'I'll pay children to tell me how to do my job'

From the Scotsman:

"YOUNG people are to be paid to tell Scotland's new children's "tsar" how to do her job. Professor Kathleen Marshall, the commissioner for children and young people, has set aside more than £10,000 to pay "participation fees" to young people in focus groups."

No, it's not a spoof, honestly - check the link. Words fail me - but I hope they won't fail the children they enlist for their focus groups because they often have a much better sense of the ridiculous than a lot of adults. One particularly ludicrous exercise I witnessed in a school was the distribution of a questionnaire to all pupils where they were supposed to list what they thought were the top ten most serious infractions of discipline and what punishment they thought should follow. One pupil put "imitating Patrick Swazye" at number one. Most of my 'tutor group' didn't want to do it on the grounds that it was "pure stupid". I was at a complete loss for any counter-argument.