Should a childless person be allowed to enter your local park?

If you are childless (and haven’t borrowed someone else’s children for the day), it’s best to stay clear of Telford. As the local paper reports:

Council staff on the lookout for paedophiles have been ordered to stop and quiz any adults found walking in Telford Town Park without a child, it was revealed today.

Anyone who wants to go to the park but is not accompanied by at least one youngster will have to explain why they are there. [Shropshire Star]

It’s best not to try to hand out leaflets either because also:

Telford & Wrekin Council said Rachel Whittaker and Neil Donaldson of the Wrekin Stop War pressure group were ejected [after handing out leaflets] because they had not undergone Criminal Records Bureau checks or risk assessments before entering the park.

Ah yes, having a criminal records check before you hand out any leaflets. How silly of them to overlook that. And as for handling pieces of paper without doing a proper risk assessment first. That’s just foolhardy. Have these people not heard of paper cuts? Alternatively, you may take this view:

Former childcare social worker John Evans said: “It is authoritarian madness which can only be based on ignorance.

“It appears that the council wants to use child protection as a cover for anything they don’t like taking place in the park, like the campaign against global warming by those two people who were handing out leaflets.

“It is absurd, it is insulting and what’s more it is dangerous as it panics people about the dangers their children face.”

P.S. Political morsel to ponder whilst muttering to yourself ‘this is health and safety gone mad’: Telford & Wrekin is a unitary council with a seven member Cabinet, all of whom are Conservative councillors.

Hat-tip: Liberal England.

UPDATE: Sanity has returned.