Crash helmets for playgrounds??

This safety madness gets ever worse! Will we all need to wear helmets every time we get out of bed one day?



PROTECTIVE headgear for babies and the elderly could become compulsory in Queensland childcare centres and nursing homes amid brain injury fears. Australia's Brain Injury Centre is leading a push for a State Government trial of the headwear, which has been designed and manufactured by a suburban Brisbane mother. Up to 50,000 people suffer brain injuries each year in Queensland.

Researchers in the US have found infant skulls are just one-eighth the strength of an adult skull. Brain Injury Centre chief executive officer Christian King said toddlers were at the greatest risk because skulls took until at least early adolescence to strengthen.

"We want to see trials done in preschools, playgrounds and junior contact sports," Mr King said. "Queensland could lead the way." He added that 0.5 per cent of brain injury victims would remain in a vegetative state. "We need to do it. It is not going to stop it, but it is going to cushion the impact when they (toddlers) are constantly falling over."

Headgear designer Isla George recently patented her brand, Head Bumpa, and said parents, epilepsy sufferers, car accident victims and elderly dementia sufferers were using the product. "I get a lot of queries from people who want to protect their elderly parents and no one wants to wear a helmet around," she said. "It doesn't look unsociable, it looks like a head band. It's quite trendy. "If you put it on early, the kids get quite used to it and it becomes like putting on a hat." The Albany Creek part-time shop assistant said she was making up to 500 Bumpas a year, but was in talks with a baby-goods manufacturer to mass-produce her invention.

Queensland Health's senior director of population health Linda Selvey has recommended that the manufacturer contact the Creche and Kindergarten Association of Queensland to explore the possibility of introducing the headgear in kindergartens across the state.

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Cotton wool kids' losing basic skills

Panicky parents are breeding a generation of "cotton wool kids" too afraid to climb trees or ride their bikes, NSW's most senior child guardian has warned. Mums and dads are so fixated on keeping their children safe that children are growing into nervous adults without acquiring basic survival skills along the way.

NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People Gillian Calvert has cautioned that alarm over stranger danger and traffic means that today's children are missing out on simple pleasures. "Over the past 10 years we have seen a real reduction in the range at which children can leave their family home and move freely," Ms Calvert told The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "Kids tell us they can't ride their bikes around streets any more." The simple joys of childhood such as bike riding, climbing trees and even just crossing the road are basic skills that are in danger of being entirely lost.

And doctors report that robbing kids of their freedom is pushing up rates of anxiety disorders in even the very young, while reducing play is denying children motor skills. The data were presented at a From Page 1 NSW Commission of Children and Young People and University of NSW conference.

"There are real concerns about reduced play opportunities," the university's Sports Medicine Unit director Dr Carolyn Broderick said. "Fundamental motor skills are developed through play as well as balance co-ordination and strength. And a lot of play equipment has gone from parks because of fear of litigation. "Children now have a fear that wasn't there in the past." Dr Broderick said research shows a significant drop in free play time and a quarter of parents were actually discouraging their children from playing sport because they were worried about injury.

But it is not just backyard cricket that has gone missing - research in state schools found international events such as terrorist attacks were making children feel insecure. "Some children expressed fear of global threats such as war and terrorism and had a general insecurity about their own future and their community's," Ms Calvert said. "These concerns meant they lived life in a restrictive, guarded way, either as a result of restrictions imposed by others or themselves."

Child expert Robyn Monro Miller warned fearful children would grow into fearful adults. "Even the RTA says children shouldn't cross the road by themselves until they are 10. How does the magic age of 10 mean you can cross a road?"

Sydney University's Brain and Mind Research Institute director Ian Hickie confirmed rates of anxiety in children were on the rise because of parents obsessed with keeping their child safe. "Parents think the world is more threatening and the idea is you have to protect them from the world," he said. Recent research found children as young as two were being treated for anxiety.

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Political correctness deadly to black kids

MORE damning evidence was presented to the Coroner's inquest into five Aboriginal deaths in Oombulgurri community, held in Kununurra last week. The allegations may well see the community closed down. Child protection agencies were racist because they were too scared to remove Aboriginal children living in squalor with their parents in case they were accused of being politically incorrect, former Federal indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough told the inquest.

Mr Brough said WA's Department of Indigenous Affairs was `deaf, dumb and blind' when it came to addressing the needs of Aboriginal communities. He said that many small remote Aboriginal communities such as Oombulgurri were not viable and should be shut down for the safety of the children living in them. Mr Brough told State Coroner Alastair Hope that circumstances in WA's remote communities were worse than in the NT, where the Howard government last year ordered intervention in a bid to tackle the crisis. "If a dog was found in a community in Perth living like children are living in the Kimberley, in many places the dog would be taken away and cared for and the carers would be charged by the RSPCA or relevant authority," Mr Brough said.

Asked if departments refused to remove Aboriginal children because of their skin colour, Mr Brough responded: "It is absolutely because they have a different skin colour. "There is no doubt that these departments are racist in their attitude, not because they hate blacks, but because they are scared to do anything about these issues because of political correctness."

Mr Brough said those opposed to closing small communities often argued it would be killing a culture but in reality many were not occupied by the traditional owners. He said many small communities of between 50 and 150 people were simply not viable because it was impossible for governments to provide the services needed to deal with the issues of intergenerational sex and alcohol abuse. "The reality is that many of these people are going to be much better served out of that community. we have to be honest if you want to save the next generation and that may well mean closing down Oombulgurri," he said.

Under questioning from State Solicitor's Office lawyer Delaney Quinlan, Mr Brough conceded he had never been to Oombulgurri, though he had told the court earlier he had visited many parts of the Kimberley, including Kalumburu.

A child protection officer, whose name has been suppressed, told the inquest the council made it difficult for staff to do their job and on the rare occasion they were given access to the community they were not allowed to stay overnight. The officer said people in the community were too scared to speak to child protection staff or told not to speak to them by certain members of the community.

Under questioning from John Hammond, the lawyer representing indigenous people, the DCP officer agreed sexual assaults had occurred in the community for more than a decade. When asked if the officer was worried about children in the community at the moment, the officer said: "Yes I'm worried in a way."

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Wrong to restrict immigration from a problem group?

Africans of course. Where are Africans not a problem? They are certainly a huge problem for one-another in Africa -- and only a Leftist would think that to be a product of "white racism". Everywhere in Africa, black welfare has gone BACKWARDS since the white man left. If white racism was doing anything, it was propping them up, not holding them back. Nasty of me to mention such glaringly obvious facts, I know

WHEN former immigration minister Kevin Andrews sparked a race row over his claims that African refugees were engaged in crime and failing to integrate into Australia he was acting contrary to advice from his own department. In a confidential briefing to the minister, obtained by The Age, the Immigration Department stressed that studies suggested it was not ethnicity that determined criminal behaviour but a combination of socio-economic problems and other disadvantage.

The briefing was prepared for Mr Andrews in response to an article in the Cranbourne Leader suggesting that transit police believed Sudanese men were responsible for 99% of assaults and armed robberies on two Victorian rail lines. The briefing, dated September 27, 2007, said: "Whatever the background of the perpetrators, it would be wrong to blame all people from a particular migrant group for the behaviour of a few." But a week later, Mr Andrews appeared to ignore its advice when he cited the failure of Sudanese people to integrate as a reason for cutting African refugee numbers.

Yesterday Mr Andrews said the document was simply a departmental response to a news item. He said his comments were influenced by an Immigration Department dossier that raised community concern about African refugees forming gangs, fighting in nightclubs and attacking other families. "I wasn't blaming a particular group. I said we've got problems there and we need to do something about it." Despite the Darfur crisis in Sudan, Australia allocated just 30% of refugee places to Africans in 2007-08, down from 70% in 2004-05.

But the race debate was not ignited until October 1 last year, when Mr Andrews was asked about the fatal bashing of 18-year-old Sudanese refugee Liep Gony in Noble Park. It later emerged that Mr Gony's alleged attackers were not African. [Probably Lebanese Muslims. They are not at all politically correct and do attack Africans]

Questioned at the time about whether better settlement services were needed, Mr Andrews said the refugee intake from places such as Sudan had been cut amid fears that some groups "don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian life as quickly as we would hope". This was at odds with a media release he issued several months earlier saying the Howard government had changed the composition of its refugee intake because of an improvement in conditions in some African countries and the need to help Iraqis displaced by war and Burmese refugees living in camps along the Thai-Burma border. The Government was accused of playing "ugly race politics" on the eve of the federal election. Critics said Mr Andrews was "dog-whistling" to marginal outer-suburban electorates with large numbers of refugees.

Mr Andrews said yesterday he had no regrets. "When difficulties are occurring, you can't put your head in the sand," he said. He had subsequently received supportive phone calls from Victorian police and visited migrant resource centres where he was told his comments were "entirely correct", based on their experiences. The Coalition had tried to deal with the issue by reducing - but not stopping - the African intake and providing an additional $200 million in resettlement services.

Mr Andrews said he had read media reports a few weeks ago that police were working with the Immigration Department to try to deal with some of the problems. "I think what I did was bring to people's attention what was an issue and now something is getting done about it," he said. "If you remain without commenting on an issue, what would have been done?"

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NSW: It pays to be the son of a cop

A SENIOR constable says he took a breath test on behalf of a teenager with a blood-alcohol reading of .2 per cent because he felt sorry for him, not because he was the son of a police officer who worked at his station. Mark Christie, from Orange, told the Police Integrity Commission that he carefully turned his back to a CCTV camera and blew into a breath analysis machine to protect Adam Clunes, 19, from a drink-driving charge. He knew Mr Clunes - who had been out drinking before driving back to his girlfriend's house, despite being on P-plates - would lose his licence if he was convicted. "I felt a great deal of empathy for his position."

That the boy's father was a police officer "had nothing to do with my decision", even though he previously tested others who faced losing their licence. "I want the Commissioner to understand and believe me that I acted alone," Senior Constable Christie said.

The commission heard that Mr Clunes's father, Colin, once "had a bitch" that a police officer had issued his son with two traffic infringements, one for driving more than 30kmh above the speed limit, and one for failing to put P-plates on the car. Senior Constable Clunes told the commission that he thought the officer had "loaded up" his son on that occasion, and that the second ticket was unnecessary.

Constable Kate Lancer arrested Mr Clunes at a roadside breathalyser and took him to the station for the second test. She knew the teenager, she had worked with his father and knew of his father's displeasure about the earlier tickets. She contacted Senior Constable Clunes about the arrest.

When asked whether Senior Constable Clunes told her "we have got to do something, Katie, he will lose his licence", she said yes, although did not know what he meant. Senior Constable Clunes denied protecting his son, saying he simply told a colleague to "do what you've got to do". It did cross his mind that a colleague may have taken the test at the station on his son's behalf.

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