Looks like Jon Platt, who took the government to court in his bid to be allowed to take his children out of school with impunity, and won his case in the High Court, has been slapped down by the Supreme Court.
As you might imagine, I have mixed feelings about this.
There’s the middle-class “hero” who is intent on defeating the government on a point of principle, regarding his rights and the need for common sense to prevail over the blunt instrument of the law, invoked by narrow-minded, power-mad state apparatchiks. Prima facie, I ought to be behind him 100%.
On the other hand there is this entitled parent intent on availing himself of one of the few privileges that non-parents have, which is the right to take our holidays during term time, when prices are keen and holiday destinations aren’t overrun with screaming herberts and their ghastly parents, whose objectionableness ranges from intolerable middle-class smugness to appalling oikish degeneracy.
Quite patently, it is ridiculous to suggest that taking a bright, capable pupil with responsible parents out of school for a week will ruin that child’s education – certainly if it’s for a purpose that will widen the child’s horizons and provide edifying experience of the world. And especially when state education – centrally controlled by dogmatic leftist morons as it is – is so focussed on the lowest common denominator, lacking any academic rigour, and leaving bright kids bored, frustrated and alienated.
Equally, it is stupid and unfair to remove the discretion of the head teacher, who is usually able to discern those who should be allowed this perk, and those who should not, and who has school-wide visibility of attendance records and of concurrent requests for term-time absence.
But, as I’ve said before, I’m just happy that the idiot state is shitting on someone else this time, and I’m happy that in so doing, they are inadvertently protecting my personal interests.
It’s almost as if these people didn’t think through the consequences of their decisions to have children, and are now unprepared to deal with them. One of those consequences is – and always was – that in having kids, you give the state a hundred new ways to screw up your day.
AJ
Al Jahom's Final Word 