I don't think I'll fucking bother, thanks, you cunts

Charlotte the LibDem Harlotte has really good fisking of the new Independent Safeguarding Authority here.

Speaking of which, here’s the Safeguarding Authority’s ‘examples’ of Emotional/Psychological abuse against vulnerable adults:

Inflexible regimes and lack of choice

Ha.

Mocking, coercing, denying privacy, threatening behaviour.

Can you feel that? That’s your irony meter going off the scale.

… bullying, intimidation, harassment

That’s it. Head exploded. All of these things are, of course, terrible - except when it’s the Government doing it to us to protect the beautiful, cute little children (the Maddy McCanns of this world). Quite where this insanity copes with the demonisation and scapegoating of children who hang around outside off-licences because their parents are smack heads and drunks is a question I leave for another day. In terms of ‘easy wins’ protecting children, wouldn’t those sorts of children seem like a better place to start, rather than affording even more “protection” to the nice, middle class kids who participate in lots of extra-curricular activities?

As usual, it's OK for the government to do this kind of shit, because, despite being filled with the same cunts that make up the general populace, they somehow get beatified by being in the government. You know, the government that never, ever gets anything wrong, the government which never has people caught doing anything wrong.

But of course, it gets even better than that:

So let’s see what this includes (even the list listed is listed as ‘non exhaustive’ by the way)

Any remark or comment by others that causes distress

Whoa. Any remark? Explain further, please:

Demeaning, disrespectful, humiliating, racist, sexist…

I think I see where they’re going with this…

… or sarcastic comments.

Whoa. Sarcasm? Really?

Jesus. I'm already fucked, here.

Excessive or unwanted familiarity, shouting, swearing, name-calling.

What do you guys reckon? Should I call them up and get vetted?

Okay, so I’ve gone through their list of ‘relevant conduct’ and picked out the bit we’re all guilty of at one time or another. We all have our bad days, our weak moments… but sarcasm? Being disrespectful? Shouting? If you haven’t, then congratulations. For the rest of us, we need to hope the Safeguarding Authority haven’t heard about our ‘abusive’ behavior.

“But!” you’re saying, “Just being sarcastic towards a kid isn’t enough reason to get blacklisted is it?”

I sympathise, but the guidelines continue:

Experience…

Translation: “Anecdote”

… indicates that it is unusual for abuse to manifest itself in only one harm category. It can be expected that evidence of a combination of these behaviours will be apparent in more serious cases.

In other words, if you’re guilty of one category of abuse, in this case ‘verbal’ abuse it’s more likely than not that you’ve also committed other crimes of abuse in the emotional/psychological, physical, sexual or neglect categories.

So, if you're sarcastic, you're probably a wife-beater and a kiddy-fiddler and if you swear, you're a flid-fiddler.

Many, many years ago, when no-one read this blog, I said this was going to be an issue. I also said that the enhanced CRB checks were going to be a fucking nightmare.

But even my worst fucking fears were no match at all for just how quickly this was going to become the society-changing fucking horror that it has.