What a state of affairs?

Okay so the big news of the week is that Facebook floated on the stock exchange yesterday, and that David Cameron and his fellow coalition colleagues announced a new way to waste tax payer’s money and molly coddle the population.

It seems that Facebook is watching, and the nanny state has arrived. It’s George Orwell’s worst nightmare! It is 1984 meets Animal Farm.

I wonder how it is though that we have all become so dependent on Facebook. I was going to say that I might be the exception to that statement, but that would be a blatant lie! I advertise on Facebook, have a Facebook account, and will – as soon as I have finished writing this, put a link to my blog on Facebook! Ooops, perhaps I am more dependent on the giant of a social media site than I had first realised.

It’s strange – now, to think that a decade ago Facebook was only a sparkle in Zuckerberg’s eye. Especially given that yesterday the floatation of the company made him a billionaire (reports putting his estimated wealth at $20.9 billion).

I blogged only a few weeks ago about the ever growing reliance on emoticons, and my notion that we were as a 21^st century society moving away from the written word and back to hieroglyphics. In relation to that thought, I can’t help pondering whether or not our reliance on social media sites (the likes of Facebook) have assisted with this.

Life now seems to be represented in two ways on social media sites; photos and status updates. A life in pictures is definitely a step away from the written word, and I’m not sure how to categorise status updates.

All I know is that we have all become obsessed with them. In fact I know a number of people that update what they are doing almost hourly. I’ve never personally found the need to do this and I can’t decide if that’s because I’m too lazy (yes I appreciate there is little effort involved – especially given that most people have facebook on their phones these days), or that I simply don’t want anyone to get a sense of how average my average day is!

Anyway, while Facebook and our growing reliance on social media and status updating on those sites and BBM etc is will continue to defy me. I am sure that anyone who profited nicely from the flotation of Facebook yesterday, or who has already acquired shares in the company, won’t care. So now to the nanny state!

I cannot believe the proposals that were announced yesterday. The government has decided to invest time, thought (although I’m not sure how much thought), resources, and oodles (no doubt) of tax payer money into a scheme to help parents become better parents.

The government are going to offer £100 parenting vouchers so that you can train how to become a parent!

This has to, without doubt, be one of the stupidest proposals ever! I’m not against it because I don’t have children so will get no benefit from it, but I’m against it because I think there are a hundred different ways to help parents parent without teaching them to suck eggs!

 The biggest problem a number of parent’s face (whether they are single mothers, single fathers, or both working parents) is childcare. The cost of childcare is crippling to most parents. It’s so expensive in fact, that a number of couples that I know have had to decide whether there is any benefit in “mum” (occasionally “dad”) returning to work.

On top of this there are a number of other ways in which parents need help with their children, and the majority of them are financial. Yet it seems that the government wants to show that its caring and understanding by saying that it won’t throw money at the problem, (which if it had done would probably have a greater and more positive impact on a number of children’s lives), but that it will stick its oar in and instead teach.

I don’t believe that it’s the government’s job, or role in society, to teach or meddle or anything else in its citizen’s lives. David Cameron and his cronies should stick to looking at tax credits, benefits, childcare maintenance payments etc, and things that directly concern the government as they apportion the funds that pay these various things.

Government should in my opinion govern and nothing more and it certainly shouldn’t try to act like an omnipotent social worker. It could be though that after the terrible results in the local elections two weeks ago, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are looking for new careers!

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