Saturday, April 12, 2008

Got Carried Away

I have been reading Hopi Sen and gathered a few thoughts on marriage. His stuff is very good as entertainment if morally corruping and wrong


A good amble through of the standard apologist response to inconvenient facts Hopi .I am not quite sure what you have said here that is not said on daily basis in the Guardian new Statesman and the BBC, but you do say it endearingly
The Press , you imply , are perfectly beastly mention the lifestyle of Ms. Mathews . First box ticked then, the lie that the media is dominated by dreadful right wing tendencies …no mention of Murdoch ? Shame .Karen’s previous record of exploiting relationships for housing and benefits is relevant in that such a morally degraded creature would plausibly exploit her child .The social welfare and housing system are of course complicit in the process even if responsibility mainly rest with the doer of the deed. I will not excuse her , as you do , on the basis that ‘society is not fair’ .
Then you fight a valiant battle against the claim made by absolutely no-one that marriage universally ensures moral behaviour . You refute the claim , made by no-one , that in history there have been no examples of immorality predating the current malaise and that marriage was at all times the norm.
You , mystifyingly , blame unemployment ( solution ..get a job) and pronounce yourself overjoyed at the replacement of the family with Soviet style crèches .
Having eaten your cake you then swing into having it , with a call for Labour to value the family and the community. That would be lovely but it would not be Labour who detest ordinary families and express this dislike with hard cash .
The point of this tawdry story can only be symbolic it happens to combine elements like idleness , callous disregard for ordinary values and a benefit suckling single/endlessly coupling mother . The themes that lie behind the way people react to it are not misguided at all. If you want to see flabbily gaseous political campaigning resting on a random meaningless event look at Blair on the Bulger case. Here there is at least some connection to the political reaction.
Leaving aside your Tardis excursions into deep history ( Look what vandals the Vikings were?) . The debate is actually this . Is marriage and family stability valuable ,should the government stop destroying it and how much is it actually the Government’s fault ? Finally is anything new really happening at all
Well it is a new problem . Children now are three times more likely to live in a one parent household than in 1972 ,and Britain now has 1.9 million lone parent households, an increase of 200,000 since Labour came to Power. In London, rules that made it harder to use marriage as means to immigrate lead to a third cut in the number of ceremonies . Marriage has slumped to its lowest level for 150 year and married couples as proportion in the adult population being 53.3%. They were about 2/3 in the 70s.Married women are out numbered by single and divorced women for the fist time this year. One in three children will experience divorce or separation before the age of sixteen and UNICEF.. yes even that left wing collection of whiners, say that Britain’s position as having the least happy children in the developed world is due to the high level of family breakdown.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter though ? Not so. ONS showed that children of single parent families are about twice as likely to have mental health problems .Children from Lone Parent Families are 2,.4 times as likely to smoke ,1.6 times as likely to drink alcohol .In the US 63% of teenage suicides , 90 % of homeless and 85% of juvenile prisoners are form Fatherless homes ( 70 % of UK young offenders coke from fatherless homes and again in the UK about the same proportion of young drug abusers . You might also look at also Patricia Morgan Civitas , Jill Kirby of the Centre for Policy Studies if you are interested in the truth.). Don’t say marriage is just incidental to the single parent story either .Only one in twelve married couples par within five years of the child’s birth for unmarried couples that number is ONE IN TWO.
Marriages decline has been disguised by immigration . It has had a disproportionate effect on white working class boys educationally . This was one of the conclusion of Iain Duncan Smiths report and it has not been refuted. How could it be ? Two out of five children are born to unmarried parents that figure was one in eight in 1980 so it is all getting worse
Alright then but is it New Labour’s fault ?I think the blame can be shared between Labour directly direct fault and the progressive wider constituency . On the obvious side of the equation is the money .The Institute of fiscal studies shows that if a couple are earning £5000 and £15000 a year respectively they will lose £5400 in benefits if they continue to share a home .Care have shown that many couples are £50 per week worse of f they stay together rising to £100. A Couple on £18000 who live in the same house pay a penalty of £8588 per year or 40% of their pre-tax income .A couple on £50,000 per year would be £7000 worse off . Shortfalls then are throughout the population . No wonder 200,000 cohabiting couples are pretending to live apart
I appreciate that social and economic changes are at work and also that groups like war widows show that single motherhood alone is not a curse . Nonetheless Brown abolished the marriage allowance ,already eroded ,and will not allow tax allowances to be transferable. Priority in the housing queue is routinely given to single mothers ,encouragement of the use of abortion as a contraceptive technique , the absurd myth of the girl who does not know she is pregnant or how it happened . (For God’s sake what world do these people live in, some bourgeois island of fantasy ?) Sure Start , has failed to be used by those it was intended for . National colleges for parenting and assorted gimmicks are only that and the blameless middleclass divorcee blonde with grief , wheeled it by the BBC are beside the point.
So it is entirely obvious why Karen Mathews seems to sum up so much that has gone badly wrong . It looks like Labour’s Britain. Sad bored useless and so pathetic as to invent a fantasy scam while idling a feral life away on benefits in social housing with no respect for anything least of all herself . Meanwhile who pays ….Ordinary working families struggling to live decent lives with no help from the state whatsoever .
The left assault on marriage and Conservative Plans to remove the impediments were the precursor to the first swing from Gordon brown to Cameron. One of the groups to do so were women and amongst them were as many unmarried mothers as any other group.


18 comments:

James Higham said...

The left assault on marriage and Conservative Plans to remove the impediments were the precursor to the first swing from Gordon brown to Cameron. One of the groups to do so were women and amongst them were as many unmarried mothers as any other group.

This last was an interesting point.

CityUnslicker said...

being married is to enter a world of self-support. you have a partner to lean on and to work things through.

On your own, with limited access to family, one is more reliant on the state if things are to go wrong(health, job etc).

of course socialists want to end such a practice if possible.

Ms Matthews is not going to vote tory, is she?

Power has no price, when other peoples money is to be spent obtaining and keeping it.

Newmania said...

That is the nub of it isn't it CU thanks for that I am not resuming I just got caught up in attacking Hopi,.

All the best

Daisy said...

nice to see you post...and i do agree with much of what you say...let me add another thought and i am not sure this has to do with any social service of any kind but somewhere along the line society lost the values of marriage...many of those who do marry don't stay married...they never really get to know the person and/or believe in the commitment they have made...it will be 25 years for me this summer and we have had some real problems and issues but always know that we are connected...my husband is my best friend and was prior to marrying him all those years ago...he is the one i confide in...the one i know i can count on and visa versa...at the moment we are really struggling through some things...but still remain best friends and married...for most this concept is unheard of...i just could not imagine disposing of him as so many do with their spouses...divorce is one thing but society now expects disposal as well which i think severely impacts the statistics...imho

Philipa said...

WTF? You just popped back to trash single mothers again.

great.

Daisy said...

philipa i am not trying to speak to newmania but honestly i don't think he was bashing single mothers...i didn't take it as such...but i did apply it to what is going on in the states...we now have as a regular and full classes...pregnancy...these classes are for girls who are pregnant but they are trying to keep them from dropping out of school...while i like the idea of kids not dropping out it is remarkable how many girls are pregnant in high school...and i am not talking about the occassional accident...i am aware of at least 10 girls who had 3 children before getting out of high school at age 18...then they get in housing and on welfare programs because they cannot support the children...it is growing so much here and is a real problem...these children are no more apt to raise children than their mothers before them...
there are single mothers out there who are raising their children and providing for them...those are in the opposite statistics...problem is philipa for some reason those good mothers are few and there are not enough people showing what you have to give up to be a good mother to these young girls in order to prevent the pregnancies in the first place...
the sadest thing i believe i ever heard a pregnant teen tell me is that she was having a baby because she wanted there to be someone in this world who loved her just for her...it has stuck with me and tends to be a ghost in my mind when dealing with other pregnant teens...

Newmania said...

No Phillipa .


' appreciate that social and economic changes are at work and also that groups like war widows show that single motherhood alone is not a curse . Nonetheless Brown abolished the marriage ....

Newmania said...

Daisy yes thats the sort of thing I am getting at but I was focussing on the tax and benefits system and how it discrimninates against married people.

Philipa said...

Daisy whilst I agree with you, and the dreadful reason for getting pregnant I can sadly believe for these children, N has admitted his purpose was to bleat about the lot of smug marrieds everywhere.

And also it was a mechanism to get a huge warm hug from him too as when I wrote that comment I felt I needed one.

Newmania said...

smug marrieds

true true

Mermaid of Moorgate said...

The only problem with marriage is that I can't run fast enough to catch a man to marry. If I did, I'd nail him to the floor and force him into nuptual bliss, thereby relieving the tax burden on the UK and helping to offset these shameful statistics.

back to the treadmill until then

Mermaid of Moorgate said...

also, smug marrieds help keep Ikea in business.

but Ikea is probably why a lot of smug marrieds file for divorce at the checkout counter...

Daisy said...

mermaid...just make sure the nail is placed just right...you want to hit the right area of the brain or it could be a disaster...oh eh erm i mean foot...yeah foot...that's it

Newmania said...

Mermaid cheap demeaning loveless sex is always an option?

Mermaid of Moorgate said...

WHAT was John Denham blethering on about last night? Blaming the Lib Dems for his catastrophic failure to motivate a vote for labour in Southampton? The guy's an idiot.

this has nothing to do with marriage though....

Philipa said...

I'd just like to say to the smug married host and hostess of this blog:

congratulations and celebrations..

Newmania said...

Oo thanks and a lovgely week to be off as well!!

Philipa said...

Fab weather this isn't it? Obviously a celebration in the heavens :-)

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