"Do You Know Who I Am?" corner

http://www.karoo.co.uk/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=19267941&category=Entertainment

Stormbreaker creator Michael Horowitz was equally critical, describing the plans as "objectionable".

"In essence, I'm being asked to pay £64 to prove that I am not a paedophile," he wrote in a comment piece for the Independent newspaper.

"After 30 years writing books, visiting schools, hospitals, prisons, spreading an enthusiasm for culture and literacy, I find this incredibly insulting."

So, people who are famous are never a risk to children and should be exempt from the security procedures that the rest of us who work with children and vulnerable adults all the time have to go through.

We could argue the merits of the database and the existing CRB checks, but really this is just a bunch of "famous" nobheads getting all butthurt about being treated like the hoi polloi, right?

good thread idea but this database is bullshit and these guys are right based on what i can glean from the article.

The database is perhaps ill-conceived but designed to tackle a genuine problem, their objection seems to be nothing but "I'm famous so I can't be a threat", and yeah I figured this thread would come in useful long-term for celebrity hissy action.

everytime i see this thread title i just think of my favorite leonard cohen song.

xpost

These schemes tend to have a bigger effect on kids' football teams and scout groups and such, but unfortunately paedophiles have a history for using those kinds of activities to meet children. So where do you draw the line as to who needs to be vetted and who doesn't?

Yeah it's a hissy fit and nothing to do with how yer average caretaker or sports coach relates to the database.

Also lol at the idea of it seeing as Pullman books are full of children being abducted by people in positions of trust.

agree about the writers' tone but i would have thought that if they don't have any unaccompanied access to children - i'd expect a teacher to be there where there's a visiting writer - then there's no need for vetting.

otoh, in FE colleges you could quite easily have 14-year-olds mixing with convicted paedophiles who are on adult education courses but no one seems to care about that.

looking at it, i'm not actually sure that pullman etc understand the legislation. unless they're charging for school visits registration is free because they're "volunteers". if they are charging, then £64 as a one-off cost of doing business is nothing and they should stfu.

anyway, it's not clear they need to register at all if they're only in schools less than once a month.

You're right on both points really joe. There might be an argument that if an author's spending above a certain number of hours a year in school settings they should register, and not if it's very occasional visits. CRBing adults who never have isolated access to children is over-zealous.

One of the faults of the database is employers assuming that it's sufficient protection on its own, but I don't think we can go back to a system where adults in regular working contact with children aren't checked at all.

And the problem with under-16s in FE is part of a wider problem - that these kids are often just parachuted into mainstream FE with no effort to meet the needs that led to them being excluded from school in the first place.

their objection seems to be nothing but "I'm famous so I can't be a threat"

to be slightly fairer, I think their objection is more "you asked me to talk to children"

but the fact that it is free for volunteers undercuts the complaint pretty much entirely

i think the real story is probably that they're all paedos worried about getting found out. pullman? pullboys, more like.

i kind of feel like it's 'insulting' that these writers are more concerned with their dignity or whatever and not the welfare and safety of kids

tbh, pullman is a bit paedo-looking

isn't it Anthony Horowitz? Read his shit when I was 11

gross