Sometimes the little guy kicks back and wins. When that happens, savour the moment.
A father who was taken to court after he took his seven-year-old daughter on holiday has won his case, giving hope to parents who want to take their children on holiday during term time without facing sanction.
The very notion of schools being able to issue fines was an appalling one, that, in a civilised society should never have got beyond the “here’s a thought…. no, shit idea” stage. It was an idea that should have been strangled at birth along with the creature that proposed it.
That Platt was able to pick apart their prosecution by taking them back to the wording of the primary legislation tells us much about the arseholes who drafted this monster (not to mention the scum who then used it to persecute parents). We shouldn’t have to play them at this game, for they should not be in the business of imposing their will upon us in the first instance. And we cannot always rely on magistrates exercising common sense.
The longer I live, the more convinced I become that the state has no business being in education. A child’s education is the responsibility of the parent. I don’t have children, but if I did, I’d do everything in my power to keep them out of the corrupting influence of the state education system.
Warms my heart. If only they were missing a decent education, that might be story. Still the parents call though.
The state has no right to be involved in anything we do….
Too true – but how can we make them see that? We’ve been disarmed – primarily with that in mind.
Sticks with very pointy ends are our only resort now.
I’ve never understood the logic of that argument. Governments can afford to buy tanks, jet fighters, bombers, and nuclear weapons. They’ve already got the most powerful weapon of all: your taxes.
Besides, the US citizenry have had the “right” to own a veritable arsenal of weaponry for generations, and they don’t appear to be in any particular hurry to do anything constructive with it, aside from letting their kids settle grudges in schools and colleges.
Clearly, it’s one thing to talk the talk, but quite another to walk the walk. When I see those gun nuts actually rise up and *do* something with said guns, I may consider believing their rhetoric.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all those who have been screwed by the attendance thugs set about getting their money back. Mind you, local authorities seem able to access bottomless pits of our money when defending their ineptitude so it would cost thee and me in the long run.
I could live with that if it taught these vile thugs a lesson in their place in the world.
Would it be the case that this legislation was pushed through on the grounds that it would be used against parents who were hardly getting their kids to school at all? Once the law was passed it was then easy for the kind of people who like bossing other people around to misuse it. I think that it was one of the commenters at Samizdata who though that school attendance should be optional but anyone who grew up illiterate, inumerate and unemployable should be made to live with the consequences.
LR – “I’d do everything in my power to keep them out of the corrupting influence of the state education system” – agree wholeheartedly, thats why my three all had primary education in the private sector. It helped build a healthy questioning in them that allowed them to recognise the inherent bias of the public sector education. Added to my own gudiance – “what evidence do you have to support that statement?” they have turned out nicely thank you. They have then moved into the state system (I want something back for my taxes) and regularly tell me of the latest attempts to indoctrinate them into the left wing ideology. There is a cost to it all, however they are my children and I gladly paid it – just like my parens did for my and my brothers.
The problem here is two-fold: firstly the schooling system tends to be staffed with tin-pot dictators who are actually not very smart and who relish the small amount of power they are granted.
On the other hand, quite a lot of parents are similarly not very smart, and if given a system whereby one absence per annum of no more than 10 school days would be tolerated (that’s a 2-week holiday, basically) would take the piss unmercifully and fail to understand the entire concept.
What is happening then is that the rather thick school administrator is trying to enforce an inflexible system designed such that complete and utter fuckwits can understand it, and is running into vastly superior intellects (i.e. about 50% of the population) and is losing.
Expect to see re-runs of this ad nauseam.