WHEN proud mum and TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp announced on social media that her 15-year-old son had returned from travelling around Europe with a 16-year-old friend, she lit the touch paper for an entirely predictable social media explosion.
Particularly as she posted, “If we’re afraid, our children will also be afraid. If we let go, they will fly” — a red rag to all helicopter parents.
It’s not her first trolling and, as a robust sort, she probably factored it in as something you just have to deal with when you’re a public figure leading an authentic life that you are honest about.
But what she clearly didn’t account for was that social services would get involved after someone reported her over safety fears.
Yes, the government body, which cites lack of funding and staff shortages when it misses obvious cases of prolonged child abuse in homes it’s supposed to be monitoring, has had to expend valuable time and resources to contact a celebrity who let her teenage son go travelling without her and “open a file” on the matter.
Kirstie says: “I just felt sick — absolutely sick. Then I was cross . . . It was just so extraordinary. I was in a parallel universe where they were actually taking this seriously.
“I have broken no law and nothing about allowing my child to travel around Europe is neglectful.”
Anyone who wishes to report concerns about a child living within their community can rightly hide behind guaranteed anonymity. But, unfortunately, it also shields the identity of those whose complaint is, as Kirstie says, “malicious”.
What’s the betting that the complainant’s idea of good parenting is to have your teenager stuck indoors playing video games long in to the night?
“At least you know where they are,” would be the skewed logic.
But you’re not equipping them to deal with the real world by incentivising them to stay home with just the warped online world for company.
Equally, our streets are peppered with other teenage lads getting in way above their heads with drugs gangs who no one seems to give a damn about.
But then their mother isn’t someone posh (God forbid) “off the telly”.
Someone who in the eyes of a jealous few, seems a little too smug about their charmed life and needs taking down a peg or two, right?
We have already reached a point where we’re all being policed by an ever-growing army of self-appointed “correctors” who are so dissatisfied with their own small lives that they sit in judgment of anyone acting outside their strictly imposed, limited parameters.
But when those in positions of authority start to pile in on the hysteria, then it’s truly Orwellian.
Social services has the argument that it has a duty to follow up on every reported concern, and that’s perhaps fair enough.
But what about Labour councillor Andy Croy, of Wokingham in Berkshire, who posted that Kirstie’s decision to let her son Oscar go inter-railing was “stupid beyond belief”?
I have broken no law and nothing about allowing my child to travel around Europe is neglectful
Kirstie Allsopp
Has he ever met Kirstie or Oscar? Doubt it.
Would he go online to publicly castigate a local parent whose young son was out making a nuisance of himself on the streets late at night? Highly unlikely.
So why make some virtue- signalling remark about a mother who knows her son better than anyone and took the decision that he was mature enough to plan and embark on a train trip without an adult in tow?
The medical profession uses something called “the Gillick competence” to assess whether or not someone under the age of 16 has the maturity and capability to make decisions about their own health and treatment.
And Kirstie clearly applied the logic to this situation, too.
And she was right. He came home safe and sound, having learned a few valuable life skills along the way.
Those of us who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies were largely left to our own devices from an early age.
Now we are parents ourselves, we must fight the urge to leave our kids stuck with devices and little experience of functioning in the real world.
When the First World War started in 1914, my 16-year-old grandfather lied about his age to sign up. Recruitment officers were paid for each new signatory and may have ignored concerns about age, so boys as young as 13 or 14 joined the war effort, and up to 250,000 boys under 18 served in the British Army.
If my grandfather was still alive, he’d have found it laughable that today’s children are mollycoddled so much that allowing a nearly 16-year-old to go away with his mate has been reported as neglectful.
It’s clearly not.
Unless, of course, it’s a child who’s been so cosseted by their risk-averse parents that they can’t actually function by themselves.
COMEDIAN Katherine Ryan wore her teenage daughter’s boots to see a West End show.
“I can now share a wardrobe with her, but she’s not so interested in the things I wear,” she says.
When Katherine was a guest on Loose Women recently, I admired her trouser suit and later discovered she had kindly gifted it to me.
Sadly, I couldn’t get it past my knees, but my youngest could and gratefully snaffled it. It seems that what one teen considers trash, another teen treasures.
PRIME Minister Sir Keir Starmer is under fire following the news that a Labour donor was granted a Downing Street security pass.
The donor – Lord Alli – has given £500k to the party over the years, including nearly £20k for “new clothes and spectacles” for Sir Keir’s “work wardrobe”.
Sorry, what? A former barrister and director of public prosecutions prior to first becoming an MP in 2015, are we seriously suggesting he needs help buying a new suit?
Bizarre. Particularly when you recall the fuss about Boris Johnson allegedly spending £58k of Tory party funds to redecorate the Downing Street flat his wife reportedly described as a “John Lewis nightmare”.
At the time, Sir Keir was photographed “browsing wallpaper” in Manchester’s John Lewis in a not very subtle dig.
But at least he’s now presumably enjoying the benefits of the new No 10 decor.
One doubts he’ll be leaving his new boots and panties behind for the next PM.
PRINCE Harry is reportedly saving his family from further embarrassment by NOT updating the paperback version of his novel memoir Spare with more recent revelations.
Big of him.
Or more likely, could he be saving up any new juice for a money-grabbing follow-up?
STOP all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone . . .
Dust off the electronic keyboards and, with unmuffled drum, the Gallagher brothers are reuniting for an Oasis tour.
Quite how many of Noel and Liam’s differences have been patched up remains to be seen.
But at least enough of them to be able to stand together on stage and belt out some of their oldies but goldies for a multimillion pound payout. Details of how the rapprochement came about are unknown.
But considering their kids have remained good friends through the 15-year feud, perhaps they were involved in making their stubborn old dads bury the hatchet?
And the band’s guitarist, Bonehead, supposedly helped too. But most of all, it’s likely the upset their prolonged estrangement was causing mum Peggy played a big part in convincing the siblings – who have another brother, Paul – to patch things up.
Peggy was 80 last year and let it be known that her birthday wish was for them to start talking again. Now it’s finally been granted.
Of course, they’ll still be as rude as hell about each other.
But at least now they’ll once again fling insults while in the same room.
