Tag Archives: child-protection

Byronic flights of fancy

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Wow, “danger”, “perils” to children, “help – before it’s too late”. What a scary Times headline! I am already shaking with fear before I’ve read it. Won’t anyone think of the children, and so on?

What is this scary thing? Of course, it’s the internet.

Mind the gap: The perils of failing to keep pace with your child online
A dangerous gap has emerged between web-savvy kids and parents. Professor Tanya Byron has launched a new campaign to help — before it’s too late

Hmm. This is to mark the launch of a campaign, a “grassroots campaign” no less. (There’s a beautiful phrase in US politics for a campaign that pretends to be a genuine upsurge of democratic will but actually, well, isn’t. Oh yes, the word is “Astroturf”)

The campaign seems to involve asking kids if they can use any tech and getting very afraid when they say yes..

The campaign’s catalyst is Byron, known for her television programmes The House of Tiny Tearaways and Am I Normal?, as well as the author of the government-backed 2008 Byron Review Safer Children in a Digital World, which resulted in the creation of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety.

So, a tv child psychologist heads it. Hmm, why am I less than convinced by this whole thing? A tv child psychologist who also writes for the Times. And gets written about in the Times. Because, she’s also in the news today. (In the Times):

Ministers need to act swiftly on child safety, warns adviser

It’s Tanya, now known as “Gordon Brown’s adviser.”

Well who else could the government call on? Obviously, no amount of experience or qualifications or all-round peer-reviewed respect gained by any other child psychologist, or by any person who actually knows anything about the internet, could stand up against the fact that she’s got tv programmes.

(If you ever doubted that senior politicians are in thrall to the cult of celebrity at least as much as the people who read Heat (etc) magazines, Tanya is the living proof of your naivete.)

The busy Tanya is panicking about the UK not implementing some European directive on games classification. Or all of her recommendations, really. So she’s going from school to school asking questions, to support the idea that kids may know things about using the internet that their parents don’t. And that this is somehow inherently terrifying….

The games classification thing is typical of the kneejerk reactions of this “grassroots” campaign. For a start, it’s inherently counter-productive, in terms of their supposed goals. Would anything make a game more attractive to an early teenager than an 18 certificate?

Is there any evidence that playing pc or console games that are “too old for them” harms kids? Any evidence at all?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that parents are all in a strange population subgroup that failed to notice anything that happened over the last twenty years? Like the arrival of the Internet. How many adults do you know who don’t use computers or the net?

There’s a more internet and computer nonsense on the BBC today.

Tech addiction ‘harms learning’
Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned.

The study – Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology – was carried out by researchers at Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and academic consultancy AJM Associates.

(The AJM website mission statement says:
“Providing outstanding returns for investors along with excellent leadership in managing real estate projects is the AJM Associates mission.” I, for one, admire the conduct of educational research by profit-oriented real-estate companies and management schools….In your face, stuffy old educational academics. )

You can buy the study from Siigel Press for about $25. It’s on their “Bestseller” list. (Hardly surprising that it’s a best-seller. It got a free plug on the BBC, ffs)

The blurb talks up the shock value of this “bestseller”.

Technology addiction amongst young people, particularly in terms of facilitating social networking, is having a disruptive effect on positive attitudes towards learning. Read the results of this collaborative study spearheaded by Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and AJM Associates. While students expressed little concern of addiction, technology obsession is hindering spelling skills, encouraging plagiarism and disrupting classroom learning. Download this report to learn the full details and the disturbing impact technology is having on today’s youth.

Call me a pedant – despite my possible incipient adult-onset internet addiction – but “While students expressed little concern of addiction,” doesn’t seem like correct grammar to me.
And surely they don’t really mean to claim that technology addiction is “facilitating social networking”?

If it was only possible to channel the energy that goes into manufacturing internet scares and turn it to a useful purpose, we could all be driving round in hot-air powered vehicles and could stop worrying about global warming,

Otherwise, I think that – if you really want to protect your kids online – you actually talk to them.

Misguided Security Managers

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In the July / August edition of Infosecurity Magazine, there is a fairly interesting article on security matters, and differences, in the public and private sectors. I cant find this article online so you will have to trust me.

There is a quote in the article, from an “anonymous” security manager which sadly echoes comments I have heard right across the public sector, when public servants discuss the need to protect public privacy:

One senior manager at a local council – who ask not to be named – told infosecurity that he would rather be brought before the courts for an information security charge, than because a child or other vulnerable person has been harmed as a result of data not being shared.

(Here, I get visions of Reverend Lovejoy’s wife crying out “wont anyone think of the children”)

In the article this is presented as a dilemma public sector information security professionals face on a regular basis. My experience of said individuals supports this. It is very tabloid friendly. It is also complete nonsense that infuriates me to the point of wanting to choke the life out of the idiots who say it. (note for any future court action – this is purely imaginary, I am not really planning to kill anyone now or in the future)

There are so many things wrong with this it is hard to know where to start.

This person is paid to be a security manager. They are not a child protection professional. They are there to manage the security of the information that the public have entrusted to the council. Nothing else. If their job description means they have to ensure that vulnerable persons are safe in their homes, then I suspect there is something seriously wrong going on.

As a public servant, this “senior manager” is paid by the public, who you would rightly assume should have some expectation of his behaviour. Unless we’ve moved into some weird world where the vulnerable pay more for their services he has no right to unilaterally assume what laws he will follow and what laws he will break. He has no right or authority to compromise my privacy and personal data because he thinks that doing so 100,000 times might save one vulnerable person.

Equally this “manager” (sneer quotes intended) has no way of knowing if he is placing the safety of vulnerable people in further danger. Privacy laws and restrictions on how your personal data can be handled are there to protect everyone. Yes this includes criminals but it also includes vulnerable people. If this senior manager feels sending a copy of the addresses of everyone “at risk” to an agency across town would be helpful sharing of their data, what would he do if it got lost? What is his defence if his information security failures allow a predator to get the details of the vulnerable people he seeks to protect?

Equally importantly, what about those who only become vulnerable because of his lackadaisical attitude? This idea that passing private information and personal data is inherently a GOODTHING™© is insane. An otherwise fine person who has their home address details passed into the hands of a criminal becomes a vulnerable person. They have, through no fault of their own, become open to a vastly different threat – one they may not be prepared for. Is this acceptable behaviour for public servants? Imagine a serial rapist who gets hold of modified electoral roll data indicating addresses (and telephone numbers) of every house in the area where a single female lives. Would you be happy with the response that he would rather be in court over an Infosec case?

I suspect the real problem is that privacy and information security statutes don’t have enough teeth. If this senior manager was facing 20 years in jail for an infosec compromise, I am sure he would think differently. As it stands, nothing he does will get him properly punished in a court of law, so he must be talking about the court of public opinion. This is, sadly, so seriously misled by the tabloids that it is easy to see he would be hounded to the brink of suicide if it turned out he had withheld data that might have possibly prevented the death of a child. In a similar manner, if it turned out he had lost a disk containing the personal details of 250,000 people it would get, maybe, a few column inches.

To an extent this is our fault. We want easy to digest news. We ignore the mights and possibilities in the first instance, so we can get to the meat of saving the child. In the second case, its too technical, too distant and probably doesn’t affect “us” so we don’t really care about it. We, the public, are stupid.

When all else fails, blame the Internet

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On this morning’s bus journey, I read in what appears to be yesterday’s Metro, from the date on the Metro website version of this article, (although I can’t believe the Metros has a Sunday version.)

Web vengeance on Baby P couple
The identities of the mother and stepfather of Baby P have been posted on the internet – along with messages urging convicts to attack them.

The baby P story is a truly mind-numbing story, involving the torture and murder of a baby, at the hands of his mother, stepfather and the lodger. The child was listed by social services as being at risk, The police had already been involved and had sought a prosecution. No one seemed able to save the lad’s life. It’s one of those stories that push the boundaries of your capacity for rage.

The visual presentation of this story has been disturbing, even for those who can’t bring themselves to read the court statements. The police released a 3-d rendering of a baby’s head with a catalogue of injuries. The next day, the papers followed this up the image with pre-injury pictures of an angelic-looking little blonde boy.

Every one involved – which now means most of the UK population – has been looking to find someone or something to blame. The almost inconceivable stupidity of the social services staff seems a fair target. The government has set up an enquiry. A BBC Panorama programme tonight will investigate claims by police and a senior social worker that they recommended that the child be taken into care. (Hindsight is 20/20, as teh saying goes.)

But, the actual culprits have already been found guilty. The visceral response is to want to execute them. Of course, faced with these backward and depressed people, no doubt themselves abused as children, the quality of mercy would get the better of this instinct, for most people. After all, that’s why most of us are not murdering simpletons.

Understandably, many people expressed their natural fury on the Internet. Intemperately, yes. Still, it seems quite bizarre to see that now this means that the Internet has got to take the blame. As usual.

There was already a half-hearted attempt to blame the Internet in the trial reports when it was reported of the mother that

When she was awake, she spent much of her time on the internet, gossiping in chatrooms and playing online poker.

I am no fan of either moronic chatrooms or online gambling. But, I find it hard to draw any connections between either of these activities and child murder.

Similarly, I can’t see that venting rage on the Intenet is much of a crime either. The argument seems to be that internet rage is bad because it will find its expression in attacks on the guilty three.

Late last week Facebook shut down pages carrying threats and abusive comments about the mother, including one entitled: ‘Death is too good for [the mother’s name], torture the bitch that killed Baby P.’
Another was added yesterday and had been viewed by at least 6,000 people last night.
The mother’s profile page on Bebo was removed after abusive messages were added.
The postings demonstrate the ease with which the law can be breached online.

How odd that writing (richly deserved) insulting comments on a website can be a crime. Indeed, unless, the web access in x prison is much more generous than in my (non-custodial, though it sometimes feels otherwise) workplace, I don’t even see how the mother will get to read the comments.

I am most baffled by the idea that identifying these people and saying vicious things about them is somehow equivalent to instructing fellow prisoners to injure them. And that such orders – from people unknown – will be followed to the letter.

Are there people in jail who assume that behavioural instructions on the internet have the force of law? Well, more than the force of law, apparently, because they may not be too responsive to the force of law, given that they are in jail.

Would a random cheque-fraudster who finds him or herself sharing a cell with one of these disgraces to humanity think “Oh, we’ll get on really well” but then read the undisobeyable internet instructions and be obliged to torture and kill the said disgrace to humanity?

More about bodyweight

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From BBC Breakfast Time to the BBC website, child obesity is yet again a BBC theme of the day. The topic is whether child obesity is a form of neglect.

Related articles are one about Kacey’s weight went off the scale and Infants being treated for obesity.

Rather disappointingly, from a freak show point of view, four-year-old Kacey didn’t break the 20 stone barrier, or whatever the top mark on a set of bathroom scales is. She was only “off the scale” in terms of the percentile charts used to measure infants. (Just in case there aren’t enough normality hoops for parents and children to jump through, when they get to school….)

It turns out that the supposedly monstrously obese two-year-old Kacey is no longer obese but is in fact just tall now.

As a result of becoming obese when she was still a baby, Kacey has had a premature growth spurt and is now the height of an average 10-year-old and still weighs five stone (31.7kg).

So, was this even “obesity”? Don’t children put on weight before they grow tall. And if they are going to be very tall, they need something to grow new body from.

This got me wondering, is tallness a potential problem? Are people to have their children taken off them by social services for growing too tall at the wrong age?

Because that seems to be one implication of this compulsory normality madnes sthat is getting beamed at children and parents.

Her mum hopes that will continue and by the time Kacey is reaching her teenage years her height and weight will be much closer to the average child. By taking control of Kacey’s food her parents have transformed their daughter’s future.

Sentence One: WHY? Thor forbid that anyone should be on the outside edges of the human bell-shaped curve any more. Average is GOOD. Standard is GOOD. Diversity is BAD.

Sentence Two: Well, no, actually, it seems to me they have more likely set up a future teenage battle-ground that will end up with her becoming anorexic, bulimic or a compulsive eater. Food & control all tangled together, with subliminal Stepford-Wines style messages about how important it is to be like everybody else. Important enough to embarrass the future fiurteen-year-old Kacey (is that even a name or a set of initials?) with the existence of discussion and pictures of her as fat two year-old “problem child” in the national press. I can’t predict a good outcome.

I don’t blame this family for apparently turning a child’s weight into the centre of their lives. What else can they do? Thye have to show a willingness to change it. The other articles discuss the BBC’s apparently successful drive (no surprise there, resources flow to those who take the fashionable line) to find paediatricians who will agree that families with overfed children should be scrutinised by social services.

Now Social Services departments are well known for always improving the lives of kids who fall under their tender attentions …….
And there blatantly aren’t any enough children who are beaten or homeless or abused who could really do with some of this attention……

Doctors say they are now seeing children as young as six months old in their obesity clinics.

Come on. How on earth can a child under 6 months become “obese”? Small babies can’t even eat food. Even bottlefed babies are hard pushed to take in more than they can handle. Babies just stop feeding when they are full. And as soon as they start moving round, even chubby babies tend to burn up their stored energy.

Parents are allegedly to blame for feeding McDonald’s diets to their babies. Nonsense again, if we are talking about the poor* – because there is always an unspoken assumption in this that the poor are too stupid to feed their kids nutritious food – they can hardly afford to give babies a diet of BigMacs and Super-thick milkshakes, no matter how stupid they may be.

* At the children’s centre in the deprived Meadows area of Nottingham parents are offered support to improve their children’s diet.

Here is the one mysterious fact about the epidemic of obesity (and, yes, I do know that you can’t talk about an epidemic of something that isn’t a transferable disease, I was being ironic, ok?) As you can read in an old post here Everything about diets seems to be bull people actually eat LESS now than they did 15 years ago, according to the UK Office of National Statistics. I can’t repeat this too often. Even the BBC did in their quiz. It undercuts almost all of the food nonsense we get stuffed down our craws:

Men eat 6% fewer and women 3% fewer calories and both men and women eat less fat than they did in 1986.

Hmm, calories and fat. Aren’t we getting constantly told that it’s calories and fat that make us fat? This is obviously not completely untrue – there must be a relationship between how much we consume and how much bodyfat we store – but it can’t be wholly true either.

I can come up with a million crackpot theories involving additives and people not walking anywhere and residual estrogens in the water and so on. These remain personal opinion based on minimal or no evidence, so I’ll spare you them. Until we actually understand any of this, it is stretching credulity to assume that every chubby child is getting stuffed with KFCs and crisps and Big Macs and is doomed to a lifetime of Jerry-Springer-style immobility.

The one crackpot theory that I won’t spare you is the idea that the social meanings that we attach to food are demented.

We are so alienated from what we eat that we barely know it comes from farms (a/c to a spurious report on the BBC yesterday). We are obsessed with the weight of celebrities. Half the population is in a constant state of self-loathing beacuse they cant lose weight, but still despises other people for their fatness. And just in case adolescents aren’t disturbed enough about their bodyweight, we are now stretching the boundaries of concern down to babies.