An 82-year-old woman in Southampton, UK was told she couldn't take photos of an empty wading pool because she might be a paedophile. Because, you know, anything that children touch regularly becomes part of their souls, and if a paedophile looks at those objects, it's just like sexually assaulting a child.

Makes me glad, as a father, to live here in the UK, where the clear-eyed, sensible view of paedophilia is doing so much to ensure the safety of my daughter from assaults by strangers (an occurrence that is so rare as to be practically nonexistent) while doing practically nothing to protect her from the people who are statistically most likely to assault her — her family, her friends' parents, her teachers, and other people known to her, who account for the overwhelming majority of assaults on children.

>

An amateur photographer was told she could not take snaps of an empty paddling pool because she might be a paedophile. Betty Robinson was ordered to put away her camera by a council worker when she began snapping the outdoor pool. 'It's absolutely ridiculous – it's bureaucracy gone mad,' said the 82-year-old widow from Southampton. She was with friend Brenda Bennett as she took pictures of the city's common – where the pool is situated.



My pool picture ban over paedophile fears

(Thanks, Marilyn!)