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

It's for your own good

I will take this opportunity to point out that several of my comments on the Peter Hitchens blogs about the 'hacking scandal' are being censored

Literally all I did was point out to people Guido's interesting post obtained via the Information Commissioner's office regarding the press and recorded offences of 'blagging' - that's it, in fact I didn't even mention details, but advised people to seek out information on the blogs

Absolutely nothing libellous, offensive, rude etc nor is anything in Guido's chart, it's all freely available government information - yet it didn't make it through

When I made the comment (which is often found on the Hitchens blog from a variety of posters) that my posts were disappearing without notice, this too failed the mods - I deliberately kept it that brief because I was pretty confident it would happen, I don't know of a way to prove this, I'm not that tech-savvy and didn't bother taking a screenshot, but I am hopeful a couple of other people had the same problem

I am not outraged by this behaviour - I think it perfectly reasonable that a company choose not to publish harmful information about itself - that's the job of others - isn't it?

Not if you listen to Hitchens arguments, last week he was warning us of the big bad politicians and how they need to be held to account

All true, but as we've just seen - nobody is holding the press, who lie, cheat and flout the law, to account and I can see no condemnation of this behaviour from Hitchens - he seems to take a 'better the devil you know' approach, and seems to justify the culture of silence between the press as a necessary evil to maintain commercial success

If we criminalise the press, and take away a vast resource of information from them (the tabloids at least) then they will not have the power to scrutinise the government

But I'd like to know who is meant to scrutinise the press - controlled by a tiny elite, they have vast power themselves and arguably papers like the Mail have a detrimental effect on our society by reducing debate to that of childish name-calling and scaremongering, we need these publications and they need to be allowed to do what they want? It's all for your own good you see

Hitchens, supposedly a man of strong moral conviction (something I've always questioned seeing as he opts to work for probably the least moral paper of them all), is quite happy to allow the press the freedom to make up s h one t, so they can make money and scrutinise the politicians, but yet won't allow people on his own blog to scrutinise one of the most powerful and influential industries in our society? The press do not scrutinise themselves ('dog eat dog'), that would just bring chaos - so how exactly do the public bring newspapers to account? They can't, which is why this hacking scandal has been quietly kept away from the public for the best part of ten years

Nobody is denying that politicians are scum, but the media are also scum, and it can quite easily be shown that the law has been violated for decades to make grubby stories about royals and celebrities to line pockets 'hold the government to account', this is not a price we must pay - scrutiny of the press will not bring about a North Korean situation, in fact the British press is infamous for it's cut-throat behaviour, you don't find it in perfectly free countries like the US, Australia, Japan or Sweden, a few ethical rules, such as those that we are supposed to already have and don't enforce, would quite easily control them

The real truth behind this is that the press in Britain need to behave in this manner to be successful, not because nobody would pay them without their gossip/nonsense, but because competition is fierce - Britain has a huge amount of national dailies, all vying for a piece of a dwindling readership - they need to be shocking, and therefore their tactics verge on the desperate - if the Sun doesn't do it, the Mail, or the Express, or the Mirror will

Whereas, in Australia for example there is only one populist rag - the Telegraph (or it's local NI equivalent), then there are two 'high-brow' papers - one left, one right - all controlled by one of the two main media players

While we're on it, virtually nothing the press do scrutinises politicians anyway, 'investigative journalism' essentially means celebrity/royal sex scandals - in fact I am struggling to think of an example of illegal activities bringing us a story for the public good (eg expenses scandal, WMD) - public interest arguments easily override this anyway, the crux of Hitchens defence (which I regard as a squeal) is that they need to be able to generate revenue, but the revenue is fixed - they just compete for a share, and in doing so engage in a race to the bottom (declining moral standards eh?)

Proper rules would not stop scrutiny, I find that scenario incredibly hard to believe when our media is so powerful anyway - it would just rid us of a few silly newspapers that are, in essence, solely there to sell smut

Losing a few unpopular (intelligent) papers might be bad for decent opinion you might say, but there'll be no trashed murder victims either

I know I have posted a few times before regarding Hitchens, first I lost respect, then I came to see him as a troll, but now I'm struggling to even take a word he says seriously - this act of self-serving deflection and hiding behind supposed 'freedom of the press' and an Orwellian nightmare is pretty abhorrent

Actually why do I keep going back? Silly boy

An experiment

Two stories mildly piqued my interest this week, not in themselves so much, but because they both reminded me of Peter Hitchens

A man (I believe 'thug' is perfectly appropriate considering his frequent use of the term) in Bristol is let off a custodial sentence after stuffing ham into the shoes of worshippers at a Mosque in Bristol

The other story is about the scouts openly recruiting more gay members, a Christian organisation, which has irked some (in my view, I don't see why, it seems Christianity has to be represented publicly by Catholics and right wing bible bashers, many Christian groups tolerate homosexuality, the established church of England being one of them, and the scouts adhere to that church)

I have a theory that we may be seeing the scouts story, as it's one of those slightly off-the-beaten-track, Christian-beat up stories, but not the bloke who got let off

Of course, the drunken racist being let off is as good a case as any for his dislike of soft sentencing, as he showed last week, but I am curious as to whether we'll see it..and if we do see it it would be a delicious irony if it focuses on how an attack on Christians is never punished

But hey, I don't want to prejudge, it may be neither, so my apologies in advance to Hitchens Jnr if this week's article is a balanced piece of critical thinking - I simply wanted to put this down before it happened rather than just say 'I said so, honest' and I couldn't really leave it in the comments, could I?

rarghh!

Cyclists - don't you just hate them?

Apparently MPs are to discuss a bill about punishing cyclists for reckless cycling, or killing

To be honest, it seems a little frivolous as I don't think they are very likely to kill us directly, or even indirectly, very often

But what I really want to rant about is the defence of cyclists, who once again continue to believe the rules do not apply to them

They cite stats that say they don't kill anyone - is anyone claiming they do? Their main crimes are breaking road rules and causing distress to pedestrians, nothing so grand as killing - it's a few kilos of thin metal going at most 30 mph, it's not particularly lethal

In particular, Guardian columnist and cycling advocate Zoe Williams says she is exasperated by the references to red light-jumping whenever bikes are discussed.
She insists the practice largely stems from fear, not arrogance, due to the high number of cyclists killed each year by heavy goods vehicles turning left at junctions, and says ministers should concentrate on tackling such deaths if they really want to make the roads safer.

 In short, she doesn't care about the trivial issue of bikes jumping lights - does anyone seriously believe this has anything to do with heavy vehicles on left hand turns? To tell the truth I don't mind the left turn on red (an idea I support for cars) as long as it's not a pedestrian crossing, what about all the other times they jump reds? In my experience typically on straights

I make a note of cyclists I see in the city every day at work, I have so far noted one single cyclist that didn't break a road rule (nothing technical about lights or helmets, usually pavement surfers or light jumpers), the vast majority seem to drive on busy pavements at speed and expect you to move...I will snap soon

And guess what happened just yesterday? I was with my mother, who is fairly immobile these days thanks to a back problem and isn't that agile, crossing at a simple pedestrian light, no turns or anything, and this dickhead in lycra ploughs straight through the middle of us at full speed, nearly knocking her over - yes, the lights were very much red (she's not that slow) and cars were waiting, there was a group of people crossing and this guy didn't even look - I had already crossed so frankly he was lucky to not hit someone, wasn't like he even had a gap!

So, Zoe Williams, defend that one - still a minor issue? Should cars break reds if they have a gap? My answer would be licence bikes as they are becoming so numerous, I should be able to report this sort of person as he is far too fast for me to even kick, and any pleasant, law-abiding cyclist should have absolutely no reason to disagree with this simple rule that all other vehicles are subject to

She adds: "Can you imagine if every time we talked about cars people complained about drivers doing 80mph on the motorway?

This has got to be one of the most up-your-own-arse arguments I've ever heard - bikes jumping red lights is comparable to slight speeding?

Considering light-jumping is an offence for both vehicles why are we making this comparison? You jump a red in a car you will probably get in trouble, why is the same offence for bikes as trivial as doing an appropriate speed

And likewise - drivers can, and do, get punished for doing 80, bikes have no enforcement - get some actual rules being applied then maybe we'll start making crazy comparisons

Maybe I will vote 'yes' after all

Another No to AV campaign video, and now it's just getting silly

To be honest this sort of bullshit where they make up all sorts of nonsense to scare people is starting to wind me up

Firstly Alan B'stard makes a comeback in a ridiculously unrealistic political scenario - fairly clearly aimed at your average man in the street who doesn't do politics, but I was struck by the fact that the result was exactly the same as what we have now - a party who tear up their manifesto and do a deal with the Lib Dems to form government and have no accountability

...in what way is that different to what we have? They just tacked on 'because of AV', when FPTP has given us exactly the same situation

Then they end with the frankly offensive statement 'one person, one vote' - one of the main beefs of reformers like me is that we do not currently have 'one person, one vote' - more than half of voters cannot win and therefore do not even have a chance of being heard, for FPTP campaigners to somehow claim it is one person and one vote is downright lying (of course it technically is, and the film deliberately obscured the lines between voting for a government and a single MP)

What they really want is 'one Tory/Labour voting person, one vote...in a safe seat'

Anyway - Yes to AV! Out of spite