(Man with camera at fusion fest today)

[reggie]

The trouble Ian is that someone who is not acting suspiciously is still under suspicion with this current way of thinking.

A few years ago my family went to the Royal Albert Hall to watch my son perform in a schools concert. We were told that we couldnt take videos due to child protection issues but could buy the video of the performance from the foyer instead!

Alienation,suspicion,restricted creativity,fear of adults,lack of spontaneity,etc etc are being stifled here.

Reggie

What kind of high street do we want

[mockney piers]

And pretty soon there will be no clowns at all and future generations will know nothing of long feet and red noses and britches.

[woofmarkthedog]

Loz wrote>

Instead we have a plague of child obesity - figures out yesterday show that 36 per cent of 10 and 11 year old children in London are overweight or obese. 36 PERCENT!! A good proportion of these children are going to have severe health issues and die early.

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36% THAT'S HEADLINE GRABBING.................But

Sorry, the data is flawed & the way they "measure" is clumsy & produces inaccurate figures. I have been having this out with the school, then the authority who then came back a re-measured my son again. The weight & height formula they use can't measure the body fat, to do this you need a calibrated pinch test but this is too intrusive as they can't / won't touch the child. My sons results came back as being in the 98th percentile & suggested he was "Clinically obese" ( their words) Worrying, yes. Well if you saw him you would know different, yes he is notably bigger/broader than many of his class mates but also very lean & very muscled due to his gymnastics & swim clubs plus he cycles to school. Fat or obese he is not. He is though part of the statistics now though.This has also happened to other children in the same year & class, plus I have asked other parents elsewhere so it's not a one off.

So given all this they haven't got the common sense or discretion to "look " at the children , they are restricted by the method & told me in not so many words " we've lost faith" in the whole process "We agree it's a waste of time"

I called The Daily Mail not long ago after they published some headline grabbing stat based on this same data, they said we only go by the Dept of health's own data, take it up with them.

I have no doubt when they see sense & get an accurate data tool/test sorted they will grab at the figures & say "Children getting healthier" due to healthy government guidelines & policies. It makes me loose faith though.

W**F

[Loz]

Woof - that sounds like BMI tests. Is your son ... erm... not tall by any chance? BMI is, I agree, limited - it tends to overrate the shorter and underrate the taller and, of course, has trouble differentiating fat from muscle. Crude and ineffective, but ticks the boxes. Not too dissimilar to the new ISA regime, then...

But, on the other hand, it is fairly noticeable that kids in general are getting fatter and are playing less sport. Expect this trend to continue as sport opportunities for kids decreases.

I am waiting for the huge outcry to hit when the obvious extrapolation to all this comes around - that, since the greatest danger (in abuse terms) to children are their parents and close relatives, you will be required to have an ISA check to have children...

[woofmarkthedog]

Nah, they will stick to the "Walk round in circles with your tongue hanging out test" if you don't trip over it you're allowed to try parenting.

Yeah plenty of ...Erm..."big boned" kids & parents out there though.

[Domitianus]

The observations about testing for obesity or overweight issues are perceptive. The BMI tables (based upon an assessment of gender, age, bodyweight and height) are indeed potentially misleading as they assume that all individuals have similar patterns of muscle compared to bodyfat. Obviously someone who trains hard and carries a lot of muscle may seem to be overweight due to their bodyweight (muscle is approximately twice the weight of fat although it has roughly half the calorific value of fat which contains around 3,500 calories per pound) whilst they are actually very lean and carrying minimal amounts of fat. Possibly the simplest and most widely used method of more accurately assessing body composition (although still nowhere near 100% accurate) is through skin fold measurement using calipers. This was popularised and diluted into drivel through the breakfast cereal marketing nonsense a couple of decades ago about being able to "pinch an inch" but, properly used, is a good rule-of-thumb guide.

As has correctly been observed, however, the present absurd hysteria about child protection means that many schools in the UK and even more so in the US simply WON'T carry out routine skin fold measurements of children due to the fact that it requires a degree of physical contact between measurer and subject! What degree of touch does it involve? Touching their bums? NO! Touching their breasts? NO! Inner thigh? NO! It requires simple, gentle pinching of a skinfold on the back of the upper arm, front of the upper arm, under the shoulder blade and at the waist. Other possible locations CAN be the chest, calf or frontal thigh but these are not necessary.

Because we have created such a hysteria around child abuse such simple and potentially long term life saving measurements (could allow interventions to protect against type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bone and joint damage etc etc etc, to say nothing of self-esteem issues) are ruled out in much of our current education system where they could most easily be applied. I wonder if future generations of children will listen with much sympathy as their parents tell them (as they are in a cardiac ward bed from their second heart attack, or recovering from an operation to have a gastric band put in, or are taking their medication for their preventable type 2 diabetes) "Yes, we knew you seemed rather chubby as a child but we and all the other hysterics campaigned against any programme to tackle it just in case your sports teacher was a kiddy-fiddler and got off from touching your shoulder blade."

Other wonderful examples of how this paranoia has spread include youth groups. A friend of mine (a mother with several grown up children of her own) told me some years ago that as a Cub Scout leader she had been told that the policy was not to touch any children in the pack, even to offer comfort to an obviously distressed child. What type of message is being sent to children nowadays when physical comfort is being witheld when it is required due to some sort of absurd millions-to-one 'precautionary principle'? What sort of fear-laden mind-set are we creating in our children when we frighten them into perceiving every strange adult as a potential abuser and label even the most innocent physical touch as something to fear? Answer? We create conditions that are a breeding ground for childhood anxiety disorders and anxiety in children is shown to be probably THE single most accurate predictor of depressive illness later on - on average preceding depression by about eight years.

I believe that in decades to come the current level of dread and panic over child abuse (which should OF COURSE be tackled and dealt with where it exists) will be viewed in the same way as the Macartyism and 'Reds under the beds' scares of the 1950s in America are now - as an unpleasant social hysteria that caused more harm than good. As has been correctly observed the precautionary principle of OVER-protecting very small numbers of children against low probability of abuse inherently exposes VAST numbers of children to HIGH risk of physical and emotional problems later in life.

[star13uk]

Marmora Man - the reason he would get a "pull" is because somebody took the trouble to voice their not unreasonable concerns. Hard to avoid in this day and age. If the police had ignored Becky123's complaint they would be rightly critised (especially if somewhere down the line there was some kind of incident.)and might even face disiplinary proceedures.

From the sound of it, they took note, invesigated to the best of their limited ability, and decided there was no evidence of any wrong doing. What would you like to have happened?

It is hard to avoid in this day and age that people have not unreasonable concerns regarding their children being photographed - the fact remains there is no law against taking photographs in public places - but when people object some kind of action needs to be taken, only if it is put their fears to rest. Don't really see how you avoid it. They guy taking photographs should understand the concerns, happily complie to having his images and his details checked. Somebody with other motives would not be so pleased. Sadly there are unsavoury, predetory poeple out there - and checks such as this are often how they get their collars felt.

[woofmarkthedog]

star13uk wrote>

Dulce et decorum est....

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No, but I do prefer Farrow & Balls Sugar bag blue.

Thanks for asking

W**F

[Loz]

Star13uk,

The issue is that the police forced the man to leave the festival. Either he was doing something wrong or he wasn't and, as you've pointed out (and something people constantly forget) is that photographing people, including children, in a public place is legal.

Once the police had seen the photos they should have established if the photos were suspicious or not. If not (and since no official further action was taken, I think that is safe to assume) he should have been allowed to go on his way. But no, he was, embarrassingly, told to leave the area, because the police would rather trample on one man's rights than explain to one possibly hysterical parent that there is nothing to worry about and that he has been allowed to continue with his perfectly legal activity.

Lets take this another way. Imagine you have agreed to meet your teenage child outside a tube station. They are running late and have forgotten their mobile phone. Station staff have seen you loitering outside the station and are worried because you are wearing a small backpack, so they call the police. The police arrive, perform a stop and search and ask your identity. You happily cooperate with the police and they confirm your identity and that there is nothing explosive in your backpack. Once all this is completed they then order you to leave the area as your presence is worrying the station staff. Would you think this is right/fair? Do you not think you have a right to stand in a public place if you can show you have no nefarious purpose? Tough. Not any more. Not while there is a terrorist around every corner and a paedo behind every tree.

I'm not blaming Becky123 here - she did what she thought was right - it's the police that were in the wrong. They handled this situation poorly. Unfortunately, that seems to be a common theme of late.