It seems that we are more terrified than we should be. An inconvenient report by the University of Bournemouth, under Prof Colin Pritchard, is very clear.
The number of violent deaths among children in England and Wales has fallen by almost 40% since 1974, research has suggested.
David Cameron, and his raggletaggle band of reactionaries, must be delighted.
Even worse, social workers - of all people - are responsible for a shameless demonstration of the welfare state in action.
'Better monitoring by social workers and improved liaison between health visitors, paediatricians, GPs and police had led to the drop, it said. The US and Germany had the highest violent death rates, the study found.'
But where did this increased fear and loathing of our broken society, with its increasingly bottomless depths of depravity and squalor, come from?
Whoever turns out to be the evil arch-villain responsible, the benefits to some are clear.
If the fear exists that your children will be killed if they set foot out of the house, you will quite naturally keep them under supervision. This clears any traditional open spaces and playgrounds of children, effectively killing the demand for play. At least, for play which cannot be 'monetised' as they say on blogs. This tends to reduce the chances that profitable property developments will be challenged at the planning stages by crank parents and communities which value their children's welfare before the share prices of Barratt and Wimpy.
Keeping children indoors also creates a massive market for consumer goodies to keep them amused and not killing each other. Plus all the supervised activities and recreations with their lucrative added options. For over ten years, society has run on fear. It has been a cash cow, a significant job-creator in this phase of late Consumerism. After all, skipping ropes and skatebords don't need upgrading. And they don't wear out easily. From a business point of view, they're a disaster. As is any play which children invent for themselves out of their imagination and resources available. Because play cannot be weighed and sold by the pound, it is the defacto enemy of industrial consumer society. Just as free air is.
That is the real sickness of society, which Cameron & Cronies are genetically incapable of grasping. But then, he is only following Brown's example. But that is Brown's shame for life, not Cameron's.
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