Punishing Children

March 6, 2008
2:00 AM CST

We all know that Britain has a terrible problem with their young people: massive alcoholism, rocketing teen pregnancies, feral violence and terrifying criminal activity. The answer, one would think, is for these kids to get jobs—the way that young and idle hands have been constrained from causing mischief for centuries.

Well, yes: until government sticks its hairy paw into the business to address with a jackhammer a largely-minuscule nail protruding from the platform of society. Let Tim Worstall point out the obvious stupidity:

Thousands of shops, restaurants and cafés will be forced to register their staff with a new child protection agency and have their criminal records checked if they employ children for weekend or summer holiday work.

Any staff responsible for supervising children under 16 will have to be vetted. The measure is in the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, which was passed in 2006. It was originally intended to screen teachers, nursery staff and youth workers more effectively by requiring them to register with a new quango, the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), but ministers have decided to extend its scope to businesses.

And who pays for this Orwellian-sounding agency? Why, the businesses, of course.

The ISA will conduct enhanced checks through the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and give individuals – at a cost of £64 each – a “seal of approval” for working with children. The measure also covers work experience.

This is what happens, incidentally, when your guiding mantra in government is “It’s for The Children”, a mantra which superficially sounds so reasonable—who can be against protecting children?—but which au fond enables government to stick its fat nose into places where it has no business doing so.

And at a profit (to government) in the form of a whole new “income” stream:

The group has also discovered that the Government’s estimated cost for setting up and running the ISA for the first five years has grown from £91.6 million to £246 million as its scope has increased.

Ugh.

But Kim, you say, that’s a cost, not a profit!

Tim applies his trusty calculator:

£64 times 11 million people is, ermm, £720 million or so a year.

Wow. Half a billion pounds—a billion dollars—a year in “extra” revenue. Enough to make even Hillary Clinton sated.

Except, of course, for the glaringly-obvious fact (to all but government) that faced with this extra cost, businesses will just refuse to hire young adults anymore—I know that’s what I’d do—and so the ranks of the disaffected youth will just swell, leading to yet more alcoholism, teen pregnancies, violence and criminal activity.

Which will require still-more population-control measures and government intrusiveness, of course. And so the shackles of government continue to be tightened on the people.

From henceforth, every time a politician in this country says that some new law or regulation is “to protect children”, he should be put in the pillory for a week and pelted with rotten vegetables.

What do you mean, we don’t have pillories in the public square anymore?

I bet there are many in Britain who would vote for its reintroduction there.

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