The Scottish Malaise

[UK Column News 10 February 2020]

David Scott reported on the recent account in the Sun concerning MSP David Mackay and his persistent text messages to a teenage boy. [about 22 mins into the programme]

There were over 200 texts sent to the boy, Scott pointed out, and among them Mackay offered to take the boy to a rugby game even though Mackay himself had no interest in rugby, but the boy was interested. He also offered to take him canvassing and dinner afterwards amongst other things. Scott emphasised that this went on and on and on, despite the fact that Mackay knew the boy was only sixteen because he had asked him directly.

"Now the Scottish conservatives in parliament," according to  David Scott, "Actually called this very accurately, and somewhat unusually...They quoted the NSPCC guidelines to what is grooming."

"And NSPCC goes on to explain how this happens and it talks about authority figures being involved, social media and networks of text messages being a medium of information being passed around. And it talks about the groomer giving advice, showing understanding, giving attention, taking the young person on trips, outings, holidays, this sort of thing. So all of this, it seems to be a classic case of child grooming."

"Now the mother found out about this last week and I would have to say played it exactly right. She didn`t go just to Police Scotland; she didn`t go to the politicians; she went to the press... They put her on the front page and Mackay had to go..."

"Of course there are other stories coming out.  Here`s one reported in the Daily Record." 

"A married SNP activist last night told how disgraced Derek Mackay bombarded him with messages for almost four years, including one asking: `Got any naughty pics?"

"Of Course, Nicola Sturgeon claimed she knew none of this; it was a shock to her; she never saw any of this coming, despite having actually banned him from drinking at a party conference because of his behaviour some years ago. I`m not quite sure what the behaviour was. Maybe we`ll find out."

"When the information was brought forward by the Sun they went to the Scottish government looking for comment, the Scottish government wasn`t actually shocked.  In fact, they tried to... suppress the information." 

"So the Scottish government said:

"`Given you yourself state that there is nothing illegal or unlawful in the messages, can you advise on your justification for publication, given the intrusion into private and family life, and correspondence, including digital communication.`"

David Scott: "Do you see the implied threat of law breaking? `Oh you`re accessing digital communications; you could be breaking the law. Do you see where they`re pushing? It`s private life. So grooming a sixteen year-old boy is private family life..! " 

"They were asked did they obtain this information by legitimate means. They were asked for the name of the boy but the Sun did not give in to any of this pressure and published anyway."

"The reaction was quite stunning in Scotland. The degree to which people quickly realised that this was part of a bigger malaise in the SNP was very striking.  But also, the reactions of the true believers within the SNP to defend the utterly indefensible was equally striking. The most egregious example is on the next slide where an SNP councillor - so this is someone with some responsibility, to some extent, in child protection issues - heard about this and her view was: `It`s all a nasty British establishment unionist plot.` She said: `Stupid man, probably a honey trap set up by the British establishment and he`s walked right into it.`"


There were others who considered that the mother and boy did not even exist, to which David Scott commented: "No, I`m sorry, this is a predatory homosexual going after a young sixteen year-old boy. That`s what it is. We have to face reality here."

"Now of the various people who looked at the wider implications, one of the best, yet again, was the Wee Flea. This is a blog by a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, formerly in Dundee and he`s looking at it as if it`s the end of the Scottish government and I don`t think this is hyperbole. This is absolutely existential because this gets to the heart of everything the Scottish government is doing. The concentration on children, the concentration on very often 16 year-old children, the whole woke pro-gay agenda, all of this starts to play into this particular little drama."

"Now this also plays into the pushing of both the queer agenda and queer theory in schools and also some very troubling developments where the Scottish government is pushing sexual education of a most alarming nature into schools."

"And so the next video we`ll just play in the background. This is from a Dundee school which is one where the Wee Flea blogger had direct involvement... "

Quoting from the Wee Flea blog: 

"This video suggests that it is the children themselves who are leading this sexual revolution which is as nonsensical as saying that Mao`s little Red Brigades were spontaneous uprisings in favour of the great leader and had nothing to do with him or the communist party. The children on these videos are being indoctrinated... they have a shallow and cheap view of love... and they even have their own `pupil led` committee to ensure that everyone else is on song."

"The deputy head teacher, an LGBT activist, is responsible for this - along with my old sparring partner Gregor Murray, the former head of Dundee Education - who was fired because of his abusive tweets against feminists. Gregor is a radical exponent of queer theory. This leads to confused children and is in my opinion a form of child abuse and it is a kind of grooming - preparing children for sexual activity in [not too] later life. The trouble is, as parents told me, if they raise concerns about this, they are frightened of being labelled homophobic or transphobic."

"Now this ties in with the experience recently in Birmingham where Christian, Muslim and Jewish parents stood up against the education being forced on the children and they were labelled homophobic and transphobic... So some of the comments on Twitter  have been truly excellent on this. I mean some of the analysis that has actually been delivered on Twitter has been far in excess of anything coming out of the mainstream press."

"So here`s Malcolm Clark."

"It`s easy to dismiss this story as just another one about a politician blowing up his career with dodgy behaviour. But if the Scottish government isn`t careful it could become emblematic."

"For too long any criticism of its deepening obsession with LGBT issues has been denounced as homophobic and any concern that`s expressed about a failure to take seriously the safeguarding of children is dismissed as bigotry."

"But maybe Derek Mackay has inadvertently opened a little window into the shared culture of some top level Scottish politicians. Maybe we should ask how seriously they really take the risks to 16 year-olds and other children from some of their key policies."

"And he then talks about: `There`s been a 3,000% explosion in school age kids being referred to gender identity clinics in less than a decade, in what some experts think is a social contagion spiralling out of control`. [A similar organisation in Glasgow has seen an 80% increase.]

"When critics warn Scottish ministers all this is a child safeguarding nightmare they roll their collective eyes. They`ve taken advice they say. But who are their experts? The government has taken advice almost exclusively from a tiny clique of LGBTQ lobby organisations."

"Stonewall Equality Network LGBT Youth & Scottish Trans Alliance form a magic circle of influence. Personnel are best buddies with leading politicians and by an amazing coincidence these organisations then obtain huge funding from the same administration their mates run." 

He then lists some of this funding...

"It totals something like two million over three years. So the government pay the lobbyists to lobby the government to make the change. That`s how it works, and the change is rapid. Parents are not being asked. And this brings us to an excellent article by Bruce Scott in the Scottish Review. He`s talking about the crisis of consent in Scottish schools."

"Exposing children or adults to a spurious ideology based on dubious scientific methods is a form of abuse or adversity if consent is not obtained. The ACE* `movement`s` cry for ACE aware schools for example, is effectively a psycho-educational treatment based on theoretical facets of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT); i.e. resilience indoctrination in schools under RSHE (relationships, sex, health education). This programme is nothing more than inappropriate focussing of a child`s mind on their own mind, creating issues where none are, creating distress in children who do not have the maturity to introspect to such a degree, and manufacturing `mental health` difficulties due to iatrogenic effects of the `treatment`."

*ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) which are meant to dominate the rest of [a child`s] life.

"He goes on:"

"This brings me to another area where consent and/or consultation with parents are being disregarded even further with plans to roll out LGBT inclusive education in Scottish schools. Supposedly the driving force behind this policy drive in Scotland (supposedly, as it is argued that it is in fact a United Nations driven agenda) is the TIE Campaign (Time for Inclusive Education) in Scotland. TIE, along with the Scottish government and their LGBT Inclusive Education policy working group are proposing that every aspect of the school curriculum, from nursery/primary one upwards, is to include LGBT focussed materials. What is the drive behind this?"

"So he finishes off by saying:"

"Children are precious and vulnerable. We must get this right now, rather than realising in 10 or 20 years from now that we have harmed children. No doubt due to reports in the media of psychologists resigning from the Tavistock Gender Clinic in London over worries of pressuring children into gender transition, and the skyrocketing of referrals of 4-10 year-olds to gender identity clinics, it may be that the tide is turning, and people are waking up."

"More people need to wake up, especially parents. If parents do not fight for their children, who will? Chief Mammy and the Scottish Government? I don`t think so."

"So he`s seeing this as a rising tide of state sponsored abuse and I think he`s absolutely correct."

"The Highland Times here looked at the sort of sex education materials that are being introduced by the Scottish government into Scottish schools."

"If you`re a parent, and already alarmed, I warn you to prepare to be enraged. Schools are currently rolling out a radical new SNP Scottish Government sex education policy."

"I use the term radical because it is nothing like the sex education anyone reading this article will have undergone."

"When I was at school, in second-year science class (I was 12 or 13 then) I was first introduced to our `bits`. My class had to wait a whole year to find out what those `bits` were used for and it was still taught in a science lab."

"Now, under the SNP Scottish government`s new policy, the mood has shifted dramatically to include discussions on genres of pornography (lesbian, interracial, facial); utilising porn in masturbation, paying for a prostitute; oral and anal sex... The accompanying `learning materials` are extremely graphic and sick."

"So that is what is being introduced into schools. We don`t see grooming simply by one member of the Scottish government; we see grooming of children by the entire state, the SNP, by Scottish government and my concern is that this will be the next Rotherham; this will be the next wave of child abuse and we`ll be talking about how did we not see it happen, ten or twenty years from now when in fact this time more obviously than ever before it is in fact the state that is pushing it."

Brian Gerrish: "Perhaps we should add to that for listeners and viewers south of the border that the Scottish government under its Named Person scheme said that the Scottish government would nominate people to be the guardians of children from conception, I think, [true, it appears in some documents] but certainly from birth. So the same Scottish government who said it was capable of looking after children, we now start to see what type of agenda the Scottish government has got. Not just planned, it has actually implemented this."

"So the squashing of the Named Person scheme, [was] a very important step forward." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOCdbu6Y-Ts

======================================================

From the Scottish Family Party which David Scott gives credit to:

Scotland celebrates the passing of the Named Person

[UK Column News: 20 September 2019]

David Scott talks about the repeal of the Named Person legislation in Scotland:

"Well, yesterday was a bit of a red letter day... a brief moment of celebration, because Mr Swinney, the responsible minister, stood up in the Scottish Parliament and announced that the whole thing - at least in a legislative sense - was being scrapped. So here we see the report from the Christian Institute who led the legal challenge and led the `No to the Named Person` campaign... They`re saying `Named Person scheme axed by Scottish government. Parents are celebrating today after the Scottish government officially announced the end of the intrusive Named Person scheme. Three years after ...the Supreme Court ruled against key elements of the scheme, in a case spearheaded by the Christian Institute, the government has finally agreed to repeal the entire Named Person legislation`."

"So it`s all - at least in a statutory sense - going to go."

Brian Gerrish: "I was just going to say: `and this really shows people.` We have so many people who say: `Yes, we now understand what`s happening in this country, how all this crass legislation is being brought in, what can we do about it? And it has been consistent work by a relatively few - a relatively small group of people - that`s brought this change about in Scotland. I don`t know whether you`d like to add a bit to that."

David Scott: "Well it has. This is real people power because the state developed this in secret; it has every state department on board; it had all of the charities that receive significant government funding involved in developing the scheme. And all of the organisations that are meant to protect human rights were all either asleep at the wheel or actually enabling this to go forward. So it was left to a small number of individuals to tell the people what the scheme actually was, and the thing that really destroyed it - then the legal case was an excellent spearhead and did a lot of damage - but the thing that really destroyed it. [was] that they could not persuade the people to accept this intrusion into their lives and it was getting that message out that really turned the corner for them."

"So this is the Herald supporting it here as a political story. Swinney `humiliated` here as another of his flagship plans is scrapped. Now this is correct, the Scottish Government`s having a lot of failures at the moment, but really the... true story here is that a major move into fascism, into totalitarianism, has been defeated by public pressure and helped by the Supreme Court. It`s noticeable that the courts in Scotland all backed the government but when it went to the Supreme Court, the story was different."

 

"The BBC reported it - here we are. BBC News: `Named Person scheme scrapped by the Scottish government.` Now, in the very next line, this is the line they put in bold... underneath the article they said the following: `The Scottish government has scrapped its controversial plan to appoint a named person to safeguard the welfare of every child in the country`."

"So six years into the national campaign which they have been reporting all the way along, the BBC still get it wrong... I just want to emphasise how stupid this is, or craven, because this is the lie that the state`s been saying. This is the lie that the state`s been pushing the whole time. When there was a debate up in Inverness and the minister responsible then, Aileen Campbell, was getting ripped apart by people who knew what they were talking about, and she was on the phone, you could hear the adviser whisper to her `child protection` because the line has always been that this is about child protection; it`s about welfare. Welfare is defined in law; it`s risk of significant harm. There`s nobody in the country who`s saying that children should be put at risk of significant harm. That`s a lie by the BBC, right."

Emphasising once again that the Named Person was never about welfare, David Scott says: "It`s not about welfare; it`s about wellbeing, which means anything the government wants it to mean and is completely undefined. And six years into this campaign, the BBC is still pushing out the lie."

"It`s pathetic."

===========================

More about the BBC`s coverage of the Named Person scheme is on Friday`s UK Column News:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQhCPym6ev0

ACE awareness

John Swinney MSP referring to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) at the ACE aware nation conference and his ambition that Scotland will be the first ACE-aware nation in the world========================
 
The Scottish Review:

"Nobody would dispute that childhood, adversity and development are important when it comes to adult 'mental health' and physical health, especially in people who present with issues in adulthood, but the evidence on ACEs does not support a 'risk preventative' psycho-social public health policy that targets everybody, especially children who are 'well'... "

"... Children as young as a five are asked to reflect upon relationships, emotions and their families. Psychological projection tools are used which encourage such reflection and yield much information (i.e., qualitative data) on children's families, lifestyles, struggles, problems and difficulties. "

"Anecdotal reports are suggesting that younger children are becoming confused and distressed with this aspect of the school curriculum (an ACE in itself?). And these 'lessons' are conducted without informed consent or consultation with parents..."

"The Scottish Government have been here before; their failed Named Person Scheme proposal was deemed by the courts to be unnecessarily intrusive, destructive of family life and highly totalitarian. With ACEs, who some critics believe is the Named Person Plan B, we are again getting into totalitarian lands."

"These curricular developments are wholly inappropriate; the school is not a place where you meddle with the 'mental health' of a child, or extract information from them on issues pertaining to 'mental health' and well-being."

http://www.scottishreview.net/BruceScott475a.html

Connections between Named Persons, GIRFEC and ACEs

. WALES

 
SCOTLAND

Sir Harry Burns, Professor of Global Public Health, University of Strathclyde, speaking at a conference: 

"I`m just thinking that there`s a lot of good practice in terms of `Getting it Right for Every Child`and you know working together in Scotland - definitely not starting from nothing in this - those are things happening. But I think that what sometimes happens is all these different agencies are working in silos and we`re doing things, and we`re duplicating what we`re doing, and we had a really interesting meeting with some mental health services and early intervention last week. And they were looking at our training and education and showing us what they were doing in early intervention and they were going into schools and doing some stuff about trauma informed work and we were going into schools and doing stuff about nurturing approaches and we were really having a conversation about the duplication of some of the work that`s going on and I think that in this time of challenging ...resources and how we work together you need to talk to each other more about what we`re doing and I think what`s exciting about ACEs is it`s allowing us that opportunity."

[that is, an opportunity to network and pool resources with a Common Purpose.]

"Because we`re calling it something in education; and social work are calling it something; and health are calling it something else. We need to come together and have a shared language and I`m really excited that this day has been planned alongside Education and Health to develop that shared language so we`re not all going around doing the same thing and duplicating our efforts. And I really hope that is something we can become better at through these conversations."

[i.e. joined up working, joined up data, the total view of the citizen]

A question from the audience: "I`m just wondering what the panel think about taking our youth and engaging them in this whole process. I recently staged a Resilience screening where some young people came and they were really excited afterwards about wanting to take this to young people and to have a screening for young people and their ideas were things like, this could really stop bullying and I was really sort of taken by it and thought, how can we engage our youth? I think of a Ted Talk by someone called George who was a NASA scientist who speaks about how our creativity decreases as we get older. So can we engage the most creative in our communities and get this message out to them? And I wonder what the panel thinks about how we can do that safely without possibly retraumatising. Thank you." 

Harry Burns: "I think that`s absolutely right. Again to come back to the point Alison made. This is not another thing. You know, we`ve had things, you know GIRFEC is a thing and people have responsibilities for delivering that."

[There is no indication from Professor Harry Burns how that may be delivered without also delivering the data gathering `named person`, the person with responsibility, an essential component of GIRFEC which was rejected by the Supreme Court]

"This is about culture. This is about context in our society and it`s a place based thing as much as anything else. So it`s not about a particular department or a particular person that has responsibility for this; this is something that should be second nature to us all, to support people who can`t look after themselves."

[i.e. Essentially he is arguing that all departments should work together, GIRFEC-style, to support people with or without their consent]

=====================

The UNITED STATES points to the underlying thinking behind ACEs which has to do with public/private partnerships and investment opportunities. 

"The evolving realization that investment in prevention results in savings to government has introduced novel private financing strategies for established interventions with predictable outcomes..."

"These emerging financing strategies move human service systems upstream to reduce disease burden and enhance well-being and productivity. By understanding the relationship between interventions, ACEs, and changes in behavioral and general health outcomes as well as overall measures of productivity, a coherent strategy can be developed to coordinate financing, maximize return on investment, and ultimately reduce ACEs and promote health." 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876285917301493
Not without the data, of course.

Parenting by the state

UK Column News: [5 October 2018]

Indoctrination in schools

Brian Gerrish: "Well, change of subject and an introduction to David Scott, but let`s just have a look very briefly at this. Several people sent this into us. It`s a youtube video clip which shows a teacher at a primary school encouraging, teaching, showing very small children how to write letters to ask a man Thomas to marry them. And the significance of this is that the boys are writing the same letters that the girls are. So the teacher says a couple of clips from the [start] of the video `You`re going to tell Thomas it`s a brilliant idea to marry you`. "

"So this school is teaching children about LGBT relationships from the earliest age ... and of course you rapidly learn what`s going on because the teacher says that the children can be more accepting at this age and if you get the information into the children they accept it now . Then you don`t have a problem trying to convince them of what they should accept and believe in later years."

"I looked at the clip several times; it`s utterly fascinating... because what this teacher is doing is indoctrination and she knows it`s indoctrination but she thinks this is acceptable."

"David, I know this is going on with a vengeance north of the border as well."

David Scott: "It certainly is; and we`re seeing it state funded. One of the odd things is this year there has been LGBT `pride marches` all round Scotland. There was one in Perth. There were two at the weekend; one in Inverness and one in the western isles, if you can believe that. And the western isles one, there was a bit of controversy because the western isles counsellors were refusing to fly the `pride flag`. So these are being state funded, well funded, and then what you find is that in each local authority there are agents pushing the agenda. They are often extremely militant LGBT agency activists but they are in state funded organisations, state funded jobs, and very often teaching the teachers or in similar areas of control over the wider education system."

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Mike Robinson: "Right David, we`re going to move on to ACEs and we`ll find out what ACEs are in one second when we look at a short video clip." 

"So we`ve got a short video here and then we`ve got some stills..."

Mike Robinson: "So David, ACEs and their consequences can be prevented?"

"Yes, so this is the latest thing to come out of America and it`s all over Britain. It`s all over western Europe. This is the new thing. It`s not that new; it`s ten years - no, it`s twenty year old research; but it`s suddenly become the flavour of the month. There`s been a film called `Resilience` which you can`t get to see. It`s been shown to all of the Scottish government employees - made by James Redford - and this is describing what is termed as the `science of hope` if you can believe that; and the `science of hope` goes to show how we`re going to transform society by government action. You have to be hopeful; you have to be optimistic and you have to - well, what do you have to do?"

"And they then go on to show correlations between adverse childhood experiences, and adverse experiences in early life, and negative outcomes, which on average is true; and we`re aware - you know, people in the Fresh Start foundation, particularly so, we`re aware of people who, for example, take to alcoholism in order to self medicate because of childhood abuse. This is true; this happens."

"But there`s something wider happening here because what they`re doing is they`re looking at the statistics of the population as a whole and then they`re taking that and changing it into a decision as to how they`re going to influence the lives of individuals and it becomes government policy and it starts going into some very strange and very totalitarian areas. So that`s what we want to explore here."

"This next slide: this is from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States; so this is a government organisation in America. They`re pushing this forward and you see here: `Parent Training today`. So this is one of the areas that is going to be pushed. They`re going to have state appointed parent trainers. So this is going to reduce the independence of parents within family life in the family unit very significantly..."

"So having identified - initially there`s ten ACEs: emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse etc etc,  although those numbers are growing now. There`s never any limit... The CDC have identified five things they`re going to stop ... happening. So the first one here is `Strengthening economic supports for families`. Now this means strengthening government subsidies for single parents, essentially."

David Scott then puts forward the view: "Economic support means state economic support, wealth transfer and, of course, it`s welfarism that has been the biggest corrosive effect on the family and has caused most of the society wide decay for those who are most vulnerable. "Scott further suggests: "So essentially what we`re doing is we`re going to double down with everything we`ve been doing - we don`t know what else to do - and we`re going to do more of it."

"Next we`re looking at `changing social norms`... So the bedrock of society is the family with traditionally one parent, usually the man providing; and one parent, usually the mother in the more nurturing role. Well, we`re not having that; we`re going to change that; because the state has now stood in the role of the father for providing for the children.  We don`t need fathers quite as much; there are a lot of single mothers and we`re going to make that the norm. We`re not going to think anything ill of that; we`re going to destroy any social propulsion towards a more stable society basis of the family..."

"Then we`ve got `quality child care and education early in life.` Odd diagram that. This is a little girl playing chess with a wheelchair bound old lady. It may be her grandmother; we`re not sure. So that might be an excellent thing to do. We`re not quite sure who`s looking after who there. Then after that, we`ve got `Enhancing parenting skills.` "

"There`s two nice lesbian mothers here, very slim. They`re outside `24-HOUR URGENT CARE parenting class`. `This way.` So we`re going to teach people how to parent. The state`s getting involved in this as well. And then most creepy of all, we`ve got `Intervening to lessen harms and prevent future risk.` So the state - actually it`s not very good at making the trains run on time and repair holes in the road - is going to prevent future risk. It`s going to look into the vibrant dynamic complex world of - you`re a family - and it`s going to decide if you provide a future risk to your children. And if you do ... then they will act to prevent that and there`s no use arguing..."

Named person scheme

"This is where it`s going. It`s very similar to the Named Person scheme It`s very similar to all of the huge lists of `parenting outcomes` and `risk indicators` we have in the Named Person scheme. It`s a slight re-branding of it. It`s based on similar American-based pseudo-science and it`s everywhere."

Mike Robinson: "Sorry David, it strikes me that in some way it`s related to `social credit` which is something that Dr Graham Downing was talking about to Ian Crane on Humanity versus Insanity last night. We`re going to play that programme after this, if you`re watching the UK Column live stream. But, you know, what you`re saying is there`s some kind of measurement made of whether you are a capable parent or not; and if you`re not, the state is going to intervene, potentially up to the point of removing the children."

"... Of course, we know that the state is the worst parent of all. So this is the bizarre thing. The last defence for children is the family unit and this is assaulting the family unit. So it seems superficially plausible but when you actually analyse what it`s doing it`s all acting against children."

"Now the next slide here is: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This is from the Scottish government website. The initial ones were from America... It`s been parroted in Scotland. Now they`ve put a saltire on it and they`re going to say this is really important. Scotland to lead the world. No, no no no. Scotland`s just doing as it`s told as it always seems to do these days."

"Now some of the other things that are coming out - it`s called the `theory of everything` OK, so the idea here is this explains everything. This explains everything about your life; this explains everything about your future. And there`s always a pyramid. We don`t seem to be able to do these without using pyramids to explain things diagramatically."

"So here`s the pyramid for ACEs. Now this, as you see, goes from conception to death. Right, so this is the `theory of everything`. So you see that down at the bottom you`ve got adverse childhood experiences ... and that allegedly causes disrupted neurodevelopment which allegedly causes social, emotional and cognitive impairment which allegedly gives rise to the adoption of behaviours which then allegedly cause disease and social problems and an early death. So there you go..."

"Now I was having a quick look at some of the Scottish government support for this. Nicola Sturgeon was at a conference in March this year. She was reflecting on the powerful impact the `Resilience` documentary had on her and emphasised the importance of considering tackling ACEs, as ACEs were one of the most important ...[?] currently taking place across Scotland. So it is being pushed by her own government. And her old friend professor Sir Harry Burns*, the man with all the slides in the World Bank... He told the audience of the original study and the accidental realisation that many of them attending who had been to the clinic had been sexually abused in childhood and he says here - there is a core truth to this, right, that you`ve got a lot of abuse; you`ve got a lot of, particularly sexual abuse, but rather than tackling that what we`re doing is we`re using it as an excuse to build the state into an every more powerful vehicle for controlling society. That`s what`s happening here."

"Now the next little bit is just a shocker. This is from the Journal of Applied Philosophy and it is awful, and it is Licensing Parents Revisited. Now this is one of the most disturbing and in many ways ignorant articles I think I`ve ever read. .. He first of all makes the case for licensing professionals and it`s all positive. You know people in the professions may harm those they serve either directly or by failing to fulfil their fiduciary duties and the harm can be significant so we need the state to get in there and regulate. Now we don`t because there are contraindications here but what he ignores is that licensing is very often used by professions to limit access, to ring fence money and to drive up fees. It is not what he`s claiming but he skirts over any real negative effects and then goes on to make the case, well now parenting is ... important, and then we should license parents because we need ... to ensure parents are competent; and then he briefly looks at the fact that we don`t really know how to do that. It`ll be OK."

"And then he looks at the right to have children which he`s not very impressed with. He says ... `she may think she has a right to her children whereas people do not have a right to be professionals` and the conclusion is: `Does a parent have a right to rear the child under her control without interference from the state?` And there`s a false choice here between a parent who might be abusive and one with no state involvement at all; or complete control and the case for independence of family life is broken down and the conclusion is `yes` we have a good case for licensing parenting. This sort of thing which seems crazy I think is on the way in..."

Brian Gerrish: "David, I`ve got to say that as you went through that this is clearly coming in. It`s coming in as policy; that policy coming in through the civil service, but very often we can see that a lot of it originates with the United Nations. But this is very very dark and sinister stuff.  One of the points you`ve just made is that `we allow the abuse of the children to take place` because ultimately this form of control over parents and families can be brought in as an excuse over the top of it." 

 

================

(The abuse that is allowed to take place is then covered up. As an example, towards the end of the programme there is a discussion about the Melanie Shaw court case)

HERE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4SRjkdEBUY

* Sir Harry Burns speaking at a conference below:  http://alicemooreuk.blogspot.com/2015/12/scotlands-wellbeing-will-be-envy-of.html

Promoting a positive image for the named person scheme

"Ministers were urged to obtain the backing of JK Rowling to help sell the named person scheme."

"Minutes from a meeting of Scottish government officials and outside stakeholders released under freedom of information legislation disclosed a call for the Harry Potter author to be brought in to convince a sceptical public to back the plan."

"The idea of involving her came after the writer Alexander McCall Smith took a swipe at the scheme in one of his serialised novels."
 
"He used two episodes of his 44 Scotland Street series in The Scotsman to mock the scheme last year. In an episode on April 21 a character said: `It was a shocking moment of realisation. Irene was an unrepentant social engineer. She was post-factual. She was a . . . He searched for the metaphor, and then he found it. She was an archetypical named person.`"

"On May 5 McCall Smith’s novel contained the following passage:  ‘Ah yes,’ said Domenica. ‘The named person legislation. Can you believe it? Can you believe that they’re insisting that every child in Scotland should have a sort of official guardian — because that’s what it amounts to. Can you conceive of a better way of insulting parents?’"

"At a meeting on June 21 last year plans were drawn up for introducing the scheme. Under the plans for August 2018 an official wrote: `High profile person/celebrity — as that is the world we live in — to publicise Getting it right for every child. Get JK Rowling on board, countermine the likes of Alexander McCall Smith`."

"Alison Preuss, of the No 2 Named Person campaign group, said: `It seems an odd thing to have discussed at a serious meeting. It now seems obvious they weren’t very confident on getting the legislation through`."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jk-rowling-s-help-sought-for-named-person-plan-pzxb77qqb

Heading for data capital of the world

"Intimate details of pupils` private lives are being shared among teachers in the latest Big Brother storm to hit Scottish schools."

"Information about children`s sexuality, personal opinions and even how wealthy their families are have been entered into a database that can be viewed by teachers on their laptops. The move has been backed by SNP ministers, who believe it will help tackle the growing problem of bullying in our classrooms."

"But Dr Stuart Waiton of Abertay University in Dundee said last night that the new database smacked of `Big Brother in the classroom`."

"The senior sociology lecturer added: `It`s a concern that teachers and education departments are becoming increasingly preoccupied with the minutiae of pupils` private lives."

"`This scheme appears to be part of the Named Person framework, which focuses on the vague idea of wellbeing and puts the state in charge of assessing and monitoring it."

"But it only encourages teachers to behave as quasi-social workers or therapists. They would be far better off focusing on the job of educating students rather than acting as Big Brother in the classroom.`"

"The `pupil-profiling` scheme is being piloted at Wallace High School in Stirling as part of the Scottish Government`s national bullying strategy. Ministers believe pupils` personal information will help teachers decide whether a child is more likely to be a bully - or a victim."

"Wallace High has set up a scheme in which pastoral notes on pupils are distilled into mini data packages that are then circulated to teachers."

"The pilot project allows staff to view updated digests of every child`s story on their laptops ahead of each lesson."

"The Government says the new approach will `identify trends` and that its success will be measured by computer analysis of the data."

"But Alison Preuss of the Scottish Home Education Forum branded the scheme `petty statism`. She said: `This will actually stand in the way of teachers developing good relationships and empathy with pupils, which is the key to beating bullying."

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/scottish-daily-mail/20180822/281479277266340

Plan B for Named Person scheme

"Anti-Named Person campaigners have accused the Scottish Government of trying to implement the controversial scheme by the back door even if the legislation fails."

"The accusation was made after documents retrieved via Freedom of Information showed that having a `Plan B` if MSPs reject the proposals was discussed at a meeting of unnamed government officials and advisers."

"A note of the meeting held in February made a list under the heading of `Contingency`. One point made was: `Plan B for if bill falls to make sure parts 4&5 can be implemented without information sharing.` Part 4 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act specifically refers to the Named Person scheme."

"Lesley Scott of the NO2NP campaign claimed the papers demonstrated that ministers intended to railroad the plan through even without political support. She said: `These worrying documents show the focus is clearly on implementing Named Person by the back door, regardless of whether the new bill gets through Parliament. Clearly, we are now dealing with a Government which is ignoring the UK Supreme Court, has no regard for the elected representatives of the Scottish people and is determined to shun public opinion`."

. Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/government-ready-with-plan-b-for-named-person-1-4782583

Privacy breaches

And SEEMiS.

The NO2NP campaigning group has learned that "the SEEMiS app, operating in Named Person pilots despite the Supreme Court judgment, tells users to `override consent` as a matter of course."

"A video tutorial for the app told practitioners"

"To extract information you will have to qualify why you’re taking it out of the system. The system asks a user to confirm whether or not consent has been given to share information. By default, most of the time, you’ll be able to tick ‘I wish to override consent’. Otherwise, you’ll have to show that you asked for parental and child consent."
"Yes, you read that right," the group continues: "`Override consent` `By default` `Avoid having to show that consent has been given`. An eagle-eyed NO2NP supporter captured a screenshot of the tick box in question...and posted it on Twitter."

"Several hours later, the video tutorial and associated guidance were deleted. This tells us that somebody, somewhere, knew the advice was in conflict with legal requirements."

"But all of this raises a much bigger question: if the SEEMiS app is still telling non-statutory named persons across the country that they can override consent, is unlawful data sharing still going on?"

"And if so, what are the Government going to do about it?"

Read more https://no2np.org/named-person-database-encouraging-users-override-consent-default/

More time wasting for discredited Named Person scheme

[Tom Peterkin]

"The controversial scheme to give every Scottish child a named person is set for yet more delays after the academic charged with making it workable was granted more time to do his job."

"Professor Ian Welsh has been put in charge of a panel tasked with sorting out data protection issues that saw the original policy rejected by the Supreme Court."

"Welsh has written to Education Secretary John Swinney to say that his panel needs `additional time` and has asked for its September deadline for reporting back to be extended until `later in the autumn`."

"The legislation has already been subjected to major delay as a result of it being taken to court. In his letter Welsh said the impact of the summer holidays on the education sector meant more time was needed."

"A spokesman for No To Named Person campaign which took the court action said: `It`s another day, another delay and a whole lot more taxpayers` money wasted on this embarrassment of a policy. It`s no surprise that John Swinney is `happy to accept` another delay. It seems he will do whatever it takes to dodge the only decision that ought to be taken: ditching this discredited legislation`."

[Scotsman 22 July 2018]

Named Person recap

Also Seemis: Overriding consent for sharing information

Child Abuse, data and wellbeing concerns

Brian Gerrish, Mike Robinson and David Scott are in conversation on UK Column News, 29 June 2018, about the Edward Heath article on the BBC website. "Several people emailed to say: This is clearly a case of `thou doth protest too much.` So all of a sudden we`ve got the BBC and other outlets saying that Edward Health could not have been on the island - channel islands - therefore he could not have been involved in any abuse. And when you look for any substance to this story, this is simply claims from Ted Heath supporters and they say: `Never mind what the police did, we had a look at his diaries. It doesn`t show him there; he wasn`t there; so therefore he`s not guilty of any crimes`. So I`m going to label that with a question mark. BBC seems to be back on its old routine of protecting child abusers."

Normalising paedophilia 

 

"This one several people told me as well. Just incredible. Ted hosted a talk where a young lady took the stage and said, amongst other things, `Let me be clear here: Abusing children is wrong without any doubt. But a paedophile who does not abuse children has not done anything wrong.` As a result of the amount of correspondence to Ted, they`ve taken this video down. But really we`ve got a classic case here of promoting the normalisation of child abuse. Probably that gives a nice lead into David Scott."

Fresh Start Foundation

Mike Robinson: "David let`s start off with the Fresh Start Foundation because here`s Robert Green. We were talking about this [on] last Friday`s news programme here: Robert Green, outside the venue of the Fresh Start Foundation talk. That appears to have not happened."

"No, well it was cancelled at the last minute after discussions on Friday last week. We got a call that due to unexpected maintenance ... the meeting was cancelled. Initially there was a flood... So we went along to the hotel .... to try and see what state the room was in, to see if we could - because this was all very last minute - if it was possible to find a way round this.... to host the event there. They were quite hostile I would say. I`m not quite sure why. We`re customers who had payed a deposit and had been badly let down. So we weren`t treated particularly nicely ... There was no sign of a flood. There was no sign of water. There was one room which didn`t seem to have been used for a while with some plaster down the ceiling. It may have been to do with that; we don`t really know. But the line from the hotel was ... the ceiling had come down and they couldn`t let us use the room. That was unfortunate."

"We managed to book a room just across the road in another hotel... and we advertised that in an hour... You know that one was cancelled as well because they had maintenance going on... The aircom system was being worked on. So although the rooms were there and were empty and there was no sign of any workmen - there were workmen on the roof - so they were going to need access to those rooms. We couldn`t get there either. So that was jolly unfortunate. So at least there`s a lot of maintenance going on in the Aberdeen construction industry. So we`ll all be benefiting. So it`s not a zero sum game here."

"But we went off to the gazebo in Union Street and we had a meeting there and a nice meal afterwards and we had actually a very good day ... Under these sort of conditions people get to know each other that bit better. And a little bit of collective response to adversity never hurt anybody. So it was actually a very good day."

Peter Cherbi`s blog

The next topic refers to Peter Cherbi`s blog who is back on the case of Elish Angiolini, former Lord Advocate of Scotland, who was involved in Robert Green`s case. She has recently been appointed in order to investigate and report on how police complaints are dealt with in Scotland. Cherbi gives a number of reasons why her appointment is a very bad idea.

Read more HERE

Data sharing in Scotland

Mike Robinson: "The Public Commissions Committee. What`s going on here?"

"Well, Alison Preuss and Leslie Scott, my wife, representing the home educators and the Tymes Trust ME charity, have put out a petition together and have sent it yesterday to the Commissions Committee and this is to get an investigation, a public inquiry, into the human rights abuses that have happened in Scotland surrounding the GIRFEC legislation, or surrounding the GIRFEC policy; because GIRFEC, which stands for Getting it Right for Every Child, was a policy whereby information was gathered and shared by the state ... and intervention into family life by the state was generated as a result."

"Now there were certain problems with this and the whole thing was eventually ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court. Problems relate to, firstly, the lowering of the threshold for interventions into family life in which welfare is now known as wellbeing, and wellbeing means anything you want it to mean. It is entirely subjective. So what it gives is the power to state officials, based on a subjective whim, there`s no more to it than that, to intervene into family life, to share information, to investigate families, to investigate children and any associated adult."

"So that`s been going on since around 2013 and there`s a lot of harm; there`s a lot of families who have suffered these investigations and they`re traumatic and there needs to be some form of recompense; there needs to be some recognition of what`s actually gone wrong. And of course the policy`s continued to this day. The current data sharing policy from my own local authority is in this flow chart here."

"And what this says is: `Are you worried or concerned about a child or young person`s wellbeing?`... And if the answer`s YES. `Do I need consent to share information?` NO. `Share information.`"

"So all you need is a worry or concern, which is an emotional reaction or a notion about wellbeing which can mean anything. That`s the current policy in my local authority. So basically there is no data protection if you`re a child or a family with a child in Scotland at the moment. And...that then generates things which can escalate into child protection issues and child protection procedures where there`s no welfare issues; there`s just this assembly of wellbeing worries."

"So that`s what they want, an investigation to stop this, to allow those families who have been harmed some form of remedy; but also to actually inform the state about what is in fact lawful because there`s ongoing consideration of some further Acts to try and sort this mess out and these ongoing considerations don`t seem to be based on any understanding of what has already gone wrong."

Mike Robinson: "So this has had some mainstream coverage. I`ve got the National, as an example of this, but actually it`s had quite a bit of other mainstream coverage in Scotland, David?"

"Yes, the idea that human rights abuse has been happening is now getting through on the mainstream media quite solidly...."
 

More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILoQdRzNUjQ

Non-statutory version of Named Person being rolled out

"There is, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom declared recently, `an inextricable link between the protection of the family and the protection of fundamental freedoms in liberal democracies."

"The judges added: `Different upbringings produce different people. The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families and indoctrinate them in their ruler`s view of the world`."

"`Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way`..."

"How revealing then, that this quote comes direct from the Supreme Court`s ruling two summers ago, against the SNP Government`s notorious and hated Named Person law..."

"So we need to be careful. As the Scottish Mail on Sunday reports today, a non-statutory version of the Named Person scheme is being rolled out across Scotland, as we speak."

"The danger is that, even though the Supreme Court has ruled against the statutory plans, they are brought in by stealth nevertheless."

"As the No2NP campaign makes clear, parents should know their rights. If a Named Person offers advice or a service to you, you don`t have to accept it. If a Named Person tries to override your wishes, it is they - not you - who may be breaching conventions on human rights."

[Murdo Fraser, Scottish Mail on Sunday]

The politicisation of gender identity

"The targeting of traditional ideas and forms of interaction between boys and girls has gained momentum in recent years throughout the western world. The politicisation of trans-cultures serves as a medium for distancing children from adopting the gender identity into which they were born. In Scotland, teachers have been informed by the Government that they should allow children to change their gender without informing the parents."

"Guidelines endorsed by the Scottish government state, that school kids as young as three `should be supported to explore and express their identity`. The guidelines assume that it is the teacher and not the parent who ought to possess the authority to provide the conditions that allow children to transition to another sex. From this perspective parents are perceived as a problem, who might prevent their child from transitioning. Hence, keeping parents out of the picture is seen as essential to the well being of the transitioning child."
"If Scottish parents object and oppose their child changing their sex, teachers and school staff should report them to the local authorities."

"The Scottish Government has also made it clear that if parents object and oppose their child changing their sex, teachers and school staff should report them to the local authorities. What this means is that if you are a parent who is not 100 per cent delighted that your 4 year old boy Johnny has decided with the school’s help to become a 4 year old girl, Mary – you will be reported to the authorities. Welcome to a world where Big Brother has helpfully assumed control over one of the most fundamental aspect of the development of the child."
https://disidentia.com/a-war-that-begins-in-the-nursery/

The Girfec Octopus

"Campaigners opposed to the Named Person initiative have hit out at the latest `bizarre` creation to explain the controversial scheme – Calamari SHANARRI, the wellbeing octopus. Children are being urged to knit the octopus and make up stories and rhymes about it as part of the Scottish Government’s Getting It Right For Each *Child (GIRFEC) scheme, which includes the Named Person initiative. Each of the octopus’s legs represents one of a child’s eight well-being indicators, which are also referred to in the Shanarri part of the name – Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, and Included. The octopus has been developed by Crossreach, the Church of Scotland Social Care Council, for the GIRFEC scheme and to teach children to become confident, productive and responsible members of society."

"But a spokesperson for No to Named Person (NO2NP), which challenged the Named Person scheme in court, said: `Calamari SHANARRI` is the latest in a long line of bizarre resources relating to GIRFEC – the policy behind Named Persons.`It’s littered with jargon and recommends strange activities for young children which will be far beyond the understanding of most of them."During the court battle over Named Persons, Aidan O’Neill QC told Supreme Court judges that the legislation was so confusing, it was like wrestling with an octopus. It looks like whoever dreamt up this latest wheeze decided to take that literally.`A Scottish Government spokesman described the octopus as a `useful` addition to GIRFEC materials. A Church of Scotland spokesperson said the octopus was a `playful way to learn about the Scottish Government’s aspirations for children in Scotland`."

* Should be `every`

Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/kirk-s-eight-armed-gimmick-comes-under-fire-1-4741968

See petition PE01692: Inquiry into the human rights impact of GIRFEC policy and data processing