Paying less, caring more

Do a rough mental calculation. Take half your annual Council tax and multiply it by four. The result is roughly what you're paying in tax each year to 'protect' other people's children. As Christopher Booker has catalogued in his Telegraph columns, the child 'protection' racket has grown into a national industry, fully sanctioned by populist horror at baby Peter, Victoria Climbie and all the other tragic victims of adult abuse. Your local council will close every library, see each street lamp doused and let rubbish pile-up in windrows on the streets before they will willingly cut a single pound from their child 'protection' budgets.

And yes, of course 'protection' is in quotes. Most children taken from their parents into the care of the State are at infinitely greater risk under the State's 'protection' than without it. Edward Timpson MP writes in the Telegraph this morning on the recent abuse of young girls by Moslem men in Rochdale, girls without exception in the 'care' of the State. Other enquiries are examining allegations that powerful Tory figures grazed à la carte on young boys being held in a State 'home'. Suicide and self-harm figures for children held by the State are abnormal. So yes, under the State's 'protection' is the very last place you'd want a child to be.

Timpson is acting the Muppet in calling for even more investment and greater spending to prevent another Rochdale. We need a radical alternative. We need to make major cuts to State spending, and child 'protection' is a massive one; we really have to face it. Cityunslicker writes on the C@W blog

However, there are no votes in this approach from a populace used to the Nanny state; so what to do? I can see the default position being minor cuts, more tax rises and a slow Japan style death with the national debt slowly climbing towards Italian and then Japanese levels whilst politicians hand out the treats to harvest votes.