WEASEL WORDS OF THE WEEK; GINA FORD

12-08-2006

Winner of our weekly weasel words award?

Childcare guru Gina Ford takes the ‘honour' by a country mile after threatening to close down the mumsnet website.

Some contributors dared to question her methods, others described Ms Ford in less than flattering terms, and for those “offences” her lawyers threatened to pull the plug on an excellent online support network.

Like most parents we'd seen Gina's Little Contented Baby Book recommended in newspapers and magazines and went out to buy it when our first child was due.

It's a best-seller, an achievement which is all the more impressive as the author doesn't have kids herself.

That's less important though than the question of whether it actually works - and here opinion is divided.

The key to her method is setting a very firm and fixed routine for youngsters early on - hence it's unofficial nickname “Baby Boot Camp”.

In my experience (as the father of a very lively two year old) there is some virtue in this - although trying to impose Gina's strict regime on younger children can at times a frustrating (even heart-breaking) business.

I guess like most parents we take the best of books like this, but weigh their advice against the individual characters of our kids and somehow muddle through.

Given that there's no such thing as the ultimate baby rearing manual (hmm is that a title? Should be) Gina has her critics too, and they have been giving vent on mumsnet.

It's not clear whether this initially irked her or whether it was the website's (entirely legitimate) decision to run an old Q&A interview with her.

In any event, the issue became really serious for mumsnet when one online contributor alleged that she “straps babies to rockets and fires them into south Lebanon.”

Now that's not remotely funny, and the person responsible has since apologised, but since when was a joke in bad taste against the law - blimey, Stan Boardman's made an entire career out of it.

Yet that, along with a couple of other comments, were enough for Gina's lawyers to threaten closure of the site if it didn't promise to clamp down on those who it claimed were libelling their client.

Mumsnet simply doesn't have the resources to fight a legal battle, so has now decided to ban all discussion of Gina Ford on its messageboards.

As they say, it's a bit like running a football site and banning contributors from mentioning Manchester United but they feel they have no choice.

Personally, I don't think there was much danger of a successful libel case being bought but the sheer cost of defending an action is prohibitive - that's how a bully like Robert Maxwell got away with his trickery for years.

Now Gina Ford is no Maxwell - she's simply wrong-headed- but it underlines again how libel laws in this country favour the wealthy.

There's a clear need for an updating legislation in this area so that they reflect the spontaneity and immediacy of the internet age.

In the meantime, we're happy to entertain sensible discussion of Gina Ford on our own messageboards, but as to the author herself - it's off to the naughty step!