Dominating adoption news, this story out of the UK about a pregnant woman recording social workers as they threaten to take her child away shortly after birth and attempting to intimidate her and her husband, then posting the recording on YouTube.

Adding insult to injury and really shooting themselves in the foot in the process, the powers-that-be set their sights on having the recording removed from the public site, then succeeded. (There's a link to a site where you can access the recording listed below.)

The recording includes conversation that has a social worker freely admitting that there was "no immediate risk" to the child, but insisting the child would be at risk because the mother has vision issues and has in the past been diagnosed with depression and "a personality disorder" that would result in subjecting the child to "emotional abuse".

In the recorded meeting, the social worker tells the couple: "It's our intention as a local authority that when your baby is born, we go into court on that same day and ask for an interim court order because we would wish to place your baby with foster carers."

Apparently, this couple has no wish or intention to relinquish their child, and have found previous encounters with the officials in charge painful, intimidating and potentially damaging enough to resort to violating a basic tenet of British law ... secrecy.

I've written before about how big British law is on keeping things all hush-hush when it comes to many things, and certainly hearings and such over child custody are officially not to be discussed, and especially not on YouTube.

Heck! Families are not even supposed to discuss details with relatives!

This, of course, dovetails directly into accusations that a quota system in the UK has social workers trawling for children to grab from loving families and force into adoption situations ... a nightmare scenario all the way around.

For information on how people are addressing the situation, check out the following organizations:

Fassit 'Social Services Inquiry Team". (You can download and watch the secret recording on their site.)

Grandparents Action Group

Unity-Injustice

False-Allegations.org

Parents Against Removal Of Children

Justice for Families

National Society for Children and family Contact

I'd like to add a personal observation here that comes from my years spent living in England ... petty officials there have WAY too much power.

Mark and I once had some geek from our local Town Council insist on inspecting our flat, that we owned, by the way, not rented ... I'd not lived there long enough at the time to feel comfortable telling him to buzz off, but I learned ... and he ended up giving us a list of infractions we MUST remedy.

Two I distinctly recall were that we were not supposed to have removed the stupid door between the lounge (living room) and the hallway ... they LOVE doors and hate open spaces ... AND guarantee, promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we would close our bedroom door every night and sleep with it tightly shut.

I do not lie.

I very well might be revealing a secret I was to carry to my grave by telling you this now. Don't know. Don't care.