New parents effectively told the state’s busybodies to sling their hook.
A government programme to promote family stability by helping new parents through the stresses and strains of having children has been scrapped because virtually no-one turned up.
I’ve become so used to reading stories where people are connected at the teat to the state and its functionaries, that a story where people didn’t play along becomes a little diamond in the compost heap that is Britain today. As Easton comments later in his article, people whose relationships are just dandy don’t need relationship help – they need to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit. It is nothing to do with the state just as almost everything is nothing to do with the state. And, frankly, the very idea of the state deeming itself suited (and competent) to interfere in other people’s lives is hideous beyond belief. Not to mention planet sized hubris.
The trials were begun after ministers were convinced that interventions in the US “report statistically significant impacts on couple relationship quality”.
Yes, just because they have done something in America it doesn’t follow that we should do it here – and that word “intervention” sends a chill down the spine. The state is far too keen on intervening were it has no place. Couple relationship quality is a matter for the couple, not the state – never the state unless one of them turns violent against the other, which a another matter.
So, once in a while, people give these arrogant interfering, nannying fussbuckets the two fingers and I realise that maybe, just maybe, there is hope for humanity at last.
There will always be hope for Humanity, whether there is hope for the U.K. as it is now governed is another matter completely……..
I would prefer it to be active non-participation, and personally I would go to a lot of trouble to avoid such ‘intervention’, but I suspect, sadly, that what you are seeing is ordinary apathy and idleness.
It is also the BBC doing a worthwhile job for once. Excuse me, I have to have a lay-down due to a sudden rush of optimism to the brain.
I have a horrible feeling that the next step, which will seem perfectly logical to those in charge of this abomination, is likely to be devising some form of incentive at the taxpayers’ expense.
Back in 2009, A Freedom of Information request revealed that the NHS had developed schemes offering smokers and drinkers entry into a draw for prizes including i-pods and helicopter rides if they signed up for help to kick the habit.
The original source is now behind a paywall, so I hope you’ll excuse this extract from my post on the subject instead:
The one that really sends the blood-pressure skyrocketing, though, is the hare-brained scheme to enter every teenager tested for chlamydia in a prize draw for a games console – “The bad news is that you do have an unpleasant STD, but hey! you’ve won a Nintendo Wii! How about that!”