As someone who believes in firm and physical punishment for unruly kids, I should be theoretically in favour of the latest batch of spin and hype to emerge from the dungeons of New Labour. Not a bit of it! For the proposal to identify potential problem children even before they are born smacks not only of adopting the classic Leftist sociological drivel about poverty and dysfunctionalism automatically leading to behaviourally anti-social children, but also of the quintessential socialist desire for the State to involve itself in every vestige of day-to-day existence.
How do you suppose New Labour is going to identify 'problem children' before birth? Will they send monitors to ogle at mummy and daddy while they make whoopee in congress? - jobsworth voyeurs of the world unite!!! I have known children to emerge from relatively disadvantaged and unstable backgrounds and become model citizens. In sharp contrast I have also had experience of offspring from middle class families turning out to be total *****hawks.
Tony Blair and his government seem to have forgotten that the State only involves itself in the lives of children in a punitively corrective or monitoring manner - the latter being essential in cases of child abuse. Its role is not to perform some sort of genetic profiling on sprogs as yet unborn. And for what purpose? To apply sticking-plaster punishment in the event of transgression. Less State involvement with harsher penalties in the context of intervention is the way to combat crime. You know, Tony, like it used to be!!
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