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.

"once everyone has got their allowance/salary/top-up they're supposed to use it responsibly is valid"

what about when the hard-working people with 10 children bailed the bankers out through their taxes. Did the bankers use the allowance that we all paid them responsibly? Did they even bother to invest it back in our industries, so that the people could afford to keep the roofs over their heads, or did they dole it out in bonuses and blow it on corporate expenditure?

They are picking on the poor and powerless, telling us that they don't "deserve" their allowances, but don't mention anything about the far more substantial allowances that we paid the bankers. And if we dare to suggest that the bankers don't deserve these allowances, they tell us that these brainy people intend to leave the country and leave all us unintelligent scroungers to it. Then where will we be? they say. A damn sight better off, is the answer.

"The media must look for months to find these families with 10 children and their 60 inch plasma TVs. They are few and far between, and the cost of supporting them is minimal, and probably less than what we forked out on MPs' expenses for porn movies, bath plugs, home flipping, and kitchen refits"

I like that quote from Claig.

How far away are any of us from sleeping on the pavement doorways, just one wrong turn or two and it could be you, me or our dc. Never think that you are safe and sound as their isn't such a thing

@claig... the last government failed to set the terms of the bank bail-out out properly. They were highly negligent in handing over the cash with what seems lik no strings attached. The new government have brought in a levy and I'm confident they won't stop there. We need the banks to succeed so that we get a return on our investment but we also need them to finance business if the economy is to recover.

Most 'bankers' are ordinary working people. Tellers and mortgage advisers etc. They don't get an allowance from the taxpayer, they get a salary from the bank that they have to manage on & they pay income tax on that salary.

I said before that state financial help should be there for people who need it. I do not accept that asking the 'poor and the powerless' to manage that money responsibly is picking on anyone.

I'm no fan of the last government, but I also don't blindly follow this one. We need to nationalise our banks, so that they work for us, in our interests and so that their profits are all redistributed to us.

Most bankers are ordinary people and are not at fault. They also don't get million pound bonuses. It is the fatcats who were bailed out by us that I am talking about, not some 18 year old cashier, who had nothing to do with it. We paid huge allowances to keep the banks in operation and didn't even nationalise them. Every working person paid for that and we may yet be required to stump up more. We saved teh fatcats, and carried on paying their pensions and their bonuses. When they threaten to leave, it is not the bank cashiers that threaten to leave, it is the fatcats and speculators.

The poor and the powerless already manage their money responsibly. The media hunts around for rare cases that they can use to influence the public. When Labour's Caroline Flint warned the unemployed that they should "work or lose their homes" and needed to sign up for five year contracts, of course she was picking on the poor and vulnerable. When Jeremy Hunt warns "don't expect us to pay for your children", of course he is picking on the poor and powerless.

At the time when my parents were having me and my DBs, they could afford us all. DF was in a good and stable job. Unfortunately, when I was about 8, he was amde redundant, and struggled to find work, for YEARS (this was during the 1990s recession).
Now, my "D"M did admit to me once that they could only really afford two children, and as the last one out, I was the one they couldn't afford. but they kept me, didn't sell me to the work house, and I fortunately ended up being a "productive" [looks at MN usage and reconsiders] member of society, paying taxes and everything! Should I have been killed off when DF lost his job, for reasons beyond his control?

I can kind of agree, on one level, that if you really can't afford children at the time, and are having to rely on handouts and your children's livelihoods and well-being are compromised, you shouldn't have more. But, a) you never know what's going to happen and b) the government shouldn't be dictating how many children people have.

As for the green fascists movement - the countries with the largest carbon footprints are actually the ones with the smallest families. In 2000, 28% of the world's carbon came from the North American territories map. According to the US census bureau, the average number of children per family in the US is 3.14.

I agree that if you can't afford it don't have more than two. Welfare is there as a safety net for those that are prevented, either by disability/job loss, from providing and not for people to just think whatever happens the government will pay.

AbsofCroissant, the green fascist movement is a huge subject. It has more than just one goal. One of its goals is our impoverishment. That is why it targets the industrial economies with the "largest carbon footprint" and seeks to reduce their energy consumption and harm their industrial base. It also seeks to prevent the development of up and coming economies such as India and China, to prevent their prosperity and ability to support their growing populations. They encourage the growth of corn to produce ethanol and overcome the oil shortage, which as Fidel castro said will lead to mass starvation (population reduction).

"Feeding Cars and Starving the Poor

On March 29, 2007, Cuban leader Fidel Castro berated Bush?s economic initiatives for ethanol production in the Cuban Communist party newspaper Granma, stating that using corn, or any food source, to produce ethanol could result in the ?premature death? of upwards of three billion people. He explained that the drive to produce corn-based ethanol would hike up food prices around the world, adversely effecting poverty in developing countries. - Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 2007"

There are many other things behind the green fascist movement, that is championed by Eton educated types such as Porritt, Lord Melchett, Zac Goldsmith etc.

Claig I so so agree with what you said about globalization further up the thread.

"They are creating a divide and conquer society, where they set one part of teh population up against the other. That way nobody looks at the policy that has created the lack of work in the first place - globalisation and global finance."

Couldn't agree more.

'having the temerity to breed while being on low incomes or unemployed'.

Quite, RamblingRosa. And as soon as govt starts punishing certain people for their choices it is making a moral judgement on them, which is not what the role of a democratic govt should be. Like justice, government should be blind but not deaf - impartial when it comes to people's class, circumstances etc, but able to listen to what people need. The idea that there might be some sort of prescriptiveness about who is entitled to have a child just makes me see red (in more ways than one). The point is, as someone said earlier, that education is the key - with better education comes better-thought-out choices about lifestyle, family size etc. If we can't be arsed to invest in education in this country, we certainly shouldn't punish people for the consequences or our short-termism.

i saw jeremy Hunt and some other horrible tory on newsnight last night
thought they were utterly vile

very depressing to have tories in charge again, and the Lib dems may as well not be there for all the good they're doing in damping down the poor/single-parent bashing that's going on. In fact I hope the lib dems are thoroughly sodding ashamed of themselves.

people's circumstances change, people lose jobs, they may have many children that they were previously supporting what do the government want to happen to them? lose their homes, fall into poverty? it's the children that will take the brunt of this. I'm sure there is a tiny minority of piss-takers and scroungers but you can't base your whole welfare policy on this minority, it's not fair on the rest.

Also, not sure if anyone's mentioned this already, but the whole idea of people being responsible about having kids assumes that all women have complete control over their fertility and are never pressurised into having unprotected sex or into having larger families than they would want.

There are millions of different reasons why people end up with young children and on benefits - it's just plain stupid headedness to dismiss all of those people as undeserving somehow or as being feckless.

It's all just right wing bullshit of the worst kind.

It actually makes me really, really angry .

Being in a society is NOT about being allowed to do exactly what you want, when you want cinnamontoast

It's about co-operation, else I'd spend all day in front of the telly drinking gin...and the children be damned

Being part of a society is an arrangement - society does X and you do Y.

This does largely involve society providing support and back-up (free education, healthcare and welfare if/when you need it plus other soon to be abolished public services) and you are expected to give something back.

Often what you give back is at some time during you life, supposed to be work related and tax paying related.

Just because someone WANTS to have more children than they can afford doesn't mean they have the RIGHT to have more children than they can afford, irrespective of their income or means of support.

They have the RIGHT to make their own decision, based on a lot of things, including the ability to financially support those children - all people have the right to do this currently, and in the future.

However it is short sighted and niaive to think that there is an endless pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to enable people to have as many children as they want to and not suffer for it financially - else each child born would be give £250,000 which I think is the cost of raising one (ATM).

If you want loads of children, the policy of capping benefits won't STOP you from having children, just as if your salary is capped it won't stop you from having more children, it just means an end to what can (for some individuals) be an endless supply of tax payers cash.

Of course when thinking about having children it is the responsible thing to think about whether or not you can afford them, whatever the circumstances of your income.

And I agree with whoever it was earlier who pointed out how dangerous it is to start thinking in terms of "them" (the feckless proles who get up the duff when they can't afford it) and "us" (the good hard working, morally upstanding members of society).

We could be them. Any of us could lose our jobs, have an illness/accident that leaves us disabled and unable to work, become a single parent....things change. Life can be hard. We have a welfare system to protect us all from ending up destitute on the street with our kids when it all goes wrong.

How anyone can not get their heads around that is beyond me.

related and not related. on newsnight there was much merriment at the idea of 40% tax earning men being alcoholics and or wife beaters. hahaha. we all know it's only the poor who are feckless and irresponsible (braying laughter). was also vile to watch. some people just hate ''the poor''. off to the workhouse with the lot of them.

Lots of women try to control their fertility but, actually, no contraceptive is 100% effective. So does Jeremy Hunt want women to terminate any babies above the desirable family size?

Also, what makes people think that cutting welfare will stop these feckless proles from breeding?

Developing countries with zero state benefits don't seem to have led to families being smaller . Or have I missed something here?

I don't get the logic.

No, he probably wants people to take responsibility for them!! I think 'the poor' are easy to loathe as the working folk think that they 'keep' them, whilst big cats that take from the state are 'cheeky/greedy' but not 'scroungers'.

No the big cats do not take from the state (lets gloss over the billions in bail outs and unpaid corporate tax) they are wealth generators.

"Developing countries with zero state benefits don't seem to have led to families being smaller"

good point. Sounds like he wants to increase the social divide and make the poor even poorer. He is also creating a scapegoat to deflect people's attention away from the cuts and who was ultimately responsible for them.

bb49 you seem to have overlooked my point about the importance of educating people so they are in a position to make informed choices

Riven, sell the other two (pref tall and blond), you'll get so much more for them

Yes c - I missed that one, but although people knock (constantly) the education system in this country, it is free, reasonably impartial (ie everyone is offered a minimum standard) and goes on until you're 16 at least.

Surely with the citizenship, pshe, science and all that's in the education system (including those inflamatory acts of collective worship) then people - even the less well off - are educated enough to make informed choices already.

Also being less well off or less well educated doesn't mean that you're daft...I'm sure even poor people are capeable of making decisions about whether or not they can afford another kid.

It could be that the consequences of having children (and I mean ANY children) ar not fully explainned or discussed, so perhaps we are missing the target audience, but not all people are making informed decision.

I know DH was certainly shocked at just how expensive the little blighters are and he's got a university education.

ramblingrosa - think of the child mortality rates in developing countries and the lack of power women have to control their birth rates in these countries (esp if religion is taken into account) I'd have a squillion children if I didn't think I'd see most of them get to grow up just so one or two of them could survive.

We are so rich, even the poorest most destitue of us in the Western World, compared to huge swathes of the developing world.

I've taken the Tutu quote for my facebook, hope that's OK.

They're debating this on anohter wbsite as well; my take is A) benefit dependency does not assume you were poor yesterday, only today, and if only we were all blessed with perfect foresight eh?

B) My judgements on a parent are not the point; I want children raised in safety, security and stability. Food, husing, not such pressures on their parent's relationship that they break up.

People say about teh deficit that we need to clear it for the kids; well yes, but the kids won;t benefit from inheriting a society where many were raised feeling outside the state, or suffering from the many isues with poor health and education related to poverty.

The blame-and-slam briagde like to start tegir sentence 'as a taxpayer..'; as a taxpayer I want to make sure the next generation si raised well adn able to take on the burden of paying taxes for their own time.