Two stories from the "adults are nuts and should not be permitted to raise kids" file. First up, blaming the victim of bullying:
School Bully Concerns - WLOS News13 - News - Top Stories (WLOS News13)
A mother and her 9-year-old son say school officials won't let him bring a My Little Pony bag to school.
...
Noreen Bruce, Grayson's mom, "it's promoting friendship, there's no bad words, there's no violence, it's hard to find that, even in cartoons now."
But Noreen says Thursday the school asked him to leave the bag at home because it had become a distraction and was a "trigger for bullying."
You know what's a trigger for bullying? Adults who let bullies get away with it.
Second, "Oh my God! He's got a spoon!"
On knife-crime island, teens are not allowed to buy spoons (Boing Boing)
The UK tabloid press spent a decade drumming up hysteria about teenage knife-crime, and MPs responded on cue, passing a series of meaningless, overbearing feel-good measures that require shops to refuse to sell anything knife-like to teenagers -- meaning that seventeen-year-old art students can't buy xacto blades, and 16-year-old carpenter's apprentices can't buy utility knives.
This silliness has burrowed deep into the automated systems and psyches of English society. A 16 year old boy who tried to buy a pack of teaspoons at a Tesco automated checkout was flagged for an "age check," and when an employee came to check it out, she or he explained to the teen that he was not allowed to buy any cutlery at all.