Children's Court! (Woke Gone Mad)

Moments from History

Children’s Court ~ Woke Gone Mad

November 16, 2011

Life on the Wirral Peninsula! That little principality on the north west coast of Britain over the water from Liverpool, surrounded on three sides by water, and leaving the occupants with the idea, proudly, that whilst they are “in England they are not part of England”.

Liverpool and the Wirral are famous and infamous and, this week, we are fully in the latter with the pilot project centred upon a Primary School on the Wirral.

*

Six drivers caught for speeding outside the school by the police were given an option.

Rather than receive fixed penalties and licence points, they could, instead, accept “appearing” before a “children’s court” comprising four 10-11 year olds selected by the head teacher.

It is wrong! And I will say it again. It is absolutely wrong!

And no matter how desperate the head teacher is in alerting an apathetic local community to heed the warnings of the dangers of speeding outside the school!

It is sending out the wrong signal to these children – who, Liam Murphy reports in the Liverpool Daily Post today, November 16, 2011, extraordinarily managed to reduce one driver to near tears.

Reading that, as a former primary school governor, caused me to entertain but one thought – unless the head teacher could adequately explain himself, he would not remain in his post for much longer.

What are these 10-11 year olds going to be like at 15? How will they react to adult correction at, say, university or in apprenticeship?

It reminds me of the terrifying Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, and, later, vividly portrayed in the film The Killing Fields (1984) and which I suspect the head teacher, council road safety officer or the local councillor will know little of, nor een the local police chief.

Collectively, the Woke Brigade.

*

Watching the news each evening as the real ‘killing fields’ unfolded, we did not believe the reports of ‘children’s courts’.

It was too ridiculous!

It was propaganda.

But the journalism was solid, reputable, unnerving.

Adults would be lined up each dawn, bound, kneeling; then children aged 10-11 (often younger) would systematically single out those to be beaten, those to be tortured, those to be put to work, those to be executed.

All part of the so-called state’s anarchical return to ‘Year Zero’.

Often, the adult-victims were the parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents.

It mattered not in Year Zero.

Here, our perspective on life, on civilisation, prevented us from ever being able to even comprehend this.

*

A very harsh comparison to that momentary madness over on the Wirral Peninsula. But when we saw this scenario re-enacted in the film The Killing Fields it sent a chill through millions, but which we all quickly dismissed with the comforting self-administered antidote, it would never happen here. And, as with Schindler’s List, films once seen not to be watched again.

*

I fully understand the head teacher’s concerns about speeding, the danger of injury, even killing a pupil outside school.

As a retired police officer I know well the impact of a fatal road traffic accident.[i]

As a retired probate lawyer I know trauma to family, of administering estates following a fatal Road Traffic Accident, more so an ‘estate’ of a minor! One comes to mind during my time in Oxfordshire. Two families in one car setting off at first light for a day out. All were killed when an off-duty soldier who had consumed thirteen pints of beer, tried to sleep it off in the back of the car where his mates left him ‘safe’; except that he woke up in the night still very much under the influence, and proceeded to drive back to barracks but drove onto the motorway against oncoming traffic; the collision killed four and himself.

The head teacher is absolutely wrong to apply this vigilante response as a way to tackle speeding. Likewise, Wirral Council. Oh, sorry. I mean Wirral Council Cabinet.

Are we really to believe that this new concept of council cabinet carries the same gravitas, the same respect, as that of ‘The Cabinet” in 10 Downing Street?

The road safety officer for Wirral Council reports that the scheme has proven successful and they hope to repeat it each year at different schools.

*

These three people - the head teacher, the road safety officer, the local councillor, oh, and let us not forget the police commander … is that commander benighted? - have done this country enormous damage in the long term by ‘empowering’ eight 10-11 year olds with this misguided concept of acting as judge and jury over adults.

*

Where a child can subject an adult to near tears, a very, VERY dangerous precedent has been set.

I trust the head teacher will not take offence when he finds that these same jurors decide to ignore his role as head teacher when he has to bring them back into line when, as mere kids, they go temporarily off the rails!

And I have a harsh word for another group of misguided adults. The parents of those children. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I say again:

And I have a harsh word for another group of misguided adults. The parents of those children. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

*

At the very least this is a stupid exercise.

Law enforcement lies with the police, not with misguided head teachers and town councillors, and bullying parents, or vigilantes. And where is the Chief Constable in all this? What is he (and his chief officers) playing at?

When you reverse the status quo you are heading for potential disaster.

When you put children in charge of adults, you head for catastrophe.

Bluntly put: it is over!

Today, increasingly, children question why they should not call their parents by their first name when their friends are permitted to do so. I just wonder what the mindset is now of those eight children that acted as so-called ‘jurors’. I wonder, even more, on the mindset of three misguided, and possibly, well-intentioned adults.

But I wonder this too.

Were they well-intentioned?

Or were they exactly the cause of why the United Kingdom is falling apart?

This, Reader, is the flip side of my earlier dispatch, Our Young People – Our Future, and had I been told on 4 November 4, that within 12 days I would be writing this article, I would have replied, “Don’t be so stupid. Get a grip. This is the UK.”

November 16, 2021
All Rights Reserved

LIVERPOOL

© 2011 Kenneth Thomas Webb 2021

First published November 16, 2011

[i] Now referred to Road traffic Collision

Well, it’s like this like! I were a juror in our children’s court like when I were 10 or 11 or summat like that … and that was wicked … made this geezer driver burst into tears … yeah, I reckon I’ll be a good judge like. Wot me? Get a job? Nah. Benefits mate. Some bod said like I’d be good running a kangaroo court like … not really into kangaroos like, but if it’s as good as that f..kk..g chaildren’s court back in twenny-eleven like… well like … I’m yer man like.

Artist Credits

Footer Image is by Juan Ordonez Image the Artist-Photographer through Unsplash

The Striking Banner Image is by Nik Shuliahin the Artist-Photographer through Unsplash