I am the proud father of a lovely daughter.
I love my daughter.
But I seem to be in trouble. Because I am a White middle aged man and my daughter has Japanese features as well as a tint or two of my own.
I can be rather optimistic about people. Normally I am
But not today.
It began a couple of days ago, actually.
Rather foolishly I invited our neighbour’s girl, Flora, over to our house to share some pizza with my daughter and then play the piano with their piano teacher and then let them get on with whatever small girls do while my wife and I spend dreary hours editing a proposal for a new national park in China.
Flora’s parents were absent. They had taken the older children to see Narnia. Flora was left with Granny. That was the reason for the invite. Flora couldn’t go to see Narnia because she was deemed too young.
Granny wouldn’t let me in. She wouldn’t let Flora out.
Various thoughts ran through my head.
1. She’s old and gone barmy.
2. She’s forgotten that she’s seen me socially twice in the last two days and that I’m her neighbour.
3. She doesn’t like me.
4. She’s forgotten that Flora has just spent the entire afternoon in my house annoying me but having fun playing with my daughter…
5 Blimey! Bingo! She thinks I’m a child molestor!
I walked home (half a minute) and then spent a rather wretched evening. It was an evening full of “whys?”
Why can’t a man have little girls playing in his house when he has a little girl of his own playing with them?
Why does that make him a suspect?
Why the bleeding hell is this desperate and polluted mode of thought proliferating?
My wife, bless her and keep her, noticed that I was upset and told me the story of Tim and the Canadian immigration authorities hauling him off on suspicion of child trafficking – it was his daughter…
My daughter then told me the story of my encounter with the Manchester Airport Police.
I was surrounded by three police officers. My daughter was whisked away for her own safety and one officer asked her “Do you like your Daddy?”
After 17 hours on a flight and another flight, the answer could have been anything!
Brother charles and wife Kimmie steamed in and the coppers withdrew. “Let’s leave it here for the time being”.
Hugh Paxton’s blog has no intention of leaving this issue here for the time being. I’m bloody outraged!
Hugh Paxton's Blog 
December 22, 2010 at 10:22 pm
“Do you like your father!”
When I saw three policemen escorting you and Annabel through the airport I thought that there’d been an air-rage incident. Relieved we were, partially, to discover that you had broken no laws and were just … being publicly humiliated by some officious zealot.
Evil are they who evil think, say I.
I bet those cops had just taken a course in Child protection or Child smuggling and had to file a report that showed they were doing some practical. There’ll probably be some person in their HQ who needs to justify a budget and is groping for statistics- hey presto you’re frog-marched through the airport because you and your daughter matched some potty academic’s dubious profiling criteria. Hmm she looks Asian, hmm you’re white, ergo you’re smuggling her into the country to sell her to a bunch of slavers. We’ll automatically ignore what it says in your expensive bar-coded passport. You’ve had two of those mini-bottles of wine in the past 14 hrs with your meals? God protect the poor girl because her father has obviously abdicated all sense of propriety and responsibility. Go thou and sin no more after this ritualistic ‘mounting’.
What’s the point of getting expensive bar-coded passports if yours and hers don’t identify you definitively as her father? Someone needs to look into FAA guidance / regulations on drinking alcohol on passenger aircraft when in charge of a minor, is it allowed or not? If it’s not allowed, then they shouldn’t serve alcoholic beverages to parents in charge of minors on the plane. They should also advertise the fact that you can’t drink alcohol and fly with a child. If it isn’t illegal the FAA should shut up and let the airline serve you the wine and the peanuts.
I wonder how many people are similarly bothered with such humiliating paternalistic crap? The sad irony is that travelers are forced to pay extra for this kind of stupid hassle. I’m surprised that they didn’t ask you to fill out a survey form afterwards to give feedback on the professionalism of their investigation into whether you were a nonce or child trafficker or drunk in charge of a minor.
Shame on the crap-hats who make the cops do this sort of thing.
I remember when air travel was fun and pleasant.
We used to be greeted with “Welcome home, Sir.”
Do you like your father is a new one! A sick projection from sick minds.
December 25, 2010 at 11:53 am
Reckon you are right. Single white man coming from Bangkok – meets a profile.
I was clearly a suspect!
Tim had rather a harder time than Annabel and I. His wife is Thai. the Canadians hauled him off to one room, his daughter to another and after a two hour session of tormenting them both, formally advised him that next time he went anywhere with his daughter he should carry a ceritified letter affirming that his daughter was his daughter.
Logic? There is none. Passports! If they are insufficient, what is? And catching a flight with a stack of birth certificates, pics of you and your daughter, letters endorsing your status – well it could be perceived as going a little too far.
And might attract further suspicion.
Sheesh!
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