There is a news item in the UK today about the extension of the CRB checks scheme. For those who don't live in the UK this is the law whereby people who work with children in any capacity have to be checked before they are employed to find out if they have a criminal record. The initials stand for Criminal Records Bureau. The need for such checks is being extended to parents who volunteer to drive children on school trips and the like.
Personally I can't see any real objection although, being subject regularly to such checks myself, I can think of all sorts of ways that the administration of the checks could be improved.
I'm more interested in a phrase that I have heard, in one form or another, on every news report about the topic. It is constantantly being stated that the extension is being introduced "in the wake of the Soham murders".
The Soham murders were the deaths of two schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, at the hands of school caretaker Ian Huntley. They took place seven years ago, in 2002. This seems to me an odd use of "in the wake of", which I would have considered to be only used following very recent events. The new checks may be right, just and sensible but I cannot see how, unless the legislation was proposed in 2002 and taken all this time to come to fruition, it can be considered to be "in he wake of Soham" or, indeed, influenced by it. Previous measures may well, of course, have deserved the description.
Personally I can't see any real objection although, being subject regularly to such checks myself, I can think of all sorts of ways that the administration of the checks could be improved.
I'm more interested in a phrase that I have heard, in one form or another, on every news report about the topic. It is constantantly being stated that the extension is being introduced "in the wake of the Soham murders".
The Soham murders were the deaths of two schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, at the hands of school caretaker Ian Huntley. They took place seven years ago, in 2002. This seems to me an odd use of "in the wake of", which I would have considered to be only used following very recent events. The new checks may be right, just and sensible but I cannot see how, unless the legislation was proposed in 2002 and taken all this time to come to fruition, it can be considered to be "in he wake of Soham" or, indeed, influenced by it. Previous measures may well, of course, have deserved the description.
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