Thursday, August 31, 2006

Privacy row erupts over child database

If the Government believed in (or cared about) the security of this database, it would not be exempting the children of "celebrities" (code for "nothing on there about the Blairs"). Our children are as important as theirs not to mention, by some accounts, rather better brought up.

If the Social Services were the answer to the problems of our children, they might well like to take an interest in the children of some of our political leaders. Of course, they won't get the opportunity to do so. Nor will they be able to take an interest in the children of anyone who buys "celebrity" by, for example, donating to the Labour Party.

Any idea that a database to which 400,000 people have access will be confidential is ridiculous. So is the notion that £200 million spent on this technology will save any Victoria Climbies of the future. Poor Victoria's fate was well-known to the social workers. However, it seems our public servants were too afraid of accusations of thought-crime to intervene when the responsible adults were from ethnic minorities.

Amid so many imagined victims of "racism" (e.g. those children of Caribbean descent who perform below average in school, despite the fact the children of Chinese and Indian descent perform above average), Victoria was a real victim of racism. The racism that allowed her to be killed is the same racism that allows the murder of so many Muslim girls every year.

Dismantling multiculturalism and holding everyone in our society to the same standards would have saved her life. This database wouldn't.

Privacy row erupts over child database | the Daily Mail

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