Are We Going Forward?

PandaB's comment on this post brought to mind the many incidents of children missing here a few years ago. Parents and care-givers are more vigilant these days though measures taken are not as extreme as what's in this article, Are we too afraid of touch?. This is an insightful yet disturbing piece. Sadly, life has come to such a state that it has become surreal, but not in a positive sense. I quote some excerpts below.

- Hospital staff are often told not to put an arm round patients to comfort them lest it be viewed as assault.

- We are all so terrified of child sexual abuse that we have outlawed taking photographs of children at nursery school without parental consent. So, a few years ago, when Clive Peachy, a bricklayer, saw two-year-old Abigail Rae walking down the road after she had escaped from her nursery school in Warwickshire, he did not stop and help her because he thought people would think he was trying to abduct her. The result? She drowned in a pond.

- Teachers have been told never to touch the children in their care. So you get 12-year-olds with broken legs crying for their mothers, with staff unable to give them a hug, and five-year-olds putting sunscreen on each other because the teachers have been instructed not to touch them.

- Equally absurd are the letters informing parents that children should not bring home-made birthday cakes into school in case of food poisoning — a position that results in children being less likely to share.
So, what do you think? Are we getting paranoid for our own good over-protecting ourselves and our loved ones? Will we create the next generation of wimps as the author put it?

Probably the real 'enemies' are at home -- Meanwhile, the sexual predators will carry on just as before — largely in the family — because no system of checks will root them out completely. And we will have created a whole generation of unhappy people.

Are we going forward, do you think?