to be furious at my children being described like this

[spacepyramid]

Apparently they are 'ill-raised, ignorant and aggressive' because I am a single parent.

All I can say is I am extremely proud of them for overcoming my apparent short comings as a parent and achieving so much despite it.

Uneducated, classist bullshit.

These idiots live in cloud cuckoo land, if you asked them the price of a pint of milk they wouldn't know.

They are not interested in anyone who doesn't earn several hundred thousand a year and the public need to get with the programme and stop voting for these cretins.

I've noticed a hilarious trend where lower/middle classes are voting Conservative because they think it raises their own status, a kind of political keeping up with the Jones's.

BJ and his ilk wouldn't piss on them if they went up in smoke like Grenfell.

Deluded twats.

Single mums are an easy target. He's a total disgrace. One good parent is better than two inadequate parents, or two unhappy parents. Of course life is easier if it all works out, but single parent does not equal bad parent. My mother was a single mother for many years, her useless ex-husband had no involvement, financial or otherwise. My eldest brother went to Oxford, the rest of my siblings are all happy and all lead productive lives. I'm from the second marriage. I've had the love and presence of both parents, I'm no better or worse than my siblings. If anything its made them better people, all determined to be better (which they are) than their pathetic and absent 'father'.

and yes you are right to be furious!

DDIJ - please don't feel like this. You are a super hero, doing the job of two, but also getting concentrated love back from those kiddos. I was on my own for 6 years with my first. I honestly believed people could just look at me and know I was a single parent, which in hindsight is bonkers. However, at the time, as happy as I was to have this amazing human being all to myself, I was depressed about how I felt I was perceived.

You are right, you can't help but absorb so much negativity, but I look back now and think, no I was doing a great job. I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't worth less than the coupled up parents.,
My eldest is a beautiful child inside and out. I honestly believe that being brought up my a single parent, whilst it had its down sides, it also had positives, and we are very close, and I hope we always will be. Chin up. There are easier days ahead.

I'm not outraged. I know my DD is less ignorant and better raised than him, and she's 4. I am a young, single parent - I fleed from her abusive dad whilst pregnant, into a homeless hostel. I'm sure he'd think me and my daughter are absolute scumbags.

In the time since, I have a nice home, I've got a degree, am currently doing another one, and am building a decent career. I'm sure I've had to work a lot harder for my achievements than he ever has. His opinion means nothing to me. I'm not outraged, and I'm not at all surprised that they are the views that he holds (or held, but let's be honest - does anybody actually think he feels differently these days?)

Actually, what pisses me off the most is that this isn't on the 6 o clock news, it's not on the front page of any papers. If it was Jeremy's article that had been uncovered, it absolutely would be.

I'm in my early 20s, and I was previously never aware of the absolutely ridiculous MSM bias our country has. The handful of billionaires who own all the papers literally control who is elected. The BBC, which was actually created for the purpose of being impartial, is just as bad, if not worse. It's disturbing.

*I grew up in the 80s and opinions like this seemed to be on the news every night.

I seem to have absorbed it and somehow I think badly of myself and my children. I do deny them things that are 'family' things because deep down I have absorbed the message that we are feral and a scourge on all decent people. Funnily enough their father didn't have any time for single parents.

I am on my knees. I hate my life but 99.9% of the population seem to think I'm on the pig's back.*

Fuck that. Sounds like it's their dad who's the scourge on society. Alongside people that express these kinds of views, who clearly lack any capacity for critical thought, or compassion. I know who I'd rather was raising the next generation. You're an asset.

His pickanenee and water melon smiles comments were just unbelievable. People will still vote for him though. Because he has ‘charisma’.

I won't listen to someone judging my children who don't know them.

In my lifetime single mothers was so badly stigmatized that society expected them to give their babies up for adoption. It happened on a mass scale and young women were treated as outcasts. So much pain, trauma and loss for so many.

So to have a PM who thinks along such stigmatizing lines is quite honestly scary.

And I don’t care if is from 25 years ago - he was a man in his 30s and a journalist expressing his opinion. Don’t believe folks that the leopard has changed his spots - actually he is just a hell of a lot spottier than then!!

Fuck me he’s got a nerve

@DDIJ

I am sad to read that post but I understand it. I'm a single parent because my ex was an abusive alcoholic and I couldn't let my children grow up in a home like that. But I am the opposite of you . I will never and have never let my single parent status affect anything I do with and for them. I won't let anyone treat them or me as "less than". I have completely cut others, who try to do so, out of our lives without a backward glance. I take my children on holidays alone, travel all over the place just experiencing and doing stuff and apologise to no one for my single parent status. I didn't choose it then but I do now and absolutely fuck anyone who tries to look down on me and my kids because I wouldn't allow some useless man to stay around hurting us and ruining our lives with his selfishness and addiction issues.

In my lifetime single mothers was so badly stigmatized that society expected them to give their babies up for adoption
Well some stigmatised them but they couldn't live on fresh air so if you didn't have a partner you went out to work - no free chil care then, no childcare much at all unless your DM agreed to look after baby.
Let's castigate the selfish mothers of unmarried mothers for not taking on responsibility for the baby.

Who here has actually read the article?

If you have, what exactly do you disagree with?
If you haven't, what's behind your outrage when you don't even know what he wrote?

I am worried for my family members. I'm ok I have a home and a couple of spare bedrooms (2 kids left home now) so I can help some of them.
No way will I let them be homeless and lose their kids.
It's disgusting what this government propose to do to ethnic minorities, including those with Jewish blood.
But hey ho, let's call Corbyn racist.

Anyone is a target who doesn't earn a huge income and I agree about the lower mc who will be voting.
Are they really that dense though? what must go through their minds?

The Daily Mail song seems appropriate here...

1995 this was said, hope his views have changed since then.

If you haven't, what's behind your outrage when you don't even know what he wrote?

Perhaps Mr Johnson could produce the article and explain why he was taken out of context and what he meant by apparently implying that single mothers and their children should suffer destitution on a Victorian scale?

Good lord above, spacepyramid, you're not seriously taking any heed of what a politician seeking your vote says, are you? Particularly not someone who (a) is known to peddle falsehoods; (b) has a repeated unwillingness to say, as a public servant, whether he actively supports his myriad children in different families; (c) spouts as much spiteful and vituperative poison as any of them, but does so with a carefully calculated amount of bumbling joviality!

Few things drive me madder than this passive voice: "Single mothers" = "Men who have abandoned their families"; "Teenage pregnancies" = "Grown men who have got under-age girls pregnant"; "Two women a week will be killed by their intimate partner or immediate ex-partner" = "Some men, and a few women, kill two women a week, because they can". Not quite such snappy headlines, but far more accurate.

We've spent a long, long time and shed a lot of blood and tears to change legislation to make it none of the State's business as to whom brings up which child. Please, please don't allow a vacuous, shallow, vote-chasing comment to distract you from continuing one of the hardest jobs on the planet.

How that arrogant, entitled, pampered man has managed to pass himself off as a straight-talking man of the people I will never know.

Doesn’t he have illegitimate kids who he barely acknowledges? So I presume are being raised by (different) single parents? Is he saying his own kids are ill raised, ignorant and aggressive?

Did he really say this?

Devereaux “ who here has read the article?”- it’s widely available online. For those comparing it to actions ( reportedly) done years ago , the difference is surely that this was absolutely and indisputably WRITTEN and SANCTIONED by Boris. In other words no chance of misrepresentation at all - as was the same case with his comments on working class men. He laughably refers to the fact that as he has written” so much” ( including a turgid and sexist little paperback called “72 virgins” - you couldn’t make it up) then obviously people can “ select” things he has written. I was a journalist for years, and can confidently and categorically say that never, ever has any of my portfolio ever included racist or sexist or offensive statements such as these. These opinion pieces clearly show his derision and dismissal of the average populace - basically anyone non Eton or Oxbridge!!