This FB post made me chuckle
There now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party in Scotland and Ukip.
IT’S REALLY not difficult to understand the outrage that has greeted Nicola Sturgeon’s recklessly irresponsible decision to give expectant Scottish mothers a box full of goodies for their new babies. What the hell is the First Minister playing at? Doesn’t she realise that we are in the teeth of a recession and that austerity is the only game in town as we try to address the UK’s £1.5 trillion deficit and the drain on the public purse of all those free services we get? Somebody needs to have a stern chat with Ms Sturgeon and tell her that she needs to learn when to say “enough is enough”.
Every expert in the field including the leader writers at The Spectator; the CBI; the TaxPayers’ Alliance; and Scottish Land & Estates have issued warnings about the dire consequences of giving away something for nothing in such an indiscriminate and scatter-gun fashion.
Of course, don’t get us wrong.
We are not saying that people should never expect a little extra help now and again to make their way in life. Where would we be if we all had to fend for ourselves and rely purely on the gifts that God has given us without any hint of privilege or “special” measures?
The thought doesn’t bear thinking about because, as we all know, that approach leads to anarchy with all sorts of unpredictable characters getting their grubby mitts on high office and the levers of power.
What we are really saying is that only the “right sort” should be given handouts such as this; people who won’t waste it and who can be relied upon to use it sparingly and maybe even invest it in a small business along with match funding from some of their father’s chums in the Carlton Club or White’s. Giving out a hundred quid worth of baby goodies to expectant mums in our sink estates will set unfortunate precedents. It sends out completely the wrong sort of message.
Apart from anything else, will there be any checks to ensure that the items in these baby boxes will be used for the purposes intended?
We don’t want to be judgmental about this but research conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, also known as The Tax-Avoiders’ Club, has shown what can happen when you give handouts to the hoi-polloi willy and occasionally nilly.
These sinister baby boxes are said to contain materials such as a mattress, an all-in-one day suit, a long-sleeved wraparound bodysuit, footed leggings and a fleece jacket with hood. If you’re asking us, this is just a recipe for trouble. This will give these children unreal expectations for their lives ahead.
Some of them might actually get ideas above themselves and develop a taste for having more than one change of clothes a week. If that sort of delusion is carried into adulthood it could lead to regrettable behaviours such as trade unionism and loose talk about the discredited European Convention in Human Rights.
These boxes, which increasingly look like they will simply breed complacency and a dangerous sense of entitlement also include, wait for it: a mattress protector, a pram-suit with hood, a baby book and a natural bath sponge. There’s also a satin-edged cellular blanket. This is simply incorrigible extravagance. Why does it have to be a satin-edged cellular blanket? Do they mean to tell us that people have started to turn their noses up at Crimplene? Who do these people think they are: members of the royal family? Before we know it, they’ll de demanding one hot meal a day; paid employment and hot running water more than once a week.
Let’s face it, and we need to talk absolutely frankly here: most of this stuff will end up on eBay or lying at the back of common backyard in the ghettoes in which these people live. A mattress and a mattress protector will just cause problems for the local authority bin collectors. Worse, gymslip mums will end up having lots more babies in the expectation of getting all these free goodies which the rest of us have to pay for. They obviously think they’re living in Buckingham Palace.
Look, all we are saying is that Britain needs to have an adult discussion about this issue. One of the most successful initiatives stemming from our painful but necessary austerity programmes has been the proliferation of food banks in all parts of the UK.
The rise in the number of people availing themselves of food banks has saved the public purse millions of pounds. So successful has our national food bank programme been that we will soon be privatising them. That money can now be spent on our new nuclear weapons programme and help make the world a safer place. I mean, what would these people prefer: a world where admittedly they must encounter some hardship or no world at all?Surely it’s not beyond the wit and wisdom of the unconscionable SNP to alter the food bank model. Instead of asking kindly people to donate Pot Noodles and Uncle Ben’s boiled rice products all the time, they could ask them to vary it a bit and hand in some of these baby products. That would negate the need for these so-called baby boxes which are, in our opinion, an expensive exercise in gesture politics and one-upmanship.
And what sort of example is the First Minister setting by borrowing this idea from Finland? Can’t she just accept the result of the EU referendum instead of ramming her contrived Europeanism down everyone’s throats? We don’t need to take any lessons in looking after babies from the Finns who, as everyone knows, leave their infants to fend for themselves in freezing conditions overnight on a jagged cliff-top just to toughen them up.
In our opinion, it’s also deeply disturbing that these baby boxes contain a poem written by a character called The Makar. This is just another chilling example of the liberal left in this country imposing its views on the rest of us. We’re told The Makar is a black, lesbian feminist. We do value inclusiveness and diversity, but is the First Minister trying to say she couldn’t have found something inspiring from tried and trusted old, male white people like Tennyson, Kipling and Byron? We enjoyed hosting a dinner party for neighbours and friends on Hogmanay. All of them were scathing about the SNP baby boxes and the organic cotton muslin squares.