A Polish nightmare.
In the grim league table of primal fears, there is one undoubted winner – losing your child. To do so in a foreign country when your language skills are not perfect, and you do not truly understand the ‘system’, nor the full extent of official powers, is the ultimate nightmare.
Young Alicja and her husband Aleksy* are living and working in the UK. They work hard; long hours, he at night and she during the day, and share the care of their young child.
Yesterday they returned home to find an official letter roughly shoved through their front door informing them that an anonymous neighbour had reported them to the authorities for ‘going out drinking at night and abandoning their child’ and telling them to contact the ‘North Somerset Safe Guarding Children Board’.
They were quite literally terrified and in tears. Neither of them drink or smoke, their child is never left with strangers – the shift system they work means that one of them is with their child at all times. They knew they had done nothing wrong – but would the authorities believe them, or believe the anonymous comments of one of its own English speaking citizens?
They come from Poland, a country which in recent times was communist run, where you could be denounced to the authorities without any right to defend yourself. They had heard the stories of English child protection teams snatching children and forcibly adopting them – ex-pat communities the world over are a source of horror stories concerning your host authority.
Not surprisingly, their first reaction was to hide their child with friends and then appeal for help from within their community.
It was their good fortune that the first person they contacted happened to be a friend and neighbour of Andrew Withers, Deputy Leader of the Libertarian Party. It was equally their good fortune that the Honorary Polish Consul in their area is also a member of the Libertarian Party. Accidentally knowing the right people saved them hours of frantic worry – I wonder how well they would have fared had they not been given the help of people who could field an array of titles at the bottom of their e-mails?
The first telephone call made elicited the astounding response – “Whoops! Sorry, wrong Polish couple”. It seems the stasi official who had pushed that letter through their letterbox had been looking for another Polish couple in the same road – “Yep, they sound Polish, that’ll do” – a breathtakingly slip shod and negligent attitude from a public servant charged with such draconian powers as removing your children!
Not surprisingly, it was demanded of this official that he return to see Alicja and Aleksy in person to both apologise and reassure them that their child was safe. This was agreed to – but true to form, the official didn’t arrive, they have heard nothing more.
Somewhere in Bristol is a young Polish couple who have been anonymously denounced to the authorities. Perhaps justifiably, perhaps not. They will be equally terrified when the letter finally goes through the right letter box.
We don’t know who they are. We don’t know whether they also have the ‘right contacts’ to deal with this.
Your child being taken from you by the authorities is not on a par with having your gas supply cut off, or a parcel delivered when you are out – a note pushed through your door is a cold and callous means of telling you that ‘they’ – the North Somerset Safe Guarding Children Board – have received an anonymous complaint. To do so when you are perfectly well aware that the recipient of your note is “one o’ they Polish” and possibly doesn’t speak good English is unforgiveable.
*Names changed for obvious reasons.
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1
October 1, 2010 at 08:23 -
Jesus! who is living in a Stasi police state full of informers now!
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2
October 1, 2010 at 08:26 -
Ps ..But as they are foreign nationals just how exactly do our statutes apply to them? Though they may be living and working here and presumably abiding by most of our laws do they not still retain their ‘right to a private and family life’ without interference from the state!
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3
October 1, 2010 at 08:30 -
“… a breathtakingly slip shod and negligent attitude from a public servant charged with such draconian powers as removing your children!”
And yet, not altogether surprising, is it?
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4
October 1, 2010 at 17:35 -
And yet, not altogether surprising, is it?
Not remotely. Perhaps because the probability of sanctions against a public servant who behaves like this is infinitessimally small. The best one can hope for is a bland statement that says that lessons have been learnt.
But you’re not going to believe that, are you?
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5
October 1, 2010 at 09:37 -
Perhaps even worse than the original “slip shod” attitude is the apparent inaction of any manager supposedly tasked with rectifying this. After all we have many excess layers of control just to do this!!!!
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6
October 1, 2010 at 10:02 -
Apart from the whole Stasi/1984 type overtones of the entire affair, what if the couple they were trying to contact were really neglecting their child? Would a letter poked through the door, asking them to contact someone in authority actually have any positive effect? Not least as it seems the follow up seems negligible, and the first thing they would do is scarper sharpish, and not tell anyone where they’ve gone.
I am at a loss to understand how social services manage to remove children from some people for seeming trifles, but ignore other more obvious cases of neglect to the point of cases like Baby P etc. I suppose it is possible to be draconian and totally incompetent at the same time. Sadly.
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7
October 1, 2010 at 10:16 -
It’s quite alarming, yes we want children in genuine danger to be protected, but this story just high lights how odd the steps taken in protecting children are – a note through the door ?
I read this week of the couple who turned down their right to annonymity, to expose coventry council, who had run up huge costs trying to take their 3 kids, because their house was cramped (?) and one medical report from 6 years previously about a genuine health problem .
Just what is wrong with child protection, when they miss genuine cases and spend loads of money on ‘mistakes’. -
8
October 1, 2010 at 10:22 -
I have just had an admission from the fearsome Board of Guardians that a terrible blunder has occured and that a senior officer is going round today to apologise to the person who contacted me !!! Not the Polish Couple
I have also asked them not to go blundering around banging on doors to apologise as this couple were brought up under communism (but it is getting more difficult to tell the difference) where the knock on the door from officialdom is something to be feared. But to allow me to tell them somebody is coming to apologise first.
Then there is the small matter of the Data Protection Act the official actually told my informant the name and address of real receipient.
This is happening everyday in a street near you, this couple were fortunate in their list of contacts, others are not. This is a Party Political plug now please join the Libertarian Party, we actually care about this stuff. The big three just allowed this crap onto the statute book.
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9
October 1, 2010 at 10:32 -
“Then there is the small matter of the Data Protection Act the official actually told my informant the name and address of real receipient.”
Oh, good grief! They even manage to stuff up the apology! Truly, the SS is staffed with clowns, nincompoops and sadists…
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12
October 1, 2010 at 11:27 -
Some random remarks from a Pole:
Probably it would not have happened if father’s name was Mohamed. The council would not dare to disrupt family life and would have shown respect for their way of life.
I have experienced similar situation. We were leaving our son alone, under 14 at that time, while working. Splitting shifts was out of question since we were 156th priority on managers’ list. Some nice friendly person reported us, most likely one of 50 single mums on our 100 houses street. The other 50 houses were basicly occupied by other foreigners. We were getting up at 4 – 5 am and they (mums) were just about to say goodbye to departing “uncles”. The visit of council worker included sniffing into the bedrooms, fridge and interrogating our son without us. I do not think they ever visited their (mums)houses and believe me there were reasons for that.
We solved the matter anyway.
What we learnt was that easiness which makes people so prone to become snitchers. Envy of proper family life – inside, eternal smile and “you’rrre right, darling?” – outside.-
13
October 1, 2010 at 11:52 -
You’ll have made the mistake of being white, married, Catholic and in work. I bet you keep the front garden tidy and can do maths. All wrong. You probably spooked them by not being on benefits and having proper books laying about in at least two languages. I expect that lad was doing rather well in school. Fatal. You don’t want to admit to being clever and/or hardworking. It’s year zero round here, mate.
See, what you have to say is “I’m a Roma and you are a racist” and make sure the lad calls you ‘uncledad’ from now on. Give the missus a black eye, get a couple of girlfriends and go on incap because of your bad back, and they’ll leave you alone .
Keeping a vicious dog is a good idea too, but it might eventually attract the RSPCA, although they usually prefer to victimize old men and women who are not quite able to keep their pets up to show standards.
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14
October 2, 2010 at 14:53 -
@Woman on a raft
I must frankly confess:
1. I am not Catholic but have lots of respect for truly religious people, whatever their faith.
2. My lad could do better at school
3. Benefits… well, receiving £20 a week child benefit.
4. Books… they are around the place, but for the purpose of the council worker visit I made them more visible:). To be on the safe side I had hidden 2 bottles of wine which we drink while having bolognese -home made, not frozen:)
5. Not having front garden. I frankly admit the grass in back garden is currently massively overgrown:)
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15
October 1, 2010 at 12:30 -
Tomek- I am sure you are right about the Mohamed, but a Libertarian minded person would have done the same for anybody of whatever race,religion or creed.
Day by day the informer to the State is becoming enshrined in Law, just check the numerous websites that invite you to report your neighbours.
The State believes this is normal behaviour- The Libertarian does not !
Another little gem that has come across my desk this morning. Somebody who thinks it is cruel to hang an animal upside down slit its throat and bleed to death, wanted to have the choice of not buying Kosher/Halal meat on animal cruelty grounds, the local trendy right on lefty berated her for being racist against Moslems !!! and threatened to report her to the GeheimeStatsPolitzei for racist thought crime.
When did this all start, not buying South African Oranges in the Seventies because the Oranges were racist, those lunatics are now in the upper echelons of Government, and the spawn of one of them is the Leader of the Labour Party.
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16
October 1, 2010 at 13:35 -
You can’t be racist agianst Muslims. It’s a religion, not a race. There are white Muslims, black Muslims, and brown Muslims. The local trendy right on lefty nampy pamby politically correct busybody needs some edukation.
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17
October 1, 2010 at 17:51 -
I believe it’s becoming quite commonplace for caterers to use halal kill meat which means an increase in the number of animals slaughtered in a manner that many find objectionable.
The Geheime Staatspolizei can’t get you if you prefer pork.
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