Increasingly in Britain, the state’s basic assumption is that everyone’s a pedophile until proven otherwise:
A council has banned parents from supervising their children in public playgrounds until they have undergone criminal record checks.
Adults have been excluded from two adventure play areas in Watford, apart from a handful of council-vetted ‘play rangers’ who will assist youngsters, it emerged today.
Parents will be forced to watch their children from outside the perimeter fence.
Watford Borough Council claims it is just following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds ‘unchecked’.
But parents are furious that they are all being labelled ‘potential paedophiles’ and branded the ban ‘a joke’.
Mother-of-five Marcella Bergin, 35, said she was disgusted when she heard she would not be allowed to stay in the park with her children…
Council Mayor Dorothy Thornhill said they are merely enforcing government policy at the play areas, in Vicarage Road and Leggatts Way.
She said: ‘Sadly, in today’s climate, you can’t have adults walking around unchecked in a children’s playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
’We have reviewed our procedures, so although previously some parents have stayed with their children at the discretion of our play workers, this is not something we can continue to do.
I keep getting e-mails saying, “People will reach a tipping point and they’ll no longer put up with this stuff.” I doubt it. Right now the way to bet is that once free societies will retreat incrementally, one trivial step after another, into a totalitarian hell.