Gordon Brown gets a Monday morning visit!

He must have thought his week was starting well. Visit the kirk, chat to friends, fly back to Downing Street for business as usual. Then he gets a visit from his best friends. Lord Mandelson, who has more capricious relationships than any person, led the charge. Ed Balls is in there now (a trusted friend?) and that wily Alastair Campbell, who seems to have been on high dose antacid tablets recently. I'd love to be a fly on the wall. Gordon Brown's minister said he prayed for all even if he disagreed with them. He better do something different today. Get down on his knees (not very Presbyterian!) and pray like mad that Mandelson is not up to some vile trickery!

Ed Balls in traffic crime shame!

Well, it may not be a crime to many. Also not much shame in it either. Ed Balls was caught using his mobile phone whilst driving a car and has been fined the princely sum of £60. I doubt very much if he is ashamed of his behaviour. This particular law, that of not using your mobile phone whilst driving, is flouted on a daily basis. Those I spot are usually either the arrogant types or the selfish types. Either way, these people are the sort that only obey the laws they want to obey.

Ed Balls has a touch of arrogance about him. It is inconceivable that it did not cross his mind to think that he shouldn't be talking on a phone in a car before he did so. He just thought he could get away with it. He thought "why not?" and just did it anyway. Is this the sort of man who should be in Parliament?

The Conservatives are targeting so-called safe Labour seats. Ed Balls' seat is one of them. It's a pity he wasn't given a more suitable punishment than a £60 fine. How about the stocks for ten days? Then put in an ample supply of rubber balls for chucking at him. Nothing hard or hurtful, you know. Just enough to let him get the message.

In some ways Ed Balls lives up to his name. Not in the way most would think. No, definitely more like a rubber ball. Whatever shame befalls him he bounces back. Whether it be MPs' expenses, sacking people, policy detail, cabinet confidentiality or just taking the law into his own hands, Ed Balls bounces along with a cheery smile (or is it a smirk?).

Well, let's hope the Conservatives can bowl him a googly. Then his rubber balls won't come a bouncin' back!

New laws and humbug

New Labour is in a tizzy today. It is also becoming strident in its anti-Catholic diatribe talk. Use of terms such as "homophobia" and "intolerance" have been bandied about. Even the LibDems are talking illiberal nonsense. David Laws was on the Today programme insinuating that the Catholic Church could teach children to have a hatred of homosexuals. Whilst he did not say so as such the inference was clear.

Ed Balls says, "A Catholic faith school can say to their pupils we believe as a religion contraception is wrong but what they can't do is therefore say that they are not going to teach them about contraception to children and how to access contraception. What this changes is that for the first time these schools cannot just ignore these issues or teach only one side of the argument. They also have to teach that there are different views on homosexuality. They cannot teach homophobia. They must explain civil partnership."

Where does the Catholic Church teach homophobia? Does Ed Balls think a church school cannot teach two sides of an argument? It is all such arrant nonsense, but the secular liberal elite have got some notion that, because a certain activity is deemed sinful by the Church, that it has to follow that hatred and abuse of the sinner is accepted and tolerated by the Church. So they speak in innuendo with slanderous overtones in order to push ahead with their social agenda. We have to be very vigilant that this new elite does not become a repressive regime exercised only in the promotion of their so-called equality laws.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, of the Accord Coalition, has been doing the rounds. He sees it as being perfectly OK to force his equality views onto others. Emm! Liberty needs eternal vigilance. I'm sure the rabbi knows that. We need honest education that empowers children with proper knowledge. Nobody can gainsay the truth about different sexual activities or behaviours. But seducing children with the gameplan of a political agenda is not on.

New Labour fright regime carries on the vetting

New Labour is a preposterous outfit. All keen to vet everyone and anyone except their wretched selves. It is perfectly OK to have morally questionable ministers in the government, but woe betide a decent citizen wanting to help other peoples' children.

The Great Nosepoker Balls is so keen to vet every person in the land that he has come up with a new category of potential paedophilic monsters. These are the exchange student parents. "Don't worry Pierre! Daddy is very nice and has been completely checked over by Mr. Balls". What on earth is Pierre and all the other young students to make of it.

Balls keeps up the mantra of wanting to safeguard children. Instead he is like a carcrash heading towards a time when every parent will be devoid of any desire to pass on experience of their life for fear of being "labelled". It will be a society without love and compassion. Each will have been vetted, each will be recorded, to little or no avail. None of this actually stops paedophilia. It all runs on a one strike and you're out routine. Each time a paedophile is convicted, the police remark, "He was under the radar, you know!" as if to confirm what a ridiculous situation it all is.

Paeodophilia is a matter that needs addressing. New Labour is clueless on the subject. One day I suppose a scientist will explain whether it is a mental condition, a pyscho-sexual condition or just something that prison will fix. At the moment the latter appears the favoured option, although I think a few in authority think otherwise. Their fears lie in the fact that if paedophilia was unravelled, then other sexual proclivities could also be. Now that would be something.

No man wants to be a primary school teacher it seems. I certainly wouldn't if I were younger. It's bad enough in Sunday School. The vetting issue creeps over us like a frightful character from George Orwell's 1984. In fact, Ed Balls and his parrot chatting wife would make a good 1984 couple.

Balls better open a few more lunatic asylums. By the time the vetting of the whole country is over we will all be nervous wrecks.

Sexual abuse amidst a confused society?

Last night Ed Balls came on the television, blinking like a rabbit in a searchlight beam, to suggest that maybe the government hadn't quite got it right over the vetting and barring scheme. Of course, it wasn't much to do with Ed Balls, it was up to the new quango and its quartermaster to sort out. But I got the distinct feeling that Balls had sensed potential electoral trouble, so his antennae were in overdrive.

Now I read that there has been a case of sexual abuse in a Nottinghamshire children's nursery. The Rocking Horse Nursery in Plumtree has been closed after it was revealed three toddlers had "unexplained" injuries, including a broken leg. What is interesting is that a Child Abuse Investigation Unit spokesman has said, "This is a new line of inquiry from information given to detectives last week. Prior to this neither Nottinghamshire police nor Ofsted were aware of any alleged sexual offences having taken place at the nursery."

Not aware? No, there were not. But why on earth would they. Unless someone says something, nothing would be done. If a burglar robbed a person, but the victim decided to stay silent, how would the police find out? By telepathy? This is the whole flaw in the new Independent Safeguarding Authority's side. Only convicted sex offenders and those given a caution or who are "known" will be flagged up. But certainly not those who are unknown to the police. I assume all at this nursery have been vetted, all have had CRB checks. If something has occurred, then someone got through, didn't they?

Instead of this multi-million pound quango spending its day vetting and barring, the government should do two things. Set up a research unit into the actual manifestation of paedophilia. It is no good talking as if every day is going to start with a bad apple check, like a fruiterer diving into a box of apples. Either paedophilia is an illness or it is a depravity on the sexual proclivities scale. Those with the condition need to be monitored or cured. If it is a condition, then babies born today will have in their number a few paedophiles waiting to grow in adulthood. If it is obtained from nurture, let us find ways to stop the nurturing in the first place.

If it was left to the Sun newspaper, Ian Huntley would have been castrated, hanged, drawn and quartered in Soham town centre. Left to the government, he is in jail and we are lumbered with a quango. Noboby seems to want to find a cure to this problem. Maybe they are too frightened that if a cure to paedophilia is found, then that could be applied to other conditions that some find offensive.

The second thing the government should do is to give social services and education authorities better guidance in ascertaining who is vulnerable from potential abuse or who may become an abuser. Whilst I am distinctly against a nosey-parker society, I firmly believe we should not sit back if we see or hear unsavoury things happening. If there has been abuse in this nursery, you can bet that someone knew about it but felt they couldn't say anything. That feeling of inadequacy must not continue.

We can only really help children and vulnerable adults if we become more caring rather than more scaring.

Private schools - public scandal!

New Labour is a body of people given to bouts of control freakery, petty jealousies and a cavalier attitude to tradition. In fact, tradition is a dirty word in their vocabulary. Another thing this New Labour regime is fond of doing is sneaking in contentious legislation as a hidden-away clause in a bill that is designed for totally different legislation. That's why retired colonels, teachers, political activists, anyone campaigning or complaining can find themselves banged up in a police cell under terrorism laws. And the real hook-handed terrorists get to run rings round the likes of the useless Jack Straw.

New Labour had the public schools in its sights. It has got the Charity Commission to show the world that public schools (private in the UK!) can "demonstrate how they bring real benefit to the public". If not, all manner of measures will be taken against them. Now these independent schools in England are protesting about "too narrow" rules for charitable status - as two out of five test-case schools fail to qualify under the testing.

I know there has always been an ongoing argument/discussion about children being educated privately. But this is a sneaky New Labour ploy to encourage their social engineering fantasies. Of course, most of the New Labour front bench are walking talking hypocrites, no greater one of which is Harriet Harman, who would sniff mightily at the thought of her children going any where near the local school. Same went for Tony Blair, who moved heaven and hell to fix it for his kids. They are the last people on this planet to moralise seeing that their moral compasses have long since ceased to meet any scientific purpose.

So we could get the situation of several of the smaller private schools closing. Far from being a benefit to children from a less fortunate background, the state system will be increased by an influx of children requiring education at the hands of Ed Balls. The costs on the public purse of such increased demand will far outweigh the benefits of any charitable status change. They never think things through properly. Any casual viewing of the debates in the House of Lords on BBC Parliament will confirm how utterly devoid of logic this current government is.

Teachers' pets bite back!

This never happened to Doris Day. When she was Teacher's Pet she was demure and very docile. Er-hum! Fast forward to the present day and we have a load of jaw-snapping children apparently biting teacher at any opportune moment. Even a crocodile would find it hard to understand.

Only human behaviour is like this. Animals never bite the hand that feeds them, unless of course the human spooks them! A teachers' union conference has been told that biting in special schools is "quite a big issue". Suzanne Nantcurvis said, "Due to the nature of the assaults they face, often teachers in special schools have to have vaccines such as tetanus and hepatitis B. I know that for some colleagues this has come at a personal cost of around £80 for a hepatitis B injection."

This is outrageous. The trouble is that as we "progress" towards a more secularised and selfish society, the libertines are placing all manner of crazy rules and regulations in our way. The risk of facing accusations as a result of managing such violent incidents left staff "worried sick", said Ms Nantcurvis. I have no doubt. False allegations are not uncommon. Money rears its ugly head.

Fifty years ago I was starting out on a wonderful education. There was discipline, but there was fun. We had "in loco parentis", something quite lost on today's educational establishment. Teachers now appear to be hostages on some kind of Guantanomo Camp for the educationally-challenged. Ed Balls carries on with his sats and his stats, but none of it will be of any use.

You can teach a dog to do tricks but you can't educate it. Education, I was told, is about "leading out". Basic Latin reveals it is duco not docio. In a country with an ever-increasing number of sleazy politicians, corrupt bankers, immoral TV producers and greedy people in general, is it any wonder that children are biting their teachers!

Meddling or motivating?

Prince Charles had a good line. He prefers to say he motivates rather than meddles. The same can't be said of the Prime Minister. In fact, the reverse could be true.

He meddled in the economy. Sir John Major is right to be peeved about that. Now he is meddling as PM. He has some odd thinking at the moment. I assume his "spokesmen" know what's what.

In this tragic Baby P case, Gordon Brown and his Children's minister, the rabbit-in-the-headlights-of-a-car impressionist, otherwise known as Ed Balls, are engaged in all kinds of convoluting sentences to describe what they are doing or not doing. Enquiries are going on they say.

Now the Tories unearth a whistleblower who tried to warn the government six months before Baby P's death in August 2007. A Downing street spokesman said the correct procedures had been followed. Is this about the whistleblower or the whole of Haringey Social Services.

A baby being constantly battered and bruised is not exactly something that anyone would or should ignore. If a minister was told of this, it beggars belief that nobody thought fit to raise a finger to use the phone or right a letter!

Certainly no motivation. Meddling? Doesn't seem they did anything, so if "the correct procedures had been followed" what does it say of the procedures? Gordon Brown needs to "meddle" in things that are going wrong and keep out of things that are going right.

Ed Balls in Nazi uniform shocker!

We all knew New Labour was sleazy. Perhaps their constant denigration of the Tories in 1997 was just a ruse to hide their own propensity for hypocrisy, petty sniping and financial greed through subterfuge. A long time ago, some wag said that the downfall of the Tories was sex and the downfall of Labour was money. The Liberals weren't mentioned, but history tells us it was both and some more!!

So Ed Balls, student boozer and amateur sexist, has some history that the Daily Mail has unearthed. I don't condemn him for student nonsense. We've all been there. What I do condemn is his new-found prissy politics which tends to condemn others, especially the Tories, when he, and his prissy wife, suggest that they alone have the moral high ground. The more this government is in power, the more it appears to be a moral low bog.