Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Vince Cable argues that the State should pull back on the obsessive checking in its attempts to wrap us all in cotton wool and stop the all bad things happening.
The endless checking is costly for the individuals, an unnecessary intrusion and a vast waste of resources at a time when public services are squeezed. Sunday schools and voluntary groups such as the Scouts have difficulty recruiting new leaders, one reason being the problems of adults being alone with children.
The Government has backed down from some checks. But the checking machine grinds on. Common sense and proportion have vanished as the system tries to avoid a repetition of the mistakes made before the Soham murders. One awful case – in which details of a sex offender were not passed to a new employer – has created a vast, costly bureaucracy with a life of its own.
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One Comment
Yes, Vince is right. The ever bigger and louder media coverage of every incident in society has created a kind of hysteria whereby some politicians think the way to respond to every tragedy is new laws restricting people’s freedom in the vain hope of making everyone safe, 100% of the time. It’s nuts. Life has risks. There will always be tragedies. If we give up liberty and convenience every time there is a tragedy, then given that there will always be tragedies it isn’t difficult to see that in the not too distant future we will have given up all of our freedom and convenience…yet there will still be tragedies…