Suffer little children

Today I am watching two teenagers on the BBC Breakfast sofa who have been tasked to speak on behalf of 'our traumatised youth in the UK'.

Why does the BBC pander to every interest group with an axe to grind and funding (four children commissioners?) to justify, and especially become equally complicit in setting up youngsters on national TV to feed the ratings frenzy for any news at any cost, no matter how valid (or not) the substance and what the impact may be on kids being used by adults to push certain agendas.

I am sure getting on TV is thrilling, and these kids can often be admirable, but in many cases they can prove less than comprehensible and frankly either waffle or end up unconvincing representatives of the causes they have been set up to advocate.

One today was asked something like 'how awful it is being a child in the UK these days'. Faced with such a loaded question the poor kid froze and in an near politician-perfect manner fobbed off the answer on 'someone else'.

And only yesterday I was watching two Girl Guides under the same glare, as part of some 'the world and its dog is making us want to be things we shouldn't' effort by another interest group. When challenged on what they did want, the whole thing fell apart when one tried to articulate what is patently not going to happen, namely that media should only cover the good stuff that celebs do and ignore the negatives.

This is just cheap time-filling at best, made worse by using kids to make already dubious points about kids that are blatantly steering certain adult agendas, whilst serving the poor individuals being toyed with in the spotlight poorly.

Whatever the merits of these youngster's feelings, my two just thought these 'representatives' seemed inarticulate, sad and daft. Not what should be portrayed to encourage our youth on living in the UK today.

BBC - UK society 'demonising' children - If anyone is messing with our kids, I can think of a few more pressing guilty parties