Fathers for Justice

[Uhu]

I agree with the principles of their campaign and I think their antics are actually doing society a favour by exposing just how easy it would be for terrorists to attack key elements of the establishment. I bet the IRA, Al-Qaeda etc are taking notes .

the security at buck house isn't exactly top notch is it? he went over the fence in the afternoon ffs...

Absolutely agree with you. It's totally irresponsible and puts an unnecessary strain on the security resources. These sorts of antics are just diverting the resources away from where they're really needed. Whilst the police are tucked up trying to get these lunatics down from bridges, the Houses of Parliament etc, where are the real terrorists slipping through cos there was noone to stop them? Total, total lunacy.Besides, being on the other end, I can't see where the courts are all against them. They can't seem to fall over themselves enough to give my irresponsible exdp what he wants.

Well actually, if we're talking about that tosser who dressed as Spiderman, he had a violent history and shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near his children by the sound of it. So I disagree with you.

Message withdrawn

Im scared it's actually having some effect and that it's a kneejerk political reaction from all parties. The courts in my experience are going very softly softly and refuse to even admonish crap behaviour by DS's dad, New Labour and the Tories are talking about new legislation to ensure both parents have equal access to their children. How on earth can a father living hours away have equal access to a child of school age? If mum works all week and child is resident with mum, going to school all day, what are they going to say, let dad have the child all weekend every weekend? What about mum's right to spend proper time with the child? The same goes for school holidays. You can't carve a child in two.

Absolutely agree Mummyloves. It's the pretence that you can carry on behaving as if you're not two separate entities and it gives so much power to fathers who are outside pissing in on your family, which is why so many women choose to keep them inside pissing out, to use Harold Wilson's description of Tony Benn. And of course, mothers are too busy actually looking after their children (and posting on Mumsnet!) to dress up in silly costumes and cavort around London and tell the real truth - that violent, sadistic, drunken bastards are allowed sole contact by the courts on a regular basis and that many absent fathers spend their whole lives using their children as a means to control their ex partners. Which is the sole reason why many of these men want contact, if the truth be told.

And they want women to be jailed or given community service for blocking access, but I bet they wouldn't be in favour of jailing all the bastards who can't be bothered to turn up for access visits, and are only reliable in that they can be reliably depended upon to let their children down every single time they are due to see them.

Dead right mummyloves. This agenda about father's rights is really dangerous. Think the Fathers for Justice mob contains some very frightening men who are trying to control the women and children who have managed to escape them. These are men who have been denied access by the courts. By and large that doesn't happen without a very good reason ? as posters on MN have shown, courts do push through access even when the father is a very irresponsible person indeed. So how bad do they have to be to be turned down?
It's all me, me, me with these guys, not a shred of concern for their children.

Any man who wants his children's primary carer jailed clearly doesn't care about the well-being of those children, does he?

I despise these twats with a passion, frankly.

This tosser should be fined for what he has done - taking police away from serious duties.

No one was made aware last night during the 'breaking news' that this man actually has a conviction for harrassment against his former wife and has also a note on his file as he holds several weopons (legally) and has threatened to kill both his former wife and his MIL!!

As DP and his work colleagues said - Would you want any of those wankers who would do something so stupid anywheere near your children!!

I also realise that money and access should not be linked but part of me thinks that one of the reasons these mothers get so stressed and resort tot he kids not seeing their x partners is money -I bet a huge amount of these men pay diddly squat to support their kids causing untold stress to the mothers. One of the men who was interviewed on Sky news also said it was a money issue - the less they see their children the more they pay - maybe if they were willing to be reasonable and pay in the first place to save their xs loads of grief and stress then they would not be in this position!!

As Essbee says she wants her kids to see their father but frankly he is not making much of an effort and is making next to no effort to support them financially driving essbee to ADs and effecting their children's behaviour but I bet you he was remonstrating about how he had something in common with that tosser last night!!

I agree, I agree, I agree 9Edam, Scummy and Twinkie).
And the police said last night that they knew it was a stunt - otherwise he would have been shot. Can't win, can they? Imagine the hoo hah if he had have been shot 'innocent protester shot by trigger happy police' etc.

DP said they should just have shot him!!

i think the way they are dressing up as superheros says it all really - idiot control freaks who genuinely think they are that wonderful

Yep, me too. How many of these men actually did shared childcare when they had their kids, FFS?

For the record - if DP ever does get so fed up with me that he stomps off in a huff, of course we'd do our best to arrange equal access and put our responsibilities as parents first. But the FFJ blokes are really dodgy.

can't someone expose them?

Think they are doing a good enough job of doing it themsleves!!

I think if they actaully fought for both parents to get a good deal they would have women in their groups who would stop them doing rideculous things like this - there is actually a group for mothers without their children called MATCH but I doubt that they would ever behave like this - something to do with dignity and love above everything else I think!!

What an absolute prat the man is. Stand up for your rights sure but not like this. He should be locked up for wasting police time and money.

To be perfectly frank, why shouldn't maintenance and access be linked? Why should women be forced to accept the very male way of compartmentalising life and pretending that different things don't fit together? The separation of maintenance, access, discipline, respect, co-operation etc. etc. if a very male agenda. A father who undermines the standard of living of his ex and therefore of his children by not paying maintenance is a lousy father. Period.

sympathise with the cause, but not the way they're going about it. now we all expect them to do something prattish...a trait which doesn't necessarily make judges feel tenderly towards them when granting access. I also feel very, very sorry for grandparents who are denied contact with children following a breakup. one of my mum's cousins had a very difficult relationship with his ex - even withholding maintenance until he was "allowed" to see his daughters - but it truly broke his mum's heart when birthday presents were returned with notes (written by eldest girl, dictated by bitter mother) saying don't get in touch again..

"...many absent fathers spend their whole lives using their children as a means to control their ex partners. Which is the sole reason why many of these men want contact, if the truth be told."

It's a shame that you need to quote your anedctoal experiences as hard fact, MeanBean. I've yet to see any evidence that your experience is the norm. In fact, I am sure that I could show you just as many fathers (including my dh) who have been denied access to their children, simply because the mother wishes to use the children as a weapon for money, power, anger, revenge, etc.
It seems perfectly reasonable that 2 parents should enter into a courtroom presumed equally able to love and care for their children until proven otherwise. And I query why so many mothers are afraid of this initial equal presumption.
Shared custody is by far the norm in the usa and it works just fine.
My boss here in the uk split from his wife and they have shared custody of the children and it has been working very well for them. He has had to modify his working schedule to accomodate the children's schedules.

Sorry, gotta go back to work, more ranting later.

Well my evil parents will never get to meet their new GS when he comes along - maybe they should have thought about being caring loving parents and then they would have!!

This is a difficult one. On paper it seems reasonable to have 50:50 access but I can't imagine the practicalities of children having a few days here, a few days there. You would always have to live near your ex. Even the usual Mum has during week, dad has weekends doesn't seem fair as Dad gets to do all the fun stuff (no change there then!).

I think the way they go about getting publicity was funny at first but they have gone too far with this Buck Pal stunt.

Meanbean, the reason it isn't linked is because abusive fathers without contact or fathers who choose not to have contact would then say that this gave them the right not to pay to support their children. Also children often want to see their fathers even if their fathers don't pay - I'm not saying not paying is fair, but the solution doesn't seem to be to make the children miss out.
I agree that large numbers of the Fathers For Justice organisation appear to be men with violent pasts, and that I have zero tolerance for. I think men who are violent in the family actually should have no rights to contact.
Not all mothers are loving and generous to their former partners, however. Some are vindictive and spiteful to men who just want to love their children. But of course, as we see on MN there are a lot of useless, spineless, nasty bits of work out there too, masquerading as fathers.

The norm in court is one parent gets every other weekend and half the holidays and the resident parant gets the rest of the time so you both get fun weekend time - x2b tried to get only weekdays and the judge soon saw through him.

SA, this is not anecdotal, it is data from Oneparentfamilies, the charity for lone parents in the UK. The overwhelming problems they come across are not the denial of access, but the use of access by deadbeat dads to disrupt and undermine the family lives of the ex-partners and in many cases, to threaten and abuse those ex-partners.

No-one denies that there are a handful of harpies from hell who use their children as a weapon against their ex-partners. But they are a handful, as opposed to the majority of mothers who bend over backwards to try and get their exes to take their contact arrangements seriously, and about whom we hear nothing in the media.

We hear so much in the news about these poor men who are denied contact, and so little about the much larger number who simply cannot be bothered to fulfil their duties as fathers. We also hear nothing about the outside pissing in phenomenon; I agree that shared custody is a good option where you have two people who respect each other and have agreed a discipline system where they do not undermine each other. But if the children have two separate centres of authority in their lives, then you have a recipe for chaos; divide and rule.

Everybody accepts that mothers and fathers have got to back each other up and not undermine each other's discipline in front of the children when they live together. How comes all that solidarity in the face of the children is just seen to be unimportant when they split? Sorry, but it simply doesn't make any sense. Children need consistency, consistency, consistency. And they can only get that if the partner with less input agrees to support the partner with more.