Featuring Phillipa

Quick Thought For Political Obsessives

Statistically speaking, on election day, it is more likely that you will be run over on the way to the polling station, then that your vote will count for anything.


Sobering thought isn’t it ,and while I am busy working, I am going to "Feature ", my friend Phillipa`s latest Piece on Fortean Times . As Arthur’s legend puts it , "bringing it to a smaller audience" . She is , I think it is fair to say , a complex character , and here she is writing at her best on subjects she feels passionately about .I do not agree with all of this by the way and argued at length with her.



Cameron IS NuLab?
Could you get a cigarette paper betweeen the approaches of Cameron and NuLab to the recent report on children? Today, I understand that DC has advocated tax breaks to make fathers stay with their families as absent fathers are the reason for all the ills in society apparently? Well, makes a change from blaming women. Quite how forcing a man to stay in a miserable household they don't want to be in is going to help is beyond me. If it's a feckless father then the extra money will end up being spent on alcohol or drugs or something other than the child. Just forcing people to live in the same space does not happiness make. Neither does it make a good parent.

Where does this fluffy idea of fathers come from? Hark back to the Victorian era? Where 'childhood' was invented and children were very definately seen and not heard. Even as recent as my own childhood (say nothing) it was the norm for the mother to rear the children and the father to come home after work and the children to be quiet and not bother him. Given that women worked and children played outside, you could pretty much live until a teenager before having a conversation with your father. Rich kids who had nannies and went to private school didn't see 'daddy' much at all. Hang on, aren't they the ones running the country right now? Yup.

They did alright. Look at history and the posh model and you will see that fathers aren't essential. People have overcome some pretty awful mothers too. So what was different then? The social structure was such that children were subject to discipline. I think employment plays a part in that children would see a future, have a direction, an expectation. The decline in manufacturing and the restructuring of the welfare/housing system does not help (neither does immigration) Also they had activities and those were more freely available and spontaneous than is possible now. The law is such that now, doing anything with children is seen as dangerous for the good people and continues to attract the bad. Once again this government has reacted to a genuine concern stupidly, making the problem worse.

There was discipline in schools, backed up by discipline in the home (which is near impossible now) and discipline by policemen on the streets (again, totally impossible).

Single mothers are nothing new. There were many many men killed in the Great War and so a great many 'single' mothers. Ah, but there's the difference? You're not really talking of a generation of people sadly widowed are you? You're talking of a generation of feckless parents of both sexes, led by the nose to this end from the onset of puberty by stupid State interference. Educated into sex and drugs and rock and roll by NuLab. Don't work, there is none, take a computer course and spend your time downloading 'gangsta rap'. The only activities after school are drug dealers? There's no police presence and no boxing clubs or boys clubs (remember those?) What role models are there?

The worst child in ASBO terms I heard about recently lived near Wolverhampton. Quite young, about 12 years old I think. The only child of a single dad, whom he lived with, who was unemployed and had bugger all to do all day but be a father to his son. When his son was out and about doing all this vandalism, where was his dad? His father and his girlfriend said that people were too hard on the lad and he was just being boisterous.

Boisterous eh? Just goes to show that when 'daddy' does live at home he's not necessarily any bloody use!

The Conservative government will NOT stop the sex ed programme in schools.

In fact they have, as yet, shown no sign of doing anything genuinely constructive. And I honestly think it will be another victory for Labour if Bliar holds off long enough for a new leader to seem a shiny new hope for Britain. And that, my friends, will be a very very sad day indeed.


AND THIS WAS A COMMENT OF MINE

I have re read and I think what you are saying is that other social developments are to blame for social problems we have and that single motherhood is not in itself a worthy target. I`m not so sure you can have it all ways It is not necessary to suggest that all fathers are paragons of virtue to have an opinion that a father and mother would generally be a better bet for the child . I will admit that finding evidence for this will be next to impossible given the impossibility of establishing a class neutral sample but still it is something we see around us . We should therefore be setting policies in place to encourage this desirable state and least stop the state taking over the role of the father usually with his money.
Your conclusion , in that there are any , seem to tend the way of all silly feminist thought which is that men are an unfortunate encumbrance to the happy home there , if anything , to get drunk and be abusive.

Not so. The absence of father figures from estates and schools has been “catastrophic” for white working class boys and part of the difference between them and there far better socio economic equivalents is exactly that Asians and Chinese families , for example have retained a nuclear family and are ascending . Educational results and crime figures for these fatherless groups , whites and Afro Caribbean are staggeringly worse that for others in exactly the same social circumstances. Of course you are right to say that the fact that the single mother is generally contributing so little to the community or the treasury takes a further framework of value away. True , you cannot hide this from children and she will tend to be treated as the child she has chosen to remain by young males. Quite clearly a woman who lives as a serf will command little authority and in any case the link between action and reward has been fatally broken .Does one blame the actual women for allowing herself to get into this circumstance . Partly yes . My wife as you know came from a very poor part of London and was the daughter of a single mother who came to Islington to get a Council flat. However she did not do this deliberately and the fact her marriage had failed was not because the intention that it should work was never there .More than this, she was prepared to work FULL TIME and leave Marian in what were inadequate care facilities. It is my opinion than while today a lot more help would be available that lesson ,that if you make problems with your own mistakes you pay for them, was more important in her life than any number of state crèches . Now it is to easy to sit around saying oh dear I can’t be head of the BBC I there will get no job at all. Additionally , by far the largest group are those who actively chose this way of life. Remember this , they are not only resented by men . They are also fiercely resented by the many other young women who are obliged to live with their parents work full time and
Make endless sacrifice to while they watch there efforts squandered on the most feckless of the community living a far better life in every way
It is certain that men are just as bad but they do not happen to have this choice
I know you are always on the side of single mothers but you take it more personally than is useful. You are one single mother , not all of them . You do not speak for them all a lot of what you say is sensible but what you do not discuss is what w the taxpayer should or should not be paying for . To actually be paying to undermine socially useful structures like the nuclear family is an outrage and unless you are suggesting that policy should be set to further undermine the family I `m not clear where this sort of special pleading takes us