Watford is good for what?

From the Watford Observer:

Parents have been banned from watching their own children enjoy two council-run adventure play areas because they have not been vetted by police.

The mayor of Watford is Dorothy Thornhill, who argued that the council was "merely enforcing Government policy at the play areas." She defended her council's scheme thus: "Sadly, in today's climate, you can’t have adults walking around unchecked in a children’s playground."

See, this is real affirmative action at work: they're even electing idiots now. Why on earth is it safer for children to be watched by a few trained workers than by their own parents? Do politicians really think that people who have cleared a criminal records check are more trustworthy than parents when it comes to looking after children?

And with which government policy does she think they are complying? I don't for a minute believe that it is government policy for all public play areas to be fenced off, patrolled by 'play rangers' and cleared of the children's parents. However, the government has created the legislative "climate" in which a local council numpty thinks it necessary to act this way to comply with the law.

The crowning lunacy of all this is that Mayor Thornhill's party is — this is good, really — the Liberal Democrats. Really, one might have thought that at least the Liberals could find it somewhere in themselves to believe in freedom.

Thanks: Henry Porter.

You can read Thornhill's further defence at her blog: apparently, banning parents from supervised playgrounds is par for the Watford course. Note also the excessive use of exclamation marks, subject of course to the Law of Exclamation (src).