Fines for not going to school

New Labour is trailing plans to criminalise and persecute young people aged 16-18 who do not stay on in school (or some form of what passes for education these days) when the school-leaving age is raised to 18.

One idea is to give them referral orders - which means to put them under the control of the Youth Justice Board (the same Youth Justice Board in whose care 15 year old Gareth Myatt was when he died in a restraint hold in Rainsbrook STC in 2004) - make them into Young Offenders. For not wanting to take up the paltry exams based 'training' or 'education' system on offer. No one with any spirit would want to have anything to do with it.

New Labour are a bunch of brutal philistines. Using criminal sanctions on 16 year olds - who don't want to take part in some farce of a training system - for which the chief beneficiaries are the profit making companies who run the training schemes for unemployed young people. (Oh, just like the cynically named Rebound who run Rainsbrook).

As always with New Labour it's a job to work out whether this is motivated by a sheer love for oppressing people or by a desparate need to score politcal points - in this case reducing the number of NEETs [Government-speak for young people Not In Employment Education or Training] at any cost to civil liberties or ordinary decency.

New Labour has abolished the concept of justice. It is simply not a matter of 'justice' whether or not a 16 year old chooses to go to school. It is not wrong not to want to. This is poltical expediency - the justice system manipulated to meet political ends.

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