Genius plan to rejuvenate the High Street!

Graeme linked to this in The Telegraph:

The Prime Minister is to announce a Government-backed code of conduct which will mean that pornography is blocked in public spaces such as cafes and railway stations where children are likely to be present.

Mr Cameron said that he wanted “good, clean WiFi” in public spaces which would give parents confidence that their children cannot access illicit websites on smart phones or mobile computers.

The Prime Minister said: “We are promoting good, clean, WiFi in local cafes and elsewhere to make sure that people have confidence in public WiFi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn’t.

Does he not get embarrassed saying stuff like this? Does he not realise that he's making a complete idiot of himself?

The coalition of charities, which includes the NSPCC and The Children’s Society, last night welcomed Mr Cameron’s intervention...

Just for old times' sake...

The NSPCC's 2012 accounts have a nice long list of donors at the back, which includes Comic Relief, The Department of Education, Welsh Government, Army Central Fund, Department of Health 3rd Sector Investment Program (Dart), Department of Health, Social Services & Public Safety, Newcastle International Airport,BBC Children In Need Appeal and Glasgow City Council. They received over £9 million in "statutory funding", see note 3, page 31.

The Children's Society 2012 accounts note 7 on "Incoming resources from charitable activities" says they received £13 million from central and local government for doing what it is they pretend to do.

Fun With Numbers

From today's Metro:

One in 20 secondary school children has been sexually abused, a charity is warning, amid fears that young victims could be driven to suicide without expert help.

There were 1,225 referrals to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to help children who had been sexually abused last year – four times as many in 2008-9. The number of under-tens seeking support shot up from 30 to 257, with some victims as young as four.

Now, the NSPCC is launching a major campaign called Rebuilding Childhoods, as it funds a huge expansion of critically important therapy... It is feared 60,000 children miss out on therapy every year and risk permanently scarring their futures, the NSPCC says.

Quite how they scale up from 1,225 to 60,000 is unclear.

Or indeed how they square this 60,000 figure with their rather more modest (and possibly realistic) estimates of five years ago. I'm aware that 'sexual abuse' is a broader category than 'rape' but according to this, half of all sexual abuse is rape:

It is the first time the Home Office has released such statistics because the ages of rape victims were recorded for the first time only in 2004-5. In that period, 974 girls aged under 13 and a further 3,006 under 16 were raped* in England and Wales, while 293 boys under 13 and 320 aged under 16 were raped. Only one in 15 assailants - a total of 303 - were found guilty in court. Senior police officers believe actual numbers of rapes may be far higher because many children do not report the crime...

The figures were obtained by the NSPCC, Britain's biggest children's charity, which will launch a campaign tomorrow with the slogan 'Don't Hide It' to urge young people to report sexual abuse to someone they trust rather than suffer in silence. Evidence collected by ChildLine, the 24-hour telephone advice service that recently merged with the NSPCC, shows that of the 8,637 young people who rang in last year about sexual abuse, 4,414 - just over half - said they had been raped.

Junior Spies

It's good to see the BBC wheel out their fakecharity fakenews story template for one its increasingly rare outings.

More than 100 children a week are contacting the ChildLine helpline with worries about their parents' drinking or drug use, according to the NSPCC... Two-thirds of those callers had mentioned their parents' drinking...

Although concerns about parental drug and alcohol abuse made up only a small percentage of them, the head of ChildLine, Sue Minto, said: "The fall-out from parental drug and alcohol abuse is a ticking timebomb in many children's lives. It's vital these children are helped before lasting damage occurs."

Thirty-five per cent of those had reported suffering physical abuse, which was more than three times the rate among other children who called. Twenty per cent mentioned issues with family conflicts, while 10% spoke of sexual abuse.

It's not like old times though.

Although the NSPCC is clearly a fakecharity, they/the BBC couldn't organise a couple of rent-a-quotes from other fakecharities to pad out the article at the bottom (yes, Don Shenker of Alcohol Concern, that means you).

Drinkaware is not a fakecharity, it's organised by drinks manufacturers to coordinate their counter-propaganda, And the article does not end with a spokesperson from the relevant government department agreeing that 'more must be done'.

Health scare story du jour

From the BBC:

Young children who are regularly looked after by their grandparents have an increased risk of being overweight, an extensive British study has suggested. Analysis of 12,000 three-year olds suggested the risk was 34% higher if grandparents cared for them full time...

Brilliant! This story has the added bonus of sowing a few seeds of mistrust between the generations.

The article follows the BBC's usual fakecharity-story template, i.e. starts off with some meaningless statistic and ends up with somebody from the government saying that the government is taking the problem seriously and is going to "do more" - only this article seems to miss out the quotes from fakecharity spokespersons in the middle.

PS, of course, the article does not mention by how much the risk of children becoming anorexic is reduced if their grandparents look after them.

So if you still need your daily fakecharity fix, the NSPCC are on top form here.

Classic fakecharity gambit

The basic template for this gambit is included in this article by the BBC.

Step 1. Produce some research that even a non-expert must realise is stretching the bounds of probability:

A third of teenage girls suffer sexual abuse in a relationship and a quarter experience violence at the hands of their boyfriends, a survey suggests. Nearly 90% of 1,400 girls aged 13 to 17 had been in intimate relationships, the NSPCC and University of Bristol found. Of these, one in six said they had been pressured into sexual intercourse and one in 16 said they had been raped.

Step 2: What a coincidence! The all-seeing and all-knowing government already has plans in place to 'do something about it':

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said personal, social, health and economic studies - including relationship education - would become statutory for children of all ages by September 2011.

"Parents have a vital role to play in providing information and advice on sex and relationships," he said. "They should lead on instilling values in their children, but schools have a clear role in giving young people accurate information and developing the skills they need to make safe and responsible choices."

More dubious statistics from the statistics factory

The quango* known as the NSPCC has churned out some more "shock horror (give us more money or else!)" numbers today.

Police recorded more than 50 sexual offences against children every day last year, new figures have shown. There were 20,758 alleged sex crimes involving under-18s reported to officers in England and Wales in 2008, children's charity NSPCC said...

Six times more sex crimes were recorded against girls than against boys. The NSPCC obtained the statistics by making freedom of information requests to all of England and Wales's 43 police forces. All but Greater Manchester Police responded. This is the first time the charity has compiled the figures**.

But the NSPCC says official statistics do not provide a clear picture of how many involved children. It is now calling on the Government to collect and publish annual police data showing the number and ages of victims. The charity also wants these figures to be linked clearly to the number of convictions and other penalties that result from the recorded offences.

* The NSPCC received about £14 million in 'statutory funding' in its last financial year (see Note 3 to the accounts). This is only ten per cent of its total income but a handsome wedge nonetheless.

** If this is the first time, then the figure is meaningless as there is no comparative. Assuming it is accurate, that means that about one-in-five-hundred kids is affected by this each year, which is 20,000 individual tragedies but not much, in the grander scheme of things.