This has gone too far

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]I want to tell you a story about a group of children at a nursery that a friend of mine told me a few years ago. And I've always thought about it since, particularly with how adults relate to each other and so on. But remember, these were children. So at this nursery, there were children of all ethnicities.

[00:00:14]So obviously white children, seek children, mixed race children, you name it. They're all playing together, completely oblivious to the idea that any of them were supposed to be divided by anything. And of course, they weren't divided and they shouldn't be and so on.

[00:00:28]And as many children do, they gave each other nicknames based on how they looked, on how they sounded, or how they acted or whatever, or you know, what they liked to wear as children always have. One of those nicknames given to the child of the parent telling me this story was based on them having a different skin color. But it was accepted by that child without question, never once causing them any hurt or offense. It was just purely based on how they looked. The child embraced this nickname, wore it like a badge even, and in a sense it was some sense of affection between them as friends. And I know this because it was the parent of the child who was telling me and they were sure of this. In fact, it was it was an interesting quirk of how this then evolved. But remember, there was no malice. There was no hurt. The child was not upset by this at all until, of course, the teachers intervened. And then things sort of changed a little.

[00:01:24]The teachers told them that this wasn't appropriate. And then suddenly, as regailed to me by this parent, for the first time, these children were being told that there was something wrong, that noticing each other and differences was dangerous, that a word shared between friends was somehow something to be ashamed of. They they shouldn't do that.

[00:01:48]And there's a very deep philosophical moral to this story. So here's what I've taken away from that story. It is only when you attach a negative association to something that it becomes negative.

[00:02:03]The intent itself with these children wasn't negative based on what I was told. The child on the receiving end didn't experience it as negative. They didn't experience any negativity at all because it didn't exist in that nursery until an adult sort of brought it in and introduced this idea that it was negative to the group.

[00:02:27]So, let's think about that for a minute because today's news update is that the Welsh Labor government has just published guidance that takes precisely this notion, adults projecting adult politics onto children and turning it into something that I genuinely didn't expect to read this morning, but hence the video. So, we I think we do need to think about what this guidance says.

[00:02:55]Nurseries and child minders in Wales have now been advised in a taxpayer funded official guidance document backed by Labour ministers to report children for racist incidents. Even calling 999 in some instances, bearing in mind these are children or as the guidance says speaking to officers and taking in their words relevant action in conjunction with the police.

[00:03:24]If the incident isn't deemed a hate crime, workers are told to offer, and again this is directly from this document, age appropriate learning support opportunities for the perpetrator.

[00:03:37]The perpetrator, this is a term that we've used in the family court where we've got somebody uh being aggressive, let's just say, with their partner and they are then prosecuted by the police and so on. But we're talking about children at a nursery here. They are talking about the child in this situation as being the perpetrator of a nursery incident.

[00:04:02]And if learning support is met with resistance because apparently someone's actually planned for the scenario of a toddler refusing re-education, um childare workers then are advised to initiate a disciplinary route with various outcomes mapped on a flowchart.

[00:04:20]a disciplinary flowchart for toddlers.

[00:04:23]And as a quick aside, many of you know I've been developing my Black Belt Barrister Pro, which is a collection of templates, guides, and AI agents, which are trained by me on real legal advice, legislation, cases, and real situations that might help you in your scenario.

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[00:05:36]So, you might ask, well, where did this come from and who's produced it? It's produced by an organization called Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning based at Cardiff Metropolitan University. And how much has the Welsh government allocated this organization since 2021? 1.3 million.

[00:05:54]1.3 million pounds of Welsh taxpayers money has gone to produce this guidance document telling nursery workers to consult a flowchart and consider calling the police when a three-year-old says something either a little bit clumsy which happens to sound to an adult and a little bit inappropriate or as in the story that I've just told you which is absolutely 100% true from a friend of mine uh from a few years ago whose child was given a nickname that was then told by the adult that that was a racist nickname even though The parent laughed about it and the child was actually somewhat disappointed that they couldn't use that nickname anymore. This guidance document now tells these childare workers that they should call the police. So, uh, obviously we're on my main channel here. Let's look at the the legal reality of what's going on because there's there's a fundamental problem here sitting at the heart of this guidance document that no one in the Welsh government seems to have really thought through for for some. Now, bear in mind if something truly were criminal, then absolutely speak to the police. But for something to be criminal, not merely unpleasant or even offensive, if it were intended to be offensive, let let's take this beyond the friendly realm of my story. Let's say that it was offensive or that it was really unpleasant. But if something were genuinely criminal, there must be criminal intent, a guilty mind, because most of those kind of offenses are are not what we call strict liability. you know, possession of illicit substances or a street liability offense, uh, then, you know, and unless there's an exemption for some reason and whatever. And so, for this to be criminal, these children must have an awareness that what they are doing is wrong, coupled with the intention to do it, regardless of it being criminally wrong.

[00:07:36]And bearing in mind the age of criminal responsibility in Wales is 10. Now, that might sound young, but it's 10, not three or four, and certainly not uh as as young as babies who might be at these nurseries. So, legally, a child below the age of 10 cannot commit, as a matter of law, a criminal offense. The law recognizes that below that threshold, children simply do not have the moral and cognitive development to form genuine criminal intent. That is why the threshold exists. Now, many of you might remember the horrific case of Jamie Bulier in 1993.

[00:08:17]And it raised questions because these children involved in that murder were exactly 10. and the age of criminal responsibility was raised to 10 in 1963 by the children and young persons act um so many years before. So it it challenged the notion as to whether for such a serious offense 10 really was the correct age but of course um they were convicted.

[00:08:42]So this guidance is directed at child care workers and to consider involving the police in situations where children who are by definition legally incapable of being criminals. And even for older children, even where criminal responsibility could exist, I would argue that a hate crime it is not just an act, but it requires a motivation and hostility. And a child using a word without understanding in a historical context or anything else is not by any real legal standard demonstrating racial hostility. I mean sometimes it might be but you know those situations should be looked on their merits in isolation not as a general guidance uh thrown at these places to ring the police every time a child says something because think of my story here. They would have called the police and involved the police and then gone through some sort of discipline. As it was, the children were just told, you know, you're not supposed to do that.

[00:09:39]The children were all a little bit awkward because they suddenly realized that it was something to to be ashamed of and must have been quite surprising for those children because they genuinely didn't think there was anything wrong.

[00:09:52]So, this is not what hate crime legislation was ever built for. and using it, one might say weaponizing it in this way doesn't really my view doesn't strengthen this fight against racism. I think it trivializes it. It makes it makes it all the more divisive, ironically enough. But there's even more because this this guidance instructs uh child care professionals to conduct what it calls an understanding audit, rating themselves on a scale of 1 to five on how well they understand white privilege and how it affects their lives. It tells workers to do an audit of their physical spaces, their books, their dolls, their posters, displays, and etc. for diversity. It tells them to make their anti-racist stance visible, including the snacks provided.

[00:10:41]So, even the snacks need to be anti-racist at a nursery. Now, of course, there must be a legitimate conversation about how children develop attitudes and, you know, guiding children properly and how the early years in education does shape minds and how genuine racism and real hostility uh etc. all should be handled properly and you know dealt with appropriately so that it doesn't continue. No one is arguing against that. But there's a huge difference between teaching children to treat each other with decency and kindness which in good early years education it's always been the case long before this guidance existed. And rather than building a bureaucratic surveillance system which tells workers that they're expected to log incidents and navigate disciplinary flowcharts and do an audit and call the police where necessary just because a toddler comes out with something that's slightly inappropriate. And again going back to the children that I told you about at the start, they weren't divided. They were all friends. They just noticed their differences and they were sharing it as a as a shared nickname. Now you you may think that well yeah they shouldn't use nicknames like that. Fair enough. But there there is ways of of telling these children that not sending them sat down some disciplinary route like that. And ironically that is only going to serve to divide them. And in that sense in that very story it was the adult intervention itself that had introduced the idea that something was wrong. The children didn't know that there was anything wrong. It's a bit like if your child says to you, I want to do X. And we say, you know, don't be silly. You can't do that. That's it. You know, don't make a big deal of it. You just move on. And but when you tell a child that noticing something is sort of dangerous and inherently wrong, then innocent interactions then can become a problem. And the children then start to see these divides. And that is where the real problem comes here. And I'm not really sure that doing that is what I'd call progress. Let me know what you think in the comments. I think this is a little bit bizarre. Um I think we're going too far and you know these are toddlers and babies. Give them a chance at growing up without this hate, without this divide.

[00:12:57]Just let them be children. Let me know your thoughts and comments. As always, this is just general legal commentary on what is or is not an offense and what we shouldn't shouldn't do. Thank you for watching. I'll see you in the next one.