All imagination ... A lot of us seem to lose that spirit of play. Lose that spirit of imagination. Ken Dodd
We are the children
Builders of the future ... 1984, 1984 starring John Hurt & Richard Burton & Cyril Cusack & Suzanna Hamilton & Gregor Fisher et al, director Michael Radford, scouts’ song on train; viz also George Orwell
The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life. George Orwell
The truth is that kids aren’t in any way poetic. They’re merely savage little animals. Except that no animal is a quarter as selfish. George Orwell, cited Arena: George Orwell I: Such Were the Joys, BBC 1983
Her face is in fact a plastic lemon, and this witch-like looking hair is the top of a mop ... Tiny little bits of sticky back plastic. Valerie Singleton, Blue Peter, cited Night on Film: An A-Z of the Dark, BBC 2011
Once one of America’s top Republicans, Lawrence King is serving a fifteen year prison sentence for a multi-million-dollar fraud. His financial crime is only half the story. Conspiracy of Silence, withdrawn Discovery Channel/Yorkshire Television 1994
Boys Town has cash reserves of $500 million but still raises up to $35 million annually solicited from the public by begging letters and promotional videos. ibid.
From 1979 Larry King developed close commercial ties to Boys Town. And Boys Town’ youngsters were sent to work for his companies. But King used Boys Town not just as a source of young boys for his business, he prostituted them at sex and drugs orgies. ibid.
Those perpetrators named by the children were some of the richest and most influential citizens in positions of power in the state. ibid.
The parties involved ever more sadistic abuse. ibid.
The FBI used Troy in an attempt to persuade fellow witness Alisha Owen into abandoning her evidence about Larry King’s nationwide network of powerful paedophiles. ibid.
In 2001 Frontline reported on the dramatic rise in the number of children being given behaviour modifying medications. Frontline: The Medicated Child, PBS 2008
A teacher suggested he was hyperactive … In pre-school another teacher suggested medication … and prescribed Ritalin … It made him anxious. ibid.
A steep rise in the diagnosis and treatment of childhood mental illnesses of all kinds. ibid.
They are hailed as Medicine’s greatest triumph ... But today some Americans question if all those vaccines are worth the risk. Frontline: The Vaccine War, PBS 2010
The result: outbreaks of infectious diseases not seen for a generation. ibid.
The science and politics of a bitter vaccine war. ibid.
One fear has come to dominate the vaccine war: the fear that vaccines are responsible for autism. ibid.
Vaccine critics question not only MMR but the many ingredients in vaccines. ibid.
Children who didn’t get the shot had the same risk of developing autism as those who did. The team published the findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. Other studies carried out by researchers in Sweden, Finland, Britain and the US also found no association between MMR and autism. Additional evidence came from Japan. ibid.
9,028. When enough people don’t vaccinate, herd immunity begins to crumble. ibid.
Tens of thousands of children are being prescribed powerful medication to control hyperactivity and improve their behaviour. According to the latest figures prescriptions for these drugs have almost doubled in the last five years. But now Britain’s leading psychological societies are calling for an urgent review. So is medication being used as a chemical cosh for kids? Tonight: Chemical Cosh for Kids? ITV 2011
The number of prescriptions for drugs to combat ADHD has gone up from four hundred and eighty thousand to eight hundred thousand in the last five years. Most of the drugs are stimulants, and work like the illegal drugs speed or cocaine. But for ADHD sufferers they radically increase focus and help concentration in the classroom. ibid.
The medication has side effects. And some of them are serious. ibid.
Bigger and bigger doses are required to achieve the same effect. ibid.
Tonight: the return of highly contagious diseases. And is your child at risk? Tonight: Are Your Kids Contagious? ITV 2012
Britain could be facing a widespread outbreak of measles. ibid.
In the fifties and sixties measles was common. There was an epidemic every couple of years. ibid.
In 1965 over a hundred people died from measles. ibid.
In 1988 the MMR triple vaccine was introduced. ibid.
Why are parents turning their backs on vaccines? ibid.
Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards. Jesuit maxim, attributed & cited Lean’s Collectanea vol 3 1903
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory, 1940
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The soul is healed by being with children. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Schizoid behaviour is a pretty common thing in children. It’s accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. Stephen King
When kids hit 1 year old, it’s like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit. Johnny Depp
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. W B Yeats, The Stolen Child
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. Cicero
Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me. Fred Rogers
Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory. Russell Brand
It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful. Roald Dahl, Matilda
My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can. Frank Zappa
In their innocence, very young children know themselves to be light and love. If we will allow them, they can teach us to see ourselves the same way. Michael Jackson
I like children. If they’re properly cooked. W C Fields
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anybody who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad. Leo Rosten
While I was drying off Maddie after her bath tonight, she said, ‘I love you’ to me for the first time. It sounded like ‘All lub boo,’ but I didn’t care. To reciprocate, I showed her what an ex-Marine looks like when he cries. Jim Beaver, Life’s That Way: A Memoir
Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold. Brad Pitt
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education. Plato
I was abandoned as a baby and some would say left to die. The next fourteen years of my life were spent in children’s homes and some of the memories from back then still haunt me now. Fatima Whitbread – Growing Up in Care: My Secret Past, Channel 5 2012
Every twenty-two minutes a young person is still taken into care. ibid.
You do start to think there’s something wrong with you and nobody wants you. ibid.