http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5942068/Teenage-volunteers-face-prosecution-unless-they-register-with-anti-paedophile-database.html

I have an intense hatred for the Daily Mail led paedophile witchhunt, but it's a whole lot more vitriolic now that it's ****ing state-sponsored and enforced.



'Officials will decide'? What the ****? It's a little ironic that the ISA has the same initials as the Marxist concept 'Ideological State Apparatus', describing how society reshapes an individual in its own image. This Independent Safeguarding Authority is an extreme extention of the Criminal Records Bureau, which seeks to.. well, I quote


The CRB checks confirm whether you have a criminal conviction and bar you from certain jobs if you have certain convictions. This makes sense, to a certain degree, and I have no problem with this as long as the scope is kept narrow and specific.

The ISA has a remit that is very subtly different, judging if there is "no known reason why an individual should not work with these client groups". This horrendous double negative might seem to reduce to exactly the same thing as the CRB, but this distinction treats everyone as if they are a risk by default until cleared by the ISA. And the ISA will judge you against your criminal record, other agencies (it doesn't specify which agencies), and public tipoffs. This is exactly like the ****ing absurd McCarthy era communist witchhunt. I really hate being treated like I'm a paedophile until proven otherwise by some faceless ****ing official judging me against some non-specific guidelines, chosen by themselves.

I've learnt previously that my fears of civil liberties being curtailed by kneejerk policies are not usually shared by others on this forum, but I'm interested in what you guys think of this.

Ah, protecting children. The bane of liberals and socialists everywhere.

Will someone please think of the children????????

Yeah I'm not fond of this cobblers either. I guess the "logic" is that nothing is too much trouble or too expensive if it saves EVEN ONE CHILD'S LIFE!

... until the dastardly villain finds a way around whatever new rules are cooked up, rendering them entirely futile. If someone wants to harm a child, I don't think they can be stopped by any blanket government policy (unless, perhaps, the policy is so draconian that it throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater).

Meanwhile children learn that the world is out to get them and that people aren't to be trusted unless the government approves of them. Trust the government, not your fellow man. Let the government make decisions for you.

I wonder whether, in a few years, it'll all come around again and enough people will get sufficiently sick of this philosophy that there'll be a knee-jerk swing to the opposite extreme.

There are a surprising number of libertarians here. It's just that with the liberals and the neocons yelling at each other you can't hear us.

That and Freelancer barges in with some **** THE POLICE! garbage and we don't want to associate ourselves with him.

This is probably the silliest thing I've ever heard from someone whose party claims to be in favor of limited government.

You can argue that point with American politics, if you want, but in this case we're talking about laws in his country. Brits have already surrendered much of their life to government control. So, it appears, they want to reduce the likelihood that pedophiles will work with children by investigating the records of people who will work around children and making a judgement call based on the check. This actually seems like a fairly reasonable thing to expect a government to do. So long as there is some sort of process for people to appeal or refute a negative finding, what's the problem?

Before I could get my teaching license, I had to be fingerprinted at the county jail (not a pleasant place, big fight going when I was there) and undergo a background check.

before i could work at a school as a temp custodian a few years ago, i had to approve of the temp agency to do a criminal background check on me.

Well, you are from the south so it's obvious that you need to be investigated!

I did the same to be a high school lacrosse coach. I am also obligated to report any signs of abuse to the proper authorities as well.

Many jobs have background checks Checking to see if people who want to work with kids have a history to fiddling kids is not a bad thing.

In the United States (or at least in Florida), teachers have to testify that they are not communists. Apparently its bad to be a government employee and support the violent overthrow of the government.


I agree with Wookie. The Brits have put the nanny state in control of everything, thus shouldn't be upset when the government does something to protect kids.

Unless Mort's a Tory, but I don't get that impression from him (at least if the Conservative party is readily comparable to the Republican party, which it is as far as I can tell)

Pfft, the tories are pretty left wing by their standards.

And err, most people are annoyed when the government does anything like this, nobody is really a fan of the huge amounts of cctv in london etc.

Also, haha southernboys.

I'm not sure I understand. Is this anything more than a mandatory criminal background check for people working with children and in hospitals?

Only blood relatives and first cousins should be afraid. And livestock.

And I don't remember ever being asked about communism.

That's true. I guess blood tests would be more effective.

well i am all for protecting children from pedo's. i believe there is a special place in hell for anyone who messes with a child... a special place with daily meetings with Satan and a pineapple.

however some of the wording used here makes it seem more like you have to prove that your not a pedophile, like they apparently assume everyone is, rather than just doing a background check.

and since i can already hear the cries of "think of the children" let me say that it will take more than background checks or even forcing 16 year old to sign up in a database to protect children in any real capacity.

This isn't protecting anyone but the ISA. This is just fostering fear in children, and putting a lot more people off from being teachers. The actual threat posed by paedophiles is minute, but the threat of an invasive government is very real indeed.

For the record, I think the role of government is economic, not social. I believe strongly in high taxation to provide public services, not to thrust ideology upon society and dominate the lives of individuals. The whole 'nanny state' metaphor is pretty lazy and useless (and so is the idea of 'big government', what the **** is that even supposed to mean? one debates the purpose of government, not its 'size'), as it lumps together a vast amount of different sorts of policies over a whole range of issues.

Though I agree, the fault of this lies generally with the public, and the media, and the vicious cycle of stupidity between the public and the media. The Sun and the Daily Mail report some sort of 'THERE ARE PAEDOPHILES IN SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!' scare story, and the public immediately go 'THERE ARE PAEDOS IN SCHOOLS WHY IS GOVERNMENT NOT DOING ANYTHING', and the government does something marginally sensible and the Daily Fail reports 'THERE ARE IMMIGRANT PAEDOPHILES IN SCHOOLS STEALING JOBS FROM BRITISH PAEDOPHILES' or some such, and the public demand government policy to go even further and so on and we end up with this sort of terrifying ****. I'd very much like the government to go '**** you, public, stop being retards.' but as long as this is an election issue the government has to pander to the mob.

The sheer insane fury over this expenses 'scandal' has shown the sheer levels of general misguided retardation of the British public, so it doesn't surprise me that misguided kneejerk policies come in to place.

That's the CRB check. This is a whole lot more, this is a check to prove that you're not a 'threat', somehow, going by both your criminal record, 'other agencies' (whatever that's supposed to mean), and tipoffs from the public. It's really the last one that ****s me up the most, so even if you're suspected of being a paedophile by some crazy old lady you can have your career destroyed.

Obviously the trick is to disregard any tipoffs from Daily Mail readers.

Just out of curiousity, what in your ideology makes you believe that the former is necessary for the latter? I would think higher taxation impedes growth and creates less incentive for people to earn more which stiffles funding for public services. Being that higher taxes deprives people of their income, I would also think that this artificially inflates the demand for public services. So wouldn't [excessively] high taxation actually hinder your ideal of increased public services?

Morthog, though I disagree with his politics on just about every level, makes great points.

It's the encouragement of spying on your neighbors that should scare people.

Random things to think about that aren't arguments either way.

This doesn't seem to make a distinction between pedophiles and child molesters. One group hurts children; going after the other group is thought crime.

There was some study (done in Great Britian :D) that found that 8% of men were pedos. That's as many as are gay. Society has determined that being homosexual is okay, and because of that, there is far less research being done on it's causes. With pedophilia the situation is even worse. Why the hell would any pedophile come forth to participate in research when they are vilified for something that they have no more control over than a homosexual has over their homosexuality, even when the pedophile ISN'T a child molester?

Thirdly, most rapes are not about the sex. This is true for child molestation as well.

Finally, something like 90% of all child abuse and molestation is done by parents to their own children. So why would you waste all this money to stop 10% of the cases, when you could just require everyone to have a background check before having children?

I get that as far as the left/right spectrum goes, but I mean stuff like the tories are for privatization and the republicans are against nationalization of anything.



It's the same thing, really. A 'small' government is less involved with the economy and the affairs of the states (which I suppose you don't really have ). It's still just talking about the purpose of government.

Holy ****. If that's true, then your argument blows all this B.S. out of the water.

I've seen a similar study that claimed less than 1 percent, these things tend to be heavily skewed. Especially since they have differing definitions of what Pedophilia is and half of them include Ephebophiles in their results.

Since the law is likely to define 'children' as anyone below the legal age of consent, it seems appropriate to include ephebophiles for the purposes of this discussion, no matter how you think it is.

So say I'm 16 years old and I find 15 year olds attractive, does that make me a pedophile?

Age / 2 + 7 rule. You're only a pedo if they are <= 14.

It's also deceptive. His statement included "abuse". It's also a moot point. Even if we stipulated that most abuse, sexual or otherwise, happens at home that still doesn't "blow all this B.S. out of the water" because it is not unreasonable for people to want a tool in place that can help prevent abuse outside of the home.

indeed

basically i'm ****ing sick of this country and its laws, but the fault also lies with the young parents.
If u so much as look at a kid, a mother will jump out of the shadows and scream "PAEDO" and other mothers will join in with the abuse.
It is on par with witch trials.
A society built upon the negative bias of the media and the paranoia that develops from it.

Im leaving for Australia the first chance i get.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

What, and lose your kid to dingos instead of pedos?

At least the pedos don't eat them, unless they are Albert Fish.

Yeah, that's a problem. I can't see any reason why public (possibly anonymous) tips should be given any weight in this process, especially considering the hysteria that already surrounds this issue.

I don't think the law works that way.

These ISA checks will be applied even to those with very limited interaction with children. Children's authors like Quentin Blake, Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo etc have been affected by this and have threatened to boycott school visits. As of October they will need to pay £64 to prove to the government that they're not pedos. This really isn't necessary when these people only have contact with children in the presence of a teacher and only visit each school once.

Charges in those sort of cases are thankfully rare. You might be in some **** if the age of consent there happens to be 16.

Also there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child-on-child_sexual_abuse , so shouldn't this law also be screening children before allowing them around other children?

Wait: You need to pay them to check you out?

Well thankfully using your rule I'm fine so long as im dating 17 year olds or older.

It's £64 unless you're a volunteer as I understand it.

This is going to screw with a lot of the lower paid staff at the hospital I work at (caterers, porters, cleaners etc). The perm. staff will probably be paid for by the NHS but the temporary staff are screwed. They're on minimum wage, they have no guaranteed hours so they earn even less than that and now they'll need to pay more than a day's wages to prove they're not paedophiles.:rolleyes: