I know that Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville, the Catholic Church and co. have made us realise that young people have never been safe from the sicker members of our societies, but it was brought home to me on Friday night that a number of us over react about child protection, not to mention a lot of other issues in the new nanny states.
We were at an Indian restaurant, and I went to the toilet. (There was no bath in there, so it was clearly not a “bathroom”, but that is another issue.) As I exited, there was a woman, in her 60’s, was supervising a boy, of about 10, going into the convenience. I assume that she hadn’t spotted me and decided I was a bit “suspect”, but was simply being over-protective. To me, there were many other less obtrusive ways of keeping an eye on the young boy without making it so obvious that no male in society can be trusted. This was even worse than the “no unaccompanied minors sitting next to a male” policy on some airlines. We were in a public place, with the entrance to the toilets clearly visible.
Statistically, the child was in far more danger getting into a car to go to the restaurant than he would ever be in the toilet. We seem to have lost perspective in recent years, with too many of us being scared of and/or suspicious of all sorts of categories of other people. This, added to the fact that more and more laws and regulations seemed to be aimed at protecting a minority of people from their own stupidity and absolving almost everyone of responsibility for their own choices, means that our sense of community, let alone humanity, becomes eroded imperceptibly and irrevocably.
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