When your child needs comforting, what do you do? Give them a kiss? A cuddle? Sit them on your knee? You probably assume that when they are upset at nursery, staff do the same. Not so. Evidence gathered from a day-nursery organisation suggests that many nurseries have introduced “no-touching” policies in response to public hysteria over child sex abuse in England. Staff are strictly forbidden from kissing or hugging children in their care at any time, on pain of dismissal. Only “unavoidable manoeuvres with nappies and pots” are permitted. What “wicked self-protective nonsense”.
Infants need physical contact: “they are sensual, instinctive beings who not long ago were curled within a warm body”. To deny them that because our society has been “brainwashed by the bogey-terror of paedophilia” is outrageous. The bottom line is “you either find trustworthy people and trust them, or else look after the babies yourself. There is no middle way.” (Libby Purves, Aug 19. The Week)
Every time I go to England the media are in uproar about some new instance of suspected paedophilia. It happens, it’s disgusting, but it also sells papers and attracts sets of eyes to news programs. It is also rare; the vast majority of people would never dream of abusing a child. But the Murdoch press found out long ago that stories about paedophiles run and run, so now the country is paranoid, and it is damaging, not the odd child here and there, but tens of thousands of them. Britain is plagued by an atrocious and unscrupulous media, which has bribed, bullied and invaded privacy of innocent people for decades.
Epicurus never had to deal with such a group of totally amoral communicators, but were he with us today he would urge moderation and common sense, and jail for paedophiles and exploitative “journalists” alike. And children need a cuddle!
“Britain is plagued by an atrocious and unscrupulous media, which has bribed, bullied and invaded privacy of innocent people for decades.”
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How did this happen? Is this a 20th C. phenomenon or a longer-term development? Of course, we are hardly immune to the Murdoch rot here in the U.S..
The main cause is too many “newspapers” and too few readers. In the old days everyone, even the humblest working man, read a paper. Now, of course, they do not, although they still enjoy page 3 of The Sun and its near-naked girls. The circulation wars have made all papers, except The Guardian and the Independent, sink to absolutely anything to get a story or a scoop. Latterly they have had the Prime Minister socializing with the editor of the News of the World, leaving the country wondering who else she had charmed. Certainly the police. All very grubby.
The Times used to be called The Thunderer and influence the policies of the Empire. Now it is reduced by Murdoch to an unreliable rag. Very sad, but in the hands of money- grubbers what do you expect.