Back Page: Hound - Between the lines in the past week's media

"Children can't be trusted" was the title of an article by Rod Liddle in this week's Spectator. Remember, as you read, that this man was until relatively recently an editor of the Today programme, arguably the most politically influential of all radio programmes. He declared that we have created "a nation of yobbish illiterates who consider themselves victims and immune to chastisement". He knows why: "Most of the problems in our schools stem directly from the terrible misapprehension that children are capable of deciding for themselves what constitutes correct behaviour."

And at the back of this, naturally, is the dreadful bugbear of children's rights. Liddle, in full demagogue mode, invites readers to assent to his imaginary world vision in which the "greatest crime" is to "infringe a child's rights". Though there is not a scrap of evidence for this, some people are doing their best to turn it into a modern urban myth.