I see Mr Brown and Mr Balls are getting off to a cracking start. Nothing like getting to work with fresh young minds eh?

Daily Telegraph - Schools to fingerprint infants

And of course, let us not forget this:

Daily Mail - Police put 100,000 innocent children on DNA database

Somewhere, the ghost of Aldous Huxley gives a wry smile.

These are very alarming articles; the tracking of young children has certainly stepped up a couple of gears - and they're deeply indoctrinated into the whole idea of tracking / surveillance being entirely normal. I would doubt that any of them will protest against this sort of thing when they're old enough that they would otherwise think for themselves.

"I have seen at first hand how well these systems work. They can speed up lunch queues, remove the need for children to carry money and take away the stigma of singling out those on free school meals. More-over, schools can register pupils more easily as they move from class to class." -Jim Knight, the schools minister.

Interesting, so home schooling would remove the need totally.