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January 27, 2006
Opinions differ ....
A few days ago, while having my morning caffeine "hit" and trying to get both brain cells pointing in the same direction, I turned on the telly. I know I shouldn't do this, because there is almost always some prize twit who manages to annoy me and I spend the rest of the day with a desire to rip someone's throat out - with my teeth!
The recent debate sparked by the "don't smack children" campaigners had reached the morning news room of ITV. Someone there obviously thought it would be a good idea to get the leader of the bunch of arrogant, nannying nitwits who want to make smacking a naughty child a criminal offence, and someone who holds a different view, together on their programme. So we found ourselves watching a slightly uncomfortable newsroom "front" team putting questions to an older gentleman of Afro-Caribbean descent neatly dressed in a open necked shirt and comfortable slacks and a large white lady of extremely patronising attitude dressed in the West African style popular in countries like Nigeria. It was obvious that she thought she alone had the welfare of children and society at heart, and that only her view was correct. She neither listened to the gentleman who put, very clearly, his views on the lack of discipline among the young and how this could be tied back to the interference of the state and "children's welfare" groups and their perpetual interference in the parents attempts to keep children on the straight and narrow. He pointed to the "rights" without "respionsibilities" and made a very good case for children to be held responsible when they transgress, stressing that they inevitably hide behind the armies of social workers and children's support groups who invariably portray all parents as criminally inclined child abusers.
The Child Commissioner representative swept all of his carefully considered points aside insisting that a smack is the same as a full bodied assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and that "violence simply begets violence". According to her argument all the world's ills and all the breakdown in discipline and law and order is due entirely to children being smacked for disobedience.
I'm afraid that, for me, the fact that she chooses to dress in the flambouyant and colourful outfit that best suits the African climate and the African culture to go on morning television, probably sums up where she is coming from on a wide range of subjects. She would not even consider that it merely shows that she is from the very worst end of racial prejudice, one which denigrates everything of her own culture, espouses what she imagines is the best of another, but takes all of her rose tinted ideology from her own background and tries to package it as coming from the culture she wishes existed elesewhere. And in so doing, she succeeds in patronising those who are from that ethnic group and culture. That she neither understands that, nor wishes too, is also self evident from her manner of speaking to people who are from those cultures.
My coffee almost boiled afresh in my hand as I listened to her lecturing the studio crew, the other speaker and the TV audience. Her accent told me that she is Oxbridge, her vacuous arguments told me that her degree is no doubt in sociology which is neither art nor science and her attitude made me want to decorate several bridges with her and her cronies heads on pikes. Since she patently has no children, or, if she does, they are probably cared for by an army of nannies with strict instructions to coddle them no matter how repugnant they may be, I take leave to doubt that her contact with reality is in any sense valid. If she is a typical member of the "Commissioners" then God help us all!
My heart and agreement lay entirely with the Afro-Caribbean gentleman, whose face said everything it has taken me this long to write! His polite, quiet spoken and very valid points made much more sense than all of the Commissioners blather - but she got the final word, probably under orders from the ITV bosses!
Where do these morons come from?
Posted by The Gray Monk at January 27, 2006 04:46 PM
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