And there I was writing in a piece earlier today that, in safeguarding our rights and liberties in general, we rely especially on two institutions – our courts and parliament.
With the failure of the executive – and most notably the SS apologist, Tim Loughton, masquerading as the children's minister – we rely here also on those two institutions, both of which have again failed. That leaves as a long-stop the media and, mostly through the perseverance of Booker, it is at last catching up.
The way the Wail is handling the issue, though,is something of an indictment of the Sunday Telegraph, which has consigned Booker to his usual ghetto, giving the "stolen kids" story no exposure in the rest of the paper. And now the Wail waltzes in and steals the story from under its nose.
Booker's current effort takes its lead from the news yesterday, on the front page of the Wailand elsewhere. But by no means all the papers are getting the point. The Independent had it that "the foster care network faces being overwhelmed as attempts by social workers to protect children from abusive or neglectful families saw the number of care applications pass the 10,000 mark".
Care proceedings, this paper said, "have been on the increase in Britain for the past five years, since the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly, known as "Baby P", led to widespread anger over whether social workers were acting quickly enough to protect vulnerable children".
And there we have it. What was quite obviously a gross over-reaction by the media at the time has since driven a massive over-reaction by the foster care "industry". This has now become a business on a phenomenal scale, siphoning the best part of £3.4 billion a yearfrom the public purse, and getting more expensive by the day.
This colossal expenditure alone should be ringing the alarm bells, and when the money is being used to spread distress and misery as well, it is time this issue was seriously explored. Sadly, with the courts and parliament failing us once again, the last resort is theDaily Wail.
That is how bad it has become.
COMMENT THREAD
Booker's current effort takes its lead from the news yesterday, on the front page of the Wailand elsewhere. But by no means all the papers are getting the point. The Independent had it that "the foster care network faces being overwhelmed as attempts by social workers to protect children from abusive or neglectful families saw the number of care applications pass the 10,000 mark".
Care proceedings, this paper said, "have been on the increase in Britain for the past five years, since the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly, known as "Baby P", led to widespread anger over whether social workers were acting quickly enough to protect vulnerable children".
And there we have it. What was quite obviously a gross over-reaction by the media at the time has since driven a massive over-reaction by the foster care "industry". This has now become a business on a phenomenal scale, siphoning the best part of £3.4 billion a yearfrom the public purse, and getting more expensive by the day.
This colossal expenditure alone should be ringing the alarm bells, and when the money is being used to spread distress and misery as well, it is time this issue was seriously explored. Sadly, with the courts and parliament failing us once again, the last resort is theDaily Wail.
That is how bad it has become.
COMMENT THREAD
