Comments on Five Chinese Crackers: From the 'political correctness is anything we don...

Whoops. That should have read "Something similar ...

2009-10-31T13:04:26.165Z

Whoops. That should have read "Something similar seems to have happened here," and, "updated their coverage".

Sorry.

That's interesting, Akela. Turns this story into ...

2009-10-31T13:02:36.847Z

That's interesting, Akela. Turns this story into one similar to the original 'Baa Baa Green Sheep' story from the 80s.

What happened there was that papers contacted Hackney Council about a nursery in the area that had allegedly banned 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' for being racist.

Without actually knowing that the nursery hadn't banned the nursery rhyme in the first place anyway, the Council issued a statement defending the non-existent ban because the officials involved thought it was their job to stick up for the nursery.

Something seems to have happened here. Someone without full possession of the facts has added to the confusion. You're right - it doesn't excuse anyone who wrote about the story after the Council's official statement, or anyone who has updated thrit coverage of the story without mentioning the official statement.

This is actually one of those occassions when I wa...

2009-10-31T12:14:57.923Z

This is actually one of those occassions when I want to be fair to the Mail.

Watford Council seem to have made more than one statement on this issue. If you look at the story as originally reported in the Watford Observer then you will see in the comments section at the bottom a response from the Council which makes it patently unclear that this is a case of not having parents getting in the way of adventurous activities. Instead it comes across as simply not wanting parents there full stop and emphasises the CRB checks on their staff in such a way that it does appear to be "stranger danger" paranoia. Indeed I was taken in by the whole thing myself.

Of course when the council clarified the position with the statement on its website then the papers that made the initial reports would have done well to have updated their stories rather than just carry or regardless and this is symptomatic of lazy journalism.

Over all I can tell you from my experience of working with kids that there is an ever increasing level of peadophile paranoia and I lay the blame for that firmly at the door of the tabloids and they deserve a thorough kicking for that.

I really don't know how you keep managing to wade ...

2009-10-30T16:57:18.932Z

I really don't know how you keep managing to wade through all this shit.