[jambutty]

Someone please convince me that we are not dashing headlong into a ‘Big Brother’ scenario where the powers that be govern every single second of our lives.

If you are going to punish a child for misbehaviour it has to be done there and then.

If that means a sharp slap across the back of the legs to bring an unruly child into line then so be it.

But to punish the kid later at home is unlikely to have any effect other than instil resentment in the child because it won’t really relate the slap to something that it did several hours ago.

Years ago when my eldest daughter was about nine years old we were stood at a bus stop in Blackburn and she was really misbehaving in spite of being told not to. Calmly I grabbed her by the hand sat down on the curb, pulled her across my knee and gave her a sharp slap across the legs.

She NEVER misbehaved in public again whilst with me. I don’t think that it was the slap that did it but the embarrassment of being punished in public that did the trick.