OneAndOneIs2

I generally avoid it.

One of the nice things about leaving the country is that it's so easy to not stay in touch with the headlines.

Why?

Well, for example, one news story I didn't miss. The government has decided to invest £100 million to cut down on crimes caused by young offenders.

So far so good.

Then you get to this bit: "families with children at risk of future high-rate offending will be reached through additional support which will ensure that problems are tackled early before difficulties spiral out of control"

And if you brave the 1MB download of the PDF, you get to see this graph, which tells you what the risk factors they'll be using to assess the likelyhood of future offending:

So, in order, we see that:

• Temperament makes sod all difference, so is worthless being in there.
• Maltreatment, AKA child abuse, makes a HUGE difference. But as any teacher will tell you, it's incredibly difficult to spot. That's why it's such a problem. So this one's also worthless.
• Mother has low IQ. I'm amazed this one didn't get knocked out of being non-PC. But since there's no qualifying exam to be a parent (pity) there's no national register of how intelligent a child's parents are. So this is.. worthless.
• Child has low IQ. Big difference here, and kids are always being tested and examined and streamed by ability. A useful thing to keep an eye on? Sadly, no. Exam results and intelligence can be very, very far apart. Intelligent kids do badly because they're bored, keen but less-able students can do very well, and kids who are already young offenders are generally not going to be the ones applying themselves to their schoolwork. So no useful measures of intelligence can be applied here. Worthless.
• Parent convicted. Finally, something that IS measurable! But did it really take them THIS long to work out that kids with law-abiding parents are more likely to be law-abiding themselves..?
• ADHD diagnosis. Yeah. Maybe a decade ago. Do you have any idea how many kids are branded "ADHD" in schools these days? According to this article there are 400,000 British schoolkids on ADHD drugs. And most schoolkids don't get drugged for being 'diagnosed' as ADHD, they just get slightly different treatment from teachers. There's too many ADHD schoolkids for this to be any use.
• Low socio-economic status. Poor people are more likely to turn to crime. This is news? And since one of the other headlines at the moment is the fear that the country is headed for recession, are they really going to try and provide lots of support for every child who doesn't have wealthy parents?

They're gonna need a lot more than £100 million.

If I were paying any tax in Britain right now, I'd be rather unhappy about the way it was being spent...