Thursday, February 22, 2007

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

11 comments:

Frobisher said...

Worryingly I keep visiting this blog & finding it interesting

Newmania said...

Goody.....I `m not that fussed with it myself though. I like Miss Smack

CityUnslicker said...

prone as I am to violent disagreement with Phillipa. Much of this has some ring of truth to it.

However, if tax breaks are not a solution what is? I think the idea of stopping sex ed is mad.

Tackling teenage pregnancies is a good idea, perhaps we could copy the Dutch who seem to have it sussed.

But I have not much to add, excpet that a tax system that is anti-family is clearly not helping the situation.

Newmania said...

excpet that a tax system that is anti-family is clearly not helping the situation.

I agree CU but thee is also too much denigration of the role of the father

Anonymous said...

You're right CU - tax being anti-family, but I'm sure the restoration of tax benefit to marriage will be of limited effect; temptations outside of marriage are just too great, people are too promiscuous and divorce is destigmatised totally. Also the state makes marital breakdown cheap by subsidising it.

Philipa offers no answers (what does she think ?) and I would like to see this written in a less vitriolic way for wider publication as I do think it has great merit.

What do I think ?

Are we getting eggs before chickens ? Have we confused ourselves that 'family' enabled an ascendant society whereas it may have been that it was an ascendant society that enabled family and that 'golden era' of the Victorians (post Victorian too).

How do we get back to more civilised ways ?

Our society needs to fall a lot further first - there needs to be real suffering and a real fear that we may not get back from it - this will galvanise people like me who do nothing much but talk.

There needs to be a collapse of the welfare state which is at the root of it all and which no party has the courage, will and much less the honesty to challenge. I deliberately use the word 'collapse' because the governments are not going to give us a 'weaning off' in fact we see the reverse.

How many people (including working) do anything of any real economic use ? Very few I would think, and I especially include in that the office professions. We are surplus in population so a moratoriam on immigration.

Wages and expectations need to come down. Why should a train driver in Devon expect to live better that a doctor in industrialised India ?

Then people will have no choice but to look after their own old and won't be able to depend on the state to subsidise their divorces. Chaps will have less desire or ability to chase after skirt.

A whole tier of left-wing lawyers and lobbies needs to be removed and the deciet that is the penal system made honest once again.

Philipa complex ? Maybe, but what she has said seems very direct to me.

(I'm in a rush and could not give this my best I'm afraid)

Newmania said...

Looks oretty good to me Kev and i `m sure philliopa will apprecitae your input . I have already written my moans on her blog so I`m keeping stum

Anonymous said...

Could you summarise them here too ?

Another point I left off was that it may all seem gloomy and that other societies seem to be coping better. But the productive people of other societies are better represented.

We get the governments we deserve - Labour and the Conservatives are useless and for that matter so are the police. I don't think we'd be any worse for not having them. Things are not quite bad enough yet for people to start holding government to account, but I think they will soon. Any more fianancial pressure and people round here (me too) won't cope. But the game's up because we all know the prisons are full and that the threats are empty. So my plan is to withdraw my consent for the government to govern me - I'll stash money, drive an untaxed car by hooky imports, ignore tax demands ...

The British parliament delivers the worst of socialism (interference) and the worst of capitalism (crime & disorder). I detest it and no longer wish to support it.

Oh...


...ban drinking in parliament - it generates arrogance and hubris, at least until this is sorted; anyway - the services, railways and police aren't allowed to be intoxicated on duty so why on earth should politicians be able to ?

Anonymous said...

I should explain I'm a Gemini - hence the schizophrenic difference between my last entries (nyahahah!)

But really, the two do tie-in and just let me know if you need clarification.

Philipa said...

Hi y'all. Glad you liked the post/ found it interesting. It's not comprehensive and as you say does not detail solutions. Just a quick comment on my blog.

Sex ed today is mad. Sort of 'hey, have a go at this why don't you?' - an assumed end result. When in my day we had basic lessons as to how babies were made and the moralising was left to our parents. Most of whom said that sex before marriage, or at the very least at school, was wrong. Today schoolgirls can have abortions and parents have no right to interfere. Whilst of course no-one wants to encourage a child to be bullied, this may give no chance to parents who genuinely care and are shut out of a very confused childs future. I think this is wrong. As I understand it the Conservative party have no plans for change.

I would amend the welfare system, not see it collapse. I would put bobbies back on the beat and tighten the borders and get rid of as many asylum seekers I could until the whole sorry mess was sorted and we could offer genuine asylum seekers a decent and organised future.

I would change a few laws to stop demonising parents and yes, I would financially make it more attractive to be married than not. I would like to see the State out of the bedroom and recind the recent law on living together and change civil partnerships to not be dependant on a homosexual relationship. ( to clarify that, I don't think it necessary for people to declare or be assumed they have sex. This would allow same sex, or different sex partnerships that do not have a sexual element to assume a legal commitment)

CU - the Dutch system you mention sounds interesting and thanks for your comments. Any details?

This is off the cuff so forgive me if I'm not making as much sense as I'd like. I must rush off and deal with something so sayonara dudes.

x

Anonymous said...

thought you weren't posting thill the weekend?

Newmania said...

That was the plan Mutley which I an sticking to now

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