Do we need daddies?

In the aftermath of these riots-cum-looting, or general thuggishness, whichever you prefer, much has predictably been made of fatherless families

For example IDS has just said:

“We’ve been ambivalent about family structure in Britain for far too long.”

Of course, we all know this means single-parent families, predominantly single mothers, but are they really to blame?

Well, yes and no, I think

Undoubtedly the rise of the Vicky Pollard style teenage mother with her feckless brood is a problem - arguably if there were good hard-working fathers in those lives those children would be much better off (or alternate partner if you wish, I don't necessarily think it has to be a male, although generally it's going to be)

But this does not simply mean a single parent is worse, or a problem in itself

I come from a single parent family, did I go and out and rampage through the streets? I can't prove this here of course, but I'd like to think you believe me

You see it's all well and good to bang on about families and how bad people like me are, how I'm so much less likely to have a degree (masters) or a job (I do) or have a family (married), but the real issue is hidden in what I said earlier - 'good' and 'hard-working' - it is the stable environment that is vastly more important

I bet you we all know a single parent, and I bet, unless you roam around inner city ghettos that the kids are fairly standard, and likewise you may have right terrors born to 'proper' families

The statistics bear out of course, but they also bear out for black people - anybody want to suggest that's inherent to what they are rather than where they are?

You live in a place where young women are poorly educated, have little respect for themselves and are treated like dirt by feckless young men, who also have no respect for themselves or anything, then you are going to get social problems and out of control kids - even if you were to force marriage, and even fidelity, upon them, you are not addressing the root of the problem - the single mothers in question are a symptom, not the cause

So there's no need to worry about young Mrs Smith down the road, whose husband just buggered off with his secretary, producing the next gun-toting hoodlum

I do think welfare is misguided - we effectively encourage people to breed and be irresponsible, because we won't let anyone starve, but this just encourages dependency, ironically my mother never did, and never would, claim welfare

Ultimately this is about those willing, or able, to engage with society and play by the rules, and those who can't, or won't - a breakdown of respect, particularly for themselves, the individual family structure has little to do with that

So how could I ever say single parent families are to blame? I couldn't, and frankly anyone who says that is a dimwit, or just hateful

What I do say is a lot of these problems do happen to come from single-parent families, but what is needed is a stable and loving home, the culture that happens to create single mothers in deprived, inner-city areas rife with gangs is to blame - attacking the notion of single parenthood itself is, at best, just plain daft

How to get on in life

As if we needed reminding that in this world it's not what you know but who, it transpires that Jacqui Smith is to front an investigation on BBC 5live into the porn industry

It's not enough that she's paid handsomely as a 'consultant' (i.e. back door to Parliament) for minimal work, on a gold-plated minister's pension for two years of ineptitude, and is actually being considered for appointment to the BBC Trust but she gets a stint in the media to present on an issue that led to her own downfall

Now it's clear where the production company are coming from, she was hit by a porn scandal and she's known so there's a good angle here, much like the 'Anne Widdecombe meets people she dislikes' documentary, but she is no more an expert on the issue than you or I, and considering her frankly appalling stint as one of the chief lawmakers of the country it seems rather a kick in the teeth that she is handed cushy jobs for simply having a public presence

She is, in short, a metaphor for what is wrong with our political system - she comes through the party system, is quickly promoted because she's a woman, put into a supposedly vitally important and prestigious role under an unelected and unwanted Prime Minister without any sort of qualification or experience for the job because essentially, there's no other candidates left, then f**ks up pretty much every decision and is forced to resign after less than two years due to a combination of ineptitude and revelations about fraudulent claims. She is then one of the relatively few Labour MPs to booted out of her constituency (I believe the appropriate term would be 'flogged') and is she punished for all this...

...no, she is given not only an MPs wonderful pension, but a ministerial one - now I do not mind MPs and ministers receiving pensions (although I'd rather they reflect the reality of the modern workplace) for their public service, but when a person has been parachuted into the role, with no accountability, and is generally regarded to have failed, is it right that they are rewarded for their failure?

Put simply there is no reason not to take these jobs, if the party offers you an important job in the government why not just take it? It's win-win as the worst that can happen is the media criticise you and you might lose your seat, for which you will be paid, there's no punishment, just get up there and do whatever you want

Then, to rub it in to us plebs who struggle to make ends meet, these people are handed consultancy work for large corporations, being effectively paid our yearly salaries in minutes - they have no skill, no experience, just an 'in' to the major parties, while we are told to work hard and be rewarded for our efforts in a 'meritocratic' system, if you get in to the political game all you have to do is pat the right backs and you'll find yourself right at the top being handed jobs you would otherwise never be considered for

sigh...rant over

Why do we pay for this?

Imagine if you will, giving an MP or a minister breakfast in bed every morning, personally delivered by a tax-payer funded lackey who cooks all your meals and even gets your clothes out

Imagine the outrage - Brown got it in the neck for having a cleaner, Smith decorated her house, Tories cleaned moats - our elected officials were living the high-life at our expense, the audacity to have someone deliver them breakfast at 8am when most of us are already on our way to work on a rushed down piece of toast

But no-one ever mentions this side of the Queen - unelected, with no practical purpose, and yet she receives far more money than any individual elected politician, and not a peep from the press about our taxes wasted on butlers and footmen, in fact, while politicians constantly have to engage in hairy-shirt contests, the taxpayer-funded lives of royalty are practically praised and seen as something interesting and quite acceptable

Is it not a tad strange?

Get it right..or maybe left

I seem to remember that a while back the Mail was unhappy at councils abusing no-drinking rules to cover all areas, such as parks and suburbs, as an attack on people's liberty

Now however, they are all for it in Nottingham, because they dislike the 24-hour drinking rules

But wait a minute, binge drinking existed long before the licensing changes, and there's no evidence to suggest that the liberalisation increased it, nor did it reduce it, as was the intention - this was what the government admitted when it said it was 'not working' - hence why there are absolutely no facts in this article, because they would show that little has changed and barely any establishments use the new licensing laws (late-night clubs where all the trouble actually came from already existed...)

They are simply against a measure that didn't really do anything - good spot, guys, but hardly a triumph, seeing as you opposed it for encouraging more drinking, rather than it being a waste of time - I'm yet to see evidence that says supermarkets shouldn't sell booze at 4am...

But then, in a rare show of balance for the Mail, they provide criticism from the civil liberties brigade:

However, there are concerns that some councils may be too heavy-handed in the way they introduce new byelaws, possibly putting an end to picnics in the park.

Dylan Sharpe of Big Brother Watch said: 'This is yet another piece of legislation with the potential to create criminals out of law-abiding people.'

Don't know which way to turn, do they...

Sterilise, or not sterilise?

A rather interesting, if somewhat alarming, debate has sprung up about the mother who has had 13 kids taken away from her and is expecting her 14th, Theresa Winters

In the article, A N Wilson makes a fairly well-pitched, emotive argument that sterilisation would be an appropriate response to such drains on the state purse (yes, she and her partner live on benefit)

It's an obvious solution - I have oft heard this argument from people, even my own parents, in response to the irresponsible 'Vicky Pollards' of the world, usually from hyped up cases in the Mail, sometimes from the real-world - 'sterilise 'em all'

Whether or not they would actually agree with state-forced sterilisation is another matter, were the state to actually suggest it I think they would be less sure about their flippant remarks, but anyway, it's a perfectly valid debate

Wilson makes a good, if obvious argument - if people are abusing the state, i.e. the rest of us, in such a way then they should be stopped - the simplest solution would be an enforcement of sterilisation

It's true, nobody agrees with this sponging off the state, and it would be the simplest solution...but then 'simple' doesn't necessarily mean right - normally the simplest solution refers to trampling all over someone else rights to maintain law and order for those who decree what good order is, with liberty comes a degree of disorder, after all

To enforce this rule, first you must decide who shall be sterilised, no doubt Winters is exceptional, otherwise she wouldn't be in the news - but how many babies is wrong? She's had thirteen, but should it be ten? Five? Three-strikes-and-you're-out? Maybe just one? Bear in mind all of these will become a burden on the state, so where do you draw the line - this case of thirteen is an exceptional and emotive issue - it would be pointless to draw up legislation based on someone who has achieved the fairly monumental task of carrying fourteen kids (or at least thirteen to term)

Maybe three-strikes sounds reasonably fair - you've been warned after all, now you get sterilised - but what is the criteria? Should this relate to just benefit claimants who have their children taken away? Or how about benefit claimants who just have a lot of kids? They're a burden too, less foster care involved, but still paid for by the state, or what about tax-paying workers who have kids taken into care? - It happens, they're sending kids into state care as well

Sounds a bit like a 'slippery slope' argument - well seeing as this is an argument from the right, who are the owners of 'slippery slope', I think it's fair game - and besides, I am merely asking where it's fair to draw the line, there seems little to rationalise here - and while Wilson admits this line of debate he doesn't even try to deny these obvious ramifications, he is merely starting a 'debate' in that particular paragraph, however the debate seems rather one-sided throughout the rest of the article, based on assumptions such as

No school will ever educate them. No employer will ever want to pay them wages. Future generations of honest, taxpaying citizens will have to carry them - and all the social problems they will bring with them - as an unwanted, indeed hated, burden.

As individuals, stuffing their faces with junk food, blowing what passes for minds with alcohol or drugs, they are unlikely to have an interesting thought, do a useful deed, or have a relationship which is not abusive or damaging to others.

Those are rather strong words, yes the statistics show that these children are unlikely to fare very well, but statistics also show that those born to single parents are also likely to turn to crime and have worse education - yet here I am, I'd hate to think if some statistic had prevented me from being born - using statistics for such a purpose is going down a very dangerous road

Wilson makes the assumption that all these children will end up being criminals - again this is emotive, she has had thirteen kids - but several have had genetic and other disabilities, one died as a baby, three have been disabled

Now it's my turn to make assumptions - do disabled children tend to turn to crime? I haven't noticed many gangsters with Cerebral Palsy, and one would think they get better care and schooling than a healthy child (ironic in some ways) - making this assumption, we are now left with nine children who will be the scum-of-the-Earth Wilson so detests, not thirteen - he would have helped his argument somewhat by factoring this in when she started raving about prison-fodder when 30% of the 13 kids in the headline are unlikely to be even near criminals

Of course, they are still a burden on the state - but Wilson deliberately brings in the criminal aspect and uses it throughout the article, it needs some balance

As far as I can tell, this is a broadside on all those who leech off the state - I find little reason to attack Winters more than a feckless youth with merely one child, in that case forced sterilisation of any who claim benefits seems appropriate - some might say we are heading into the realms of totalitarian control with that sort of programme

Would it perhaps not be a better solution to reform the benefits system rather than give benefits out and then sterilise people for abusing the system? If we wish to live in a welfare state there are always going to be those who rely on it - workers are always going to pay for those who don't work as hard, there is probably a tipping point at which there are too many takers, but inevitably if you can't tolerate people sliding into real poverty then there will be people who live off hand-outs, a certain degree of social conscience must exist in a welfare state - perhaps it would be better to reduce the state intervention before we ramp it up any further

It would be less effective, yes, but probably a lot safer

Where are we headed?

I've been thinking lately, which in itself is never good, about old age and what will happen in the near future

I, and pretty much everyone alive right now, have all grown up with old people who went through the second world war, they may not have even served, but they witnessed it, grew up through terrible hardship... et cetera, et cetera

This has always produced an anchor of respect for the older generation, 'they fought off Hitler', or 'they lived through the blitz' - the onus has always been that the younger of us haven't done anything so meaningful

And by younger of us, I now mean anyone under the age of 70 - only those older than that will have any meaningful memories of the war, and to have served you need to be at the very least 82

I am not questioning what they went through, I am questioning what will happen when they're gone - in 10-20 years there will remain but a few centurions in wheelchairs, much like the last survivors of the first world war we have now

Even if there are still quite a few left by then, that broad connection that we all have with the war through our own relatives will be lost, grandparents will be like my own parents - Baby Boomers

No more will we have grandparents who witnessed D-Day, or even German air raids, as my own grandfather did, too young to actually serve, and yet he has already passed of old age

I've been wondering how this will affect generational communication, the loss of the living memory of one of the most significant events in world history is in itself important, but I've really been wondering how this will affect how the old will be viewed

You might think we just go back to how it was before - but there never was a 'before', our modern world has never had a generation who didn't go through one of the major world wars - we're talking about the end of the Victorian period here, not only was old age a relative rarity but technologically and politically it was eons ago, the world is immensely different now (we have the X factor now...)

So I see this as a real break - the first point in 'modern' (or post-modern if you want to be a pedant) history where the old will have no moral authority over the young, no massive issue of respect to beat the rest of us with

Think about it, the old aged will soon be the Baby Boomers - the generation which many of its own call 'the worst generation' - what tales of horror will they scare the grandkids with? The Cold War? The Summer of Love?

I don't particularly regard the Baby Boomers as any worse than the rest of us, they are usually seen as indicative of greed and excess, with a monopoly on power and placing a burden on the future generations, but that really doesn't matter - the point is that they aren't held in any higher esteem than the younger members of society

So when they become the old there'll be no nostalgic stories of where they served, or respect based on the fact that they shot down 17 Nazis, they'll just be people who lived through a time of relative security and increasing standards of living, granted there were negatives like the threat of Nuclear holocaust and the IRA attacks, but they don't compare to the nostalgia of 'fighting Gerry'

So how will it change? Will we as a society be more resentful of the large, privileged group who will now be a burden upon us? Will we continue to respect our elders and nothing will change? Will politics modernise substantially?

You could use the monarchy as a metaphor here - the Queen will, I'm sorry to say, eventually die, the much-loved sovereign who is held in high esteem and whose good grace has probably kept the monarchy alive in this country, will be replaced by her son - ridiculed by many, held in contempt by some, he will never attain the same level of respect as his mother, what little deference there is left for the monarchy will die with Liz, and that may well represent the symbolic death of that generation as well

In a wider sense, will we learn from the past? Many historians attribute, at least to some extent, the farcical first world war on the century of relative peace preceding it - the hardship of war was long forgotten and in many ways, romanticised

Somehow I doubt we'll be sending Imperial forces off expecting them home for Christmas, but will nations be less inclined to make peace the main priority? Maybe we'll become more selfish and protectionist, despite the impact of the UN and globalisation

We've already seen that people have largely forgotten the fear over totalitarian ideas that Nazi Germany provided us, I wonder how many adults from the 1950s would like the idea of ID cards being reintroduced - there has been an increasing trend of late for our selfish fears to circumscribe the basic freedoms that Churchill celebrated

No doubt we are a freer and more liberal country now, but it seems we are more and more willing to give up basic rights for our 'safety'

Likewise people seem to be prepared to resort to more extreme action, I could use voting for the BNP as one example, but there's a lot of other issues in that one

No doubt it will be an interesting few decades - in some ways it will be good to see what happens without a generation who can inspire huge levels of guilt in the rest of us, it really is quite amazing how a conflict which people had no choice over has been used as a stick to beat the rest of us with - many right-wingers talk about disrespect and how the young couldn't have fought the war (not that they did either) when in reality they had no choice in the matter and behaved as any human would have when confronted with that reality

I often wonder what the vast number of soldiers who never got out of their twenties would make of the use of their names now

But regardless, I just hope that we do in fact remember our history as it becomes less and less raw to those currently alive, and we don't, once again, forget our past

County House

So apparently rural communities are under threat from the closure of their shops and pubs

Hardly news, but I was more interested in the belief that it is the lack of 'affordable housing' causing this problem - meaning villages are full of commuters and holiday houses, instead of 'local people'

League of Gentlemen jokes aside, I feel this is a rather short-sighted approach

The problem is that not enough people use rural services and provisions - shops and pubs don't get enough business in essence, and I agree that to some extent this is caused by the rise of commuter belts and holiday villages, although the two are a bit different

But there is more to it than simply needing to add more people to the community - why exactly is there less business? Because nobody is at home in the day

Now if you asked me, being a village person myself, why very few people use the local provisions I would indeed say there is nobody home - only pensioners and housewives, but I would like to emphasise that last group housewives (fine, or househusbands) - there has been a huge decline in the number of stay-at-home parents in recent decades, meaning rather than one spouse being at home, engaging with the local community, the house is empty and they are both off somewhere - hence nobody to pop to the post office for a bottle of milk

I am not endorsing a return to the old sole bread-winner lifestyle, as certain right-wing pundits do, I merely point it out as a fact that both partners are more than likely to be working these days

I feel that this is a major factor in rural decline - I don't pass judgement on society for it, that's just the way we've gone and this seems a fairly obvious economic outcome

Secondly, there is the point about commuters - images of well-attired London yuppies heading off to the city at 6am springs to mind, but one must remember that virtually all workers in a village 'commute' - that can be, as in my case, a six mile drive to town, likewise all my family work locally, but not in the actual village - villages do not have jobs, unless as in a few cases I know they happen to house an office or other large employer

Were you to build more housing in my village, assuming these people intended to work, they too would be commuters - unless they found a (low-paid) job in said pub or shop, where the combined employment is about 15

There are other rural jobs - arable farms of course in my native East Anglia, but now they are very intensive, highly mechanised operations, the few employment opportunities they present are seasonal - not great for securing the rural economy

The holiday home issue, which blights the south coast, is not the same as this and probably makes the situation worse, but it is not something I've had first hand experience of, but arguably the commuter aspect still threatens underneath that anyway

So at the bottom of this is that there aren't enough jobs to support the communities - this has always been the way in rural places (at least since the industrial revolution kicked off), children grow up in the village and move to the towns to find work - now that the agricultural employment sector has been reduced to nothing and few spouses stay at home it is unsurprising that village economies have been harshly exposed

What these campaigners want is more housing for people who 'live' there - thus using the services and keeping them going - but I fear they are over-simplifying, more people would just mean more empty houses

With regard to the places that are vacant for half the year, I understand, but I still feel they will hit the next hurdle if they clear that, which villages like mine are currently at

So ultimately the solution is to bring more jobs into villages - the most active villages in my area tend to have one notable business located there, which does keep things like shops going - but many small, particularly farming based, ones, are completely devoid of employment opportunities

Likewise it's clear that society is damaging the role of the post offices with the Internet, so the villages must fight back with the Internet - one core way for rural-dwellers to make a living is through Internet businesses or tele-working - thus there are more people at home to use the local facilities rather than their local tesco express in the city

You must also keep up with modern life - people still like pubs, but these days it's all about catchment - pubs need to attract their locals from far wider than just the few hundred people in the actual village, our 'local' is actually in the next village and is very popular - the decline is in part down to rising overheads, a problem in itself, and changing drinking habits, but it should be remembered that if a pub only has a handful of punters it's not really a successful business - very free marketeer of me to say so, but like I say, I think campaigners should focus their attention on the costs, taxes and the breweries before simply wanting to expand the population

Likewise, while still in free-market mode, half the problem with small rural shops is they are reliant on pensioners and welfare claimants - now while I like my shop and try to use it, the fact is post offices are unfortunately almost redundant now - you don't need to collect payments, pay bills, tax etc at the PO anymore - it's all done online, hence why the PO has tried in vain for years to basically be a bank or anything else that will get people in the door - it has got to the stage where subsidisation seems appropriate, and I don't completely oppose that - basing public services purely on profit does not produce good service in my experience, and while we're on public service, it's not convenient for many old people to live in villages anymore - with bus routes non-existent and rather ironically, the most convenient shops disappearing, they are better off in the towns

Truth is there are a lot of reasons why the rural communities are dying, modern life stacks the odds against a rural business - but throwing catch-all ideas about increasing housing probably won't solve a thing - it needs novel, and ultimately individual, solutions to preserve each one, if it is even right that we should