↓
 

Nanny goes mobile

Head Rambles Posted on by

The timing could not be more appropriate.

On the day that the Nanny State Index is published [placing Ireland in the top three again] some little wanker is grabbing the headlines with his latest proposal.

TD proposes fining parents for allowing children use internet.

God give me patience!

He also proposes that mobile phone retailers face fines if they sell such devices to children under the age of 14.

Okay.  Let’s look at this.

First of all, how many thirteen year olds wander into a mobile phone shop to buy a phone?  Not many I would wager.  The vast majority are bought by the parents so that’s hardly going to work?  And if I were to wander into a shop to buy a phone for one of the grandkids, I would tell the vendor to mind his own fucking business if he asked who it was for.

As for fining parents: just how is that supposed to work?  Are there to be police raids on private homes?  Are there to be spot checks on the streets?  Is Teacher supposed to go running to the law if he or she spots some kid doing a drop of surfing in the playground?

I agree that there is a possible problem with kids seeing smutty stuff on the web, but it is up to the parents to deal with this little problem.  It is up to parents whether their sprog has a mobile phone or not and it is up to parents to monitor their kids’ activities.  It is a parental thing and has fuck all to do with the state or laws.  Any law which attempts to interfere in the way people live, or bring up their children is by definition a Nanny Law.  Any law which attempts to force parents to take responsibility is a heinous abomination.

Cyber safety is “the single greatest threat to children in our time”, according to this wanker.  Well, I am delighted to hear that.  It means they have solved the “problems” of smoking and obesity and all the other things they try to regulate. 

When the smoking ban was proposed people said it was unenforceable. Many laws are very difficult to police. There is a law against slapping children, I could be at home slapping my children all day, nobody is going to know about it.

Did someone mention the slippery slope?  And the fucking eejit admits that the law is unworkable before it’s even introduced!

You don’t send the police in to police it, it is about setting a standard. It’s about setting an ideal, it is about creating awareness.

Okay.  So it’s a law that can’t be policed.  If you want to “create awareness” [Jayzus but I hate that fucking expression!] then stick an ad in the paper but don’t create yet another unworkable law.

This is an objective by us as a society to protect our children by regulation. We ban so many things like alcohol, pornography and gambling, yet we give them a device with unlimited access to them.

This is one of the most frightening statements I have heard in a long time.  It is a pure unadulterated desire for state control over the individual and the family.  It is weapons grade Nanny State.

And since when did a mobile phone give unlimited access to alcohol?  Fucking idiot!

I received a message from a parent who said their child was watching a beheading by Isis.

I hope that child was immediately put into care.  The parents obviously aren’t fit if they have to rely on the state to do their parenting for them.

As a legislator the only tool available to me is to introduce legislation. I really resent the accusation of politics of press release, that I’m doing this for some sort of political gain.

And I’m the fucking tooth fairy.

 

 

Comments

Nanny goes mobile — 12 Comments

  1. You said that, “I agree that there is a possible problem with kids seeing smutty stuff on the web.” I presume you mean finding the really good quality stuff. But it was even worse when I was a kid. My brother and I shared a room and he was always hiding his ‘nudie magazines.’ becuase he didn’t want me wrinking the photos. I had to be really quiet too as I took the room apart on the hunt because if Mum heard me, she’d be up to find out what was going on. It wasn’t just ‘a possible’ problem it was a total hassle!

    • Indeed, underwear ads were good currency around the playground, and a copy of Playboy was worth its weight in gold [at least a full pack of fags].  The trouble with them though was that after a while the pages tended to stick together…  😐

  2. Talk about cherry-picking! The ISPCC bod said “unsupervised access to the internet was not a good thing”. In her next breath: “children needed privacy to access some services such as the ISPCC’s Childline.” Make up your mind.

  3. As a legislator the only tool available to me is to introduce legislation.

    Or in other words: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail!

  4. Personally I reckon all those cigarettes packs covered in Pathologist Porn are what is desensitizing our kids. We had to fake IDs with a photocopier, then go to a different local town and find a Video shop inorder to be able to get to see The Evil Dead. It was a lot of work and I’m sure we appreciated the rewards of our labour more. Kids these days see worst slasher porn at the breakfast table when Da leaves his pouch of Cutters Choice Of Emphysema lying around. 

  5. Once upon a time, when my sister and I were just young’uns, we had a couple of friends of equal age that came from a home that always had the TV running–24 hours a day–and the only things our friends did when at home was to sit in front of that TV and watch it. They didn’t ever go outside to play, they didn’t have one single board game in the house and they barely knew how to carry on a conversation. One day, while my sister and I were visiting, we suggested they turn of that ##@%%!! television and play a game instead. We had said this because we were just sick and tired of watching them watch the television at us and we didn’t really think they’d do it. However, against all illogic, they actually did it. They shut the damn TV off. Not to let an opportunity pass us by, my sister and I took them outside and spent the afternoon doing what kids usually do when the days are warm and sunny and there are woods nearby.

    When their father came home from work he practically had a heart attack because the TV was off (!!) and his kids were playing outside (gasp!). He immediately turned the TV back on and our two friends slowly reverted back to their zombie like existence as they wheeled back to their sitting positions on front of the almighty blabber box.

    Now I don’t know how it is in Ireland but here in the states it seems that every child that has finally gone past the breast/baby food phase and onto solid foods is given one of those so-called smart phones with their own cell account and data plan. From then on, instead of having their brains turned into mush by a CRT tube showing game shows, soap operas, re-runs of the Honeymooners and such, they’re now having their brains pulled out through their eyeballs into a screen the size of a cigarette pack.

    Pass all the legislation they want but there is absolutely no way to monitor who’s playing with the smart phone at any point in time just like they couldn’t monitor who it was that was actually watching the idiot box every-single-moment-of-their-childhood. Especially with a great number of adults using the anonymity of the Internet to justify acting like 9 year-olds with a bad attitude. How would they tell the difference between adults acting like kids and real kids?

    Of course you always have that self righteous nosey neighbor or the equivalent who will call the authorities if they happen to see your kid with their own smart phone or tablet?

  6. spent the afternoon doing what kids usually do when the days are warm and sunny and there are woods nearby.

    You grew up in Norfolk too?! Or would you like to rephrase that? 😛

Hosted by Curratech Blog Hosting
↑