Feedback from last week's Scottish Review
Last word
Regarding the national entitlement card (SR 2 March) – why are we allowing ourselves and our children to be led, unprotesting, into a Big Brother situation – even while we all profess to hate the intrusion of cold calling, online, by telephone, through the post or at the door?
Why do people not make the connection?
And as far as our schools go, where on earth are the school boards in all this? I chaired our local school board and the only people who really had clout were the parents. When parents complained vociferously enough, the authority did something about it. It seems to me, therefore, that the school boards could stop this scheme in its tracks, that parents could and should complain as I undoubtedly would have done, had I still had a child at school'
While our son was at secondary school, a well-meaning teacher invited a representative from a major bank into the school to talk to the children about managing their money. This was a good idea, but she made the mistake of leaving him alone in the classroom.
A few weeks later, every child in the class received a letter from that bank, congratulating them on opening a new account – the speaker had distributed forms which the children – used to doing as they were told – had duly filled in.
I phoned the bank in question and – as my granny would have put it – went through them like a dose of salts. Not that they were in any way contrite. As far as they were concerned, they had done nothing wrong. Through the school board, we did manage to make enough waves to ensure that it didn't happen again – and of course most, if not all, of these new accounts were cancelled.
In the SR article, the fact that children were then being contacted on numbers which should have been completely private and personal would have been good enough reason for me to contact first the school, then the local authority and finally my member of parliament, since surely data protection laws should not permit this under any circumstances. It is outrageous.
Am I unduly paranoid about all this? Not really.
Has anyone else noticed that – of late – cold calling has become more aggressive? I've had several calls recently – in spite of being registered with the telephone protection service – which I would rate as being on the verge of abusive, and all because I objected to them calling me in the first place.
We have to get very, very tough about this. The only way to stop it is if it becomes counter-productive for the perpetrators.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Catherine Czerkawska
