enhanced CRB checks, any policy they propose that affects children must be examined by the police to see if there's any hidden 'grooming' built in, and police should video every second of any visit they make to a place where children are gathered.

For The Sake Of The Children, this potential Town Hall paedo menace must be tackled.

rod seacole liddle

Some very good suggestions here; keep em coming.
The Lib Dems currently run Watford, incidentally. Perhaps that is the problem; they've had Mark Oaten hanging around local play areas with that pained expression on his face.

The best article I've seen about this sort of paedophile psychosis comes from Frank Furedi at Civitas: http://www.civitas.org.uk/blog/2008/06/licensed_to_hug.html

GeoffM

OK, OK, I've had a visit from the Council and they've reassured me.

You are all getting over excited.

Just come with me to this nice room and lie down on the couch whilst we adjust the restraints.

You will just feel a little prick (no sexist hate jokes please) and then you will have nothing to worry about

Ever again.......

Meanwhile Chesterton wrote this (extract from The Secret People):-

"We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs."

MNC

Why the hell would a a kiddy fiddler attempt to fiddle in front of other parents?

Will they ban birthday parties next?

Idiots.

Jobsworth

Take extra care to be twice as stupid and twice as slow as you might be under more normal circumstances.

Be stupid and slow at all times.

Be sheeplike. Greet friends and colleagues with the word 'baa.'

Say goodby with 'baa baa.'

Simple and effective.

Spend a lot of the time looking around blankly. Chew ruminatively. Baa.

Cause unnecessary blockages. Pretend not to notice. Be slow. At all times.

Be stupid. Be slow. Easy when you really put your mind to it.

Be unnecessary. Baa.

Where were we? Oh, yes, being slow, being stupid, being unnecessary. Baa.

Don't give up. Others once they see what you are doing will see the pointlessness of it all and they will gleefully try to outdo you in the stupidly slow or the slowly stupid. Baa.

Be pointless, be unnecessary, be slow, be recumbent, be stupid.

Baa Baa

Murgatroyd

Jobsworth, when we are all stupid now, how will we know when to stop?

Can we rely on rod seacole fiddle to tell us when his campaign is over?

David from Fulham

Find a borough noted for sharp practice in issuing parking tickets. Get one volunteer to follow (at a discreet and non-harrassing distance) each warden, noting and photographing dodgy or abusive ticketing practices, leaving notes on windscreens offering to give the evidence to the affected drivers. Hugely publicize the results.

Nicholas

GeoffM "and experience feminine women who actually like like men rather than the slappers/laddetes/feminazis that define British womanhood."

An interesting comment. There does seem to be a problem with British women. A lot of this barmy legislation and regulation seems to originate from a certain type of female hysteria. But there are also now "femimen" who think and act the same way. The role models in government and on TV are not good.

Iain Sharpe

Actually this is not as you describe (I’m a Watford borough councillor so have some local knowledge of the events).
These are not like the normal playgrounds you find in local parks and recs (of which Watford has many and where parents can take their children without any council staff being present). These are two enclosed facilities whose raison d’être is to provide organised activities for children, run by council staff. They aren’t generally accessible to the public and are not really ‘open space’. They are very popular and parents take their children to these activities and leave them in the care of the council for a couple of hours at a time.
So, it’s more like dropping children off at scouts or brownies than taking your kids to play on the local swings. In my experience scout/brownies leaders etc. expect the children to be dropped off and picked up at the end and don’t encourage parents to linger around. It might even be compared to leaving children at school – parents generally don’t insist on sitting in the classroom while the teacher takes a lesson.
Officially parents have always been supposed to drop off their children and pick them up at the end of the session – but over time this hasn’t been enforced, parents have stayed around and recently there have been a few difficult incidents arising from this. So mainly for practical reasons, it’s been decided to stick to what has been established practice.
But also, whether we like it or not (and I have tended to agree with Rod’s general sentiment on such issues in the past) if children are left in the care of the council, the workers are responsible for their safety. If something bad happened to a child while in the care of the council, Rod would hardly be leaping to its defence.
Suffice to say that if parents take a child to a public park or playground in Watford they won’t be denied entry and can play with or look after their children just as they can everywhere else. If parents choose to leave their children at a supervised session, they should drop them off and pick them up at the end. If the council and staff are running such organised activites, and the children are in their care, they have to have some practical discretion about how they are run.

David from Fulham

Find a borough noted for sharp practice in issuing parking tickets. Get one volunteer to follow (at a discreet and non-harrassing distance) each warden, noting and photographing dodgy or abusive ticketing practices, leaving notes on windscreens offering to give the evidence to the affected drivers. Hugely publicize the results.

Ian

Play Rangers - do they have an ID number and name as the police do? Perhaps a large group should regularly take their children there and each time record the names, numbers and other particulars of the individuals with whom they are entrusting their children including taking photos - for future reference only - of the individuals in question. This may start to stir things up. If the Play Rangers refuse call in the police.

Marcus Cotswell

As I've suggested over on Coffee House, the thing about disobedience is just to carry on doing what you would have done anyway and ignore the laws or regulations that say you can't do it. The drawback is that you do need to be prepared for periodic arrest and even some time in jail ("an occupational hazard" as the intro to Porridge would have it).

Bill Seacole Corr

Rod doesn't mean paedophobia in Paragraph 2 Line 6.

He means paedophilophobia.

Remember you read it here first.

Liz Brown

A massive group of parents to descend on Watford with their children and swamp the playground

Andrew

I would suggest that if they won't allow children and parents to play in the park, then perhaps an alternate venue be chosen. Flash mob the next council meeting with parents and children. Bring toys, music, food and noisemakers. Have a party!

Or, for real impact, do it on Monday lunchtime. Take over the offices of these bureaucratic twits and turn them into playrooms. "Yes Timmy, that computer screen does look like it could fly..."

Hugh

The inhabitants of Watford should simply refuse to have any more children, and there should be a boycott on moving there (should be easy enough to enforce this second bit). This will either ensure the city's extinction in about a century or ensure it is populated entirely by local council members and their offspring, so that they only inconvenience themselves.

Guy Chapman

Would you believe it, another 'PC gone mad' story, which, after the smallest bit of scrutiny, turns out to be untrue - just like every other 'PC gone mad' story: http://www.watford.gov.uk/ccm/content/strategic-services/home-page-content/statement-about-harwoods-and-harebreaks-adventure-playground.en

John Duckham

Leave the country.

paulg

we wil do what we always do get drunk and write silly comments about the subject, until eventually watford will get the message that its nonsense!
This ghandian strategy of passive resistance appeals to all of us as it will involve us in not doing anything. Over and above what we normally do, its the british way.
With a renewed sense of mission coupled with a moral dimension we can kick in this rotten diktat, without leaving our chairs.
I propose you as the leader and, if i get the bottle of champagne i will drink it and become very abusive in your support!

rod seacole liddle

Come on Iain, why shouldn't parents watch their kids playing? Who do you think you are? And what difficult incidents?

TonyS

You are an Idiot Rod, The explaination from the council is (as it nearly always is) a million miles from your hypocritical bullshit. You did this on purpose to flush these loons out for fun didn't you?

Meibion Glyndwr

Stand outside their offices and shout like the UAF zombies. That will shake them. He He.

Lungfish

Iain Sharpe- How dare you come around here talking common sense, its strictly forbidden!.
I also don't like the darkly racist undertone of your use of the term 'brownies'.

I'm a press photographer, mostly with local press (what's left of it...)
Quite a lot of my work is in schools. I photographs children at sports and swimming, gymnastics, dance etc etc. I have never been asked for a CRB for this work.

I also teach Photoshop and photography at a local collage. For this, I have been CRB checked.

The youngest person I have has ob a Photoshop course was over 40.

You work it out.

I'm a press photographer, mostly with local press (what's left of it...)
Quite a lot of my work is in schools. I photographs children at sports and swimming, gymnastics, dance etc etc. I have never been asked for a CRB for this work.

I also teach Photoshop and photography at a local collage. For this, I have been CRB checked.

The youngest person I have has ob a Photoshop course was over 40.

You work it out.

logdon

Is 'fucking' now allowed at the Spectator?

I know a spot of extramarital was perpetrated upon Quinn the obviously not so frosty non Eskimo* by Blunkett but is verbalising now replacing 'doing'?

*And in the interest of PC will Bob Dylan's Actic saga now be renamed Quinn the Inuit?

GaryO

I suggest wandering into council offices near you on lunch breaks and while admiring the ceiling let off a fart or two. And don't be ashamed about it either, let it rip! If planned correctly, even a small number of "protesters" could leave a big impression. Once we get to know each other, proper rotas and timetables could be made with help and advise given out to new joiners. I mean it could turn out to be a new social activity!

So go on comrades, fart, fart away!

rod seacole liddle

Bill - no, I meant paedophobia. I think we have asort of psychosis about our children, an irrational terror. I understand why youthink it should have been paedophilephobia.

Paul L

On a more general note, the next time a politician stages a photo op with children (and there will be many of these during the next election) we should demand that everyone involved: politicians, flunkeys, security people, journalists, cameramen etc are CRB checked. They are after all working with children.

Lickyalips

The 2@s in power would relish the prospect of civil disobedience - they would then invoke the Civil Contingencies Act and put every street in every town in lock-down.
The EU already has a fully-trained paramilitary force -EUGendFor (how Orwellian is that name?)- who are ready to rock'n roll on the streets of any country they are posted to. They will act with impunity, as they are not subject to local laws...(pretty much like the cops in this country, then!) Furthermore, despite outwardly being against capital punishment, there is, written in a footnote of a footnote in the EU Constitreaty, a clause which allows for the death penalty against anybody who is involved in a riot.
Good 'ere, innit?

Iain Sharpe

Rod

For the same reason I suppose that when I used to take my stepchildren to brownies and cubs they didn't allow parents to stop with their children - perhaps they thought in some way it would be a distraction.

Likewise, why schools don't let parents sit in the classroom with their children.

There are any number of playgrounds in Watford where parents can take their children, play with them etc. This is just about the practicalities of managing a supervised session.

It's probably invidious to go into the detail about individual incidents here. Would be quite happy to discuss privately.

But surely you can imagine circumstances where if people are supervising a large group of children, it might just make life that little bit more difficult if there are lots of other adults also there.

Sandra M

I will turn up with Grayson Perry dressed as his alter ego Clare and if Clare is not allowed in, I will say that is discrimination.

Or I might dress up as my new alter ego, Kevin (think Jeanette Cranky). If I am not allowed in, I shall say that as a transgenerational transvestite, I am being discriminated against and I will sue the council.

Tom

All hatred is self-hatred and those who are anti-gay, we are told, are really gays in denial (as in the film American Beauty).

So anyone who bangs on about paedophilia should be accused of being paedophiles. We can then go into Town Halls making citizen's arrests and seizing computers.

Do I win the champagne?

Arthur Lincoln

Parents of children in Watford should each bring a charge against the council officials concerned under the Human Rights Act, i.e. The Right to family life.
Use their own sticks to beat them with.

Dixon

"TonyS
October 29th, 2009 11:58am
You are an Idiot Rod, The explaination from the council is (as it nearly always is) a million miles from your hypocritical bullshit. You did this on purpose to flush these loons out for fun didn't you?"

Read that GK Chesterto poem someone quoted earlier, then read the above comment. Then ask yourself how the writer could have been so prophetic.These sort of people cannot even recognise that their "explanations" only embody the very attitudes they dimply try to "explain" ( ie, rationalise ) away.

seacole notdole

There's a scene in the film the killing fields where a child, being taught in a class by the party, has to symbolically cross out the image of his parents on a black board. The party will provide all the child's needs and mold him into a model party worker. No need for family any more. Not that I'm saying Watford Libdems are a bunch of totalitarian fascists..

I Littler

"This will either ensure the city's extinction in about a century or ensure it is populated entirely by local council members and their offspring, so that they only inconvenience themselves."
How? Nearly all council employees I've met didn't have the orientation to have children

Bunnykins

It's not being disobedient, but why don't you guys just emigrate? The only people with the necessary expertise at picketing and protesting in England are the very people setting the agenda. The rest of you have sat quiet for too long and you've been completely snookered by the looney left.

bains

A Rwandan genocide war mass murderer will pass a CRB enhanced check,it will come back as no record which is a pass.So will anyone who has committed any serious offence outside the uk.It only works after you have committed your offences here.

Wilhelm

Drum roll please

The campaign for a monoculture starts here, right now, and no amount of spurious piffle Fraser Nelson scribbles and squeels will divert me in that noble task.

Do I get the prize, a bottle of champagne ?

mike bassett

I work fulltime as a volunteer with disabled schoolchildren. I have 5 children and 3 grandchildren. Well done Ron. I would love to join a civil disobedience campaign or anything to stop this lunacy.I can see very soon it will be impossible for me to continue my work. Ghastly. The work of our erstwhile Education Minister, the aptly named BALLS.

Nick

Tell your children you're taking them to the zoo and that they will be allowed to take photographs of the sweetly named play rangers, but only from the safe side of the cage as they are known to have unfortunate habits and can attack without warning or provocation.

Lupus Lungfish

Iain Sharpe -I'v just noticed you are married to Dorothy Thornhill!. I suppose much obsequious apologetic grovelling is in order for referring to your Mrs as 'Dotty',- I can see on further examination that Watford seems quite a well run and not too barking mad council which is quite a rarity. Enjoy the sherry anyhow!.

EyeSee

Man the barricades! Now this might just be my pet hate, but I think we could start giving it back to the bastards by organising 'refuse to pay car park charges' days. (And, pass on tickets if you have time left -they really hate that). As a taxpayer, I paid for the bloody car park, then have to pay to use it, which drives custom away from shops, who might be a useful source of other revenue, particularly those coming from out of the area. Anyway, councils have come increasingly to rely on thise particularly nasty form of taxation and take great delight in the extra revenue the 'fines' bring in. That is another possible area by the way. Let's all start writing to our local authorities to ask how the fines are legal, bearing in mind the 1689 Bill of Rights. I know a number cases where problems suddenly went away when it was brought up, so I think they want to leave it untested. So let's get them testy.

workie 'non CRB compliant yet' ticket

Thanks to Iain Sharpe for his clarification, credit due for the effort - although it would have been even better coming from the apparatchiks responsible.

However...to address the 'its just like dropping off at the brownies' point. Parents still need to be able to have access to these organised facilities at random times to keep the jobsworth elements on their toes. Knowing that the public will only be present at prescribed times allows the lazy, slack, or malevolent full reign between delivery and dropping off times. CRB accreditation counts for nothing - after all look what happens when trained/cleared social workers are allowed to operate when the public dont have access to their operations.

And dont forget Iain..the public pay your wages and/or expenses. The facilities belong to them not you.

EyeSee

OR, we do the full revolting peasants thing. Everyone needs to get a weapon, to show we are serious. Knives I reckon, big farkorf shiny ones. Guns for show, knives for a pro. Please note; this idea may not be 100% original.

Amanda

I would just refuse to go to the park.

The play rangers won't be able to justify their wages and the council will be forced to sack them.

The embarrassing boycott will then be classed as an experiment that didn't work out. Noble and well-intentioned, but not practical/feasible/fill in self-serving bureaucratic word here.

Sanity restored - and parents back in the playground.

The Gateless Gate

What is puzzling about this thread is that a lot of the posters are coming up with suggestions for dealing with this one little play park in Watford. Surely Liddle's point is that the mindset which produced this inanity is widespread and affects numerous other areas of everyday life, hence the call for mass disobedience - against all authorities one might surmise?

lupus lungfish

I'm not sure this example was a very good one to demonstrate the lunatic nanny state Labour legislation on all things childcare related. It seems a perfectly reasonable idea to have a couple of supervised playgrounds where the sproggs are barricaded into a pen with a couple of vetted minders whilst I could go for a couple of pints etc. I note that even Mark Steyn has laid the boot in on this story and I very rarely disagree with him (another exception being his unwavering support for Conrad Black).

James Murphy

An update on my one-man 'no sex for women' civil disobedience campaign: I am leading from the front: I denied my wife any recourse to my body last night, and any sexual enjoyment thereof. I have never seen such a forced look of contentment on her face. thus proving to me that this battle is win-able! Aux armes mes amis!

Amanda

Just tell any 'poll' that asks that you are going to vote BNP at the next election.

The fizzing bile that this will bring forth from the PC brigade will be as funny to watch as sticking pins in their backside and watching them jump!!

rod seacole liddle

Gateless - precisely.

Raven on the Wing

Looks like some Seacolian wag has made a start by stencil spraying images of a cock and balls all over Westminster Bridge.

Joe Adolfo Tung

Since we’ve all embraced so joyfully and without a murmur the pseudo-liberal crap that we are each incapable of looking after ourselves and the state and its outreach agents must know better, we can hardly complain when we are told what to do. Soon, we’ll be glad if Big Brother lets us grow parsnips, knit a scarf without a prior permission by some distant quango. Just get real, leave the skies to the birds, and go for a touchdown.

Henry Slow

Amanda @ 6.08

Better still, do vote for them.

Jess The Dog

The idea of not paying council tax has been floated. I've suggested a Council Tax Strike in the past as a measure of protest. This may seem an empty gesture, but it did for the Poll Tax and it would have a severe impact on local authority cash flow....like most organisations they pay out monthly.

So, have a council tax strike. It's not refusal to pay, it's late payment. Like the letters that eventually get delivered by the striking posties. So no-one need go to jail over it.

Iain Sharpe

@ workie

"Parents still need to be able to have access to these organised facilities at random times to keep the jobsworth elements on their toes"

Would you want parents to have the right to enter their children's school classrooms at random times to make sure they are being taught Maths or Science rather than Marxism?

I seem to remember that back in the cubs and brownies days we had to pay a small fee for the children to attend but wouldn't have insisted on accessing the sessions ourselves at random times to make sure our money was being well spent!

You're right that we should always remember that the public pay our allowances. But still, in managing public services there have to be some rules - you can't play rock music in public libraries or touch the paintings at art galleries even if your taxes do help pay for them.

@ Amanda - the whole point of why parents bring their children to these sessions is that they are supervised by council staff. Otherwise they would just go to the normal parks and playgrounds.

As regards the campaign of civil disobedience I suggest that readers 'Try to take your child to a public playground in Watford' where you won't be denied entry but instead will be able to play with, stay with and supervise them just as you always have been able to.

Fearless Frank

James Murphy October 29th, 2009 5:46pm
"Aux armes mes amis!"

Surely you mean "Down tools"!

teledu

Arrange a "Gary Glitter" day in the town. Bring along your portbale tape/CD palyer and play nothing but Glitter songs outside the council offices and in parks. Mock the daft bastards who see every adult as a potential perv. Stick pictures of Gary Glitter all around Watford.
Ring council office numbers and play "Do ya wanna be in my gang?" down the line.
The council adopts the attitude that the natives are all "Gary Glitters", prove how ludicrous and offensive that is by mocking them.

Mike

Get a load of parents (mothers preferably - no doubt fathers would be jailed) with their kids and simply push past these jobsworths. If they use physical force to stop the parents thenget the fathers there for backup and use "minimum force" to remove these parasites.

Dixon

"The Gateless Gate
October 29th, 2009 4:55pm
What is puzzling about this thread is that a lot of the posters are coming up with suggestions for dealing with this one little play park in Watford. Surely Liddle's point is that the mindset which produced this inanity is widespread and affects numerous other areas of everyday life, hence the call for mass disobedience - against all authorities one might surmise?"

Thats how I approached it.

Lee Wells

Iain Sharpe - You are not just a local councillor, you are also the husband/partner of the mayor who introduced this perverse idea. An important fact you fail to mention. Wonder why?

Jog on!

Amanda in America (not the one that mentioned BNP)

To Rod Liddle and Gateless Gate:
We're only responding to what Rod wrote, for heaven's sake. What would you like us to do, make up our own topic? That's fine, I do it all the time. Beyond that --

1. Ever heard of 'broken windows'?

2. You have to start somewhere.

3. It's the little things that we grudgingly accept that lead to worse -- first a bit of intimidation by TVL, threatening or pretending to threaten to send G-men into your living room, then, next up, actual G-men in your home, taking away your children. (Come to think of it, this is already happening to some unfortunate folks.)

I thought THAT was the point of the article.

1,2, and 3 are all facets of the same thing.

Jez

109 comments and Dixon is the first to get it!!!

Dixon should have the Champagne!

(can i have half?)

Gerard Eastick

Liddle, you are an unreconstructed Trot. Your tenure as editor of the woefully biased "Today" programme proves only one thing. You made this happen. You created this world.

You and your former SWP comrades have created something worse than Salem Massachusetts in the 17c.

In you relentless pursuit of scapegoats (lets not forget your reasons for leaving the BBC) you helped to create the very scapegoat culture you now rail at.

You have created a world in which class hatred and the humiliation of ordinary people is now considered to be the privilege of public employees - employees who depend on this corrupt government for their liveliehoods; employees who have taken on a glib mantle of faux morality that has determined that anybody who lives here peaceably and with regard to the law, is now considered a threat and a suspect.

As for the subject of your piece here, rail away, but if you seek to find those responsible for this outrage, you need only look in the mirror.

You should be flogged.

(yes, it's my real name and my real email address, not like all the anonymous toads who infest right of centre blogs in order to scream abuse)

Baron Pipin II

Lupus Lungfish @ 5.46

A droplet of useless info for you first. Amongst my many sins there’s one that my wife disapproves of alot. I write letters. Hundreds, to all and sundry, but mostly to those in the public eye. Would it amuse you to know that amongst the handful of replies I’ve got back over the years sits a thoughtful response from the hated Lord Black well before he got sent down?

More to the point, the Watford case hardly qualifies for the onslaught, and mark Steyn’s take on it, useless though it is to win Rod’s bottle, points in the right direction. The madness of political correctness goes deeper than a playground here or there. It’s the straightjacket of the well-meaning legislation, initially well-meaning anyway, that strangles us. We have only ourselves to blame because we voted in the people who enacted it. Getting rid of the constraining garment of statutes that makes live miserable for more people than it helps must be what we should be aiming for. You seem to have an eye on the ball, the wit, and more than a touch the wordsmithing talent. Whom should we go for then?

Stephen

Rod: I come to this site to read intelligent debate from a right of centre perspective. Sometimes, the comments are simply entertaining (Verity and Nicholas spring to mind). Usually the discussion is both entertaining and informative. However, although you have achieved your main aim (a long string of comments) you have done little in this post than attack, in tabloid fashion, a predictable and easy target. It sounds so reasonable at first; though written in your charateristically robust style. But it turns out that you were simply wrong. Public playgrounds are not being policed by Watford Council. Parents are not banned from playing with their children. A cursory glance at Watford Borough Council's website shows that the adventure playgrounds in question are not 'public playgrounds in the usual sense of the phrase. Iain Sharpe from the Council has pointed out your errors. Your post is, to use your word, 'fucking' lies. But I don't think you care. you certainly won't apologise. And I, for one, Fraser Nelson take note, am not going to bother coming back to the Coffee House. If such lazy nonsense can be published here in search of a few advertising ratings and the favourable reactions of people who will believe anything that supports their pre-existing prejudices what is the point of reading it? When I want to read something that 'you couldn't make up but I just did' I read Littlejohn at the Mail; he's funnier anyway. But I don't think you will care. And I'll be perceived as 'not one of us' by daring to suggest that maybe, a County Councillor has a point of view that should be listened too. Has it ever occurred to you that you and I, and all the other 'Coffee Housers' might be part of the problem as well as part of the solution. No, I thought not. It's always someone else's fault isn't it.

Iain Sharpe

The logical extrapolation from this thread is that Rod and other posters ultimately believe that no organisation should ever be allowed to organise events for children unless they also allow unlimited access to parents and other adults.

Thinking of my time variously as a child or step-parent, I have come across various activities where the convention is that parents don't attend - youth clubs, cubs, brownies and all that kind of stuff, some specialist sports coaching sessions. I gather IKEA run play activities for children (presumably while their parent choose furniture)that adults are not allowed to attend.

In some cases children themselves don't want their parents hanging round while their taking part in other activities.

In some ways the idea that children can never be allowed to carry out any activity unless their parents can directly supervise them is more nannyish than the nanny state that posters here are railing against.

workie unwaged ticket

Iain Sharpe@ 7:56pm

"Parents still need to be able to have access to these organised facilities at random times to keep the jobsworth elements on their toes"

1) Would you want parents to have the right to enter their children's school classrooms at random times to make sure they are being taught Maths or Science rather than Marxism?

2) I seem to remember that back in the cubs and brownies days we had to pay a small fee for the children to attend but wouldn't have insisted on accessing the sessions ourselves at random times to make sure our money was being well spent!

3) You're right that we should always remember that the public pay our allowances. But still, in managing public services there have to be some rules - you can't play rock music in public libraries or touch the paintings at art galleries even if your taxes do help pay for them.

Iain. point by point.

1) You equate being present at play sessions with formal school lessons. I say they are entirely different - as are the qualifications needed for 'play rangers' versus teachers. in any case some schools would welcome the extra interest in their kids education.

2) I too was in the cubs and parents definately were able - and did - turn up at sessions randomly and were even allowed to assist and volunteer for stuff (imagine that! without any council officer's permission)

3)Rock music in libraries or touching paintings are acts of despoilation. It is wrong to equate parents presence at playgroups with such acts. It shows a lack of perspective.

Maggie

We should overwhelm the system by launching millions of actions under the Human Rights Act and the Health and Safety Laws and the Child Protection Laws.
Today I was appalled to discover that although the Gollies have now been written out of Toytown, Noddy has still got a friend called BIG EARS. That must be causing all manner of trauma up and down the country to the otologically challenged and must be worth a bob or two in compensation after clogging up the courts for a few months.

Iain Sharpe

Workie, point by point

1. I doubt if many schools would welcome, e.g. parents sitting in lessons acting as an alternative focus of attention/discipline/activity to the planned lesson. I'm not really sure what qualifications have to do with it - teachers are qualified to teach, play workers qualified to run play sessions, both having discretion and ability to set rules for the sessions or lessons that they run.

2. Your experience of cubs and the like was clearly different from mine or at least my stepchildren's. It perhaps goes to show that it's different strokes for different folks and people take decisions based on what seems most appropriate in a given situation. We all had to wait outside until our children's cub/brownie session was over.

3. I'm not sure why it smacks of desperation. If you would like a better and real life example, a couple of years ago I got a survey while in a reading room at the British Library asking if I favoured relaxing the rules on mobile phone use in said reading room. I voted not to, perhaps because I am a mean-spirited killjoy or perhaps because I would find constant trilling ringtones distracting when I am trying to work.

You may feel that since it's a public facility paid for out of our taxes that library users can do what they jolly well like even if their behaviour annoys others. In which case we will have to agree to differ.

Fergus Pickering

Oh come on, Stephen, you don't come here for the truth, whatever that may be. It apears Rod's got a bum steer here, but there you go. Half of us here are mad, and the other half probably get funny looks. Don't be so po-faced. Do you, or do you not, enjoy The Sun. If you don't you can abandon us and read the bleeding Guardian. Never apologize. Never explain.Who aid that? I had thought it was Disraeli but I think it isn't. Good advice though. Aologizing just encourages the bastards, don't you know.

GeoffM

I think that demanding to see CRB checks from every official you meet would be fun. The implication of being potential paedo's would embarrass.

Harassing politicians who want photo opps. with kids would also be fun.

In one post it was said that it has been argued that homophobes are really just gays who can't admit it to themselves. Thats a good line to follow on the paedo alerts.

A few years back I had responsibility for I.T. at a very PC organisation. We installed software to monitor traffic on websites and emails, searching for certain words.

We found that a number of staff were very active on porn sites, often really dodgy ones, and exchanging non-work related emails that contained sexually explicit and extreme political content.

Were these staff knuckle dragging BNP types or "conservative" people?

No, we were amazed to see that it was exclusively gay staff, feminist and "bolshy" staff.

I took great pleasure in "having a quiet word" with them - showing them printouts of the evidence.

Biters bitten - and a very happy day for me.

It also proved very useful in shutting them up - just one raised eyebrow from me and they became less strident in their pontificating and demands.

Philip Tatham

You could wihthold all council tax payments until they come and talk to us about being sensible but there is so much apathy in this country nobody would be bothered. They all talk well but action nothing!!!!

Lupus Lungfish.

Baron Pipin 2nd.-Who should we aim our ire at?, well to be honest I wouldn't shed a tear if Ed Balls was hit by a bus. I also have a particular hatred for Alistair Cambell and of course Harman. I think these three characters have a lot to answer for when it comes to the brand of nannying, paternalistic, interfering and socialist crap that we are all suffering.
P.S. What did Conrad have to say for himself then?- I have far more sympathy for Simon Mann, its about time somebody sprung him!

Mark Powley

Mass sparkler lighting at all Guy Fawkes celebrations would be good for a start. At Alexandra Palace last year they were banned.

rod seacole liddle

Grateful to Iain for writing, many thanks.
Here's the new statement from Watford Borough Council - subtly different from yesterday's statement:
http://www.watford.gov.uk/ccm/content/strategic-services/home-page-content/statement-about-harwoods-and-harebreaks-adventure-playground.en

I take the point that parents are not banned from all playgrounds, but it also strikes me that this scheme is very different indeed from a school environment. And it does not alter the fact that parents have been banned from even merely watching their children take part in activities: there is no reasonable explanation for this that i can think of, but perhaps Iain could elucidate what happened regarding those "one or two problems" he talks about.

Peter

@Iain Sharpe

I don't think anyone has a problem with you asking parents to clear off because they're a bit of a nuisance, getting in the way and you can look after the kids perfectly well, thank you.

But that's not why you did it! You did it because you are worried that they are secret paedophiles and it's only now you're facing a backlash you have come up with other more sensible reasons.

michael

Furnish speed cameras with a bright pink knitted beanie with flaps and ties and a giant white pompom-
finish with a dirty old gaberdine.

It would hardly be PC to allow the nations flashers to go cold
this winter.
It would'nt do for these erections to become dysfunctional and revenues subjected to chilly weather shrinkage.

'HUG A FLASHER'

'WHERE ARE THE PILLS IN BLUE WHEN YOU NEED EM'

Barbara

Looking at Iain Sharpe's language, what strikes me is the number of times he uses the words 'allowed' and 'not allowed'. He is clearly a person who thinks in authoritarian binary opposites (good/bad, in/out) etc.
This is about supervised PLAY, not schools or workplaces or the British Library. A little compromise/fluidity might be in order, no?
By the way, who supervises the supervisors, if it's so important to ensure that only trained professionals are 'allowed' to interact with the children?

On the broader point, one of my extended family is a diversity trainer (I know, I know). We are gleefully informed from time to time of all the new things 'you are not allowed' to say.
So, my broad-brush suggestion (and I am amazed to hear myself say it, not being the campaigning sort) is: do or say something politically incorrect at least once a day.
Simple, cost-free and very satisfying.
Go on, you know you want to!

Chheers ... hic!

toby mary poppins forward

I love the way that the truth of this was posted pretty early on, and it's perfectly reasonable, yet it didn't do anything to stop the river of drivel that poured out here. Any sensible person can see the difference between a public park and an organized playgroup. If I took my kids to a playgroup and left them there with the staff I'd want to be sure that Pater Padeo from number 17 couldn't drop in and play with them whenever the fancy took him. The rest of you seem to feel it would be fine and would throw the door open to him. Never let the facts get in the way of your opinions, eh?

EyeSee

Oh My God. This country is going to Hell in a handcart and a councillor pitchs up to prove that they (the political class in general) have no idea that the original concept of public servants was that they, er serve the public. Now we have his non-English style of law and governance- everything is against the law unless specifically allowed by the State. Only in a free country can such perverts (for they alter the truth and pervert natural, let alone man made justice) thrive. Once they have insinuated themselves they work like a cancer to take over completely. Then you have a totalitarian state, which takes violence to overthrow. A little civil disobedience now seems a better idea to me and saves on a lot of future pain and grief. Though I do recognise it would mean some 'politicians' having to miss out on power and wealth. I find myself wondering of late if an Orwell character of some inflated self opinion might not have looked like Gordon Brown, in the flesh.

'You can see the little piggies, with their piggy wives...'

Vellocatus

The easiest way - and many have done it, is to light up a cigarette and tell them to stick their smoking bans where the sun don't shine.

The smoking ban was the beginning of this absurd campaign to criminalise almost everyone. If it remains unchallenged, expect many many more freedoms to be lost.

Don't believe everything you hear about smoking 'harm' - It has been exaggerated beyond all reason and repeated over and again to con the people.

Carl

I saw the Mayor of Watford on TV. I think that life has punished her enough. No wonder she hates normal people.

Karl Marx

Post-Irony on a collosal scale?

I'm thinking colonial references etc...

logdon

Dixon
October 29th, 2009 1:29am

Kosovo. Another bloody travesty.

A book, Al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe details the facts on the ground.

The back cover statement, 'A battle Al-Qaeda lost, their attempt to add Bosnia and Kosovo to their caliphate', says it all.

Kosovo's subsequent pseudo separation supported by an idiotic and suicidal EU is not recognised by Serbia, who lets face it know a thing or two about these people.

Fortunately Serbs are a proud nation with memories of a long history of Islamic aggression and expansive motivation. Ottoman brutality was particularly virulent in the Balkans, these people do not forget. Or easily forgive.

One day they will be seen as hero's.

ron headridge

simply super glue the doors of every politican you can get access to over the night of the 5th of november. as well as placing rotten fish in the roof tiles of council buildings. petty? but funny and annoying at the same time.

Maggie

Bonfire Night provides endless scope for civil disobedience. Everyone should be feverishly stuffing effigies of Blair, Brown and anyone who's ever had a good word to say about them. Bonfires should be huge enough to contravene all the rules. If any council busybody interferes they'll have to suffer the consequences. We can sue them later for being responsible for driving everyone to distraction.

Baron Pipin II

Lupus Lungfish @ 8.31

May I add Lord Mandy of whatever to the list, please? The idea of a bus running over any of the human soul engineers doesn’t appeal to me much, I'm sorry to say. No, they should be around to suffer in silence the embarrassment, the indignity of seeing the pseudo-liberal fatuitous claptrap being brought to dust.

Count me in when the expedition to free Mann sets sail provided that he gives up on Mark T. This apple fell far far away from the tree.

On Lord Black: nothing that fits any of the topics here (Napoleon). Also, his wife responded at length to another missive of mine, and if you ask, again on an issue that’s not relevant (film: Jude Suss).

Baron Pipin II

Barbara @ 10.31

It’s fine to be politically incorrect until a nutter (well, mostly a zealot with a chip on the shoulder) gets shirty and one ends up facing a magistrate or a judge. The secoles of this world get publicity, insignificant pawns like me aren’t that lucky, and hence a criminal record may ensue. Moreover, the good burghers of this country retain a healthy respect for the law, thank God. I hate to repeat it, but we need a tweak or two in the legislation aimed at reinforcing the key libertarian principle of free speech that got dented by the introduction of the Human Rights cum Unique Species Protection laws, whilst ensuring that this doesn’t encourage those few amongst us who do harbour real evil.

Baron Pipin II

Karl Marx @ 1.12

Who dug you up?

biggestaspidistra

I'm going to look up Solidarity again, that seems a good beginning. No credible leader yet. I could go either way: non-violent peaceful disobedience or pitchforks. I'll wait for instructions from The Leader, once he's found.

Entwhistle

Just look at the viewing figures! Mass disobedience campaign rallying-calls are surely blog-viagra.

workie ticket

RE: Iain October 30th, 2009 1:25am

Iain re point 3. You need to pay attention old chap!. I wrote 'despoilation' (in the sense of spoiling or ruining something like a painting or an atmosphere) not 'desperation'. Its a similar sounding word but has a very different meaning.

You have suggested that the only logical extrapolation of the view that parents and carers should have access to their children while in the care of playgroup leaders, is that everybody everywhere should have access to everything a council does. I dont. I simply believe that parents or carers (not anyone else) should have access to watch their kids at a playgroup (not in classrooms). This has been clearly put. Your 'logical extrapolation' seems more like offended officialdom objecting to the ignorant taxpayer poking their nose into what they consider as 'their' business.

Ive got kids who do both schools and playgroups and with all due respect to council playleaders/rangers I dont believe many parents consider the two a match.

Scott Chegue

Stephen

What do you mean? You can't just leave us like that. How will we cope?

Dixon

"Jez
October 29th, 2009 9:45pm
109 comments and Dixon is the first to get it!!!

Dixon should have the Champagne!

(can i have half?)"

No...its earmarked for charity, Im donating it to my local branch of the Miriam Appeal.

Dixon

Barron Pipin: "...we need a tweak or two in the legislation aimed at reinforcing the key libertarian principle of free speech that got dented by the introduction of the Human Rights cum Unique Species Protection laws, whilst ensuring that this doesn’t encourage those few amongst us who do harbour real evil."

Like I said, free web-sites are an option available to all of us, right now.

Dixon

"toby mary poppins forward
October 30th, 2009 10:48am
I love the way that the truth of this was posted pretty early on, and it's perfectly reasonable, yet it didn't do anything to stop the river of drivel that poured out here. Any sensible person can see the difference between a public park and an organized playgroup..."

Any sensible person can see the difference between "drivel" and irony...but clearly not the person who made the above cheerless, miserable mumbling. Obviously...as Rod has pointed out...the play topic was only a starting point in a much wider topic. so "explanations" for it are in that sense irrelevant. Like saying a mans "explanation" that his wifes black-eye really was due to her walking into a door ( believe me, it does happen ) "proves" that there is no such thing as a spouse-beater. Doh!

Like I said earlier, that GK Chesterton poem someone here quoted,
capturing the lifeless, humourless, grey, half-awake quality of council jobsworths and their fellow-travellers, like Mary Poppins cited above,and the miserable world of oppressive greyness they would usher in, has been shown uncannily prescient.As our Mary Poppins here shows us again!

For every "explanation" there are a dozen calumnies. Take another, unaccompanied men being banned from taking cameras into parks. A rule now adopted as standard accross most of the country. Well, the explanation goes, not actually banned. Just arrested and quizzed for half an hour while their details are takenand they are given a background check before being issued a "warning". I am not making this up. Its beern a recurring topic of debate and news items in photography journals for the past two or three years now. Even Austin Mitchell the MP and photographer was arrested in this way because he had been spotted taking pictures on Blackpool beach during the break in a Labour party conference.

Daphne Clayton

"The answer is simple: as a grievously maligned sex, we men - and let's face it, it IS men that the PC brigade are really targeting - must take a leaf our of Euripides playscript 'The Birds" and refuse to have sexual intercourse with any women, be she wife, girl-friend, sister, mother, etc, unless or until these PC fascist, mainly women-run council committees are forced to confess the vile misandry that underpins their entire political philosophy"

Firstly it was Aristophanes, not Euripides who wrote The Birds' and secondly are you honestly implying that you withholding your sexual favours is going to bring about anything other than relief to the fairer sex and an opportunity for them to catch up with a long neglected copy of Lysistrata?

So far I have read about depositing children here there and everywhere in protest...could we not just get them to write a note saying that they want to be pushed on the swing by Mummy and they were told not to go near strangers? Isn't that what these 'play rangers' are?

Iain Sharpe

I suppose this thread is coming to a close, but I'll just pick up on the couple of things.

@ Rod - You ask about what incidents, but I feel a bit awkward about giving details of individual cases. The best I can do is as follows - a series of problems where children's safety was put at risk because play workers' attention was distracted by dealing with parents. This included one when a child ended up injured and having to go to hospital after an incident where the staff member's back was turned dealing with another issue involving a parent.

More general a blurring of the lines about whether parents are watching their own children or acting as de facto supervisors and difficulties if they start trying to reprimand other people's children and how those parents may react to that. And also generally parents becoming an alternative source of attention and authority even though the council staff are formally in charge of the session and therefore responsible for the safety of all the children on site.

These sessions are about risky and adventurous play, which is why the facility is only opened for supervised activities - the play workers' full attention needs to be on the children who are formally in the care of the council. If any harm does befall the children, the council is responsible, compensation would have to be paid from people's council tax etc.

Surely you can picture the scene of 20 or so lively children playing on potentially risky equipment, council staff responsible for their wellbeing and not wanting to have parents distracting their attention when they need to be watching the kids.

@ Peter - I can't really say any more than that what you write isn't true.

@ Workie - Sorry I misread your post and I'm not sure if we are really disagreeing that much, although we may be. You don't take on my real-life example about mobile phones in the British Library which isn't about despoilation, just applying rules in a public venue.

Along with many councillors, I have spent much time down the years fighting the corner of residents who are in some way not getting a fair deal from various forms of officialdom. But over the years I've learned that you have to be fair-minded - not every case turns out one where council or other officials are in the wrong, and in the end there have to be rules and systems in providing public services.

I'm not quite sure what point your last sentence is trying to make - you'll have to write more clearly old chap!

Dixon

"Iain Sharpe
October 30th, 2009 10:22pm
I suppose this thread is coming to a close, but I'll just pick up on the couple of things."

If that isnt genuinely a council earhole for you? Because he works on a council somewhere...how amazing...and has posted a couple of coments on someone elses blog he now thinks its his to express authority over and he can sum up proceedings and declare it closed!Who the hell does he think he is!

Absolutely brilliant. You really could not make it up!

No, I men really, he has just demonstrated in his blithe, unselfconcsious and gob-smackingly immense arrogance everything that anyone has ever said about these sort of people.

Dixon

Well, my plan ( web-sites ) was right! They've just declared it ( in a manner ) on that Newsnight. They report that a blogger writing about Somerton council has just succeeded through the power of words and awkward qestions posted at his web-site to get ELEVEN councillors to resign! Absolutely brilliant. A majesterial "fair play" to you sir!

They had nine of these earholes together for a photo-shoot outside the town hall. What a devious gang of cunning looking bar stewards they were. The "property developer" with the dark-glasses ( on a grey day ) and an aggressive mien ( "so Im a property developer, its got nothing to do with my being a councillor" ) was really "choice".

The blogger is called Neil Connely and his site "Muck and Brass".

Daphne Clayton

@iain.

Hi!

could you confirm to me the extent of the training of these 'play rangers'.

Also if this play is so dangerous then you will obviously be able to show the permission slips from the parents? and you will also pop back to Dotty Dorothy and get your bloody story straight.

Howard

This is part of the plan of the EU to have complete control over everyone.The EU have a plan to have regional councils with unelected jobsworths in charge. You will not be allowed to vote for these as voting is not encouraged by the EU. Notice every day more and more powers are been given to these jobsworths. Only last they can come into your house to take your property for payments of their fines. These are fines that you are already been found guilty if your don't pay up or go to court we will triple the fine.
Whats next take children away from parents so they can be indoctrinated by the state.

Iain Sharpe

Daphne

They are not play rangers or even 'play rangers' but fully qualified play workers at the appropriate level for supervising children's playschemes and being responsible for the wellbeing of children in their care.

You can imagine how a council would be vilified if it left children in the care of unqualified people.

As regards your last comment as far as I'm concerned it has always been pretty straightforward. With hindsight one might go back and realise that comments made to a local journalist about a specific facility can (or at least could on this occasion) take on a whole new meaning when reported in the Daily Mail with no explanation of the specific context. Perhaps we have a lesson to learn there.

Iain Sharpe

@ Dixon

Oh dear. The phrase 'I suppose' is a reflection rather than an instruction and I'm mystified as to how you can take it otherwise. I imagined that threads like these have their natural shelf life before people move on to other things, and thougth that the slower rate of postings indicated it might be reaching that stage. At the same time, there were a couple of questions posed to me on here that I felt I ought to reply to and my opening sentence was a thought a fairly gentle reflection of that situation.

So I do apologise to anyone who took my comment that 'I suppose this thread is coming to a close...' as an example of 'blithe, unselfconcsious and gob-smackingly immense arrogance' - it was only intended as a polite introduction to my comments.

rod seacole liddle

Iain - a huge thank you for engaging with each of the criticisms in the original blog and the comments below, and all done rather charmingly, too. I think you probably deserve the bottle of champagne, which was not what I envisaged. I'm still not convinced, by a long way. But it's been a good-natured and effective defence, mate, so congrats...............

COUNCILLOR IN CHAMPAGNE BRIBE FROM GUTTER JOURNO SHOCK HORROR!!!

-admits accepting cheap bottle in exchange for bringing down govt. (story on P79)

jon ryan

Don't know why my name didn't appear on the `shock horror(!!!)` revalation.I suspect it was the SECRET CABAL who RULE THE WORLD and are FORCING US INTO EUROPE stopping my fearlessly displayed name from appearing.
Or possibly something to do with immigrants.

Iain Sharpe

Rod

Many thanks for your kind words. Perhaps I too started out 'far from convinced' but after discussion and argument felt this was probably the best practical solution. Our equivalent supervised facility on the other side of town has always been on a 'drop off your kids' basis with no parents present and there have never been any complaints about this.

I hope now to go back to reading your blog as a relief from political activity rather than an extension of it.

And we will try to avoid incurring your opprobrium again, deservedly or otherwise.

EyeSee

Rod, Jacqui's on the phone. Says that as she was very reasonable, agreeing that she had acted disgracefully, can you get off her back now too? I mean, it doesn't matter what our rulers DO, does it? Just how reasonable they are when caught out.

Coeur de Lion

Oh, further to. My grandchildren wil be paying the final salary inflation proofed pension of this County Dog Person until the crack of doom.

Lupus Lungfish

Iain Sharpe- hmm, champagne and sherry, both from the grape I suppose!

Brian

Flash mobs! Pick a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, organise through blogs and twitter and reclaim our children's play areas from the council.

workie ticket

re Iain Sharpe October 30th, 2009 10:22pm and...

I'm not quite sure what point your last sentence is trying to make - you'll have to write more clearly old chap.

My point is/was that you are giving 'playrangers' whateverthehelltheymaybe and their sphere of responsibility with teachers. this is wrong. They are not equivalent and you cannot equate a playgroup with a classroom which you did. I thought that was clear enough.

Anyways..enough's enough..we speak different language..have different values..never the twain &c.

David B

Become a Freeman of the Land, which permits lawful civil disobedience under the terms of The Magna Carta. This right cannot be repealed by any act of parliament, nor by royal decree.

http://captainranty.blogspot.com/2009/11/magna-carta-article-61-our-last-weapon.html

Remittance Man

So what do the parents then do? Lurk suspiciously around the park gate? Thus the bastards create a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"Well yes, your honour, we have loads of evidence of Mr Bloggs hanging around outside the play area. If you study the cctv footage you will see he spends most of his time peering over the fence looking at the children.

"What's more you can see he talks to other suspicious characters also engaged in kiddie watching. This must be a conspiracy.

"What's that? He claims he was just watching his own children? Well, they all say that, don't they. Send him down and put him on the sex offender register for ever. Thank you. Now if you'll just sign this compulsory care order for his children. We've got space at Myra Hindley House. Yes, the one run by that nice Mr Brady."

Siôn Jones

Whenever you encounter a council official or member, from street cleaner to mayor, demand to see their credentials (CRB etc) , and insist that a third party of your own or opposite sex (according to taste) be present during the meeting.

Fred Collier

I like the ideas for mass disobedience already given...I would simply like to add that having been CRB checked several times, I have found it ridiculously inadequate....the first time I applied, I received a letter back telling me that I couldn't be verified as my home address dates (i.e., where I was living and when) contained a gap of four days (I has moved from one address on the 4th of June, and not moved into the next address until 9th of June). When I rang the official in charge of my check he actually advised me to lie and put the dates back to back....for all he knew I was teaching in a Bangkok Boys' School for that time (actually I wasn't, I was hanging around playgrounds in Watford)....tht's how efficient and rigorous these checks are anyway.

Sue Westmacott

How many of us sit back complaining about paying council tax yet do nothing? If the majority of households refused to pay, just for one month, imagine the chaos it would cause. Joe Bloggs on his own will achieve nothing, we need to all stand up together and say bollocks we've had enough. Lets face it once a party is voted into power we have absolutely no say.We need to stand up for our rights as a 'demorcratic' society and not be afraid of this police state we live in.