This vile government is beyond belief - suggesting that the refusal of perfectly sensible and rightly searching Freedom of Information requests is acceptable because of the existence of critical commentary that is freely available on the internets.

You do not need to be a home educator to be enraged about this.

Make no mistake - if the state cannot police the precious online world (and Ed Balls cannot remove uncomfortable truth blog posts by making a single shitty phonecall) then it will make full use of the endless legislation it has constructed to stick the boot right in.

Lovely Ali has written a post well worth reading here. She makes reference to this pertinent quote from the late Tim Field:

"When close to being outwitted and exposed, the bully feigns victimhood and turns the focus on themselves - this is another example of manipulating people through their emotion of guilt, e.g. sympathy, feeling sorry, etc."

The government continually uses the discrimination card to silence freedom of speech and fair criticism - whilst continually encouraging or engaging in discriminatory activity itself.

The reason I dislike the female PCSO who paces our road is becuase she tries to touch other people's children without their consent. I am not being sexist. She is an appalling professional.

The reason I shouted at the black driver when crossing the roundabout today is because he did not give way to me. I was not being racist. He was not a good driver.

The reason I resent the gay man I once lived with is because he ran off to Ireland with my dressing gown and other belongings in his bag. I am not being homophobic. He was a thief.

The reason I criticise independent expert Graham Badman is because of his complete lack of intellectual rigour and his belated scrabbling around for evidence to shore up his wildly inaccurate assertions and totalitarian recommendations that have the potential to harm my children. I am not bullying independent experts. The man is incompetent and a liar by omission. No amount of government dogma will alter that fact.

If a government department thinks that it is acceptable to refuse Freedom of Information requests because:

• someone has told the truth,
• someone has taken the piss, and
• someone (a child, no less) has produced a piece of animation

and this might, conceivably, hurt the feelings of an extremely powerful, highly experienced, well-paid independent expert, then this tells me that the real bully is not the truth-teller, the piss-taker, or the young animator. The bully is the government, using its legislation to protect itself from scrutiny once again.

So the ISA has caused people to wake up and question who is the cart and who is the horse in the relationship between citizen and state. They don't want to be registered on a database for so much as thinking about someone under the age of 18, which is of course where all of this will end if we allow it to continue.

Perhaps those people can't yet see the dangers inherent in ContactPoint, not to mention the Common Assessment Framework - but if they apply the same logic that has caused them to give a resounding NO to the ISA - the logic telling them that such an initiative is grossly disproportionate and wholly damaging to voluntary relationships of trust in a free society - then they will work it out in no time. 

Certainly, if the mainstream media continues to highlight cases of state kidnapping, naive and complacent parents will start to think twice before proclaiming that they are happy to be inspected by the local authority at a time and in a manner of the authority's choosing, because they know that their children are clean, fed watered and loved. In the light of recent events, isn't that already starting to sound sound rather stupid?

As smart home educators have been saying all along, knowing that one's child is well looked after is not sufficient to protect one's family from an over-zealous teacher, doctor or social worker if the ultimate arbiter of suitability is the state, not the parent. A home educating parent is a parent like any other. What applies to a home educating parent with regard to the education and welfare of their children will have to apply to all parents.

In much the same way as the ISA has been given a resounding NO by everyman, so the home education recommendations will be given a resounding NO by everyparent when it becomes apparent that they are in fact home recommendations, applicable to ALL parents. Everyparent - not to mention the people who aren't parents - will apply their logic to the home recommendations and understand that they are grossly disproportionate and wholly damaging to voluntary relationships of trust in a free society.

Ed Balls' home recommendations will effectively see their children parented by the state and its tight circle of quangos, fake charities and other organisations, whose power, obscenely inflated salaries and easy access to children will invariably attract the wicked, the corrupt and the abusers. Home educators know this to be true, I know this to be true, and when a statist whore like Polly admits that it is true, then you can only imagine the ugliness that really exists in the public sector - ugliness that we all continue to fund, one way and another.  

But will it reach the point where every decent-minded person will perform their own act of civil disobedience and just say NO? That's what's really starting to worry Ed Balls. Threatened by Tory promises and more concerned about his climb up Gordon's greasy pole* than for the safety of the chiiiildren, he has performed something of a U-turn, now pledging to review the ISA with the help of an "expert" whose input, if genuine, might have been expected somewhat before he set the wheels in motion towards a database state.

Only today, home educators have experienced this rather backward state of policy-based evidence making for themselves - in the buttock-clenched form of Graham Badman, the "independent" "expert" Ed Balls consulted to review the practice of elective home education in England. Graham's intellectual sloppiness and lack of academic rigour has finally caught up with him, and now, months after his report and its totalitarian recommendations were handed in to teacher, he is running scared and desperately scrabbling around for evidence from the local authorities to back up his nonsense claims. He won't find it - smart home educators have already done their homework.

Whatever Badman tries to say, it won't wash. Decent, intelligent home educating parents will say NO. Decent, intelligent parents will say NO. Decent, intelligent people will say NO. The Conservatives, eager for votes, will say NO. The mainstream media, eager to capture the current climate, will say NO. 

Graham, go to the bottom of the class. And there's a spare pair of pants in the lost property drawer.

[For better information on Graham and his pointy hat with a 'd' on it, you'd do better going to see Pete Darby, Jax, Carlotta, Irdial, Merry, Maire, Danae, Ali Preuss and Firebird.]

*That one is for the Angry Exile, hope he has the mind bleach handy.

Well, not always. But often.

In the case of Polly Toynbee, whose latest Grauniad column is featured next to a rather apt fake charity NSPCC advert, her conformance is likely attributable to gross stupidity. Polly makes this stupid point, made by many other stupid people before her:

"Ministers are on a hiding to nothing: negligent in cases of harm, intrusive when checking on adults helping out with children"

And it is of course stupid because once the state assumes the role of arbiter of suitability, it's perfectly possible to be negligent and intrusive, which it frequently is.

She continues, seemingly without thought:

"As with all records, there will be errors – there always are. But those barred have the right to see why, to know who registered them and to challenge wrong information. Some may slip through the net – but most will be flagged up."

"There will be errors... Some may slip through the net but most will be flagged up..." The same could be said if parents and children were encouraged to protect themselves from abuse by saying NO to those who use their positions of authority to exploit the vulnerability of their victims. All without having to to drag the details of millions of innocent people onto a database that the small minority of unconvicted paedophiles will be falling over themselves to be registered on.

"It's reasonable to expect that anyone who comes from an organisation has been checked. How angry would a parent be if the Brownies suggested someone who had never been checked and who turned out to be an abuser? These days fear of abuse – often stirred by the press – deters parents from letting children take part in activities."

Perhaps because I am not stupid, checks mean very little to me. Polly needs to take a good long hard look at all of the "checked" abusers who have quite easily wormed their way into schools, care homes and other organisations on account of their clean record. I see no reason to fully trust the checks of an organisation; neither do I see any reason to be deterred from letting my children take part in activities. 

"The ISA is reducing three registers down to two and gets its information from the CRB – a check for employees that the last Conservative government devised."

Who cares whether the ISA will reduce three registers down to two? What's relevant is the sheer number of people who will be on the damn thing. And wherever the ISA gets its information from, if that information is incorrect or misleading then either innocent people will be villified, or paedophiles will be given a green light to abuse - and stupid people like Polly will nevertheless rest assured that their children are safe from harm. Bad, wrong, dangerous.

"The new register was recommended by the Bichard inquiry, following the Soham murders. Bichard uncovered how hopeless the police are at passing information from one authority to another if it's left up to them: the ISA will collect it all instead."

Polly's docile lack of critical thinking is truly stupendous. She really is the village idiot. Fortunately, retired detective chief superintendent Chris Stevenson is not stupid. The senior detective who took over the Soham investigation had this to say: "This CRB-check paranoia won’t stop another Soham. I helped to catch Ian Huntley and I know these stupid rules would not have prevented his crimes." Quite.

"Philip Pullman is understandably indignant at needing a check to visit schools (though I imagine he's rarely left unaccompanied by admiring teachers). Checking him sounds excessive, and Ed Balls's new guidelines may frame an exemption while still allowing for volunteers who do extra reading sessions to be checked."

Ah! Framing exemptions for people who don't look or act like paedophiles! The system according to Polly, lapdog of Ed Balls (a truly grotesque mental image) just gets better and better...

"I know of one good old charity doing excellent work with inner-city children that had to abandon some of its best projects when it emerged that a board member was a convicted paedophile, and a few children complained they were molested at one project. And much harm was done to hundreds more, after the rumpus prevented a main part of the work continuing in the same way. To name the charity would only do the same damage all over again, but if everyone had been checked from the start, none of it would have happened."

WTF? Polly - when a person with a conviction for sexual offences against children is allowed to take up a position of authority that will bring him into contact with children - almost certainly particularly vulnerable ones - THAT, RIGHT THERE, IS NEGLIGENCE. We do not need a new initiative such as the ISA to identify such people. That "good old charity" is at best naive, at worst utterly corrupt - and I question the morality of sweeping such a scandal under the carpet.

And finally, if you needed further evidence of Polly's conformance to the nannying state, here it is:

"Yesterday Martin Narey of Barnardo's spoke out in strong support for the new register. "Calm down," he rightly admonished the ranters. The NSPCC added its support. All the charities for children, the mentally ill, the disabled and the elderly have been consulted: they are the ones who must give a dusty answer to frivolous critics. They carry weight because they understand tricky day-to-day problems."

Well, what recommendations. Martin "baby snatcher" Narey (who can piss off, quite frankly). Monumental fake charity and witch-hunt initiator, the NSPCC. All the other government-funded, government-lobbying charities for the chiiiildren, the mentally ill, the disabled and the elderly. Polly, you make me feel physically sick.

It's more fun to have a good populist rant about the death of childhood, the evils of the nanny state and the infringement of civil liberties.

It's not at all fun. And if only it were populist - although the sheeple are definitely starting to wake up, despite the best efforts of Polly and friends.

Registering will be a minor nuisance to many people, but it's not a milestone on the road to dictatorship.

Polly, you're either really, really, stupid or actually rather evil. I can't quite decide which. 

H/t Amanda Enclade and Idze, who tweeted this quote and made me think: "The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity." - Rollo May.