My thanks to Sam for posting a very insightful response to my recent article on Dickensian Britain.
I reproduce Sam's response in full below, as I believe it is worth highlighting in its own right.
Nanny is creating hell on earth, and no one seems willing or able to stop her.
"Reading the comments it seems like none of you have considered why so many kids are not toilet-trained, are rude and violent, can't hold cutlery let alone polite conversations.
State and economic insistence on both parents working + execrable dumping grounds (aka 'nurseries') = immature, disturbed and disturbing kids who lead chaotic lives amidst strangers predominantly.
The damning academic research was conclusive ten years and more ago. Yet the gov has simply let this mass abuse of our little children continue unabated.
Anecdotally, I have a daughter-in-law who, on her path to becoming a child psychologist (for which profession there is an explosion in demand), has spent the last 6months at one of these 'nurseries'.
The reports are grim. She goes home every night in tears (this isn't hyperbole for effect).
Staff are very poorly paid and undereducated. Staff are bullied and bullied - particularly about the latest set of 'targets' and their fulfilment, and about inspections (the last of which had the manager screaming round the day before getting all staff to sign that they'd done a whole course in Elf'n'Safety, when of course, they hadn't. The inspector saw the anomalies but nonetheless gave the nursery a good mark).
Children are left there from 8am to 6pm and longer. They have a couple of rushed hours with their parents who feel so guilty that at weekends they indulge and spoil their little cherubs rotten.
Half the four yos can't use a toilet properly. Several don't know how to sit down and eat a meal normally. Boys particularly are violent and abusive. Girls fight viciously. Every week almost my d-i-l has to make a formal report of injury that is serious enough to be entered in the elf'n'safety book - that is, an injury deliberately done to HER by one of these children.
You'd think this was some sink estate, wouldn't you? It's not. These are the children of both the new middle-classes and of 'traditional' professionals. These parents are not lazy - they're pushed beyond what is good for their children and what is good for themselves by this care-less, tax, tax, tax socialist culture. They don't have time for their kids, let alone for washing nappies, ensuring decent table manners, and teaching respect and courtesy. They have no time for loving their children...
God help us. Really. These kids are the ones who will be responsible for our welfare as we age. This is a country on the road to sheer hell."
Visit The Orifice of Government Commerce and buy a collector's item.
Visit The Joy of Lard and indulge your lard fantasies.
Show your contempt for Nanny by buying a T shirt or thong from Nanny's Store.
www.nannyknowsbest.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Celebrate the joy of living with booze. Click and drink!
Why not really indulge yourself, by doing all the things that Nanny really hates? Click on the relevant link to indulge yourselves; Food, Bonking, Toys, Gifts and Flowers, Groceries
My compliments to Sam; A very insightful piece of writing.
ReplyDeleteIt does appear to be a goal of our socialist masters to turn people into state dependent yes drones. We do seem to be told, sometimes subtly sometimes less so, that we must only trust the state and report anyone that goes against the diktats of the state.
Now Ken, a question for you; Given that the Conservative Party or holding open hustings (another Americanism)in your home town for their next election candidate, will you be standing?
Tonk
ReplyDeleteRe standing...LOL:)
The Tories wouldn't want me, and I wouldn't want to be a politicain:
1 I am direct and speak my mind
2 I don't tolerate fools
3 I am not patient wrt delays/bureacracy
4 I don't trust politicians
5 I am independent of mind, and don't accept being told what to do/think etc
Attributes which bar me from a career in politics methinks!
Sam has expressed my fear: that these children are the adults of tomorrow who will be running the show.
ReplyDeleteIn my middle age, I'm already concerned about what I can expect in later life - to be living alone at the mercy of youngsters who have no respect for the law; to be living in a care home, staffed by immigrants earning the minimum wage; to be in hospital, neglected by nurses who consider it beneath them to tend to the physical comfort and safety of patients and at the mercy of policy which considers the life of the old to be expendable in the interests of budgetary constraints.
Jay
I can only endorse Sam's opinions and wish it could be splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the country. It's possibly only a matter of time before public expressions such as Sam's will result in the front door being kicked in at 4 in the morning.
ReplyDeleteKen;
ReplyDeleteI was only joking, I wouldn't want to stand for election neither, unless I started a party based on the views expressed by the majority on this forum. That would put the cat amongst the pigeons would it not:-)
Ken, with regard to No's 1)2)3) & 5) I am amazed you have been able to get involved with so many organisations. I worked for a major national company for 23 years, but ended up getting out, because I could see that my "face didn't fit" any more. I wasn't prepared to be a "yes" man. Strangely customers seemed quite happy - some used to ask for me by name - possibly because they were sick of being lied to by others?
ReplyDeleteAs for Sams story, I can't say I'm surprised that many of these "little horrors" come from well-to-do families. I came across many instances of the "Nouveaux Rich" throwing their weight about, and demanding this, that, and the other. Conversely many hard up families were a pleasure to help, they were usually the ones to proffer a tip, even if they couldn't afford it.
I despair.....
Micro
ReplyDeleteRe organisations, most appreciated and appreciate my directness (an FCA/director/fraud investigator/internal auditor etc that isn't direct is of no use to man nor beast).
There was one in the past that didn't, I shall save their blushes by not shaming them here:)
The British - and especially the English - seem to have lost the will and capacity to say 'NO' to Nanny's excesses. I am dismayed at the widespread anger, sometimes amounting to despair, which I see here and on other blogs. It almost always ends with a hand-wringing "There is nothing we can do about it."
ReplyDeleteBut there IS something we can do about it. Burke said "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". Benjamin Franklin said that those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.
Like Ken, I sit loose of political parties. But those of us who desire to restore not just liberty but sanity to the governance of this benighted country must combine in order to prevail. I wish I could do more than just blog, but at 80+ and in poor health it's difficult.
Post on as many libertarian blogs as you can, and consider supporting the Libertarian Party, the Convention on Modern Liberty, and similar groups. Bombard the mainstream media with protests.
And while I agree with Ken that the current Conservative Party is a pretty effete bunch, do what you can to beef them up (I take a Tory shadow cabinet member out to lunch every now and then and whisper subversive treason in her ear.)
LOL, anticant, but there is also the alternative of voting for other than the shades of beige of the Lib/Lab/Con coven. Could there ever be a better time?
ReplyDeleteJay
Whispering poision into Tory ears over a cosy dinner - Anticant is really Lady Peter Mandelson - you are well and truly outed.
ReplyDeleteI am voting UKIP - sod all the main three parties. Until we are out of the EU (which makes most if not all of the nanny laws we profess to hate) we have no chance.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, thank you Ken and friends for your kind words!
ReplyDeleteI'd be happy for my writing (aka righteous-rants!) to be plastered anywhere. Except that I'd rather wish to be feted for being more positive!
Awfully, that's not possible in this country now though. And it would be good for a mainstream reporter to pick up such stories and do some thorough investigating. They don't or won't. I am still wondering why not (no, not really - I think we have a fair idea why these stories are kept under wraps).
A few comments, if I may:
After I wrote that little piece, it struck me just how dreadfully hypocritical it is of the gov to be initiating a massive 'child-protection' project when, in plain fact, millions of our little ones are being routinely abused by this dump-and-neglect nursery culture.
But then, the CP project will make £millions for the gov. What with fines on top, it's a nice and rather large earner.
None of this money will be available for picking up the pieces in years to come: the school failures, the crimes committed by these children as youths and adults, the family dysfunctions (ask any former Kibbutzim child), the psychopathies that will have been engendered by this abusive neglect.
My other thought was of protection for my d-i-l. She's a lovely, hugely caring and very smart young woman who will make a wonderful child-focused psych (and a great, loving stay at home mum when the time comes - they are both totally emphatic about that).
But she's already facing a bit of a rollicking for having picked up on a supervisor's utterly abysmal treatment of the children in her 'care'. (I do mean very unkind and nasty - e.g routinely ignoring children who ask for toilet help and then shaming/castigating them for helplessly soiling themselves and so on.)
My d-i-l is facing the row! Not the abusive supervisor. How corrupted and insane is this?
I guess this gov has tapped into the dark side of human nature that Stanley Milgram was so shocked to find in his experiments. We're talking about those who follow 'authority' blindly for the sake of approval/meeting targets however cruel and inappropriate. There seem to be an enormous amount of these types amongst us. But then, Hitler found that too, didn't he?
Keep fighting the good fight. The White Hats always win - eventually. ;-)
Sam
Sam, sound words indeed. I am a work at home dad and while I don't make anything near the dosh I used to (who does nowdays with New Labour's brilliant stewardship of the economy and low tax rates) I have been there for my kids day in day out, school run, teatime, sports etc etc.
ReplyDeleteWe took one look at the so called 'carers' and nurseries in our area and decided that one of us was going to stay at home.
My missus earns more than me so that's what we did. Less dosh, less holidays overseas, certainly more crap cars on the drive, but better kids.
I wish I had a tad of Mandy's inexplicable influence. He's always struck me as a rather mediocre person and a gesture politician. I suppose it testifies to the abysmal quality of Brown's other entourage.
ReplyDeleteAs for the unrealism of UKIP, we can't stand alone, and I don't want to be sucked further into the crazy Yankee orbit. So far as the EU is concerned, my preference is to stay in and do our utmost to reform it.
Hardly an insightful comment. Whilst I agree that the nanny state is taking over, this article plunges straight into the "most kids are awful" rhetoric that you'd expect from grumpy right-wing pensioners.
ReplyDeleteThe article didnt really address issues of state control but was rather more about the "youth of today", and a hidden swipe at single parents.
And if kids are being "dumped and neglected" then isnt that the opposite of the nanny state? You seem to want it both ways.
Sorry, the article was boring, hackneyed and for the most part untrue.
Absolutely spot-on.
ReplyDeleteLike stay at home dad, one look at a ghastly nursery and I gave up work.
The dirt, the chaos, the smell, the attitude of staff, the moronic atmosphere had us heading for the doors.
State schools in the area (when my kids were small) were not much better. After 6 months in a state school, we'd had enough.
My 10-year-old was being taught his 4 X table (I kid you not - he'd already learned all 12 by the time he was 6!) and my 6-year-old, so the "head teacher" told me, would learn to read by just being around books!
16 years of private schooling followed - a time of penury. But it paid off. My kids are now well-mannered, well-qualified, independent adults.
What I had to teach them wasn't that special. But they were with us all the time, watching, learning, asking questions, knowing that they were important to use and fully aware of their responsibilities.
Why have we lost that, as a nation?
Now it's the government's fault that private employers force people to work long hours?
ReplyDelete" . . . open hustings (another Americanism)"
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting, because I am an American and I've never heard this expression before.
Is "bollocks" an Americanism as well?
Spot on Ken, however as a parent who finds myself in the situation of sending my kids to nursery for a silly number of hours per day (with noticeable detrimental effects), I'm still completely unable to change the situation. Which, is of course, very frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI would love for my wife to give up work and look after the kids (one now started school, another on the way), but financially it's a non-starter.
We don't have expensive holidays, fancy cars or a big house. We don't even have satellite TV! Our kitchen is crumbling and our carpets are threadbare, but there's no money to replace them with. Once the new little one goes to nursery, we'll be spending over £1,000 per month on nursery and after school fees. Enough to leave the cupboard bare, but not to make it worthwhile one of us giving up work.
Simply put, the modern world of high house prices and high taxation is forcing us into this new, untested society of kids brought up by a constantly changing bunch of low paid barely qualified girls, only just old enough to work themselves, who know little or nothing about the world, let alone the children they're trusted with.
Scarily, we both earn above the national average, so quite how less well off folk get by, I really don't know.
Bugger it all!
Looks like the previous anonymous wants it both ways too. Moaning about nursery fees whilst both parents want to be free to coin it in.
ReplyDeleteYou want the freedom to have kids? Fine. Don't blame the state though.
Yes the previous previous Anon also opens by condeming people for generalizing about kids, only to then go on and generalize about pensioners.....Typical leftie in my experience.
ReplyDeleteStill whilst we blindly believe the left's view of kids can do no wrong, nothing will improve.