Just as you think Britain’s local authorities have reached the
edge of the envelope in vacuous, bullying stupidity, that they can
go no further in their efforts to create a society of politically
correct sheep, they excel themselves once again.
It’s old news now that at Seagry in Wiltshire, children were
banned from playing on a veteran steamroller which had stood in the
school’s playground without accident since 1964. It was deemed “not
proper playground equipment” and “failed to meet any required
standards whatsoever.”
Something — actually a quasi-official national body — called
“Sports England” proposed eliminating games like sack races,
three-legged races and egg-and-spoon races from kindergartens and
nursery schools in order to prevent children learning a competitive
ethos, proposing problem-solving exercises instead. The government
also supports banning games of musical chairs at nursery schools
because they may lead to aggression.
At the village of Great Somerford, Wiltshire, playground swings
were ordered demolished for being too tall. A charity kite-flying
contest for children was banned by a Lancashire council on the
grounds that they did not have health and safety insurance.
At Torbay, palm trees were condemned by the council because
“they have very sharp leaves.” Liberal Democrat councillor Colin
Charlwood is reported to have said, in what sounds like dialogue
from The Day of the Triffids: “what if one of those leaves
caught a child in the eye for example. It’s a little bit like
keeping tigers - they are beautiful to look at, but you wouldn’t
want them wandering the streets.” These are trees they are talking
about!
Children at one primary school were prohibited from making
daisy-chains in case they picked up germs from the flowers. Another
school stopped children making hanging flower-baskets for the same
reason. Playground pursuits like handstands, tag, yo-yos,
tree-climbing and skipping have also been banned in various
places.
Children at Cummersdale Primary School, Carlisle, were allowed
to play conkers (an immemorially old English game involving
breaking chestnuts) as long as they wore safety-goggles. Children’s
ball games and bicycle-riding (!) were also banned by some
authorities. Outdoor activities with a bit of adventure and
initiative attached to them, such as canoeing, rock-climbing,
archery and sailing are all in decline, according to David Bell,
the Chief Inspector of Schools. At Fairway Middle School in Norwich
it was announced that children who wished to throw snowballs at
other children would have to obtain their targets’ permission
first, making the whole exercise rather pointless (What would
Calvin and Hobbes say?). Tim Gill, a director of the Children’s
Play Council, said: “There is no one person or body to blame. What
is at fault is our culture of caution.” (Huh? There is a Children’s
Play Council?)
NOT ONLY ARE CHILDREN’S LIVES and growth being stunted by
authorities apparently hell-bent on depriving them of the slightest
experience of adventure and achievement: adults too are being
protected beyond the bounds of sanity.
A garden gnome wearing a policeman’s helmet was banned because
neighbors were offended or possibly intimidated, and a lady’s
display of china pigs in a window was also banned, lest any passing
Muslims were offended.
As the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar approached, an actor
playing Lord Nelson, Britain’s greatest Naval hero, who scorned
danger in storms and battle, was forced to wear a lifejacket over
his Naval uniform while transferring from one boat to another in
the calm waters of the Thames at Tower Bridge.
But, as I say, all this is old hat. The latest is that a
skull-and-crossbones flag has been banned from a 6-year-old boy’s
pirate party as being “unneighborly.”
Town hall planners told the parents of Morgan Smith that they
must apply for planning permission to fly the flag, at a cost to
them of $150. It was reported that an assessment of the 5ft by 4ft
flag’s “impact” on the surrounding area will be undertaken before a
decision is made as to whether the flag would be permitted for the
party or not. The family have flown a Union Jack or a St. George’s
flag without a problem, but a neighbor complained to the council
about the Jolly Roger and they were ordered to remove it.
Mr. Smith said: “When the lady from the council came to see me
she said that it was no problem flying any of the other flags, it
was the Jolly Roger that was of concern.
“She took some pictures and said that we would have to take it
down from now on. I’ve put in a planning application but I
shouldn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
This is not the first time officialdom has intervened to protect
people large and small from the sight of the Jolly Roger. When, in
commemoration of Princess Diana, a “replica” of a pirate ship was
built in Kensington Gardens in March 2000, for children to play on,
hearkening back to Peter Pan’s adventures with Captain Hook (Peter
Pan’s earliest adventures were in Kensington Gardens), it was
decreed it would be without violent imagery such as cannon, walking
the plank or the Jolly Roger.
Still, if children are deprived of adventure and excitement in
one way, they will often find it in another: All this care lest
children be exposed to the tiniest conflict coexists with some of
the highest rates for juvenile crime, drug abuse, underage sex,
sexually transmitted disease, and underage drunkenness in Europe.
(Russia, a byword for dangerous, drunken chaos, has a rate of
juvenile and teenage alcohol abuse a fraction of Britain’s,
according to a recent survey.)
Beverly Hughes, the new Children’s Minister, said in May 2005
that the government could do no more to tackle the problem of
teenage pregnancy, which was out of control. Britain’s teenage
pregnancy rate was five times that of the Netherlands, three times
that of France, and double that of Germany. In 2004, the Department
of Education and Skills released figures showing that more than 10
children were expelled every day from English state schools for
assaulting either staff of fellow pupils, and another 280 a day
were suspended for similar attacks. Millions of people now claim to
be in fear of gangs of marauding teenagers.
H. G. Wells’s story The Time Machine depicted a distant
future in which the human race had divided into the helpless,
sheeplike Eloi and the brutal Morlocks. Present British policies
appear aimed at creating future citizens who are Eloi and Morlock
in one.
