How should we respond to kids making threats?
Readers are discussing the dismissal of a primary-school teacher over a Facebook post he made in response to threats made by kids to rape and murder his wife.
The teacher asked one of the youngsters’ parents to get in touch before he contacted the police, adding that he would find the child ‘sooner or later’ and ‘sort this out my way’.
The school said in doing so, the teacher breached its safeguarding policy.
The question at hand is whether the school was justified in having safeguarding concerns for these comments or whether they should be on the side of Mr Flynn who maintains he was a victim of a crime.
Readers are also discussing: the unmeasured power of AI, politicians accepting monetary donations, the economic contributions of foreign students to the UK, living in an increasingly cashless society, continuing the discussion on Labour’s Green-Belt building plan and praising South West Railway for their service.
What do you think?
Share your thoughts in the comments
Was Mr Flynn’s response a child safe guarding risk?
■ Primary school teacher Michael Flynn was sacked over ‘safeguarding fears’ for posting online that he would bring four yobs to justice after they threatened to rape and kill his wife (Metro, Wed).
This is unbelievable. His wife was threatened after she caught one of the kids trying to steal a bike while she was at home caring for their daughter.
Mr Flynn asked one of their parents to contact him on Facebook before he called the police, adding their village was a ‘small place and I will find him sooner or later’.
And now he loses his job?
What a disgrace. The yobs seem to get away with this behaviour while Mr Flynn is penalised. The school should reinstate him immediately with an apology.
Vicki, West Midlands
■ The ‘yobs’, ‘thugs’ and ‘delinquents’ that you and Mr Flynn refer to are children. Does Mr Flynn think it’s suitable to threaten to ‘find’ children when they misbehave in class? He’s not Batman and they’re not super-villains. Act like an adult, Mr Flynn.
Joe, Gloucester
■ Mr Flynn reacted exactly as any of us would. You can see he would not have harmed these ‘kids’, but would have hauled them to the police.
His school should have been proud of him trying to teach these wayward kids that it’s not acceptable to threaten in this way, to stand up against bullies.
What are we all supposed to do, let these kind of children run us ragged with their horrific words?
They need to be talked to and the police involved but when Mr Flynn tried to do this, he was fired.
I am horrified that the world is coming down to this – a nanny state where no one can say anything to any ‘child’ who threatens an adult with death or rape.
I am a mum-of-three and believe these children need to understand this is an upsetting, serious offence.
But they never will if no one is allowed to say anything to them for fear of being fired. What a ridiculous state of affairs.
Vanessa, North London
■ When I was a supply teacher, one child of six said he could do anything he liked and I could do nothing about it.
It is a sad world where teachers can be bullied by the children they are meant to be teaching.
Caroline, Southfields
■ I couldn’t believe what I was reading regarding the 91-year-old lady with dementia being strapped to a stretcher and having a spit hood placed on her by police after a disturbance with her carer (Metro, Wed).
A taser was ‘deployed but not used’. It’s like reading something out of the old ages.
Two police cars and a van attended the incident at a care home. The police need to be held to account for this cruelty.
Ask people who ring the police for assistance when being attacked or burgled if they would like two police cars and a van to turn up to assist them. Disgraceful.
Lyndsey, Sheffield
■ Police should not be involved with mental health calls.
As a nurse, I know how difficult mental health patients’ needs are and the necessity for professional medical help.
Police do not receive sufficient training to deal with these matters, causing unnecessary anxiety to both sides.
The diabolical financial failings and mental health support from all our governments for years means this problem will only be solved with emergency mental health teams on call and places to safely hospitalise patients.
Chris, via email
■ Will the proposed crackdown on selling vapes to children (Metro, Wed) be instigated in the same way as many other similar initiatives for various other issues? As in, they won’t!
Who is going to do the actual cracking down? Not the overworked, under-staffed police force! So who else?
Paul, London
Labour’s Green-Belt housing plan is just playing to its anti-Tory base
■ Al from Charlton (MetroTalk, Wed) says there are ‘thousands and thousands’ of acres of disused land that could be used for building homes.
I’m sure he is right, but that being the case why does Labour feel the need to allow building on the Green Belt?
It comes across to me as political opportunism designed to play to people such as Al, who are envious of those who live in the ‘leafy’ Tory shires, rather than addressing the real issue of the country’s alleged housing crisis.
HG, Maidstone
■ Don’t worry about where to build new houses, the whole route alongside HS2, which currently runs through Green Belt land, will be re designated Brown Belt and available for redevelopment. This is known as a land grab and is one of the primary reasons for building HS2.
L Davies, Birmingham
Foreign students gave the UK £42B last year
■ Barbara (MetroTalk, Tue) says universities unfairly favour foreign students as the government seeks to cut down education-related immigration.
Last week, a report found that international students contributed £42billion to the UK economy.
If true, where would the government make that money from, if it stopped giving visas to foreign students and their dependants?
Olawale Kuteyi, Dagenham
The AI takeover, almost cashless banks, and credit for South Western Railway
■ So-called ‘fury’ over Labour accepting a donation from a millionaire who funds the Just Stop Oil campaign makes me wonder if any Tories have checked the definition of ‘rank hypocrisy’ in the dictionary.
Just to remind them, they were delighted to take cash from oligarchs linked to Vladimir Putin and from Mohamed Mansour, a former minister in the brutal regime of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.
Andy Jinman, West Worthing
■ I had rather hoped that the idea of AI taking away human jobs had been somewhat overblown but now I read (Metro, Wed) that AI could wipe humans off the face of the planet. This is a step too far! Humanity has been quietly working on eradicating itself through war, weapons of mass destruction, destruction of the ozone layer, antibiotic resistance and, most recently, climate change for decades – to put in so much work and have the prize snatched from our grasp at this late stage seems most unfair.
Julian Self, Wolverton
■ A trip to the bank this week was interesting. I wanted to withdraw £3,000 in cash but was told it was doubtful there was that amount available as ‘no one uses cash anymore’. They did have just about enough to give me but if we can’t get cash from a bank then where?
Baffled, Leeds
■ Having often been critical of South Western Railway and sometimes their contingency plans for when things go wrong, I have to say well done to them for the service they have provided during all these train strikes. They have run an excellent service compared to other rail companies. And they deserve credit where credit is due.
Fred, Hampshire
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