Monday, October 09, 2006
All your children belong to us III
Went down to the local "Cheap e'Mart" on Sunday. I know it's true that if "you buy cheap you buy twice" but the Cheap e'Mart is so cheap you have to buy 3 or 4 times to equal a quality product in price.
Amongst the usual clients we have the mother and baby, the mother wishes to pay for her purchases (under £5.00p) with a card, (I very rarely use cards for purchases these days). Anyway as she pulled out her wallet, visible to me was an (I think): "NHS exemptions tax credits" card. I've no idea what this is or how it works and I don't really care (I know it costs me money and that's more than enough information). The card was clearly to do with the baby as the majority of the space was taken up with two pictures of the baby.
I was swept with feelings of revulsion and disgust, here we have this baby already photographed, catalogued and in "debt" to the "good" state. I was hard put to restrain myself from berating the mother for having allowed the state to so photograph and "cardsise" her child, but clearly I managed it, otherwise I'd probably be in the hospital.
How foul! In our so called free democracy, this baby (along with no doubt many others) who is probably still too young to even talk yet the claws of the state are already embedded into it. I am reminded of: "... and once we have them we never let go whether they like it or not". Will this child ever be free of being categorised by the state? Will it even be able to conceptualise human life without a state? Or will it simply always and forever be the property of the state?
Amongst the usual clients we have the mother and baby, the mother wishes to pay for her purchases (under £5.00p) with a card, (I very rarely use cards for purchases these days). Anyway as she pulled out her wallet, visible to me was an (I think): "NHS exemptions tax credits" card. I've no idea what this is or how it works and I don't really care (I know it costs me money and that's more than enough information). The card was clearly to do with the baby as the majority of the space was taken up with two pictures of the baby.
I was swept with feelings of revulsion and disgust, here we have this baby already photographed, catalogued and in "debt" to the "good" state. I was hard put to restrain myself from berating the mother for having allowed the state to so photograph and "cardsise" her child, but clearly I managed it, otherwise I'd probably be in the hospital.
How foul! In our so called free democracy, this baby (along with no doubt many others) who is probably still too young to even talk yet the claws of the state are already embedded into it. I am reminded of: "... and once we have them we never let go whether they like it or not". Will this child ever be free of being categorised by the state? Will it even be able to conceptualise human life without a state? Or will it simply always and forever be the property of the state?
Tags: children, liberty, rights, freedom
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
