Of course it wasn’t drugs,
Of course.
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Other than very nearly interfering with the mail, an offence which can carry with it prison time, surely the real story here is being missed.
The REAL story must be the horrific and unspeakable suspicions of dangerous malevolence these children were desperately in danger of; which no other action than a totally invasive and potentially identity mis-shaping search of their private belongings could assuage!
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next you are going to tell me 1984 is not a manual for running a country
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But the mother and child already probably lost the money they had saved for six months to afford it. It’s too bad the internet empathy squad can’t get the kid enough donated to a different camp, with a better outcome.
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NO FRUIT CUP for you!
As far as I understand, first you should complain to the school. They are required to publish a complaints procedure, though this school apparently doesn’t feel they need to publish it on the web (perhaps they only hand out leaflets to parents).
If the school doesn’t react, you take it up with Watford Borough. Try until they reply.
Next step is to complain to Hertfordshire County Council. Note that when contacted by The Sun they claimed "It is normal procedure to check the contents of a letter.” Sounds alarming if that’s the policy for the whole county.
If the council sees no need to react, try the Local Government Ombudsman. Don’t contact LGO first, you must go through the other steps and wait for replies before proceeding. However, the LGO’s oversight of schools is limited, I’m not sure if this is the kind of stuff that falls within their purview. But if it’s county policy I’m sure they’d like to hear about that.
Probably better to go for the Department of Education instead (but you must go through the school/council steps first).
And/or contact the post office (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have any online forms for reading other’s correspondence). If it’s county policy they’d be rather alarmed.
I’d do it myself but I’m a bloody furriner so not sure what standing I have.This seems like an open and shut case, unless the school claims the agreement form spells out kids agree to have their mail opened and read. I still don’t think that would fly, so complain away Brits.
P.S. bit hard to believe kids today would write letters unless the teachers told them to. Nice racket there, telling them to write letters and then as a matter of policy read the letters for anything naughty.
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You got drunk under age? As in not in teens, but in elementary school age?
Unsurprised by this news. Living on the IOW, web savvy daughter who was 10 ( 8 years ago) was reported to the Head teacher of school AND to the police authorities because she emailed a girl,who racially abused her at school, called her a f…head and some colourful words. She was too scared to approach teachers as they were unsympathetic in the first instance. We were contacted by the LA education officer to assess our ability to be parents. ( Although not snobby about education, just FYI-Dad - part Phd and electronics engineer, Mum - double post graduate, pretty much travelled and worked around the world).
In another incident - daughter who has medical condition was off school for several days WITH a doctors note, only to have the truant officer visit our home to verify if we were fit enough to be parents. Our names are foreign sounding; we are articulate and know our rights - heaven forbid, we question authority on the IOW !
IOW 30 years behind the rest of the world. Enough said.
No, that time was lost. Drunk was another time. But we were never banned from eating bloody chocolate. Or psychologically tortured.
I don’t care what the planned activities might have been. Being forced to sit there and not participate in anything while everyone else gets to do any number of fun things IS cruel. It’s cruel on several levels. Obviously, it’s not fun to watch everyone else, but there is also the issue of being humiliated continually over the course of a week and singled out constantly throughout a camp that was a very big deal for you to be able to attend in the first place.
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The U.S. and Somalia are the two holdouts on ratifying the Rights of the Child.
Somalia has stated that they will sign when they get their political house in order. The U.S. has stated that we will not sign, ever. Children are chattel in the U.S.
Edited to add: The U.K. has ratified, however. Should have RTDA before posting.
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Well, the USA has its own reasons for hardly ever ratifying anything…but the constitution doesn’t only apply to over-18s, and children have many protections and freedoms thanks to that.
Camp just ain’t what it’s ‘choced’ up to be
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The point being missed in this discussion is that the kid embarrassed The Authority. When you embarrass The Authority, The Authority will strike back with overwhelming force to disincentivize the other inmates/pupils.
It’s got nothing to do with chocolate, allergies, dirty hotel rooms or anything else. Just don’t embarrass The Authority or expect to pay the consequences.
Roald Dahl was actually an anti-semitic misogynist who stuck his wanger into anything that moved. At one point he mentioned that the males of a certain spider had to restrain their females to mate with them–which he thought was lovely.
For a little girl, yeah, he probably would have been this cruel. That aside, still gotta love the books 
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Does that charter entail them to behave like Nazi guards? How come people with such a mindset work with kids? I would think twice before entrusting them even a pet!
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Ahum. Monkey see monkey do. If the NSA/Government snoop, it’s to be expected that the citizenry takes it as a validation. The violence, bullying, lack of respect, zero-tolerance tyrannical reprieves shown by Authority sets the example to be followed by everyone else.
It sounds like the little girl gave the letter to them to be posted, and they opened it. I thought it was only an offence if the mailpiece had already entered the postal mail system.
Dans ce pays, il est bon, de temps en temps, d’intimider une petite fille pour encourager les autres.
I’ve read quite a bit–including The Witches. And Boy. I love the story of how he briefly thought he was responsible for killing a candy store owner. I should have added that, even though I could easily imagine Dahl being this cruel, it was an incredibly unimaginative punishment.
