At the height of New Labour’s rule there was a pleasant little ditty that emerged in working class schools in Scotland, “If your Mammy’s getting angry and she’s going to skelp your bum, ring 0800 double one double one.” 

This was in the noughties, a time when Labour’s politics of behaviour was kicking in, a time when a new law was introduced for every day this “caring” political class were in office, a time of Asbos and child curfews and one where I was almost expecting their next political slogan to be, “Grass on your neighbour, vote Labour”. 

Having adopted all of the worst aspects of New Labour’s authoritarian approach to behaviour management, the SNP have similarly turned themselves into the party of the PC professional classes, proving themselves to be just as disconnected from the common man and indeed from common sense. 

So, it is no surprise that having insisted that their new anti-smacking law would not criminalise parents we now have the Scottish Government promoting the new law by encouraging the public to phone 999 if they see someone smacking their children and also producing leaflets, hot off the press, that urge children to report their parents to the police. 

This new law, remember, is not to stop you beating your child, that law already exists. 
This is a law that will see loving parents arrested for lightly smacking their child 
on the bottom or on the back of their hand. 

To PC World professionals, this is an act of abuse, something that will scar a child, that is a form of “violence”. 

Of course, if lightly smacking a child is a form of violence then grounding them must surely be a form of false imprisonment, while taking away the XBox or mobile phone is a form of theft. At the very least this is a form of coercive control, of emotional abuse, “Arrest those evil parents!” 

As parents now learn to look over their shoulder every time they attempt to discipline their children and teachers and the myriad childcare workers are turned into police informants we should at least recognise that in the real world what we are witness is yet another act of state violence being carried out by our virtue signalling 21st century snobs as part of their culture war against us “deplorables”.