Nanny Knows Best

Nanny Knows Best
Dedicated to exposing, and resisting, the all pervasive nanny state that is corroding the way of life and the freedom of the people of Britain.

Monday, July 31, 2006

The Dangers of Trees!

The Dangers of Trees!It may be advisable to warn your children that Naughty Nanny is on the prowl again. This time she is looking for those children who have the cheek to build tree houses.

Tree houses, you see ladies and gentlemen, are the work of the devil and are banned!

Sam Cannon, Amy Higgins and Katy Smith (12-year-old friends planning to build themselves a den in a cherry tree) from Halesowen, West Midlands, found this out to their cost recently.

The kids climbed the 20ft tree, then found themselves frogmarched to a police station and locked in cells for up to two hours.

Nanny's ever vigilant police then removed the childrens' shoes, took mugshots, DNA samples and mouth swabs.

Funny that gangs of yobs, criminals, drug dealers and other assorted scumbags are not treated in the same way isn't it?

Nanny's police told the children they had been seen damaging the tree, which is in a wooded area of public land near their homes.

The police interrogated the children, who admitted that they had broken some loose branches because they had wanted to build a tree house.

Hardly worth a DNA swab is it?

Nanny felt otherwise, and seriously considered charging the children with criminal damage. However, very graciously for Nanny, she eventually decided that a reprimand (the equivalent of a caution for juveniles) was sufficient.

The hapless children will now have their details will be kept on file for up to five years.

Is this a police state or what?

Sam's father, Nicholas, said:

"The children did not deserve to be treated in the way they were.

A simple ticking-off by officers would have been sufficient.

The children didn't realise they were doing anything wrong,


they didn't deliberately set out to damage the tree.

Sam's eyes were swollen and red when they let him out of the cell


as he had been crying.

He is a placid child and has never been in trouble before.

When I got the phone call from the police to say Sam was in custody

I thought he'd done something-like steal something from a shop.

I couldn't believe it when he said all he had done was break some loose branches off a tree.

To detain them,


DNA them and treat them that way was simply cruel and an over-reaction by the police.

Generations of children have played in that tree

and my son and his friends won't be the first to have thought of building a tree den
."

Superintendent Stuart Johnson, operations manager at Halesowen police station, said:

"I support the actions of my officers who responded to complaints from the public about kids destroying an ornamental cherry tree by stripping every branch from it,

in an area where there have been reports of anti-social behaviour.

A boy and two girls were arrested


and received a police reprimand for their behaviour.

West Midlands Police deals robustly with anti-social behaviour.

By targeting what may seem relatively low-level crime

we aim to prevent it developing into more serious matters
."

You will note that he happily ignored commenting on why the police needed DNA samples.

I assume then that the crime statistics for drug offences, assaults, robbery, knife crime etc in the West Midlands area are at an all time low?

Please can residents of the West Midlands comment on this.

Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, said:

"It's my opinion that too many children are being criminalised for behaviour that could be dealt with informally

by ticking them off and speaking to their parents
."

Doubtless the police will log this as a success in their records, which Nanny uses to judge the efficiency of the police.

After all, it is easy to arrest a 12 year old; seemingly not that easy to break up a gang of yobs, terrifying a council estate, or crack down on scumbag drug users/pushers.

It's not the quality of crime prevention that counts in Britain, it's the quantity!

14 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:14 AM

    The police take DNA samples of everyone they arrest. It is a backdoor method of building a DNA database of the whole population (just how quickly would that idea get thrown out if they tried to pass it through the House of Lords). Big Brother eat your heart out.

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  2. Anonymous11:27 AM

    What a load of s**t reasons for arresting them!!!!
    Now tell the kids to go and mug someone and they should get a free Bahamas holiday to make up for the pathetic reason for their initial arrest. (Or perhaps they'd like an African safari).
    God save us from the police.

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  3. Anonymous11:49 AM

    Halesowen isn't the roughest place in the world but it's not the quietest either.

    I wonder how many crimes were committed and ignored by teenage jobs while these Police 'Officers' were looking for easy hits.

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  4. Anonymous12:31 PM

    there were dead branches on the tree? Perhaps they should arrest the owners for neglect??

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  5. Anonymous12:46 PM

    Er... Seems to be glossing over that the tree was on *public land*, and that they'd been damaging the tree. Now, would you want kids pulling branches off trees in your park? In escence these kids were acting as vandals, and I'm happy for them to get a nasty shock and a lesson that what they were doing was wrong.

    And where exactly were the parents while this was going on as well?

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  6. Anonymous1:11 PM

    You forget!! They've done exactly the same to two kids who were playing in the street and chalking hopscotch grids on the pavement!! OOOHHH THAT'S NAAAAUUUUGHTY my arse...(Daily Mirror is you want to check...)

    @J Barberio:
    S/HE'S ONE OF THEM!!!! RUINING OUR CHILDREN'S FUN FOR NO GODDAMN REASON!!!

    Run dear, I hear the flamers on the horizon. Their pitchforks gleam in the moonlight.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous1:23 PM

    Bye, bye democracy. Welcome to the Police State!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous1:41 PM

    A little more information that seems to be glossed over here...

    This took place in a suburb of Birmingham, they were not kids playing in the woods, but kids vandelising a public park.

    The tree the kids pulled branches from is an ornimental willow. Not something anyone could 'build a treehouse' in.

    Accepting a reprimend meant they and their parents eventual admitted wrong doing.

    This seems a case of 'I support the police cracking down on young holigans, but not my ones!'.

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  9. Lynda Lee-Potter (deceased). Remember her? Used to "write" for the Daily Mail. She's take a 100-word story, like this, and use it to construct a towering edifice of illogical bile shaped after her own very obvious, and very predictable, prejudices.

    Who knows what the facts are in this case? Certainly not the reporter whose story has inspired this thread. Ken, you don't want to believe everything you read in the papers.

    These kids could well be some of the horrid little toads who do so much damage to our public open spaces. Or maybe they're complete innocents and the police have acted with their usual bullying ineptitude. Whatever the truth of the matter, we aren't likely to find out.

    The Latin author Terence had a saying: "Nihil ad me attinet." Loosely translated it means: "This does not concern me in the least."

    Well said, Terry!

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  10. Anonymous6:59 PM

    a while ago my neighbour an old woman attacked my friends lad(12yrs)with a broom i stopped it going any further then phoned plod 3 cops turned up talked to us and several witnesses then her.I asked what were they going to do and there reply "nothing mate shes old" and they left since then she throws rubbish over our fence and trys
    to make life miserable I wont phone em
    again i will deal with it myself

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous2:50 PM

    J Barberio you need help!!! Ken is absolutely right in saying that the Police were heavy handed. When I was a kid I used to get a whack across the arse with my Dad's belt when I did something wrong (which is why I'm staying anonymous, wouldn't want my Dad put in prison for such a terrible act!). Nobody is suggesting that the kids were in the right just that locking them up in a Police cell may be a little drastic!

    Personally I would like to see one of the 3 million or so tax rises we have had to endure under this Arrogant Labour "Dictatorship" put to good use (chance would be a fine thing) not wasted on locking up 12 year old children for doing minor damage to a poxy tree!

    Perhaps one day you will be the victim of a more serious crime - bet you'd want plod to help you then or would you be happy to see them focussing their attention on some 12 year old "hooligans" breaking sticks off a tree?

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  12. If kids had more access to open spaces and places where they can use their creativity and sense of adventure to build tree houses,ie, playing the 'old fashioned way', perhaps there wouldn't be so many bored children around with disruptive behaviour?

    They will and have got the House of Lords OK to build a database, including using DNA, and already schools in Yorkshire are FINGERPRINTING children of 5 years of age. Thousands of them.

    http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=1735844

    By next year every school and every child minder will be obliged to record pages of information on every child for submission to the government database. Children's Index.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/31/eu_fingerprinting_kids/

    and this in turn has everything to do with European total state control of the masses, as per
    the Schengen SIS II

    http://www.statewatch.org/news/2001/nov/enemyII.pdf#search=%22Schengen%20II%20Bush%22

    which although it purports to be for 'terrorism' reasons actually lists protestors and demonstrators under 'terrorism' and that is what its all about.

    Get the kids now - schools etc will easily collect their data, their cirumstances, their parental details, their fingerprints etc - that gets the next generation listed already.


    When implementing ideas such as finger printing kids, anyone protesting is quietly listed under the terrorism act.


    This has nothing to do with cutting down on antisocial behaviour OR protecting children (government has come out with both those reasons), and everthing to do with the UK and Europe removing the rights of anyone to ever have the ability to protest at whatever governments decide to do.

    Sadly governments have been able to 'persuade' people that each crafty move they've made so far to reach what is now fixed and unchangeable, was for some 'good reason' - and thats all they needed. For the majority to believe the lies - and now its so well established throughout Europe (and Bush too has had a hand in it) that its too late to do anything to stop it. A machine was built bit by bit, not enough people noticed (or if they did, they thought it was some wacko conspiracy) - and now that machine is starting to move forward rolling all rights under it.

    Not the police on their own, they're just the cogs that help run the wheels.

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  13. One of the links wasn't posted correctly.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/31/eu_fingerprinting_kids/

    God help the children - what kind of world will it be by the time they are adults.

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  14. the url link won't post properly, so I'll do the beginning of the article on finger printing children - if you copy paste a sentence from it into search, it should come up:

    "Kiddiprinters! EU biometric ID plans reach out for the children

    You're never too young to get a record, say interior ministers

    By John Lettice
    Published Monday 31st July 2006

    The EU is planning to fingerprint children from as young as six, and earlier just as soon as it is technically feasible, according to documents obtained by Statewatch.

    The matter has already caused considerable debate (albeit behind closed doors and with no visible civil liberties concerns) among member states, but is being pushed ahead as part of a broader push towards biometric identifiers, without reference to the European Parliament..."

    ReplyDelete