Footing the bill

Earlier today I mentioned how the contract between taxpayer has been broken as more and more money is demanded to pay for services we neither ask for nor want. Well, right on cue comes this story from the Mail.

Pupils who create mayhem in the classroom are to face a punishment that will make them quake in their shoes.

They will be asked to slip off their socks before being given a foot massage designed to control their unruly behaviour.

Foot massage for unruly pupils? What sort of idiot came up with that?

Labour-run Lambeth Council in South London is to spend £90,000 next year sending reflexologists into its schools to practise their soothing art.

You really couldn't make this stuff up. As if Lambeth Council don't have better things to spend your money on? Apart from the fact that there is no evidence that this will have any positive effect anyway, the bigger question is whether Lambeth council actually asked the local taxpayers - the ones who are literally footing the bill - whether they want their money spent on foot massages for naughty children. My bet is that they didn't.

Lambeth Labour councillor Paul McGlone said the council was right to provide the alternative treatment.

'It's incredibly important that we address young people's behavioural problems and we make no apologies for using different and innovative methods but this obviously won't replace more traditional ways of dealing with anti-social behaviour.

Actually it was the liberals who abandoned the "traditional ways" of dealing with unruly behaviour - which, funnily enough, proved remarkably effective at curtailing bad behaviour - and now, having found that kids are getting out of hand they are turning to "alternative" therapies rather than going back to the ways that worked.

That's the thing with liberals. Even when they know the numbers up for their methods, there is no going back to tried and trusted methods. Instead you will see increasingly mad schemes costing increasingly large sums of money which will always fail to deal with the problem.