Skipper

This morning on Today I heard the interview between Humphrys and Phillip Pullman. Along with several other authors who write for the younger end of the audience, he is refusing to do school readings in future. The reason? A new rule which requires him to register with the education department- at a cost of £64- so that they can check and be sure he has no paedophile tendencies. His argument was that this assumption of possible predatory intent was insulting-and I can see that- but his best argument was that anything a visiting author does when visiting a school is right out in the open and supervised by adults in that teachers are presernt throughout.

Who dreams up such rules? Did someone in Whitehall win a brownie point for this piece of unnecessary bureaucracy? While there are so many things which do need doing, why do something which so obviously does not need doing? It's another exampole of the 'could be hit by ba meteor' thinking whereby someone with a morbid sense of bad things which might happen, is allowed free rein. Some things are so unlikely as to be not worth worrying about- because if we do we'll stay locked up in our houses all day.

As result of all this children will miss the chance to be entertained and stimulated into reading because of some fatuous and insulting regulation which should not have been seriously considered in the first place. It is to be hoped Pullman's stand, and that of his fellow authors will lead to this foolish rule being rescinded.