Jeremy Hunt: "Don't expect us to pay for your children"

[LadyBlaBlah]

I know lots of people agree with this in principle (especially going by the Daily Mail comments)

If you can't afford a child, don't have one. Simple.

But it really is not that simple-like all these things that make judgements on those on benefits

Where does this policy end up - eugenics and enforced sterilisation?

Based on what criteria?

Starving children?

And this is all in the context that Nick Clegg was bleating on increasing international aid to lift children out of poverty in his conference last week - "look at me and how good I am to the little starving children in Africa". The hypocrisy staggers me. By the same rules, Africans should stop having children too. That should be policy rather than giving them aid - right?

Desmond Tutu said "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." I love that quote. It is simply a reflection on us how we chose to treat other human being.

This poor bashing is really really depressing me. It is daily It is worse than I imagined it could be.

The ONS produce an animated example of how the demograhic structure of the UK changes over the next few decades.

www.statistics.gov.uk/populationestimates/flash_pyramid/UK-pyramid/pyramid6_30.html

I'm not sure of the assumptions that underly the model.

Population is expected to rise substantially from 62mm to 71mm over the next 20 years ... which argues for less children. However, the pyramid becomes increasingly inverted ... which argues for more children to tax to support the aging population.

So the actual problem is too many old people. Anyone seen the film Logan's Run? It depicts a dystopic society in which the maintenance of an equilibrium population requires the death of citizens reaching a particular age. We could start with the House of Lords!

So you support smaller families and less kids, to stop spending your money on scroungers. But, you don't support more immigration to make up the shortfall, which is what SGB and the progressives advocate. There is so much government waste, not only on Trident, but elsewhere. The amount of your taxes paying for plasma TVs for the "feckless" is minimal compared to the waste elsewhere, and we need more children to look after all of us in our old age. The solution the progressives offer is more immigration.

I agree and it is depressing.

I have noticed over the last couple of years that there seems to be a growing hatred towards families and children regardless of whether you are rich or poor. People feel resentful that they pay taxes which go towards schools and childrens services etc.

I live in a town which is very popular with families and the amount of negative comments directed towards families and children I have heard recently from middle class people in their 50's and 60's is very sad.

Some people (me - and i guess claig [not craig btw]) don't want to support trident and are happy to support families that are struggling. Why is your view more important?

'I live in a town which is very popular with families and the amount of negative comments directed towards families and children I have heard recently from middle class people in their 50's and 60's is very sad.'

I hand it right back to them, tbh, because if they think I am going to support them to be retired for 40 years and play golf and get more and more expensive health problems when I'm going to get FA and work till I drop, they really have another thing coming.

It would be better if we had fewer children really, as SGB says. However green a lifestyle you lead, every human has a carbon footprint. Children grow into adults that work and travel and have more children of their own and so on. Also, the fewer people there are, the more resources there are to share around, and I think the fewer wars there will be around resources. To think that global population growth isn't a problem is sticking your head in the sand IMO.

complimentary is right, it's not racist to say that foreigners have bigger families.

It's not racist to say that, it's more xenophobic than racist and ignorant and adds nothing to anything

"Population is expected to rise substantially from 62mm to 71mm over the next 20 years"

isn't this rise due to immigration? isn't the birth rate in decline, as they always wanted?

Yes too many old people, not enough young to support them. So we will soon get messages supporting euthanasia and teh "sustainability" crowd will start telling us that the old are no longer sustainable, they are not productive, they are wasting the "planet's" resources, they are the greens' "useless eaters".

it's not a given, either, that children will stay in their country of origin if they are British. plenty will emigrate, especially if things keep going how they are now.

Therer si a whole world of difference between large families who have happily supported themselves falling on hard times, and folk increasing their families when they are already not in a position to support themselves.

The former are what the welfare state is all about - a fall back position for every one of us.

The later is just stupidity.

Primarily increase from 60mm to 70mm is due to immigration though (i think and wait to be corrected) that the birth rate may have started to rise again.

"However green a lifestyle you lead, every human has a carbon footprint."

this is the green philosophy. Every human is a problem. It is Eton educated elites like Jonathon Porrit and Zac Goldsmith who belive in the "carbon footprint" problem and the "human footprint" problem and the "human" problem. Humans aren't a problem, it is the elites who are a problem. Doom mongers throughout time have argued that we were always over populated. We know that we can grow enough food to save the world if we really wanted to.

Havent read thread, but the fact is that resposible people do not continue to have 10 kids unless they can afford them.
Me and dh battlked with the idea of no.3.

I am sympathetic towards those who find themselves in a situation unexpected (e.g. lone parents after marital breakdown or death of a spouse) but I think the real problem is non-working couples who just go on and on having kids with the state picking up the tab.

You children wont starve if you get off your arse and get a job! Simples. Thats what everyone else has to do.

Benefits should be there for those who are truly needy, not people who choose it as a lifestyle

"folk increasing their families when they are already not in a position to support themselves."

the cost of this is not as great as the media makes out, and these families are doing us all a service, by increasing the birth rate and these children will grow up to achieve things that will help us all. If we stopped shipping our factories overseas, we would have work for everybody. Some of these children may grow up to be scientists and doctors etc. We need more children, not less. The cost of supporting these families is not as great as we are being told, and the benefits of these children are much greater than the cost.

I think most intelligent people consider each pregnancy very carefully.

Can we afford another child?
Can I give it sufficient time and attention or am I already stretched?
Am I happy with the impact another person would have on the environment?

Claig: WHy do you say 'progressive' as though it's a bad thing? Is it just because you are a fan of the Catholic Church, which is the enemy of progress and would rather not allow women full human status?

I think theyre being taken by all the people who want to work and dont care what they do.

Move, re-train, do something youve never done before.

I re-trained so I wasnt stuck in some dead end job, plenty of people on my course were single parents trying to make a better life for themselves and their children.

I had a bit of a cry after watching newsnight last night.

The smug smirking tories saying "children are a choice! if you can't afford to look after them don't have them! why should decent law-abiding blah give any money!!!".

Put aside whether we need a larger population or not.

What about the fact that many people on benefits already have large families. They can't change that "choice" retrospectively.

So what the tories are going to do is punish the "undeserving" poor by not giving them enough money to feed, clothe, house their children. It is going to rip these families out of their localities, support networks and extended families, tear their children out of school and dump them in another part of the country, where there are no opportunities, and leave them and their children to rot.

Wha choices are there? They can hand excess children over to social services, or let them starve. We are going to see people dying on the streets.

Oh hold on -that's where big society steps in. So all of the people who have compassion and empathy, all of the people who wouldn't step over a starving child, are supposed to step in for free and sort it all out. Take the place of the state. But what if they don't? What if they can't?

How are people going to feel when the first busloads of "undeserving" poor start to leave the cities? When the first families are living on the streets? When the first children start dying? seeves them right I guess. Basic tory policy from the tory policy handbook.

This situaiton is appalling. What of the extended families left behind? What of the grandparents who were getting help from their children, who are now going to be shipped away? What of the free childcare they were able to provide so that people could work? What about people with mental health problems being removed from their support networks in this fashion?

And this is just the start.

Poodles. Oh sorry Pootles, (sorry you may pick up on typing error) The example I use with my cousin is clear. Other countries are far, far less 'giving' in terms of benefits to whose who wish to start a new life in another country, such as the USA. This country is extremely generous to all kin and sundry, at the expense of those who work. The example of Muslims illustrates that some foreigners have larger families than others. It is as simple as that.No?

I don't believe half of the things the Catholic Church says, I'm not even a Catholic. I think the progressives are dangerous, far more dangerous than the Catholics. I think the progressives are just puppets of the elites (people such as Eton educated Porrit and Zac Goldsmith and other puppet masters). We even have progressives like Alan Milburn, Frank Field and Lord Hutton working with the coalition. The only reason I support Catholics is that they are the only opposition to the progressives' plans which will lead to the population control policies advocated by Porrit and the elites. The Church believes that humans are sacred, the progressives believe they cause a "carbon footprint" and are a problem for the "planet". The progressives will eventually advocate euthanasia for the old, and the Church is against it.

The Church is for humanity, I don't think the progressives are.

"It is not racist to state the facts, foreigners and in particular 'some' Muslims have more children thus taken up more of the money, NO? "

NO

Most communities of very relgious people have larger families. In this area the two main religions are christianity and judaism, and the people who adhere to the stricter interpretations of both of these religions have very large families.

I would agree that your comment is racist/xenophobic/anti-muslim - whatvever - deeply unpleasant.

Well, I suppose the riposte is "well, don't expect the children to pay your pension then"

It does seem rather Victorian and punitive. Where is the humanity? Where's the thinking - it seems very Puritanical and shortsighted as well. But mostly it seems stupid.

Let's look at the facts:

We live in a declining and aging populations in Europe - who will foot the increasing pension bill?
The problem is not the amount of children these unemployed people have, it's encouraging parents to work, and providing childcare for a reasonable price, with tax breaks, so that working isn't just a fantasy.

I agree about the carbon footprint - humans aren't the problem, it's wanton waste of limited resources are the problem.

I don't see how a family of 5 with no car who use public transport have a greater carbon footprint than a family of two with a his n hers SUV and two hungry labradors are. In fact research shows that the family pet can have a much a carbon footprint as a SUV.

The carbon neutral pet is a rabbit - but only if you eat it. (Chickens are net positive, in case you're wondering how Henny Penny holds up in the research.)

Larger families also help add social glue to an increasingly urabnised and alienating life.

Research shoes that boys who have sisters are more likely to have better mental health and to be less at risk of criminal behaviour. Larger families are more supportive and cheaper in the long run to the state.

Family size isn't the problem for poorer people who are on benefits, the lack of rational thought and imagination by this recent government is the biggest problem Britain has to face.

This government doesn't seem to have two brain cells to rub together - it is a pity they kept the women out of cabinet posts..

I would hate to live in the Uk now.

shirly Don't tie yourself up in knots, you will get hight blood pressure!

cor complimentary! or should I say Oscar Wilde! haha!

Can you have a little look upthread for me please and answer my question about what will actually happen when ladies have babies and they are on benefits.

thanks in advance!

xxxxx