English Yokel

Always bad news, that.

But the first comment is also a swipe at the Mail itself. We have known for ages that banks have tried to cut their costs of borrowing by sleight of hand. They entice savers into accounts with promises of high returns, and then bit by bit reduce the interest payable until it is little more than seven tenths of sweet fa. Now the Mail is saying that it is the savers' fault, that we are all "lazy savers". Can they not identify this basic dishonesty by the banks? No? Well Yokel must remember that they are the mainstream media, even if at the better end of it.

Then there is the attempt by the Pentagon to destroy morale in the US forces. Smoking is too risky to be allowed! Yokel supposes that we in the UK must welcome the US to the beginnings of the nanny state paternalism that has all but destroyed the UK.

But finally amid his tears for this couple and their daughter,Yokel gives thanks that his own children were not subjected to this level of state sponsored cruelty. From his own family's brushes with the "welfare system" Yokel knows how easy it is to fall into their grasp, and how difficult to get out, and how their draconian powers are without any form of checks or balances. Here there is a system in which one protagonist (the Social Worker) is ex-officio always right, and the other (the parent) always wrong. The parent is never left in any doubt as to the powers of the social worker, nor any doubt as to how futile is any effort at resistance. Years after the event Yokel's child (now a young adult) thanked Yokel for explaining the whole court ordered access procedure. At the time the child thought they were being dumped on the absent mother every couple of weeks because Yokel didn't like the child! An arrangement that the social workers preen themselves was clearly in the best interests of the child, because social workers said it was!

This last story has hit a very raw nerve. Sorry, Yokel isn't usually given to tears.