Kidnapped By The State - At Two Hours Old

I always feel desperately sad when I hear a story about a baby being forcibly separated from its mother. In human terms it feels fundamentally wrong. You only have to see the bond between a mother and her child to realise how heart-wrenching it must be.

But when I heard this, about Nottingham social services taking away a baby, two hours old, when they had no legal right to do it, I wasn't just saddened; I was absolutely outraged.

Not even the State is allowed to take a child away from his mother without a court order. And yet that's just what happened in Nottingham yesterday. Two questions:
..1) who the f*** do these people think they are, to just walk in and take a child without any judicial permission ?
..2) what the hell are the hospital staff doing allowing the bastards to do it ?
Actually, a third question:
..3) what does it say about the relationship between the individual and the State where one arm of the State (the hospital) just allows another (Social Services) to behave like this ? Whatever happened to the principle of "Duty of Care" ?

Thank God, a judge (in the High Court in London, for goodness sake) got involved soon after this highly illegal act took place, and ordered that the baby be returned. Nottingham social services, citing the mother's alleged mental health problems, use of drugs and "troubled childhood" are applying to the court now for an interim care order, which is what they should have done in the first place.

Mind you, if everyone who'd had a troubled childhood had their babies taken away from them, social services would be overrun, partly because social services cause so much of the trouble in the first place through interference like this.