One in Four Children...

Another lovely day down on our little allotment - warm sun, fresh breeze, and lots of birds singing in the trees. While we pottered around Nosher and I discussed the latest national statistics from the NSO based on the 2001 Census.
'Apparently one in four children in the UK is now living in a single parent family' Nosher said by way of his opening contribution.
'That's based on 2001 figures - it'll be much higher now' I remarked. 'All the bleeding-heart liberals will be out in force saying single mothers need more help - and the charities are saying their caseloads are growing so fast they'll soon be overwhelmed.'
We stood for a while and gazed over our peaceful little world, with everything in its place and a place for everything. Then Nosher turned and said:
'We never had this problem when I was a lad. When will these idiot politicians realise that by labelling single mothers as the biggest victim-group in society they're just encouraging inadequate young girls to get pregnant?'
'The problem is not just the bleeding-heart liberals' I replied 'it's that the entire benefit system rushes to offer these people more and more benefits, and penalises those who stay with a partner, so it's more profitable for dishonest couples to live apart, all at the taxpayers' expense.'
'Well, I think it's wrong to penalise couples' Nosher said 'we should bring back the married tax allowance.'
Up in the willow trees a family of starlings noisily announced that their achievements shouldn't be ignored.
'The idiots who rule over us claim it's all about alleviating child poverty' I commented 'yet the poorest families now are white working class couples, who pay punitive tax levels on minimal incomes, yet are not able to claim the range of benefits a single parent can access. And young single professionals, who actually live at a serious disadvantage compared with almost every other group, because they can't access any social benefits at all - they have to pay for everything.'
Nosher stared at me for a moment. Then he said indignantly:
'Child poverty? They classify a child as living in poverty these days simply because the little blighter can't afford to buy a mobile phone as flashy as his school friends! That's not poverty - it's emotional inadequacy! Instead of giving them taxpayers' money as a reward for being inadequate we should be telling them to grow some backbone and get a life!'
I stared back at him.
'Maybe you're right' I said. 'But it's often the inadequate ones that turn into trainee yobs in order to take their spite out on the rest of society.'
'Well the solution is to put every baby born to a single mother up for adoption' Nosher asserted 'there's no shortage of couples wanting to adopt babies. It's when the little blighters have turned into maladjusted brats that no one wants them. And these inadequate teenage mothers wouldn't be so keen on getting pregnant if they knew the baby was going to be taken from them - and so they wouldn't be getting a free council flat and loads of other social benefits for free.'
'That sounds a bit hard' I commented. 'On the other hand, the system as it operates at the moment encourages ignorance, indolence, fecklessness and stupidity, as well as a total lack of self-responsibility.'
As we turned back to our planting I couldn't help feeling that the entire system of paying people to have children is somehow distorting our social values. It puts up the tax burden on people on low incomes (so they're not really any better off) and instead of solving a problem encourages feckless people who want to live on social benefits to reproduce without any sense of responsibility, so that they become even more of a burden on society. These tiny islands are overcrowded as it is - we don't need yet more children who will grow up just like their parents and never get a job and never contribute anything to society.
'Fancy a glass of parsnip wine?' Nosher asked.
We settled in our old deckchairs outside Nosher's battered wooden shed, and gazed with no small sense of satisfaction over our little domain. All that we saw we'd worked for, a feeling that is now lost to so many people in our society because we pay them to be poor and dependent on social benefits, and so they always will be poor and dependent on social benefits.
What this country needs is many more allotments, and a compulsory training scheme for everyone on social benefits to learn to grow their own food. Then they'd learn the value of good fresh home-grown food, and not buy expensive pre-prepared junk food at the supermarket. And they'd get some healthy fresh air instead of crouching over their computers playing moronic games all day. And they'd stop smirking at those of us (who grow fewer by the day) who've actually worked for what we've got in life.
But instead of this happening the number of allotments is falling as councils and land-owners sell them off for development.
Like I say, our social values are all wrong in the Dis-United Kingdom today.
More from http://www.overthegardenfence.blogspot.com/ soon.
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P.S. Since this discussion Nosher has moderated his views a bit - he now recognises that not all single parents are lazy scroungers, and that some are hard-working honest people who are single through no fault of their own and deserve the support that our society gives them.