Thursday 13 October 2005

A tax-consumer speaks

How do these people ever get appointed?
A SENIOR education official last night hit out at plans to name and shame youngsters who are served with anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs).

Councillor the Rev Ewan Aitken, education spokesman for the local authority umbrella group COSLA, said any attempts to replicate such moves in Scotland would "demonise" young people and do nothing to improve the behaviour of those who break the law.

Councillor, it's not the ASBOs that "demonise" the recipients but their own actions. Not only that, people, old or young, who make the lives of others miserable should be stigmatised. As indeed should their misguided defenders.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comment made on previous template:

Andrew Duffin
David I don't disagree with your view, but I do have an uncomfortable feeling about ASBO's. 
 
Through the blunderbuss nature of their criminal sanctions, they extend fairly drastic punishments into areas where the law (the real law, I mean, not Blair's knee-jerks) never intended them to go. 
 
Consider - if subject to one of these orders, you can be imprisoned simply for walking down a certain street or entering a shop. Is that right? It is proportionate? Is it the action of a freedom-loving democracy? (not that we live in such a thing, but you know what I mean). 
 
Also remember that Blair's latest outburst suggested that children UNDER 10 should be made subject to these obnoxious instruments. 
 
This needs more thought than I can put into a comment. But it's definitely not a case of "ASBO's good, NEDS bad"

13 October 2005, 12:25:57 GMT+01:00