I can no longer pretend that the army of teenage mothers living off the state is anything other than a national catastrophe.A previous commenter on this site got it spot on: many (though not all) teenage girls do not become pregnant accidentally because of ignorance, because of a lack of understanding of how their bodies work. They become pregnant because they have absolutely no ambition for themselves. They have been indoctrinated with the lie that they’ll never amount to anything, and have fulfilled that prophesy by making no effort to achieve any qualification. Very often they live with parents (or a parent) who have no jobs themselves, who are setting the example of benefit dependency for all their offspring.
Such young women see parenthood as one way of achieving a level of independence and self-worth. And they’re right, because that’s more or less what they get: a flat and therefore some privacy, an income for the first time in their lives. And in fact, many of them make a decent job of parenthood despite the awful circumstances. But even they are nevertheless rearing the next generation in an environment where the main adult isn’t working, but claiming...
Teenage girls shouldn’t be having underage sex. Why? Because it’s wrong.
Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.
Parents shouldn’t teach their children that a lifetime on benefits is attractive or even acceptable. Why? Because it’s wrong.
Being accused of agreeing with the Daily Mail’s agenda is not the worst thing my critics can say about me. Being accused of accepting the current appalling state of affairs, of pretending that the concepts of right and wrong are meaningless - that is far worse than being accused of pandering to the right.And, of course, it is a complete load of bollocks to suggest that the ordinary working class people of Glasgow South and in hundreds of other constituencies throughout the country don’t agree with me. The most vociferous critics of the dependancy culture and of deliberate worklessness have always been those who live in the same communities, those who resent paying their taxes to help other people waste their lives.
Don’t interpret this as any kind of “back to basics” crusade; I’m not remotely interested in what adults do in the privacy of their own homes, and I’m not sounding the rallying cry for Christian or religious morality. But when the actions of others has such a debilitating effect on the rest of society, it’s time to stop being polite. It’s time to stop worrying about how people’s feelings might be hurt if we question the choices they’ve made.
Because very often, those choices are wrong. And it’s about time we said so.
Well, hear hear. Of course, this is something many on the right have been saying for some time (IDS, Nadine etc), but the liberal media treats them as being slightly deranged for holding such views. If Tom Harris can provoke a real debate in the Labour movement and get people to wake up about what's right and wrong, then that can only be a good thing.
93 comments:
" many (though not all) teenage girls do not become pregnant accidentally because of ignorance, because of a lack of understanding of how their bodies work."
Yeah yeah they just trip over at a Party and land on a erect penis , then in all the confusion, forget to get off it and end up mystifyingly pregnant .
Thats just the way it is. He is still clinging onto this ridiculous lie
Hear hear. With the exception of suggesting that teenage girls do not equate sex with babies, Tom Harris has it spot on - angry for all the right reasons and willing to say that just because the political right think something doesn't mean it's wrong.
Iain - let's hope you're right.
I think Tom is right but trying to change the dependancy culture is like trying to force a Moslem to convert to Christianity and vice versa.
Surely in a free country it is better to let people live the lives they want to live.
So what if some people depend on benefit for their independence. It's not as bad as bank bosses depending on millions of taxpayer's money for their bonuses.
One keeps on seeing them. There are good, coherent, old-fashioned conservatives in the Labour Party who are just waht is needed to rejuvenate the real Tory Party
Pat Nurse, sorry but I am going to clobber you for this:
"Surely in a free country it is better to let people live the lives they want to live"
Does that apply to pedophiles? Burglars? Where do you draw the line?
Shall we all pick up the tab for these feckless teenage mothers with no ambition?
"So what if some people depend on benefit for their independence."
Because it is not fecking designed to be a lifestyle choice, it is a Safety net for goodness sake!
It is this level of supine liberal claptrap that has turned this country into a haven for scroungers and faux victims. You really frighten me, people like you, Pat Nurse.
Do me a favour..pulease.
Why now?
Tom is right. We do the genetically unemployed no favours by permitting this life-style. It is degrading and hopeless. Their health is poor, their life expectancy low, their aspiration to do better is nil. It is a major cruelty to a large sector of our populace.
Politicians of whatever party should be resolved to end the dependency culture. That may require some tough love.
I don't really see why this is, in a wide perspective, a major problem.
18-21 is about the best age for a female physical body to have children. Women who wait until 27-32 are in any evolutionary sense "later mothers."
Of course it's true our society is out of step with our biology, but the biology remains.
As it is, almost every other country in Europe is facing a coming demographic disaster, with inverted population columns. As you note, many of these women don't do a bad job as parents, so why not just pay them well?
[PS: My mother was 19 when she got married, in 195something, My grandmother was only 17 in 193something. The current "socially" acceptable age of marriage is absurd from a physical health perspective.]
Fair dos, Wrinkled Weasel, I take your point.
However, I stand by what I say about living in a free country - as long as what you do doesn't hurt anyone else so I agree with your comment about paedos etc..
I still think that single mums and teenage parents are easy targets when there are bigger more expensive fish to fry.
Sorry I scare you. You scare me too!
Wow. Tom is exactly right of course.
That Tom has said this is really important. The Tories would be hounded for advancing these same views that bluntly.
I suspect this common sense argument can only be won, once left leaning politicians are talking in these terms themselves.
This must be a good omen for David Cameron.
Left leaning politicians who actually care about these issues, should seize the opportunity to debate within their own party and to also influence the Conservatives positively in government.
Better late than never could have been used if this had been understood around 1965.
It is a career for many of these very sad young women. A career always encouraged by Labour and indeed The Conservative abolishing of married couples allowance.
Is it just me but Tom says that
" many (though not all) teenage girls do not become pregnant accidentally because of ignorance, because of a lack of understanding of how their bodies work."
It's two clauses - that they don't do it by accident and they don't do it because they don't get basic biology.
I think it's a brave (maybe even courageous!) post.
More power to his elbow and common sense.
OT I am about to be sick - Mr Brown is sucking up to the USA by announcing an honorary K for Kennedy - yep that one who left a woman to die and fundraise for the IRA.
WTF is Gordo thinking of? Cheap and repellent opportunism *bleugh* *off for another wash*
Oldrightie, I wouldn't take this as an argument for promoting marriage - and doing so financially is spurious in my opinion - but as an argument for tackling the welfare ghettos and culture of dependency on the state.
Pat Nurse says ; "as long as what you do doesn't hurt anyone else".
But if it "hurts" all the rest of us, the tax-payers, is that OK ?
The simplest way to reduce teenage pregnancies is for society to stop paying for them. £ 1500 for equipment, an income for life almost, and their own flat, cushy number.
Alan Douglas
the liberal media treats them as being slightly deranged for holding such views
The liberal media (both DTP and the BBC) are completely out of touch.
They think they are superior and more enlightened than "ordinary people" whose views can therefore be ignored with contempt.
The liberal media have been complicit in the destruction of our society by Labour.
The liberal media are as guilty as Labour.
When Labour are burned, the political news and opinion sections of the liberal media cannot deny their responsibility. They must be reformed.
I have said for a while that the quickest way to stop this type of pre-destined scrounging is to state that, the minute a child leaves school untill the age of 18 (unless entering further education)all children are the financial responsibility of the parents. No housing or benefits availiable for under 18's. Parents would be less inclined to allow their children to leave school and laze around if they had to feed, clothe and support them with no help from the state. Child tax credits etc stop at 16. How many parents would support not only their lay about daughters/sons but the babies they choose to bring into the world. Not many I'll bet. A lot of parents 'evict' their pregnant daughters to ensure they are a priority for housing. Parents should be MADE to take responsibility for their childrens actions. And if they still evict them, the baby goes into care and the mother is left to fend for herself. It wouldn't take long for the message to get through. It wouldn't take long before parents told children, don't get pregnant at any cost. By the time these girls/boys reach 18 they would either have spent two years working for a living or getting further education and might just decide that there is more to life than Elzabeth Duke and Lambert n Butler. I would like to remind a few people that single parent hood for some was not a career choice. Please don't lump all single parents in together as it is offensive to those that do a wonderful job after finding themselves in reduced circumstances.
Well said Tom. Now take the next intellectual leap and look at how the benefist system that, encourages the destruction of the family, promoted by your party since, well, since it started, is largely to blame for this.
I agree with most of what he's written, but according to what ethic are all of those things wrong? He needs to back up these claims and he can't do that without some kind of religious/philosophical morality.
So according to what ethic are thos things wrong, and on what basis should everyone else pay attention to his preferred morals?
plato @ - senator K will be joining such distinquished company as robert mugabe, mussolini and nicholae ceausescu all of whom were awarded an'honourary' knighthood !
Notice one of his tags is 'political suicide.'
He seems to share Iains view on how wwll this post will go down with the party thugs.
He might have a word with Ed Balls about his sex education leaflet advice to parents whilst he's at it.
I fear Tom Harris' allowing facts to dispute the Socialist Narrative will damage his career, but it could help his constituents.
@Pat Nurse - the so what is that everyone else has to pay for the consequences. So its not an issue of freedom at all, but of consequences and responsibility.
Well said `andtherewasmethinking`...trust me there are many in this country who hold exactly the same views. Now if only Cameron had the courage.......ahhh well at least he hasnt given a gong to a liar, cheat, and drunken long time hater of Britain........Oh please tell me it isnt true.......it cant be can it???????????????????
I'm going to be very un-PC:
When I went to school, only twenty odd years ago. Girls who slept around were SLAGS, overweight kids were FAT BASTARDS, and kids who smoke/did drugs were W*NKERS.
It's funny, but since we stopped calling people SLAGS, FAT BASTARDS and W*ANKERS we seem to have a lot more of them.
Yes Tom has stuck his head above thr parapit, and he should be thanked for it.
It is Labour both in government and opposition that has stopped any movement away from this dependancy culture.
It is not good for people and should be stopped.
It needs very hard decisions and I am glad Tom has said what most people think.
But as always judge Labour on what they do never on what they say.
Massively increased benefit dependency and general moral chaos go back to which decade, do you think?
I'm sorry, but I really cannot see how "Labour MP Condemns Thatcherism" is any sort of story.
I know it's rude to comment on typos and I make enough of them myself but, Lola, benefist system is a classic. The tax-payer takes the punch.
“...get people to wake up about what's right and wrong...”
So exactly what’s right and what’s wrong? And who exactly decides for everyone?
You?
Paul and Simon Gardner.
"who decides what's wrong?" to paraphrase you both.
Well, strangely enough, you two have, for the last few decades.
Are you going to admit defeat?
Wrinkled Weasel said... “Simon Gardner. "who decides what's wrong?" to paraphrase you both. Well, strangely enough, you two have, for the last few decades.”
WTF are you talking about? I’ve done no such bloody thing.
Why is no-one celebrating the marvelous advance in science? These girls are producing babies with no assistance from men whatsoever?
Or are you all saying that uneducated teenage girls must act responsibly while men are absolved absolutely? Victimise those dealt the worst hand by fate, excuse the "Lords of Creation" because ....because why? (Because some men want to compound the girls' suffering by forcing them to have an abortion doesn't really wash as a complete and total justification for blaming only one parent.)
Tania,
You can't get pregnant if you keep your knickers on.
I was a member of my Council's Teenage Pregnancy Working Party.
Of course the conventional line is that teenagers get pregnant because they are "ignorant" or "don't have access to contraception". To suggest it is a deliberate act to claim benefits is considered beyond the pale.
One day we were taking evidence from representatives of the schools council - 6 teenagers from 13-18 from various backgrounds.
I asked - "do girls get pregnant for a flat?" All of them replied "of course they do". The professionals had the vapours at this!
The reason teenage girls don't get themselves pregnant in Holland or Spain is not because of superior sex education and availability to contraception etc it is because (i) it is considered wrong by society at large and (ii) this view is re-inforced by the state in the benefits system.
The reality is people behave the way they do because of motivation. If promiscuous 14 year old were hung from cranes as in Iran, then we would have no teenage pregnancies in this country. They would all keep their legs crossed!
The benefits system rewards feckless behaviour and until this is tackled we will not deal with the problem - even if every teenage girl in the country was given her own 24/7 contraceptives advisor/mentor!
Well done Tom Harris.
Simon, you and your fellow nihilists have imposed a neo existential consensus on the rest of society.
That you do not realise this is all the more worrying.
You see, I know you. You think you can take away my language, my nationality, my desire to think as I do. You want me to conform to your twisted, rotten and selfish society that allows the tyranny of all the minorities you hold so dear.
Well, you are failing. There is such a thing as right and wrong. But your mind has become dimmed with your own hatred of life and everyone else around you.
And so vengeful and so twisted in your morality have you become, that you want everyone to think like you. You cannot help it. You are a product of late 2oth century philosophy, if you but realised it, but you don't. You are lost in your own miasma of decadence.
I totally agree with the tone of the article and its content...
until you mention Nadine Dorres who perpetrates and continues to promulgate the half-born abortion 'the foetus grasped the nurse's thumb' myth which makes her either a fantasist or a liar...
Wrapped up in all this is a crucial point that Tom makes inadvertently. Morality is irrelevant and it is fascinating that the average age for first sex is 15 in the US - puritanical,bible-bashers- and nearly 18 in free-love,toke-puffing Holland. UK is 16-something.
Teenage pregnancies have always happened; it is just we have stopped letting the financial and nurturing responsibility fall on the extended families of both young father and mother.
Of course most young girls can do better for themselves than getting pregnant but when state benefits greatly exceed a weekly wage and have a flat thrown in, isn't this a no-brainer?
Daily Referendum said... “You can't get pregnant if you keep your knickers on.”
You need to get out a bit more.
And also seem to have missed her point rather.
@Paul Halsall - [PS: My mother was 19 when she got married, in 195something, My grandmother was only 17 in 193something. The current "socially" acceptable age of marriage is absurd from a physical health perspective.]
Regardless of the biology, I'd venture to suggest that there was, in both cases, a subtle difference between your case and that under discussion... Mayhap your grandmother and mother married men who were working for a living?
Wrinkled Weasel said... “You see, I know you. (Much foaming-at-the-mouth hysterical ranting snipped.)”
Very fortunately you clearly don’t. For which I’m grateful.
And again - who decides - on the morality the rest of us must all follow?
You - god help us? Iain? The church? Frank Field (an earlier Labour moralist)? The Victorians? The middle classes? Who?
And by what right?
Shaun said... “Nadine Dorres...”
[spit]
[heave]
Bravo Tom Harris.
It is time someone on the Left not only stood up to Harman's feminazis (several post on CiF)but put the boot in.
Love to think it is the beginning of the end of Islington Leftism, but it will need a lot more blows. However, it is the first blast on the trumpet that makes the wall begin to fall.
Lord Elvis astutely asks "why now?"
Call me a deformed old cynic, but I was expecting to see the initials "BNP" somewhere further down in the comments.
Tom Harris is right, of course he is. He should cross the floor.
Something about Heaven Rejoicing over one sinner repenting ?
Long before IDS was saying it...
KEITH JOSEPH was saying it - talking about a distinction between the deserving poor and the UNDESERVING poor.
Even though I support lowering the age of consent underage sex represents a lot of statutory rape.
I'm not sure their parents are teaching them it is acceptable or "lucrative" but they are teaching them it is normal. Monkey see...
I am going to say something very un-PC.
I’m fed up with centuries of celibate old men imposing their morality on the rest of us.
I’m pretty cynical about the middle-aged (largely again now past-it men) deciding morality for the rest of us.
It beggars belief that any gay man should presume to pontificate on the morality of young women. What a nerve.
Simon Gardner,
Bollocks, I got Tania's point "uneducated teenage girls" my arse. What uneducated girls? very few people in this country go without an education. You don't need to go to Oxford to understand that having sex gets you pregnant. PLEASE enough bloody excuses for scrounging slags.
Why do I suspect that Tom Harris was being slightly ironic?
I am astonished that he is getting credit for stating something that the rest of us have known forever.
Man in a Shed - we also have to pay for those MPs who fiddle their expenses and buy second homes they don't need, plus rich tax dodgers, and bankers who will now rely on our taxes for generations.
I only ask why when we go through a recession and everybody's wondering where they can claw money back, that they choose to moralise about the young women who choose to have a baby rather than enter the rat race.
Personally, I don't object to paying for such families - but I do strongly object to paying for the underserving rich to get richer!
Daily Referendum said... “Bollocks, I got Tania's point... ”
The rest of your post indicates you clearly didn’t. Now go back and read what she actually wrote.
@ Guthrum 7:00pm
'There is more joy in CCHQ over one Blairite that repenteth...'
Also, shows Harriet a thing or two about positioning ;O
@ Newmania
Thanks for the brain-teaser at 3:24pm. It took me a good ten minutes to work out how you'd interpreted the phrase you quote into exactly the opposite position, but I've spotted where & why your 'mis-read' occurred. Is there a prize?
Elvis asks "Why now".
A good question.
Hazel Blears suddenly sprouts on 'political correctness' and 'immigration'.
Why now.
Two reasons. Its the end of Labour for a decade or more. Some MP's with nothing to lose are liberated from the party line and can tell the truth.
A pity Harris Blears and co didn't speak up when it mattered. When Frank Field did to the cost of his job. When Hoey spoke up to the cost of her job. When many in Con Party were speaking up against immigration and social benefits breeding a new underclass.
Harris and Blears: Its too bloody late the train has left the station.
I agree with much of what Tom has said, but it would have been even more impressive if he had said while he was still a member of the government.
*gets more popcorn*
Refreshing as it is to hear an MP taking about morality....no one mentions the 'L' word. Go to Amsterdam for lessons in driving down under-age pregnancy:
http://wannabepm.blogspot.com/2009/02/going-dutch.html
The Dutch kids give love and commitment as their main reasons for losing their virginity. The Brit kids cited peer pressure and physical attraction.
As for benefits...scrap them and bring on the Citizen's Income that Her Majesty promised her government would deliver....in 2006! Tum tee tum tee tum. Still waiting.....
It's all about LURVE,
Big Kisses,
Ivor XXX
Savonarola said... “When many in Con Party were speaking up against immigration...”
Umm. Isn’t there net emigration from this country or something? I only ask for in formation.
Oh, so Pat Nurse is a university lecturer - but of course. Only a bearded, sandal wearing, tofu eater would say they didn't mind their taxes going on feckless Vicky Pollards. I'll be damned if I'll work 10 hours a day with an hour and a half commute at each end so that some fat slag can wheel her bay-bee around with its no-account slouching father at her side - being neither use nor ornament. It is my damn business and it is NOT okay.
And forget about the cost for a minute - do you call watching Jeremy Kyle, playing video games and crapping out brat after brat by any number of fathers a useful life?
An earlier commenter wise cracked about net emigration.
You are quite right. lets have a look at who is leaving.
I left 20 years ago and settled in NZ. In the last five years we have seen a massive influx of English, all cashed up and arriving with the same shell shocked gaze that we saw when the white South Africans bailed out 5 years earlier. They cannot believe their luck at managing to have escaped, of course this torrent of broken brits has dried up now as you all have unsaleable houses.
You are losing bodies from the middle, to be replaced by the spawn of Stella swilling, nylon soccer shirt wearing, pit bull owning tattooed mongs.. That and a million or ten from eastern Europe and the sub continent.
I wonder what will happen when the rump exceeds the ability of the middle to pay for it? Oops to late.
You cannot put the poo back in the donkey.
Simon,maybe you are rich enough to support this army of unmarried mothers,I am not.I also live on an estate full of them.It is true,they do it for the benefits and flat,they know full well what they are doing.Let them have their babies by all means but let them and their parents foot the bill,not me.
Lady Finchley, I'm with you. It a shock though that Pat is bearded. The poor girl must have some terrible hormone-imbalance.
Simon Gardener
So exactly what’s right and what’s wrong? And who exactly decides for everyone?
You?
And by what right
Classic straw men. Set up unrealistic conditions and then knock them down. What is right and what is wrong in terms of generally acceptable behaviour within a society is, as I am sure you must know, a bit of a moveable feast. What was right in 1969 is quite capable of being what is wrong in 2009. Ask any gay person over the age of 50. There is generally an operating and evolving consensus within a society. As a very simplified image, think of riding a pendulum swinging between back to basics Victorian public morality and full on hippy summer of love. I choose to think of the Tom Harris post as a movement of that pendulum.
On this specific issue, it seems that being a young unemployed single mother is still quite tolerated and enabled but maybe not so much in 5 years time.
Now then, who gets to decide for everyone? Well unsurprisingly its enough of everyone for it to count. Yup "who decides for everyone" is another straw man.It doesn't happen like that. Nobody is nailing royal proclamations to the village noticeboards anymore. Laws get made that may punish or reward some behaviours, that's a function of government which is, at least in theory a reflection of society. Outside of that people get to try and influence the position of society by arguing and taking positions. Sometimes they win big (Chartism?) and sometimes they wither on the vine (Ingersoll?) and whether they are good, bad or indifferent doesn't seem to matter half as much as how strongly their ideas chime with the society they are in.
Lastly, by what right? Well as there is no reality of a secret cabal of rulers of the world making sudden and arbitrary decisions on this matter, right doesn't really come into it. Straw men don't exercise rights.
That's it really, society may be moving on again on this issue or it may be a lot of frustrated bluster that gets nowhere. Lets see if it gets traction.
Simon Gardner
Umm. Isn’t there net emigration from this country or something? I only ask for in formation.
Using the interweb and Google I took a look for the figures and errrm no there isn't net emigration, actually the opposite is true.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/focuson/migration/
Apparently, net inward migration has been a major source of UK population growth since the late 1990's.
Who would have thought?
Well said, indeed. But that's HIS career scuppered. They won't like it.
It's a straw man argument. I doubt there are many, if any, Labour Party members or supporters who would disagree with a word Tom Harris said. The difficulty lies not in identifying the problem but in solving it. Cutting of benefit or denying proper housing punishes not only the feckless mother but also the baby. I can see that the proposal of at least one commenter here that we expand the orphanages might appeal to a certain type of tory but would hope that most were more evolved than that. The only coherent solution attempted in recent years was the new deal. It may not be perfect but does anyone have any better ideas?
What takes you to Langport, Iain? 'Tis the jewel of the Levels, and no mistake...
Lady Finchley said... “...do you call watching Jeremy Kyle, playing video games and crapping out brat after brat by any number of fathers a useful life?”
On the other hand, look on the bright side. At least she isn’t you.
I thought Tom Harris made several good points. I'm bemused at why you think such points to be right-wing however! But you're right inasfar as morality has been absent from the left for too long, for fear of being judgemental.
Watching the godawful Broon gamboling around in Washington like a pig in shit, godawful grin plastered from ear to ear, I longed for a gang of Tom Harrises to plunge daggers into the back of this increasingly bloated buffoon.
As Savonarola points out, the answer to the 'Why now?' question is that all of them - apart from Broon - realise that they are doomed.
Broon himself isn't well. He is so deluded that those closest to him must fear for his sanity. He really had convinced himself that the current shambles is nothing at all to do with him. He's just an embarrasment.
Beware the ides of March, Broon.
Apologies for the mixed metaphor: I'm a townie, but I'm pretty sure that pigs who find themselves in shit don't gambol: they eat the shit, don't they? That's Home Secretary rather than PM territory.
Also, I appreciate that Harris, Blears and even Darling (who has obviously been trying to tell his deluded boss what's what) taking up their daggers right now is rather like the officers of the Titanic strangling Captain Smith just as the ship started its death plunge.
It would be nice to think that things will be any better under the godawful Cameroon and Osborne. They won't, of course: far from it.
Clams Linguini
All wet liberal dem types are bearded - men and women!
Simon Gardner
Not like me? Their loss, darling.
Net emigration?
I neither know nor care what the exact figures are. I arrived in the UK in 1977. Tax rates 98% at top, inflation 18%, three pay rises a year, Lord Scargill running the mining industry, Red Robbo running the car industry, Derek Hatton running Liverpool, savers and the prudent having their savings destroyed by inflation and nobody running Govt.
We are heading for the same situation if not in the numbers but in the net relative effect.
On emigration. In the market 'bad money drives out good'. On immigration bad immigrants drive out good. As was the case in 70's.
Single mothers should not receive a penny. 1000's of young children will suffer. However this policy will stop this indiscriminate breeding which is not based on giving the unborn child a good life but the feckless mother a so called role in life. We are criminal in our abuse of these young people.
I suppose I should give him credit for putting this into print. Whether he is genuine in what he writes is another matter.
I now expect many more Labour types to write what the rest of the country have been saying for years. There's something distinctly unpleasant about faux mea-culpas.
To their shame all Labour MPs supported this smoke and mirrors government in the lobbies like sheep running through a sheep dip.
They fiddle with multi-culti-inclusion politics. They appear to have purposefully forgotten the majority of the population.
Not for much longer. They will not be allowed to forget what their meddling has created.
... At the going down of the sun, And in the morning, We will remember them.
Now piss off and leave me alone.
Andrew Cooper said... “Watching the godawful Broon...”
Very good speech in Washington. He must have surprised himself. He certainly surprised everyone else.
The speech to the joint session of Congress wasn’t to British tastes but was absolutely right for a sentimental and schmaltzy US audience. (I believe he is mates with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - hence the invite.)
He really rose to the occasion. Why doesn’t he rise to the occasion here?
Whoops. The campaign has already started to get Tom Harris thrown out of the Labour Party.
see http://www.bickerstafferecord.org.uk/
Bickerstaffe has decided to BAN comments that don't fit in with his kindergarten level existentialist worldview, so don't waste your energy. Apparently, those who do not hold with it are to be called "trolls"
He cannot even get that bit right. Rodney old fruit, you need to get a bit more familiar with this interweb. Think of blogging as a Samizdat, only this time, you are the KGB and we are the dissidents.
Talk about dependency culture! What about "Fred the Shred" doesn't he "depend" us for his crust? If its a question of morality then how can the present distribution of income/wealth be justified? The words of the old Music Hall song have never been more relevant than they are in this context..."its the rich what gets the pleasure and the poor what gets the blame....."
Lady Finchley,
Point taken.
The problem is that custody is always solely the mother's. No the father's & not the grandparent's who could, very often look after him far better.
Then the girl gets another boyfriend who, for reasons deep in our evolutionary past & which these thugs wouldn't understand if it was explained to them, kill him.
The fault is not with the girl getting pregnant (the teens & early 20s are far & away the best time to have children if you want them healthy) but that as a society we have abandoned the concept of extended family & now the concept of family at all Instead we have social workers who se a helpless single mother as their meal ticket & any family members who could solve the problem as deeply unwanted. Employing "social workers" is literaly subsidising family breakup.
I ain't bearded, I don't wear sandals. I love McDonald's and I'm not a lib dem either.
I just happen to be someone that managed to rise out of the underclass even though I know we are supposed to know our place and have no brains or ambitions. So sorry to disappoint snotty Lady Finchley.
I hate the judgemental nature of you twats on here. Who the fuck do you think you are. Do you honestly reckon that if you cut the benefits to these people that jobs would suddenly appear?
Don't you think they suck benefits because there isn't a decent job out there to pay them a living wage. Would you work 10 hours a day with an hour commute at each side for £30 a week ? I fucking doubt it.
I believe in live and let live. I would still prefer to pay my taxes for single mums than fraudulent MPs,tax dodgers and bankers.
"I hate the judgemental nature of you twats on here"
Pat Nurse, your capacity for making the bleeding obvious sound glib and superficial is first rate.
We are mostly twats and we are judgemental. And yet, somehow, for someone who describes themselves as a college lecturer and a writer,who cites "The Da Vinci Code" as a favourite book, I would keep a slightly lower profile.
Why don't you lighten up a bit Wrinkled Weasel. Go find yourself a bit of totty, get it pregnant, live on the dole and chill a bit.
No wonder we have mass emigration. Who would want to live in the same country as the likes of you.
Yes, go on, clobber me some more, be as personally abusive as you like .... am I bothered?
Pat Nurse
Language, language!
If you indeed rose out of the underclass then you should know better than anybody that it can be done and benefits for mothers chosing single parenthood as a lifestyle should be stopped now. We now have several generations of family who have NEVER worked and have no plans to. Spare me your crying jaysus routine about crap jobs for crap wages - all my first jobs were just that and I had nobody to help me.
Why would anybody who can't be arsed to stay in education think they can get a job that is anything but the minimum wage? This is not about the lack of opportunties (although I agree much more needs to be done) but poverty of aspiration. As long as we are handing out benefits to girls who make single parenthood a lifestyle choice we will only expand the ever growing underclass.
Pat Nurse:
"Why don't you lighten up a bit Wrinkled Weasel. Go find yourself a bit of totty"
You clearly do not know the current price for totty.
Pat Nurse,
Where are the jobs for them? Well, there is such a thing as entrepreneurship, that thing that the French don't have a word for. Lifestyle benefits stultify initiative.
Or is the argument that without their benefits the only entrepreneurship available to young mothers will be prostitution? I doubt it somehow. It's more likely that they will delay becoming mothers until they or the father of their WANTED child can afford to support that child.
Pat Nurse said... “I hate the judgemental nature of you twats on here. Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Exactly so. What a bunch of very unpleasant neo-neanderthal throw-backs. The sheer lack of understanding of their fellow countrymen/women’s lives and the available choices or lack thereof...
And clearly few of them have ever been a teenage girl. Hence all the unpleasant and extremely ignorant moralising.
And the misogyny is palpable. Doesn’t it usually take two to make a baby? It certainly used to.
That these ignoramuses think they should be running a country beggars belief.
Simon Gardner
If you hate us so much why don't you f--k off? We wouldn't mind at all.
Nobody is just blaming the girls - it is the attitude of the underclass in general. And since it is the girls who make the lifestyle choice which couldn't be accomplished without the boys who shall we start with?
Neither you or the bearded Pat have address the poverty of aspiration. I'm still waiting....
Lady Finchley said... If you hate us so much why don't you f--k off?
Have you ever heard of that science fiction staple* the “hate brace”? Well that’s what its all about. (Well not hate so much as “despise” is becoming more accurate after yesterday’s attack of the moral vapours.) You, yourself are a very particular example; the very worst sort of Tory - that David Cameron must be desperate to sweep under the carpet before the GE.
And I have said before and will repeat for your benefit:
“(a) I happen to like Iain Dale (though the inexplicable Nadine Dorries thing is dead creepy - ref private correspondence);
(b) What on earth is the point of going somewhere where I agree with everything - can’t see the point and can’t see the fun?”
*I’m trying to remember which 30s/40s/50s SF author invented the hate brace and I just can’t recall. Google is useless on the matter - unsurprisingly. The original was a short story and very good. It must be in my loft.
Simon Gardner
And you are the worst example of a wanky Lib/Lab fool.
You know nothing about me or what I believe. We have a broken society in case you haven't heard - not broken by poverty but by absent fathers, low aspiration, low self control, no work ethic and the rest. The victims are the children - the Baby P's of the world. Funny isn't it that most of the worst child abuse cases involved parents who are paid up members of the underclass.
You really are quite simple, aren't you?
Watch yourself in your loft Simon. Sounds like the going is soft up there.
What a load of old link baiting drivel from Tom. He truly is Labour's answer to Iain Dale!
This is a deliberate provocation. It is part of Tom's audience building strategy learned at the feet of you Iain Dale, the blogging expert. It is "Morality" and it is "Anecdote" but like so often with your own outpourings it is also very wrong. Immoral almost. Shame on you both. And all for a quick blog behind the bike sheds.
Tom's blog is gratuitous drivel. All anecdotes. All generalisations. No facts. No figures. No tactics to deal. No conscience. No consciousness. Pants.
I'm sorry, but what is so radical about what Tom Harris wrote? There is not much in his post that anyone on the Labour left disagrees with.
Except, I must say, the tone. It is unpleasant, and it sounds as if he's more interested in not looking like a Guardian reader than in the single parents he talks about. He seems to believe that writing the bleedin' obvious is something to be proud of. I ask, is this the first time Tom Harris has had this thought? Has he only just realised that teenage parents have it tough? That it would be better if they were in school or in work.
Of course its better for people to have ambitions, qualifications and independence before starting families.
In the past, nearly all women were forced to be dependent, on their families and on their husbands. Now, it is just the poor and badly qualified.
Tom Harris or Iain Dale might think they are being radical. But all they are doing is trying to impress people who have convinced themselves that the left live in a romantic dream world. I vote Labour, I believe in full employment, I don't want anyone to need benefits.
Here's the tricky bit. What are you going to do to help teenage girls from poor families? What alternatives are you going to give them? Are the Conservatives going to accept that you need better employment laws to help young parents find work?
Ben
What good are employment laws if these girls (and boys) are not qualified and worse, do not want to work because they don't even know anybody who does, and they are maybe the third generation in their family without a job?
You cannot legislate for poverty of aspiration. Changing a mind set is a long term project but I am afraid that we will have to do the unthinkable and say enough is enough. No more automatic entitlement to benefits for young people. Where I come from it is unthinkable that a young person would leave school and go on benefits.
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