Children can find way home alone

IT’S worth learning the name Lenore Skanazy and the tale of her nine-year-old son that has caused huge comment in the US.

Skanazy, a journalist, took her son to the handbag section of the massive Bloomingdales department store in New York - and left him to get home on his own. He was armed with transportation maps and all the fare money he needed, along with money for telephone calls.

Lo and behold, back home he came, with a satisfying sense of personal victory. Skanazy trusted him to get the subway, then a bus and to ask a stranger for directions if need be. She also trusted that stranger to not think, quote: “I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”

Hoorah for Skanazy and may others follow in her step. And why not here in Edinburgh? Of course, you’ll need to choose your store quickly – with the One Kid At A Time policy that many establishments now favour, it could take several years just to do all the nine-year-olds in Leith.

That said, it would be a worthwhile endeavour if it can start to reverse in any way the mollycoddling wave of misguided parenting that thinks that the best way to raise children is to provide a door-to-door taxi service for their every need.

It’s because of these misguided parents that it becomes almost impossible to drive anywhere in this town during term time. When the school holidays arrive the streets become the open thoroughfares of transport they should be all year round.

My parents tried this exact policy, leaving me age eight at a North Berwick petrol station. As the smell of burning rubber left from their Hillman Imp filled my nostrils, I discovered that I had only been given just enough money to get the train as far as Longniddry. Thankfully a man who saw me being thrown from the car helped out. But it did me no harm. Indeed as part of a policy for not only cleaning the environment but also developing leadership and independence skills in our otherwise, largely feckless, youth population the strategy has much to recommend it.

To encourage parents, would it be so difficult for the City of Edinburgh to have a standardised school drop-off exclusion zone that extends one mile around every school.

Given that parents seem so terrified for their little ’uns safety, this zone would presumably halt the squadrons of paedophiles currently patrolling the streets in their sweet-dispensing cars. Apart from anything else some would argue that it’s society that needs protected from children, and not vice versa.

Of course parents don’t need to go the whole hog in one go. They can start by leaving the kid in the local Spar, then in Jenners, and finally blindfolded in a changing room at The Gyle.

The main thing is that we get rid of the culture of ridiculous overprotection and start getting into a culture of social skills development and objective risk assessment.
Skanazy, a journalist, took her son to the handbag section of the massive Bloomingdales department store in New York – and left him to get home on his own. He was armed with transportation maps and all the fare money he needed, along with money for telephone calls.

Take a guess at the following; how is your child more likely to suffer injury at the hands of a paedophile – outside the family, or in a car accident?

The answer makes a complete, final nonsense of the whole idea that the way to protect children from harm is to stick them inside a car.

So come on Edinburgh parents – get your child to Princes Street now. Never has there been a better excuse to go shopping without the kids.

The moles of peace
DIY retailer B&Q is recalling sonic mole repellers from its Northern Ireland stores because Northern Ireland/Ireland doesn’t have any moles.

Embarrassing as this might be for B&Q, it is surely an opportunity for all Scots with Irish and Northern Irish links to offer the moles as part of the ongoing peace dividends.

Using the glut of B&Q mole repellers now on the market, we should shepherd our own mole population, and present them to the people of Northern Ireland and their southern brethren as the Moles of Peace. It would certainly be more entertaining that your average commemorative statue.

Food for thought
Hooray for the City of Edinburgh’s food inspection programme. Go to their website here and you will find a report on all of the businesses inspected as part of a most welcome food safety campaign. Not only will you find evidence of your council tax pounds at work, you will also find reasons to reconsider eating at, for example, TGIFridays, one of a number of well-known eateries to be designated IMPROVEMENT REQUIRED.

By choosing where you eat wisely, you can guard your health and help Edinburgh ruthlessly weed out those who would do us harm through incompetence or inability.