One law to rule us all

We are supposed to follow the law. Be ruled by it, as it were.

Home educators generally do follow it. They usually are ruled by it. They stand on the law. They know it, memorise it, recite it, cling to it. Their bulwark, their friend, their line-in-the-sand, the law.

Local authorities do not. They regularly flout the law. They lie. They demand what is not in their legal duty to demand. They harass and they harry. They treat caring parents like criminals.

In this, they are aided and abetted by everyone who tacitly allows them to harass and harry home educators: everyone who knows and chooses not to react, everyone who encourages them by not speaking out, everyone who allows them to bully and harass and harry and lie to home edders.

So why is it one rule for home educators and another for local authorities?

And, why, if the law should change according to the Children Schools and Families Bill, for example, will local authorities be rewarded for regularly harassing, lying to and harrying a segment of the law-abiding population?

And why should a segment of the population follow the law when the local authorities do not?

What profit is there in following the law if local authorities' representatives, who are also supposed to follow the law as we do, regularly break it?

They break the law and are rewarded by the promise of more powers.

We keep to the law and are punished by the law-breakers who incur more powers to harass and harry us.

It's enough to make you think that crime does pay, that breaking the law will result in someone being rewarded, not punished, not stopped....

It's enough to make you say NO, isn't it?


With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, here is a mangled quotation from 'The Fellowship of the Ring':

One law to rule us all
One law to find them
One law to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them