It appears New Liebour have inadvertently proved the theory of time travel by slowly moving us back to 1984.

There was a joke email doing the rounds a couple of years ago saying that the estate of George Orwell were sueing the Labour Party for breach of copyright.  It was funny at the time but I think someone at Liebour HQ must have taken it seriously and thought they’d better get their money’s worth if they were going to get sued.

Children as young as ten are being asked to complete a questionaire on their school and home life.  The questionaire asks if they feel safe at home and school – sensible questions because a child that feels unsafe needs help.  The questionaire also asks if they drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes – a bit intrusive but children that drink alcohol or smoke need to stop before they do themselves damage.  Nothing to Orwellian so far but it gets better.

Children are asked if their mother or step-mother does paid work and if they feel the statement “my parents and family look out for me” is true.  Pupils aren’t asked for their names but they are asked for their postcode and many schools have introduced biometric devices for logging into school computers.  Parental consent isn’t being sought for this questionaire but there is an obvious malpurpose for this questionaire – the information could be used by the DWP to try and identify benefit cheats and as much as I approve of them cracking down on fraudsters stealing our taxes, using children to spy on parents is wrong.

Hat-tip: PJC Journal