A nation of traffic wardens

We're a nation of interfering traffic wardens | Camilla Cavendish – Times Online

An excellent article (ma sha Allah) in the Times on Thursday (yes, I sometimes read papers other than the Guardian, although in this case I picked it up on the train from someone who had finished with it) about the proliferation of state-funded busybodies and jobsworths which has appeared in the UK recently, which has made a lot of people fearful of involving the state in their lives:

>Taller than me, [the official] called for “back-up” on his walkie-talkie because I, with my two small children and our heavy bag, was “obstructing” an empty walkway. We were there because my husband had gone to buy tickets for a train that we were going to miss after Screecher Man had refused our pleas to let us pay on board.
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>It was his cold hatred that unnerved me, and the acute pleasure he took in making us miss our train. We weren’t trying to slip unnoticed across an international border. We were catching the 14.32 to Sutton.
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>We have become objects of suspicion to institutions that used to make us feel secure: banks, councils, the police. In turn, we distrust them.
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>A report by Harriet Sergeant for Civitas describes the recent jump in complaints by law-abiding people against the police. A 19-year old student was arrested and detained for five hours for holding a Tube lift door open with his foot. A man was nicked for pulling over to answer a phone call. Each example sounds silly, tabloid. But there are too many to ignore. Surrey Police’s recent decision to abandon box-ticking is a measure of their concern about the corrosion of their relationship with the public.
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>A year ago a respected group of midwives, obstetricians and researchers called the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services wrote to the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson. Their letter said that “there is now no health professional, or official help line that parents feel they can safely ask for help”. **They described people who avoid health visitors, because they see them as “health police”. They told of mothers with postnatal depression who will not go to the doctor for fear of alerting social services. They said that an increasing number of children are taught at home because “the educational system is now seen as part of the surveillance process”.** Their letter made 15 points, many devastating.

This should give anyone a clue who wonders why people resist obvious moves to increase the powers of state bodies, as with the stubborn refusal of the Irish to ratify the new European treaty by referendum, despite its approval by their country’s two main political parties. I question the comparison to traffic wardens, though – most traffic wardens seem to be foreigners, usually West Africans.