Thersites Writes

So postal workers have decided to go on strike. It's suicide - not least because the last time they went on strike - 1996 - there weren't as many private sector rivals able to take up the slack. Plus, nor were there anyway near as many people who had access to and used e-mail. Or to put it another way: would YOU go on strike if your core market could just simply go somewhere else for your no-longer exclusive services?

More cynical souls might argue that this is just a prelude to the privitisation of the Post Office. Perhaps so, but it's not the first time a trade union has done its members in for a pound of flesh.

In the 80s I was cutting edge, it seems. My mother was terrified of paedophiles, cars and packs of feral youths. I agreed and stayed indoors or in the garden, like she wanted. It was remarked upon, especially by my father - who didn't like me much anyway, that this was very odd and unhealthy. But I chose to do it and could have just sneaked out if I wanted.

Children these days have caught up with me, while old-fashioned notions like choice have been cast aside:

The risk of abduction remains tiny. In Britain, there are now half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922 - despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic.

In 1970, 80% of primary school-age children made the journey from home to school on their own. It was what you did. Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting children is now the norm - often in the back of a 4x4.

We are rearing our children in captivity - their habitat shrinking almost daily. In 1970 the average nine-year-old girl would have been free to wander 840 metres from her front door. By 1997 it was 280 metres.

Now the limit appears to have come down to the front doorstep.

The worst part of it is that many of these idiot parents roamed free when they were young but now deny their children the same freedom. Meanwhile the inmates - err, I mean children - are dead keen on staying locked up too, every bit as afraid as their paranoid parents, who drive them to school in big, fuck-off SUVs but then worry like big girls' blouses about 'the traffic'. (Which, with confidence and the right guidance, is easily dealt with.)

I honestly think that parents' instincts can be destructive at times: all that fear and distrust can run amok if not reigned in. Indeed, most of the absurd moral panics of recent years have been down to parents panicking about their children, which causes all sorts of problems for the rest of society, made up - as it is - of sensible, grown up adults.

And if you want to sell something, just get the parents to think their child NEEDS it. Hence the rise of annoying mobile phones which are supposed to help little Timmy get in touch, but which usually gets his head kicked in by Big Kev and his trog mates when they get around to mugging him for his new Nokia. And there's the spectre of children being microchipped and traced, 'just in case', even though there's something just weird about using the same means to trace the family dog and your first born.

Psycho-parenting reaches its crescendo during the child's adolescence, when a difficult time is made worse by jealous, confused 'adults' who resent the loss of total control and can no longer project their wills and desires onto someone who is turning into an adult in their own right. As the chav plague shows, there's not enough parenting going on in some houses, but as the high number of unhappy, bitter damaged people on booze or anti-depressants show, there's too many jumped-up little Hitlers and Evas warping their kids too.

Thankfully, some parents are beginning to question this outlook. And since children are being treated like Red Setters, perhaps they should at least be given the same number of walks and exercise. Nature is wonderful, be it fungi, birds, trees or clumps of fox fur, as even I in my garden (and the big holes I liked digging) could attest.

But right now, we're fucked up and we no longer spare our children the worst of our instinctual lunacy. A million miles away from my brother, who roamed and roamed and played with friends in the park, walked to the shop on his own and frankly didn't give a toss - a healthy and somewhat alien attitude these days. He had the choice I did and made the most of it, as did I on my own terms. If only today's children had the choice, and for that matter, the will to do the same. I blame the parents, as the old cliché goes.

Some of you may have heard that racist, stupid Tory MP Ann Winterton is trying to limit abortion through the back door:

Ann Winterton's bill would require women to be counselled about possible ill-effects, then to wait a week to consider them before going ahead...

...She wants compulsory counselling - rather than the voluntary counselling offered currently - and a seven-day "cooling off" period, to allow time for second thoughts.

And her Termination of Pregnancy (Counselling and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill will also include a provision that doctors record whether abortions are being performed on physical or mental grounds.

Yes, because what vulnerable, desperate women need is to be forced into a long wait to ponder what happens next in painful detail, being harrassed by some counseller and then given the scarlet letter on their medical records. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Apparently, this is all for the good of their mental health, which is beyond parody IMHO.

This dreadful misanthrope does not care for women nor for the children who will end up growing up either poor or unwanted. (Or exploited Chinese labourers, for that matter.) It's callous, vindictive and intrusive and all about putting ideology before reality. Hopefully it will be defeated immediately, but this is perhaps the first of many skirmishes over the issue.

As for Winterton, there's nothing particularly pro-life about her, is there? You have to wonder why the Whips didn't shut her up, as this is hardly going to win Dave Cameron that all-important female vote.