The State

Is not your friend.

Children are the responsibility of their parents, not the state. It is up to them to decide what is in the best interests of their child, not the state. If, having decided that the best interests of their child is to take him out of hospital, that is their responsibility and their decision to make. There is no reason why they should explain themselves to the state’s minions. If as is probably the case here, the child is dying, then palliative care at home with the parents is the best option for the child, not in hospital stuck full of tubes. Indeed, in such a position I would do exactly the same; take the child somewhere where he could die in comfort and peace surrounded by those who love him. That is a decision parents should make, not doctors and not judiciary; the parents.

These parents have made that decision and have done nothing illegal, as parents do have the right to remove their children from hospital, yet the state has issued a European arrest warrant as the police in their effrontery want to determine their motives so are using a sledgehammer to do it. It is at times like this that I am reminded how pervasive the state has become – demanding ownership of our very bodies. It arrogantly assumes that it knows best. The state is not your friend; it is your enemy. Usually incompetent, invariably inefficient, vainglorious and wasteful and from time to time, malevolently evil. This is such a time.

Repeat after me; the state is not your friend, the state is not your friend, the state is not your friend.

15 Comments

  1. Agreed wholeheartedly.

    The state is not, has never been, and will never be my friend.

    It views me only as an irritation, whose resented vote is sought once every five years or so, and in between I am just an annoyance whose sole purpose is to be bled dry to feed its voracious appetite and that of it’s sponsors and masters.

    • I have stopped voting as that validates it. I pay only that tax I cannot avoid and adopt aggressive tax avoidance to minimise that which it can thieve off me to feed its voraciousness.

    • Indeed. Here we have it being used to arrest a couple who have not broken the law but have had the effrontery to take their child away without seeking permission from the vile date apparatchiks. They don’t need permission.

      • Sorry to sound dense, Longrider, but I don’t understand ‘vile date apparatchiks’.

          • How silly of me! My excuse for not realising that was that it was getting late.
            Anyway, as your other commenters have noted this has all the makings of a major scandal. Thank you Mr Blunkett for introducing this steaming great turd of tyrannical nonsense into our legal system. Without the EAW this issue would have died a death after a couple of days of gutter press hand-wringing.

  2. The EAW, wasn’t that the piece of legislation that our overlords kept promising would only be used for serious crimes like terrorists, drug barons and kiddie fiddlers?

    How the rhetoric differs to the actuality…

    • It isn’t. Not that this bothers those issuing it. The “lawful” bit was just the public face that they put on it to make it seem like an acceptable tool to get all the EU-supporting politicians across Europe to sign up to it and to try and convince the public into believing that it was a “good thing” and make dissenters’ voices comparatively small. Hence all the hype about the “terrorist threat” beforehand. In reality it is (and was only ever intended to be) yet another means of giving the EU more power over its citizens. Unfair and unreasonable; certainly. Lawful, certainly not.

      Oh, but of course it’s no coincidence that this first use against a couple of EU citizens who are guilty of no crime involves the huge emotional crowbar of a sick little boy, thus guaranteeing all the drones trilling in unison: “Oh, but it’s for the good of a child, so …”

    • And now they plan to extradite the parents, so they won’t even be able to stay by their terminal son’s bedside, an act of such monstrous, stubborn and wilful cruelty that I’ve now got even more reasons to be ashamed of my country.

  3. On the other hand, you can also see the point of view of the police and authorities. They see a sick child, and parents removing this sick child from NHS care, which is likely as good a care as anyone can provide (especially as palliative care drugs such as opiates would be readily available to the NHS, but not to the parents).

    Over this hangs the dead hand of Social Responsibility. If the police do not act, they get blamed for the premature death of the child (regardless of whether it was always going to croak it anyway) and also get blamed for preventing the parents acting in a stupid manner. They have decades of experience of assorted nutjobs such as extreme Jehovas Witnesses and the like to draw on, and know all too well that whilst the parents may believe that they are acting in the child’s best interests, these actions may well not be in the child’s best interests at all.

    Put simply, what the police saw looked a lot like idiots doing something stupid, and it is their remit to prevent this.

    • Nope. Don’t buy it. Treatment requires the consent of the patient or his legal guardians. They withdrew that consent. It is not illegal to do so – and religion is none of the state’s business. They are not obliged to explain themselves and it was never a matter for the police. The issuing of an EAW was a classic example of function creep. No crime had been committed, therefore nothing to do with the police, CPS or the local council. The police do not have a remit to stop people doing something that “looks stupid”. Their role is to investigate crime and arrest criminals not terrorise law abiding citizens going about their lawful business..

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