THERE’S something curiously entertaining about watching politicians trying to defend the indefensible - think Thatcher over the poll tax or Blair over Iraq.
From the country’s top mandarins to the hard-pressed local authority officers, they are all at it: trying to impress their elected masters with new ideas.
In fact as you read The Source, the chances are right this very minute someone, somewhere is concocting a truly bad policy.
They come in all shapes and sizes, from awful road revamps to terrible new Government taxes - that’s the nature of an old fashioned parliamentary democracy.
But if a competition was launched to find the UK’s worst policy of 2013, one wonders if Worcestershire County Council could ever be beaten.
If a child gets into desperate trouble and needs outside help, we might expect a council to step in and help without talking about money.
County Hall is consulting over changing this, by asking parents to pay if they deem the situation to be a “non crisis” one.
Incredibly, there are even suggestions an outstanding bill could be passed onto the child once they turn 16 and have the ability to pay, essentially turning social workers into debt collectors.
The council says the policy partly came about because there are “rare” cases where parents can re-house their child, but refuse to do so.
We can’t find any evidence this idea has been trailed by any other council in the UK, although that should come as no surprise to anyone.
There seems to be something inherently wrong about bringing charging into a system that until now has always been free, or at least paid for by general taxation.
It also opens up a tin of worms about where we draw the line.
If it’s about discouraging family breakdown and general unruliness why not charge pupils £10 for every missed day at school?
If money matters this much, how about launching a premium rate phone number for reporting cases of child abuse?
The saga even made the national press this summer, with Councillor Liz Eyre, the Tory in charge of children and families, telling The Independent it was about boosting the “social services toolkit”.
Even for a politician who rarely speaks plain English, what gobbledygook.
The Source poses the question. Is this the worst policy ever?
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