Nanny State In Action

I posted on my companion blog, Wolf Health, that Britain faces a nation wide crisis over widening obesity rates. Now we see local councils advocating that the State take control of "dangerously" obese children and remove them from their families.
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This from the Sun:

Dangerously fat kids could be taken from their parents and put into care, council chiefs declared yesterday.

They warned that the worst cases of obesity will be increasingly seen as evidence of "parental neglect."

Social workers will have to step in to offer advice to protect the child's welfare.

In the most extreme cases, children could even be taken away from parents.

. . . The dramatic warning was delivered by the Local Government Association, which represents more than 400 councils in England and Wales.

Around one in four people in England are obese, so overweight that it threatens their health.

But experts fear HALF the population will be affected by 2032.

LGA public health spokesman David Rogers said some councils were already taking actions "where parents are putting children's health in real danger.

"Councils would step in to deal with an under-nourished and neglected child so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different?

. . . "There needs to be a national debate about the extent to which it is acceptable for local authorities to take action in cases where the welfare of children is in real jeopardy."

. . . But Mr Rogers said childhood obesity had now become an issue for every council.

Tough action was needed to protect the health of millions of children. . . .

Read the entire article.

Of all the ways that this problem can be addressed, taking a child from his family seems the absolute worst possible decision. Whether a child grows up fat or slim may be a concern of the state, but it is so patently obvious that there is so much more involved in the family unit that bears on what the child will grow into as to make this draconian policy proposal utterly insane. And even besides that, there are a thousand things the state can do to promote health and weight loss, not the least of which is mandating more physical activities for school age children. It is one thing to use the bully pulpit, another thing entirely to use the police powers of the state against a family.

But, sad to say, I am not surprised that this suggestion should arise in the U.K. As a general rule, the socialist left believes in the superiority of centralized power and that those in power - so long as they are reliably socialist - are in a better position to make decisions effecting individuals than individuals can make for themselves. Socialists also tend to have far less respect for the traditional family unit - as the U.K.'s welfare system among others makes clear. Modern Britain is a true laboratory experiement in socialism and multiculturalism transposed on top of a Western democracy.

Cross posted at Wolf Health.