Social Workers Ask: Why Must You Knuckle-Dragging Reich-Wing Thugs Be So Hateful ?

Crivens! It looks like FR has upset the child snatchers. One of them's penned a rebuttal article that appears to be based on the theory that the only reason the public don't trust them is that they're not nearly crazy enough. Here's the opening line:

The Daily Mail is vile.

Is that your professional opinion, ma'am ?

Everybody, apart from its readers, must know that.

Well, either that, or it's the people in social work who are the unrepresentative fringe.

But the problem is the sheer number of people who do read it – more than the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and Independent put together!

That'll be Option B then.

Many social workers, with their tendency to a more liberal and tolerant world view, prefer to just ignore the Mail and all it stands for.

They're 'liberal and tolerant' - but they think Britain's biggest selling newspaper is 'vile' and should be ignored. Apparently, what she meant to say was that most social workers are 'tolerant' of other 'liberals'.

But the trouble is the Mail doesn’t ignore them back.

Yep, that's the extreme right for you: you can't even abduct kids and destroy lives without someone whining about it.

It feeds the 2.3million people who read it every day a constant drip drip of poison against social care staff, questioning the profession’s competence as well as its motives.

You sure wouldn't want to question the motives and competence of folks with this kind of stellar record.

And I say 2.3million – that’s the number who buy it, meaning that at least twice that number read it. That’s quite frightening really.

Again, this is a sign of the political divide. Social workers are frightened by people reading a paper they don't approve of, while the right is frightened by state-sponsored child abduction at the behest of unaccountable fanatics. Tomat-o, tomat-a.

It suggests that almost 5 million people will have seen the story yesterday about the “scandalous” behaviour of social workers who have told a woman called Fran Lyon they plan to take her baby away from her shortly after it is born.

Yep, platoon commanders caught in an ambush in Helmand Province, murder squad detectives and private equity firms - they all need constant public scrutiny, but the public having a right to know how Child Abduction Services go about their business ? That's just crazy talk!

The piece is written in an emotional, some would say lurid, style, detailing how the woman, “who has never harmed anyone” does not know if she will get to hold her baby.

You know, if sneer quotes hadn't been invented, huge numbers of leftists would have no way to communicate. What, exactly, is the point of putting them round 'who has never harmed anyone' ? Has she, in fact, hurt someone ? Can these people cite any evidence of that, or is it just - and I'm going out on a limb here - a stupid innuendo, included for no reason other than to smear the victim ?

It’s clearly a very sad case but, as every child care professional reading it will know, there is another side to the story.

Well, see, that's kind of the problem, the fact that social workers could be caught chowing down on newborn children and the rest of their colleagues would be on TV explaining that it's the system wot done it.

A side that those 5 million Mail readers will not get to hear.

Hello ? This is better than the guy who shot his parents, then wrote a book about how tough it was being an orphan. One of the most objectionable aspects of the child care system is the way it is shielded from public scrutiny. Say what you like, but the Daily Mail has consistently opposed this secrecy, so it's a bit much to hear social workers lamenting the DM for not being open enough.

Why should we care about what Mail readers think?

Tolerant!

Well, for one thing it helps stoke up real hatred against social workers.

I'm thinking the whole 'off-the-scale kooks destroying families to make trivial political points' thing may also play its part.

The story of Fran Lyon prompted one person to write a blog headed “Save A Life – Shoot A Social Worker"

Hmmmm.... so a leftist quotes a joke completely out of context, then tries to cite it as serious proof of right-wing extremism. That doesn't happen more than every time.

That can’t be a good thing.

So, let's check the scorecard here: jokey headline by a blogger = bad, meanwhile torture, insanity and organised crime ? Just part of life's rich tapestry.

But, for what it’s worth, Community Care readers will get to hear the other side.

Libs are big on Top Secret revelations that will totally make them seem less stupid, except they can't reveal them just yet.

On September the 20th we will be running a feature examining the way Fran Lyon’s story was hijacked by the Mail (and the Telegraph) through no fault of her own and how key facts about her psychiatric history were omitted.

Would that be her real psychiatric history, or would it be one written by a baby doctor who's never, strictly speaking, met her ? Like I say, leftards are big on 'context', but it'll have to be one hell of a context to make having people with no training make psychiatric assessments of people they've never met seem less sleazy.

Some Community Care readers have written in saying they don’t want to read about “child-snatcher” allegations against social workers in the national media.

Fortunatly, I have a plan to stop all that, one I call Operation 'Stop Snatching Children Then, Morons'.

Notably 32 members of the social work team at Bolton Council protested at our coverage of John Hemmings and his claims that children were being taken into care to meet adoption targets.

An MP scrutinising the actions of public servants ? It'll never catch on!

I think Community Care shouldn’t ignore every anti-social worker story that appears in the national media (though you have to ignore a lot of them otherwise it becomes too exhausting!)

Telling the truth = 'anti-social worker story'. Even when they have to pick their way over the bodies, it's still all about them.

Hopefully our coverage of Hemmings – and the forthcoming feature on the Lyon case – is helping, just a tiny bit, to set the record straight.

Given how slippery and sleazy this article is, the one thing we can be sure of is that the record will end up bent as a corkscrew if these loonies have anything to do with it.

It’s at least worth a try, surely?

I return to my initial point: they really think they can get off the hook by going double or quits on the deranged leftism. Just who's doing their psychiatric assessment ?