Urgh! ...Now that wasn't difficult was it?

The government gets it:

Sex offenders banned from schools
Anyone convicted or cautioned for a sex offence against a child will be banned from teaching in schools.

Like a grunting former Yugoslav tennis player Ruth Kelly has finally managed to return serve and keep the ball in court.

Now this is a relief on a number of grounds but mainly because I hope it means that I no longer have to listen to the Daily Paedo spot on the Today programme.

Today, after listening to one, Donald Findlater deputy director of the Lucy Faithful Foundation, a charity that works with offenders and victims, talked to the programme about sex offenders working in schools

After listening to the offender concerned, who used to be a Deputy Head, I was relieved when Donald echoed my thoughts after hearing the interview, which was that the sad, pathetic but ultimately potentially dangerous individual wheeled out today (whose assumed name for today, so as to speak, was Smith) was certainly not 'fully recovered' as he claimed to believe and that sex offenders 'really should seek alternative careers for themselves away from schools'.

Tuesday had seen William Gibson given a hearing. William was allowed to work as a teacher because he had after all married the 15 year old concerned and she was fifteen and hey you know lads its difficult to tell isn't it (well not usually if you know what class they are in, but whatever, clearly I digress...) I thought William was pretty sad too and given his subsequent fraud convction and schools devolved budgets I thought he should seek another career too... but hey...

Thing is that societies are ultimately allowed to have values, in fact to be societies they have to have values (sociology students, DISCUSS)... and that sometimes means that boundaries have to be defined.

Some tracks are meant not to be crossed and this little bunch are the last people we want playing rubicon hopscotch with the kiddies.

I just hope that these werent the guys Ms Kelly had in mind when she said that there "must be no witch-hunts against hard-working teachers".

I don't want a witchhunt - but I do want teachers who set a good example and I don't think these guys do. On the whole I think 5 (or 10, or perhaps even 15) is a little young to learn that redemption might be possible for perverts - because after all there's always the chance that it isn't.

See that's what happens when someone starts with the Daily Mail links - but seriously they're not ACTUALLY banned from schools yet, are they Ms Kelly?

'In future, the former chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, Sir Roger Singleton, would oversee the panel on staff suitability to work with children,' Ms Kelly said.

I suppose that is better than an over-worked, potentially befuddled, and potentially personally circumscribed minister at any rate.

Still it all goes to show, grunting notwithstanding, that this whole business IS apparently more difficult than it seems. Allegedly.