Thursday 4 March 2010

Oooh, How Awfully Convenient….

Just a few days after the usual suspects were whining about the ‘dangers’ of unknown (i.e. unknown to the State) people looking after children, along comes this case:
A court heard yesterday how the boy's mother, Amy Hancox, had entrusted her son to childhood friend Boleyn in the run-up to Christmas 2008 in return for a weekly payment, because she was struggling to cope with the child.
Oh, how cosy. But surely nothing unforeseen would happen, right?

Ah:
Mr Hotten said Miss Hancox had been depressed after splitting up with her partner - Ryan's father - in late 2007.

He said: 'Boleyn and Taylor accepted Ryan into their care and after a period of some weeks he was dead.

He said: 'The arrangement appears to have been for Kayley and Christopher to look after Ryan until Christmas.

'In return Amy was to give Kayley a sum of money each week. One says £20, the other says £40, and a contribution towards food, gas and electric bills.

But the Mr Hotten said that instead the couple 'abused and beat him and finally on or around December 22, 2008, they assaulted him and he sustained injuries from which he died.
Lovely! An everyday story of love’s young dream…

And, of course, grist to the mill of the control freaks who will insist that of course state registration and approval of all ad-hoc carers will stop this sort of thing from ever happening again.

One thing puzzles me, though – in the usual report of neighbours hearing screaming and not reporting it, there’s reference to a housing officer also not realising something was up:
…on December 22, housing support officer Kelly Janner called at the property.

Mr Hotten said: 'She saw a child's legs sticking out beneath a quilt in the house, but the rest of the child was covered up.

'She said she heard the child moaning as if he was just waking up', and left to take Boleyn to the Job Centre.
I’m assuming that last bit means she was there in an unofficial capacity, as a family friend.

Or is it the role of council housing officers to ensure their clients get to the jobcentre on time now?

You know, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the answer was ‘yes’…!

5 comments:

English Viking said...

There's definitely a recurring theme here. Bullet.

Anonymous said...

Clients are now 'service users'....I can't think of anything else to say. The daily drip feed of incomprehensible state stupidity, incompetence and downright sinister control freakery is doing MA ED IN!

Furor Teutonicus said...

Reading the British "news" is getting to be like living "Groundhog day".

Face it, unless you get a majority of Brits reading bloggs, nothing is going to change, because they do not know there is a second option. HEL, outside of the cheap and nasty press and the BBC Propoganda machine, they would not even know where to LOOK for another opinion/possibility.

They do not even realise, for the most part, no matter HOW much lip service they give the idea, that the press are a lying shower of bastards and will tell you anything the "Government" PAYS them to tell you.

It has never crossed their minds (if they have one) that they can actualy do anything about the situation.

How often have you heard "WELLLL there's nothing you can do, so whats the use of complaining?"

Na, a rambling rant, but I know what I mean. The public need their heads bouncing of a large lump of concrete very hard, to wake them up.

banned said...

Yes, they will use this isolated unfortunate case to strengthen their arguments for control freakery over unregulated childcare, in much the same way that they will use the recent conviction of the parents who starved their daughter to death in their campaign against home-schooling.

JuliaM said...

"There's definitely a recurring theme here. Bullet."

I used to wonder if we had enough lampposts. Now, I wonder if we have enough bullets!

"Clients are now 'service users'....I can't think of anything else to say. "

A rose by any other name...

"Reading the British "news" is getting to be like living "Groundhog day". "

Or a particularly harrowing trip through Dante's 'Inferno'.

And yes, until enough of the populace drag themselves out from behind 'Heat' magazine and 'Dancing with the Stars', nothing will change.

"...in much the same way that they will use the recent conviction of the parents who starved their daughter to death in their campaign against home-schooling."

Yup. That one was tailor-made for the Righteous.