Proud to pay my taxes

[English assassin]

Teenage mothers on £30,000 of benefits
23 May 2005
Three schoolgirl sisters who all had babies within months of each other are living rent-free in a council house on benefits worth more than £30,000 a year, it emerged today.
Julie Atkins and daughters Natasha Williams, now 18, Jade Williams, 15, and 14-year-old Jemma Williams survive solely on benefits of £600 a week, bringing them an annual income of about £31,000.
The girls told today how the fathers of their babies had no contact with their children and contributed nothing towards their upkeep, the paper said.
Youngest daughter Jemma was the first to fall pregnant, at the age of 12, after having sex with her teenage boyfriend. She gave birth to son T-Jay in February last year.
Just weeks later Jade, then 14, and 16-year-old Natasha - who is in a secret relationship with the baby's 38-year-old Asian father - found they were pregnant.
Natasha had daughter Amani in November and Jade followed with Lita in December.
The two younger sisters are still at school and are the only young mothers in the playground. Jade sits four GCSEs this year and hopes to work in IT. Jemma takes her exams next year.
All four mothers live rent free in their three-bedroom Derby house and receive a combination of income support, tax credits and child benefit.
Double divorcee Mrs Atkins, 38, remains unrepentant about the family's situation, blaming society for their predicament.
She said: "I don't care what people say about me.
"I blame the schools, sex education for young girls should be better.
"They have all ruined their lives because they are far too young to have children."
The sisters feature in the BBC3 series Desperate Midwives: The real truth about childbirth that airs from 9pm tonight.

So the mother has THREE daughters, all of who fall pregnant one at 12, one at 14 and one at 16, and lo and bloody behold she blames "society for their predicament"

Now come on. I am not against the old society is to blame line in its place, but Mrs Sodding Atkins needs to be in jail for aiding and abetting underage sex, surely. How hard is it for her to tell her daughters "This is a penis, don't touch it til you are 16". Is that too much to ask? And what's all this bollocks about a secret relationship with a 38 year old man who is paying nothing? So I, Johnny Taxpayer, have to support this girl and her kid because some dirty old letch doesn't want his wife to know he's been banging a 16 year old, is that it? Where's my state subsidised 16 year old squeeze eh?

In assassin land there would be no bunce for Natasha until she had coughed the name of the 38 year old for a start (and yes I know about the domestic violence argument and IMHO you deal with it by locking the b'stards up, not by allowing them to intimidate women so they won't name the father.) The other two fathers would be off to chokey for underage sex.

I know my membership card of the prgressive circle must be under severe review here, that is if it hasn't already been revoked, but this is just WRONG.

To be honest I'd like to have the knackers off the three of them though I suppose some bleeding heart is going to object to castration as contrary to human rights or something. "Its the only language they understand..." (~D this too is a JOKE.)

[The_Doctor]

I agree with you.

It is always society's fault, never yours.

Poor society, it gets blamed for everything. :embarassed:

[Spetulhu]

Haul in mrs Atkins for interrogation. Surely she's got SOME idea about who knocked her daughters up. Two of those are criminal cases!

Society's fault? Of course, it's not like a mother should be watching out for her children.

Kind of like these idiots close to my home who want the city should choke off the streets and lower the speed limits "so the children are safe". WTF? This is an area with small housing, everyone's got a large yard around the house where children can play! And some idiots want to hamper traffic so they can leave the kids without supervision in case they decide to play in the streets! :furious3:

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Oh my god...what kind of a name is T-jay?! That's horrific!

[Adrian II]

I am not against the old society is to blame line in its place, but Mrs Sodding Atkins needs to be in jail for aiding and abetting underage sex, surely.Rrright, why not arrest the girls too, shove the children off to care homes, and make all seven of them miserable? Do you have to wax so two-dimensional about issues at the drop of the word 'society', EA?

This is exactly what I meant when in the other thread I said our social fabric is eaten away by consumerism, marketisation, by financial valorisation replacing real values. Here's a family suffering from lack of responsibility from various parties, and it starts you off on a rant about your money and they way you would take your anger out on the girls, who are minors.

My idea would be to, um, emphatically commit the various gentlemen involved and ensure they have a vested stake in the financing of their childrens' future and the educational future of the young mothers. That's where the boot should come down. Such a policy should take care of Mrs Atkins' political re-education along your lines as well.

[KukriKhan]

So for how long will this ummm... non-traditional family be subsidized? And is there any connection made between the fathers and reimbursement? In other words, if one or more of the fathers are found/revealed/come forward, will the government take money from them to compensate for the tax money spent?

[Fragony]

@subject

Well if a certain brand of politician keeps blaiming society people will use it.

[English assassin]

This is exactly what I meant when in the other thread I said our social fabric is eaten away by consumerism, marketisation, by financial valorisation replacing real values. Here's a family suffering from lack of responsibility from various parties, and it starts you off on a rant about your money and they way you would take your anger out on the girls, who are minors.

I'm missing the bit where I said the girls should be punished? The mother, yes. She hardly looked after her children did she.


Well if a certain brand of politician keeps blaiming society people will use it.

There we have the two positions. Is it consumerism etc that has caused this or is it the fact that people are forever told don't worry its not your fault we'll sort you out? I can see why Frag might be right AII but I'm not seeing your argument just yet.


So for how long will this ummm... non-traditional family be subsidized? And is there any connection made between the fathers and reimbursement? In other words, if one or more of the fathers are found/revealed/come forward, will the government take money from them to compensate for the tax money spent?

If a father is named, the Child Support Agency will in principle deduct maintenance payments from his excess income to pay to the mother. However it is very easy to avoid this, thus:

(1) Do not be named as the father. You can do this by telling the mother you will "smash her**** face in," as I think the traditional phrase is, if she puts you down on the birth certificate. Or you can knock up some silly under age bint (who I read in another paper had had an abortion and two miscarriages before the baby that went to term, come ON Mrs Atkins, its not the stork banging your daughters up you know) who thinks its romantic that she is having forbidden love. So the violent and the borderline paedophiles get off.

(2) Have no (official) money. Cash in hand jobs are of course OK because no one knows about them.

(3) Just be too difficult. The CSA deals with 100's of thousands of cases. Move house occasionally, don't open your mail, change jobs, and the bureaucracy just never catches up with you. If you are caught, deny paternity, it takes the ages to get an order for a DNA test and by then you are off again...

What you must NOT do of course is have a stable job and home and pay your taxes like a good boy. Do that and they come along and dock 25% of your income.

[Adrian II]

Is it consumerism etc that has caused this or is it the fact that people are forever told don't worry its not your fault we'll sort you out?Could you or Fragony point out a politician who blames this sort of situation on 'society'?

[Fragony]

Could you or Fragony point out a politician who blames this sort of situation on 'society'?

Are you really asking me this?

[Adrian II]

Are you really asking me this?Are you short of examples?

[Fragony]

Are you short of examples?

Ah common, the entire left. Isn't that exactly what being left is about? Making up apoligies for what you wouldn't allow yourselve in te first place? Make a pick, all the politicians from PVDA, Groen-links, SP, all the same.

[Adrian II]

Ah common, the entire left. Isn't that exactly what being left is about? Making up apoligies for what you wouldn't allow yourselve in te first place? Make a pick, all the politicians from PVDA, Groen-links, SP, all the same.Then you shouldn't have a hard time finding a quote from one of them, saying that society is all to blame for minors getting pregnant.

[ichi]

Society doesn't make girls pregnant, sperm does!

[English assassin]

Well it depends what you mean by "this sort of situation". Gordon Brown, for example, would presumably deny that there is anything in means testing the Family Tax credit that actually REQUIRES girls to get pregnant before they are 16, and he would be right. But I think it is fair to say that "society is to blame" is a reasonably common, one might say stereotypical attitude in new labour, whereas no, YOU are to blame would be the reasonably common, one might say stereotypical attitude of a right of centre party.

I mean, look, apart from anything else society has criminalised sex with grils this age AND (and you may feel contradictorily) ensured that they have access to free contraception. They have access to free education up to the age of 18, and it used to be free til the end of University but New Labour stopped that. Its still free if you are poor enough. Finally they live in a society where their equal right to work and a right to equal pay is enshrined in law. In no sense were their only life choices getting pregant and living on the dole.

Short of having Ann Widdecombe walk round behind them with a big sign saying "DO NOT SHAG THIS GIRL" I fail to see what more society could do?

[Adrian II]

But I think it is fair to say that "society is to blame" is a reasonably common, one might say stereotypical attitude in new labour (..)Well, then you shouldn't have a hard time coming up with a stereotypical Labour quote saying that society is all to blame for minors getting pregnant.

[Fragony]

Then you shouldn't have a hard time finding a quote from one of them, saying that society is all to blame for minors getting pregnant.

Well as I said, give someone something they can use and they will do so, in this particular case once again 'blame society', why would they do such a thing? Because people listen. I don't need quotes to prove anything. Who are the people that listen to this sort of behaviour? Because then you have your answer.

[Adrian II]

(..) 'blame society', why would they do such a thing?To be honest, if there were many politicians in Britain or The Netherlands who blamed under-age pregnancy on society, I'd know because I read their programmes, interviews, speeches and parliamentary interventions, and I speak to some of them personally on occasion. Maybe there is a weird back-bencher somewhere who says things like this, but it isn't mainstream, it isn't stereotypical and it isn't to the point.

I believe Mrs Atkinson isn't parroting any politician at all. If anything, she is shifting the blame onto politicians.

This woman has proven to be unfit as a mother. There have always been women like that and there always will be. They'll always blame others. As to what should be done about the Atkinsons, that's a different subject.

[Fragony]

To be honest, if there were many politicians in Britain or The Netherlands who blamed under-age pregnancy on society, I'd know because I read their programmes, interviews, speeches and parliamentary interventions, and I speak to some of them personally on occasion. Maybe there is a weird back-bencher somewhere who says things like this, but it isn't mainstream, it isn't stereotypical and it isn't to the point.

I believe Mrs Atkinson isn't parroting any politician at all. If anything, she is shifting the blame onto politicians.

This woman has proven to be unfit as a mother. There have always been women like that and there always will be. They'll always blame others. As to what should be done about the Atkinsons, that's a different subject.

Well I think this discussion went beyond that, this particular case is just an example.

I believe Mrs Atkinson isn't parroting any politician at all. If anything, she is shifting the blame onto politicians.

But this is important, why would she do such a thing. Aren't her children her responsibility? What exactly is she so angry about? Why does she blaim society for something that is her own's? Trying to 'understand' can be good, but it shouldn't be a carte blanche for screwing up. It means lowering our own standards in the long run, are you willing to do that?

[Kraxis]

Come on! If she had any validity in her claims (that schools and educations doesn't do enough), why don't we see more of it? Apparently it is equally bad for everyone, or does she imply that her children just that much more dumb than everybody else?
Child (youth... whatever)pregnancy is luckily relatively low in Western Europe.

Also if it really was the education of the children (in the schools of course) that was to blame, then why didn't the 50s boom with childpregnancies? They were there, but surprisingly not more than now (there were vastly more youthpregnancies of girls at 17 and older). Or is she effectively calling herself a bad mother because she can't seem to control her children properly?

[BDC]

Heh, what a mess.

Society is to blame. Clearly she's a useless mother and this should have been recognised and dealt with.

[Adrian II]

Society is to blame. Clearly she's a useless mother and this should have been recognised and dealt with.Now we're talking.

As a journalist I've made some interviews with people like Mrs Atkinson. People who are irresponsible and dysfunctional in so many ways it is a miracle they aren't dead. If they have complaints about society, it is that society hasn't done enough to keep them from creating misery both for themselves and others. Mrs Atkinson knows very well that she is deeply stupid and irresponsible, I have no doubt about that. Only psychiatric patients who are far gone wouldn't be able to have that much self-knowledge. But she wouldn't openly blame herself if she was interviewed in front of her children and she knows that somewhere, somehow society is to blame for not intervening in time for her situation. And why? Because she had been promised it would, and then it never happened.

In Victorian times such a family would have been split up, the mother put in a work house and the children in foster homes where they would grow up into more or less useful servant or factory fodder and die young.

Today we have the money, services and wherewithal to sort out situations like these and to put such people on the right track. But we don't. We use the liberalised, free-marketised, McDonalds approach to social services.

Allow me to digress.

What -- apart from the quaint food which is the obvious butt of countless lame jokes -- is the most remarkable fact about a McDonalds restaurant? That it has no cook. A McDonalds restaurant functions without a person who is knowledgeable about all aspects of the food they sell. The food is standardised, quantified and semi-packaged, its processing and treatment is split up into countless separate acts that are quantified, timed and protocollised. When you work at McDonalds you don't sell food; you work off a protocol. It's a fit-all formula, broken down into countless 'specialised' processes that require no special knowledge, skill or particular concentration at all. Including the service smile that isn't a smile at all because it's paid for together with your fries.

The same applies to our social services. Their work has been compartmentalised, quantified, protocollised, timed, formalised, embedded in contractual obligations. Each service, each staff, each staff member spends a prescribed amount of time on a prescribed caseload or part of it and then goes home. The social psychiatrist sees twenty-four patients a day, prescribes all sorts of medication without ever seeing how they work out in the patient's actual social situation. Case workers walk away from time-consuming problems and file them for the next shift, for a different service, etcetera, etcetera. And nobody is responsible for the end result. There is no cook at the heart of our social services.

That's why a couple years ago, a Dutchman in his fifties -- who was enrolled in all sorts of social programmes and psychiatric out-patient care and what have you -- has been lying dead in his home without anyone noticing for two whole years! His electricity was cut off from outside his home (so much easier these days, isn't it) and his rent was paid automatically because his social assistance money was coming in automatically as well. Someone in the social service had the job of calling this man once every week with a couple of questions. Well, he did, but nobody answered the phone, the empty form was filed under 'no answer' for two years in a row, nobody took notice and that was that.

That's how the Atkinsons of this world are 'helped'. I don't know any more details of her case than you do, but based on experience I suppose at least fifteen people, from school teachers to doctors to policemen to social workers, must have pretended to 'help' her and her girls at some time during this whole episode, but in the end none of them did. It wasn't in their contract.

And then some hack comes around, asks a couple of sympathetic questions and writes down only the juiciest, politically most offensive couple of words Mrs Atkinson says during the entire afternoon.

[Byzantine Prince]

Oh my god...what kind of a name is T-jay?! That's horrific!
Americans have really bad taste in names. For examples I have known a lot of people(even here in Canada) with the names T.C. or P.J.(no, not Panzer). They usually come from America, damn hippies! :furious3:

[_Martyr_]

Excellent points AdrianII ! :bow:

[Crazed Rabbit]

You mean you don't enjoy subsidizing criminal behavior EA?

You don't like having to pay extra taxes so people can loaf around and not do anything?

How very unsensitive of you.
~;)

Government's job should not be to help people, but to ensure that everyone has the same oppurtunity and that laws are enforced. Beyond that, it should not stray.

Crazed Rabbit

[Xiahou]

Government's job should not be to help people, but to ensure that everyone has the same oppurtunity and that laws are enforced. Beyond that, it should not stray.Ditto. Why doesn't government leave charity to the charities? They can make much more effecient use of the resources than any government beaurocracy.

[PanzerJaeger]

Subsidizing irresponsibility only leads to more irresponsibility.

Welfare for people who can work is idiotic in itself. If these "innocent" little girls can have kids that will cost you all money, you should force them to work in a fast food place or clean toilets or something to teach them how stupid they are.

I didnt read anywhere where any of these people were disabled.. why are they getting any money?

[Papewaio]

This is just another form of Eugenics.

[GoreBag]

This is just another form of Eugenics.

Inverse eugenics - only the jerks breed?


Oh my god...what kind of a name is T-jay?! That's horrific!

THAT's where blaming society comes in.

[Papewaio]

Inverse eugenics - only the jerks breed?


Exactly the government is picking certain groups to breed above others. It is eugenics of goblinisation.... ~:cool:

[bmolsson]

Subsidizing irresponsibility only leads to more irresponsibility.


At least she is pro-life....... ~:cheers:

[Adrian II]

At least she is pro-life....... ~:cheers:Hehe.
Funny how some of our American friends don't read what this is all about, but just shoot off their talking-point oneliners. Do you suppose some peoples' brains have been McDonaldised as well?
~;)

[English assassin]

Where were you going with the McDonalds point, AII?

McDonalds does to food, oops "food", what Henry Ford did to car manufacture. Its industrialised and broken down to repetitive, mindless tasks that a moron can do, (no bad thing, we seem to have an endless supply of morons). There are no skilled engineers/cooks, and the product is remarkable primarily because its cheap.

(Digressing, I am not too dewy eyed for the good old days of craftsmanship as opposed to mass production. I am the happy owner of a 1969 Norton Commando, the ne plus ultra of british motorcycle manufacture, hand built by craftsmen. It spends all its time broken down and leaking oil on my garage floor, in stark contrast to my mass produced Honda which has not had as much as a puncture.)

Suppose we have Mcdonaldised social services? There's a reason Henry Ford invented the production line, and its to make productive use of unskilled labour. Both from what I have seen of local politics and from what I have seen trying to run a law firm, I would say one of the major challenges in life is that there is a mismatch between the average amount of intelligence and motivation required to do the average job, and the average amount of intelligence and motivation possessed by the average worker. Put bluntly, humanity is about 10% too stupid. Systems and Mcdonaldisation are a tool to bridge that 10%.

So, you want social services who are well enough funded and staffed with people who are sufficiently skilled to identify Mrs Atkins inadequacies at an early stage, and lead her by a process of socratic questioning to understanmd that she has to take responsibility for her daughters precocious sex lives. Fine, except we also need those people to be good doctors, and good teachers, and maybe even good lawyers and journalists. And there aren't enough to go round. So you have to fall back on systems.

When we have had social services scandals in the UK, the root cause is usually a breakdown in systems. (specifically, record keeping and information sharing) It aseems to me we need MORE process not less. And the process needs to be one that delivers a slapping to the likes of Mrs Atkins before her children are in the maternity ward, rather than "respecting her rights" (AKA leaving her without support). I too come accross people who are so inadequate its a wonder they can feed themselves (not all of these people are senior members of the conservative party, either). Today, they are bunged in a council flat and left to fend for themsleves. Personally, I would like to see a new sort of "suppiorted living", half way between a visit from the social worker once a month and the sort of placements we offer to people with learning difficulties, where these people are given rooms in flats with a concierge and controlled entry (to keep out the ne'er do wells who otherwise often exploit them), where a structured work friendly timetable was imposed (lights out at 11, breakfast from 7-8 am etc) and where fairly intensive support was given to get them into work (training, mentoring, a creche on site etc)

Of course that would simply be billed as "Conservatives want to bring back the Workhouse", but it would be a damn site better than paying a fortune for people to sit on the arses popping out sprogs and watching Tricia.

[econ21]

I'm not getting it - what's all the outrage about? Some schoolgirls have kids. Well, stuff happens. What you goin' to do? The kids need to be paid for, unless you want to see what an underclass really looks like. The schoolgirls can't pay for it, as they are in school. Yes, the fathers should contribute but then the Child Support Agency seems to have the devil's own time squeezing money out of fathers. Posters here seem to think the grandmother should pay, but she doesn't have a job and I'm not quite buying the idea that she can directly control the sexual behaviour of her children. I don't have a problem with my taxes being used to raise some kids, if the alternative is that they fall into poverty. Quite frankly, I find the sentiment in this thread extremely uncharitable and, with the eugenics garbage, ugly. Love they neighbour and let he who is without sin throw the first stone. It's at times like this, I wish I were a Christian.

[Adrian II]

Where were you going with the McDonalds point, AII?You seem to have understood it quite well, like most others.
Put bluntly, humanity is about 10% too stupid. Systems and Mcdonaldisation are a tool to bridge that 10%.Is that so? Or would this McDonaldisation be the very reason why people today generally think that almost any job is shitty and worth holding only for the money it procures?

If you'll allow me to get personal -- and I don't mean to play some silly 'journalists versus lawyers' game here -- I think that the low esteem in which you seem to hold your own job is rather telling. You're not much more than a cog in a large machine even though you put a brave face on it. I'll readily admit the same applies to my own profession (I'd even go so far to say that it is undeserving of the label 'profession' with its connotations of skill, social responsibility and ethics).

However, at an early point in my career I opted to work in a cooperative outfit, a semi-socialist form of company where the work is not McDonaldised, I am fully responsible for the end result of my work and I am damned proud of the collective end result we produce. Not proud as in: boy, this is going to bring in money. But proud as in: boy, we are really contributing something to society. Compare it to your local fire brigade. They have a functional division of labour, not a McDonald's division into crappy protocols. And their output isn't measured by the amount of diesel they burn in a year versus the profits they make on the people whose lives they save. Imagine we McDonaldised the fire brigades. You'd call the emergency number and be connected to a call center where you get to speak to a sophomore student on his night job. 'Flames leaking outside the window you say? Would that be your own building, I mean your property? I see, and what is your insurance number? Yes, I hear you.. people jumping from the third floor to their deaths, yes... but... but I have to have you insurance file number before I can put you through...'

Peoples' attitudes to work, professionalism and social responsibility have changed dramatically over the decades due to McDonaldisation. I have witnessed this process close-up in our own national railroad company NS ('Nationale Spoorwegen') both as a longtime passenger and as a journalist. Since the 1980's NS has been privatised, liberalised and marketised, so now the shareholders decide what happens to the company. It so happens that shareholders don't give a crap about transport or social relevance, they are uniquely interested in dividend. And since there is money to be made from firing people, scrapping services and selling the stretches of land on which Dutch railways have been laid (at public expense) over the past one hundred and fifty years, that's what we are seeing right now. The shareholders are God, the passengers are cattle.

And since shareholders demand quantified results, all NS operations have been split up into scores of large and small companies with separate 'mission statements', incompetent (young! dynamic!) managers and huge overhead costs. Practically all expertise that used to be available within the original NS has been scrapped and subsequently 'outsourced', at ridiculous costs, and often to the same people who had just been fired because their knowledge was 'expendable'. Jobs have been Fordised, McDonaldised and generally ridiculised, the result being that the old professionalism that used to make the NS one of the best companies in the whole wide world is now gone. Staff don't know squat, they hate their jobs, service is at an all-time low, one manager after another runs off with his pockets stuffed full of options (put, no doubt) and bonuses, and the public is sick of it.

Caution: any resemblance between the NS demise and today's social services is pure coincidence. Please note that we do not have capitalist social services involved in the active breakdown of social fabric. Not at all. We have remnants of socialism that thwart peoples' initiative and responsibility. Booh! And we have legions of leftist politicians and overpaid QC's who blame society for everything and cheer on the Atkinsons of this world. Booh! (2x)

BTW English Assassin: any chance you show us a quote from a British politician (just one will do) who puts the blame for under-age pregnancies squarely on society?

[BDC]

Yes, we have a mess of a de-nationalised rail system too. Another of Maggie's brain childs.

I don't think the grandmother should pay (hey because she has no money!), just the whole thing is a mess. What's up with those girls? Surely they would have realised what happens after their sister got pregnant?

[Adrian II]

What's up with those girls? Surely they would have realised what happens after their sister got pregnant?The point is: nobody here knows what's up with them, unless some patron happens to live next door to the Atkinses. Surely you will be aware that there are people so dysfunctional it's a miracle they can tie their own shoes. Put them in a house, leave them to their own devices and soon there are four, and then seven of them. And all will be relatively unhappy, I guess. If not outright miserable. The issue is: should we then blame them, haul them before the Daily Mail jury, arrest them, have the neighbourhood stalk them, demand our money back, demand compensation, prison sentences, police action, tough speeches in confeence rooms, and make everybody even more miserable? I don't think so.

[English assassin]

I'm not entirely sure why we are playing this game, but this http://www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=69 is the social exclusion unit report on teenage pregnancy. Distressingly for me, or possibly you, it lacks the key phrase "In a very real sense we are all to blame", obviously the Bishop of Oxford must have had another engagement that day, but it does attribute the problem to "neglect" by society (para 8 of the summary) and, hardly controversially, observes that girls with more life choices will be less likely to be teenage mothers than those with fewer.

More broadly, the fact that something called the "social exclusion unit" is interesting itself in the issues suggests that if feels society can be reconfigured to reduce teenage pregnancy, surely. (I love the phrase "social exclusion". Note how it locates the problem in society. Now, a disabled person who can't get to work because the bus won't take a wheelchair is socially excluded, right enough. But a drug user is not socially excluded, he or she has chosen to exclude him or herself.)

Of course as ever this hugely begs the question of why some girls have fewer life chances, and the role neglectful parents such as Mrs Atkins have to play in that.


Or would this McDonaldisation be the very reason why people today generally think that almost any job is shitty and worth holding only for the money it procures?

Possibly. Or possibly that is rather an elitist point of view. But even if it is not, should "society" pay the cost, in terms of crappy motorbikes that leak oil rather than nice japanese ones that don't, for job satisfaction. I (one) may have a McDonaldised job but I (one) can access goods and services at ridiculously low prices thanks to everyone elses McDonaldisation.


I think that the low esteem in which you seem to hold your own job is rather telling. You're not much more than a cog in a large machine even though you put a brave face on it.

As it happens, not entirely so, I don't know what the situation is in the Netherlands but in the UK law firms are partnerships, not so different from your co-operative in structure I imagine. My own area of practice is public law advisory work for the public sector, (and as it happens I'm pretty good at it if I do say so myself) so I can quite understand your choices. I would certainly have made a lot more money in corporate law, but...

I'm not going to defend rail privatisation, I can see a bear trap when its put in front of me. By all accounts even Thatcher thought rail had to be nationalised. Thwe fact that equity finance didn't work for the railways doesn't mean its invalid as a way to finance a business generally, though. (What that had to do with teenage pregnancies i am not sure but it needed to be said.)

[Adrian II]

I'm not entirely sure why we are playing this game (..)Because you and Fragony stated that Mrs Atkins was parroting countless politicians. So I ask for some politician's quote. Unfortunately, not only the Bishop of Oxford, but any other prominent figure you might want to quote just happens to have a day off when you need them most. This goes for Fragony too. You will find countless quotes from politicians sharing your view that society shouldn't neglect the Atkinses of this world but sort them out. After that, opinions on strategy and tactics obviously diverge: should we tackle only the Atkinses every time one pops up on page five of the Bloody Mail, or should we tackle the system that ignores them? Are we concerned about our society or just about my taxpayer money?
I (one) may have a McDonaldised job but I (one) can access goods and services at ridiculously low prices thanks to everyone elses McDonaldisation.You mean your omnipresent quality press, your railway paradise, affordable housing, superb NHS, national diet of chips and Twizzlers, etcetera? Well, I stand corrected. Alright, chauvinism alarm: so let me add that on this side of the pond too, life is beginning to look like a giant, lukewarm, nutritionally void Happy Meal + plastic gadget that doesn't work.
I would certainly have made a lot more money in corporate law, but...Right. I may have mistaken your sarcasm about lawyers for some sort of barely veiled self-indictment. Sorry for that. I already knew your job probably wasn't some hyped-up corporate sinecure, you're much too smart and involved for that. Yes, that is a compliment. Now shoo.
By all accounts even Thatcher thought rail had to be nationalised. The fact that equity finance didn't work for the railways doesn't mean its invalid as a way to finance a business generally, though.That is true, and I thank God my outfit operates on a free market, we have to deliver for the money we make, and nobody owns us. But my point was that public services shouldn't be run like companies, and that many companies (if fact all, apart from McDonalds..) shouldn't be McDonaldised.

The problem I have when trying to extrapolate my (cooperative) view of industrial organisation is mainly a problem of scale. Cooperative structure is not going to work for the giant equity-financed corporations running this world. Even Microsoft, which seems uniquely suited due to the nature of its own product and production processes, doesn't come anywhere near a twenty-first century Athenian industrial democracy.

But I'm working on it. ~:handball: ~;)

[English assassin]

Because you and Fragony stated that Mrs Atkinson was parroting countless politicians.

Ah, that explains it. I didn't say she was parroting any politicians. I wondered why I was getting such a hard time over this. the closest I got to it was:


But I think it is fair to say that "society is to blame" is a reasonably common, one might say stereotypical attitude in new labour



But my point was that public services shouldn't be run like companies, and that many companies (if fact all, apart from McDonalds..) shouldn't be McDonaldised.

Aha. Now that is almost worth a thread in itself. "public services shouldn't be run like companies" discuss.

To begin with an anecdote. A colleague left to become an advisor in the voluntary/charity sector. (This is an occupational hazard in my area, I've just lost someone to the UN in Ramalla too.) He happens to be a member of the Labour party, so no mad free-marketeer. His view now is that a major weakness in the voluntary sector is not that it is too corporate, but that it is far from being corporate enough. Projects are costed properly and surpluses aren't made and carried forward, so the whole enterprise is chronically unstable and undercapitalised. Being under capitalised, there is insufficient investment in things like IT and training for staff, resulting in less capacity, por retention, and so on. His view is a more business like approach, far from undermining the non for profit ethos, would be hugely to the advantage of the clients of these organisations.

Likewise, although I have certainly seen organisations delivering public services that are first class, staffed with committed and able people and really focused on what they are doing, I have seen at least as may that have been truly shocking, malevolent is not too strong, in their disinterest for anything except their own status . (As an aside the disease is usually stronger the closer you are to central government.) Curiously the staff in the malevolent organisations are usually the ones who are loudest in their assertion that they embody some intangible and conveniently unquantifiable quality not to be found in any company. (I really wish I could tell you about a current example I have where a turf war over one project is actually going to be putting lives at risk for the next 2-3 years, but obviosuly I can't.)

I'm not dewy eyed about companies but they are a lot more resistant to this sort of producer capture and outright political shenanigans. Also of course ones that seek to impose additional costs on the market tend to go bust.

So while you have a point on the railways I do fail to see why, say, a health service shouldn't be run "like" a company.

[JAG]

I think a lot of stereotyping has gone on in this case by our nasty tabloids who love a story like this. The mother when interviewed also made a very valuable point - her 11 year old child was having sex, unless she was to lock her up in her home 24/7 she could not possibly stop her child from having sex. The 11 year old was having sex in many places with her boyfriend, what is the mother meant to do other than say it is wrong? I fail to understand why so much emphasis is put into making the mother look terrible, yes she has clearly failed but physically stopping an 11 year old who clearly made a consistent choice to have sex? Very hard.

It is also clearly societies fault as well as the individuals fault EA, I am sorry to say. I know I am falling into a stereotype lefty here, but you cannot avoid the fact that it is. We can imagine the situation and areas these people live in, we can imagine the kind of behaviour the children see day in day out, experience and think perfectly acceptable. That is society failing. By letting deprived, run down areas - housing, schooling, hospitals etc - continue to get worse you get the angry, aggressive, dysfunctional behaviour increasing. We are all influenced by the part of society we live in, these children CLEARLY were too. If everyday you are told about and shown sex as if it is 100% normal you will be more likely to participate in it. On top of this if you live in a run down, dysfunctional area where violence and gang activity is the norm it becomes ever more likely. This is not to say the girl and mother did not play a significant part in their choices, they did, but society has helped cause the failure, to get away from that would be absurd.

Thus you should be proud to pay your taxes EA, because it is your taxes which - given a progressive, lefty govt - will help solve the problem. Your taxes will help build up these sords of areas, give chances to these people and help solve the problem. It is govts you would support which would make the problem far worse, it is alright for you to keep stating how it is the people at fault without acknowledging government's and societies failures too, but when you have cut all benefits, cut taxes and turned your back on these people and they keep happening with ever increasing numbers what will you do then? ... Create hate, fear and loathing, play on it and win votes no doubt, like Tories usually do.

[Adrian II]

I didn't say she was parroting any politicians. I wondered why I was getting such a hard time over this.Oh alright, but Fragony did, and you seemed to subscribe when you said it was (stereo)typical Labour talk.
Now that is almost worth a thread in itself.Well no, actually this is about why social services don't deal with the Atkinses du jour. Her situation seems a typical half-product of the Kwik-Fit approach to welfare. Yes, we did look underneath your car when we fitted your new exhaust just before you had the accident. Yes, we did notice the oil dripping. But we're not qualified mechanics, you know. It's not in our contract and we have tight schedules. But we're really sorry your wife had to die 'n all.

[PanzerJaeger]

Hehe.
Funny how some of our American friends don't read what this is all about, but just shoot off their talking-point oneliners. Do you suppose some peoples' brains have been McDonaldised as well?

Lol get off your high horse - youre just as much of an entrenched ideologue as anyone here. ~:handball:

Fact is if these girls are mature enough to have babies they are mature enough to get a job. If child labor laws disallow such an option for the younger one then mommy will have to forgo that new pair of shoes and work overtime.

Its called personal responsibility. Life is tough when you live like trash. :shrug:

[English assassin]

The 11 year old was having sex in many places with her boyfriend, what is the mother meant to do other than say it is wrong?

At last, a question with an easy answer. Call the police. Sex with an 11 year old girl is a crime, and a serious one too.

[JAG]

Lol get off your high horse - youre just as much of an entrenched ideologue as anyone here. ~:handball:

Fact is if these girls are mature enough to have babies they are mature enough to get a job. If child labor laws disallow such an option for the younger one then mommy will have to forgo that new pair of shoes and work overtime.

Its called personal responsibility. Life is tough when you live like trash. :shrug:

I thought slavery was abolished in the US, oh yes I forget it was introduced again when the US embraced the bare free market. :book:

[JAG]

At last, a question with an easy answer. Call the police. Sex with an 11 year old girl is a crime, and a serious one too.

When the boy is of an age similar? I am under the impression that, that is the case here. When an 11 year old girl and an 11 year old boy want to have sex with each other and do so, you are going to arrest the boy? It might be the girl forcing the situation far more than the boy - which in fact seems the case here. Unless you want to keep an 11 year old boy in jail until he and the girl are legally allowed to have sex you are not going to stop them having sex if they want to have sex. Fullstop. It is horribly unfair to arrest the boy.

Obviously if the boy was not a boy but a bloke, then it is different but nowhere has that been stated or implied. In fact it would be a totally different story if that was the case, don't you think?

[Adrian II]

@EA, the report you quote makes interesting reading. It starts by pointing out that teen pregnancy numbers in western nations have started to diverge since the late 1970's:


Although more than two-thirds of under 16s do not have sex and most teenage girls reach their twenties without getting pregnant, the UK has teenage birth rates which are twice as high as in Germany, three times as high as in France and six times as high as in the Netherlands. Some other countries – notably the US – have rates even higher than the UK. But within Western Europe, the UK now stands out as having the highest rate of teenage births.
In order to explain this divergence, the report then outlines three factors:


5. The first is low expectations. (..) One reason why the UK has such high teenage pregnancy rates is that there are more young people who see no prospect of a job and fear they will end up on benefit one way or the other. Put simply, they see no reason not to get pregnant.

6. The second is ignorance. Young people lack accurate knowledge about contraception, STIs, what to expect in relationships and what it means to be a parent. (..)

7. The third is mixed messages. As one teenager put it to the Unit, it sometimes seems as if sex is compulsory but contraception is illegal. One part of the adult world bombards teenagers with sexually explicit messages and an implicit message that sexual activity is the norm. Another part, including many parents and most public institutions, is at best embarrassed and at worst silent, hoping that if sex isn’t talked about, it won’t happen. The net result is not less sex, but less protected sex.

8. These three factors point to a single faultline in past attempts to tackle this problem: neglect. Governments and society have neglected the issue because it can easily drift into moralising and is difficult for anyone to solve on their own. And the most vulnerable communities and young people have been the most neglected of all. Teenage pregnancy is a classic joined-up problem but has never had an agency or individual prepared to take responsibility for tackling it as a whole.
Finally, as the report shows, there is a telling correlation here. The UK's numbers for teen pregnancy are closer to those of the U.S. and New Zealand than those of the rest of Europe. What is the common factor in these three societies? And I don't mean language, haha, nor the roaring sixties and their 'attack on family values' because that struck much harder in The Netherlands and our numbers look a lot better.

Has there been a particular political experience these three countries shared since the late 1970's?

[English assassin]

When the boy is of an age similar? I am under the impression that, that is the case here. When an 11 year old girl and an 11 year old boy want to have sex with each other and do so, you are going to arrest the boy? It might be the girl forcing the situation far more than the boy - which in fact seems the case here. Unless you want to keep an 11 year old boy in jail until he and the girl are legally allowed to have sex you are not going to stop them having sex if they want to have sex. Fullstop

Yes I am. Its against the law. (Oooooh, get HER, Judge Dredd just walked into the org...)

@AII well I know what you are getting at of course but I'd need to see evidence that it was anything to do with liberalising the economy. if the UK figures sky rocketed in 79, NZ in the 90s and the US has always been high then I might agree, economic liberals are a threat to our daughters.

What I do think the UK and US are very weak on (don't know about NZ) is sex education, which is obviously a contributing factor. Did you see the statistics on use of contraceptives? Very telling.

I also have no issues at all with the need to improve peoples life chances though as I pointed out in an earlier post these girls have pretty good life chances already. JAG certainly paints a dire picture of deprivation and it may be the circumstances that these girls live in, or there again, it may not.

Comtemplating these problems en masse is important of course, it doesn't in my mind detract from the fact that something has gone VERY wrong in this family with three underage pregnancies and at least one secret paedophile in the picture, and the one person who was unquestionably under a duty to stop this is quite defiant that it is not her fault. Even if you think it is ALSO someone elses fault she, surely, deserves condemnation if only so all the other crappy mothers out there might just think, maybe I'd better have a word with Kylie about condoms.

[ah_dut]

When the boy is of an age similar? I am under the impression that, that is the case here. When an 11 year old girl and an 11 year old boy want to have sex with each other and do so, you are going to arrest the boy? It might be the girl forcing the situation far more than the boy - which in fact seems the case here. Unless you want to keep an 11 year old boy in jail until he and the girl are legally allowed to have sex you are not going to stop them having sex if they want to have sex. Fullstop. It is horribly unfair to arrest the boy.

Obviously if the boy was not a boy but a bloke, then it is different but nowhere has that been stated or implied. In fact it would be a totally different story if that was the case, don't you think?
I think that both of them need to have something done to them as it's USI (underage sexual intercourse) I have no idea what that something is though...Because as previously stated, a)it's not the child's fault, don't punish the child b) punishing the parents will probably affect the child c) You can't really take money off their benefits or force them to spend it on better food or whatnot...

Well on the topic of sex education...I am going to say full stop that it is relatively ineffective. I don't exactly live in a deprived area or anything but the people who are going to get laid at a party don't exactly carry condoms around...trust me, I have been at some of those parties.

And well, it might br useful but sex ed in it's current form is just quite laughable. I only know about it in my school and a couple of others and it all seems a bit on it's high horse so to speak. It's just a don't have sex but if you do please use a condom...but we closed down the local youth health centre thing and you can't really go off and buy a condom so don't have sex ~:eek: cycle.

This topic is a great dillemma in that whatever the monkey you do, very little good seems to happen :furious3:

[Adrian II]

Did you see the statistics on use of contraceptives? Very telling.In a way, yes, and better sex education is no doubt a part of the solution -- but we're not going to vindicate Mrs Atkins' statement after all, are we? ~;)

I think most intractable social problems are inextricably linked: poor performance in school, poor health, deficient housing, family problems, domestic violence, sexual abuse, low income, unemployment, welfare dependency, alcohol and drug abuse, juvenile crime and, indeed, sheer stupidity. By that I mean stupidity in the real sense of: lack of intelligence, absence of a capacity of the mind to perform logic-symbolic operations necessary to function in modern society.

For convenience, let us call them 'the poor'.

There have been two approaches to them in the world's affluent societies in the past decades, leading to two different kinds of policies.
1. The neoliberal one: the poor have only themselves to blame, they aren't entitled to my tax money and if they create problems they should be punished for it. Cut social spending.
2. The social/christian democratic one: the poor are an integral part of my society, I want my money spent wisely on them in their interest and mine, and if they create problems we will resolve those problems. Maintain social spending.

On this scale the UK seems to have been a half way house between the U.S. and the rest of Europe. All statistics bear this out. And all polls bear out that the British have had it with neoliberal policies:


A large proportion of the population believes that the gap between rich and poor is too large and that it is government's responsibility to reduce it. Most people substantially underestimate the pay of highly paid occupations, but still think it should be lower. Most people believe that there is 'quite a lot of real poverty' in Britain, and give views that are consistent with notions of a poverty line that rises over time as society becomes more affluent. Less than a quarter of the population blames 'laziness or lack of willpower' on the part of the poor for their low income.
Inequality and the State, Prof. John Hills, Oxford University Press, 2004
Taxes are the last taboo of the Thatcher era, but Brown has been working on that quite successfully. Anyway, in response to your concluding general remark I would say that generally speaking, social spending is still necessary and beneficial, and I do wish we use it wisely, in a client-centered and not state-centered way, and on the basis of moral instead of financial accountability.

BTW: New Zealand seems to fall outside any equation (http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/Articles/teen-Sep03.htm) because high teen fertility has always been a feature among Maori and Pacific women. The trend in teen pregnancies has been pretty stable since the 1960's, the main difference being that since the 1970's NZ teens don't marry anymore:


In 1971, there were more births among married teenagers than those not married – 5,100 versus 3,700. Over the next three decades, the number of nuptial confinements among teenagers collapsed from 5,100 in 1971 to just under 200 in 2002, with most of the large fall taking place in the 1970s and early 1980s.

[English assassin]

think most intractable social problems are inextricably linked: poor performance in school, poor health, deficient housing, family problems, domestic violence, sexual abuse, low income, unemployment, welfare dependency, alcohol and drug abuse, juvenile crime and, indeed, sheer stupidity. By that I mean stupidity in the real sense of: lack of intelligence, absence of a capacity of the mind to perform logic-symbolic operations necessary to function in modern society.

Indeed, the role of genuine stupidity in social problems (and its close cousin, poor impulse control) is in my view hugely underestimated. The trouble is unlike some of the other factors you cite stupidity isn't curable. (Nor, if reports I have seen on programmes run with offenders in prison, is poor impulse control).

Some of the factors you mention could in principle be cured easily. Poor housing shouldn't be that difficult (though you would be amazed how easily some people can trash their council flat. But then people who think it is normal to crap on the floor should probably be in some form of mental health institution). Some maybe rather more tricky but in principle more can be done (domestic violence and sexual abuse, say). But take all that away and you will come back to the inescapable facts of stupidity and the consequences of stupidity.

And there I have to say we hit one of those defining issues that puts me right of centre, and that it is that provided a person does not have learning difficulties, (ie is so deficient that they are genuinely incapable of functioning in adult society) and provided every opportunity has been given so we aren't talking about the merely under educated but the stupid and reckless, then let the consequences fall where they may. I wholly accept the other view is tenable, but in my view trying to enforce some sort of equality of outcome, which is in effect what you would be doing, creates huge moral hazards.

NB stupidity isn't evil, although its consequences can be close to it. Of course, stupid people are not morally blameworthy or to be condemned. But, in the words of a famous judgement, it is a misfortune, not a priviledge.

I wouldn't put too much faith in those polls either without a very clear idea of their design. A lot of people might agree with "do you think people who are paid more than you should be paid a bit less." Do people have a good understanding not only of what, say, a consultant surgeon is paid, but also how many consultant surgeons there are? I really fail to understand the excitement caused in some parts of the left by the idea of attacking "the rich" (by which incidentally note that we mean people who work for a living. If we were talking about Charlie Windsor and his flunkeys I could begin to see it.) Consider this:


In 2002-03, the original income of the top fifth of households in the UK was around fifteen times greater than for those in the bottom fifth (£60,300 per household per year compared with £4,000). This compares with ratios of eighteen to one in the two previous years.

After adjusting for taxes and benefits the ratio was greatly reduced, to four to one for final income, unchanged from previous years.

The types of households that gain from this redistribution tend to be one adult households with children, two adult households with three or more children and retired households.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=334

Thats a heck of a lot of (income) redistribution right there. Fifteen to one down to four to one. Do we need more? And if you totally mullered the top, shall we say 5%, do you really think it would make that much difference to the pensioners and unemployed? There's an awful lot more of them.

[Adrian II]

(..) in my view trying to enforce some sort of equality of outcome, which is in effect what you would be doing, creates huge moral hazards.I hope I have made it clear that I am talking about controlling social damage and misery. This thread never was about forcing 'equal outcomes'.
(..) "the rich" (by which incidentally note that we mean people who work for a living (..)Ah, so the rich still work where you live? In The Netherlands, they don't even live where they live anymore. ~;)

[A.Saturnus]

And there I have to say we hit one of those defining issues that puts me right of centre, and that it is that provided a person does not have learning difficulties, (ie is so deficient that they are genuinely incapable of functioning in adult society) and provided every opportunity has been given so we aren't talking about the merely under educated but the stupid and reckless, then let the consequences fall where they may. I wholly accept the other view is tenable, but in my view trying to enforce some sort of equality of outcome, which is in effect what you would be doing, creates huge moral hazards.

So simplified, it comes done to the following "defining issues":

- those people who cause all those problems are genetically inferior. Thus whatever they have to live with is their business. It is neither effective nor morally acceptable to help them any more than others. That way, only the strongest of them will survive and will eventually become worthy of the compassion of us Übermenschen. That is only natural.

- they have these problems because the bourgoisie exploits them. Capitalism makes them poor and robs them of all their choices in life. Their only hope is the struggle of the classes. Teenage pregnants of all countries unite!

Great prospects, isn't it?!

[econ21]

Thats a heck of a lot of (income) redistribution right there. Fifteen to one down to four to one. Do we need more? And if you totally mullered the top, shall we say 5%, do you really think it would make that much difference to the pensioners and unemployed? There's an awful lot more of them.

Fascinating fact. I suspect it's the benefits, not the taxes, that have the biggest effect. (In fact I know it's the case, if you look at other inequality measures such as Gini coefficients). A lot of households may have zero income before benefits - eg state pensioners, unemployed, disabled - but then get a living income from the state. Tax rates are higher for the rich, but broadly speaking are reasonably proportional - especially as the rich are quite good at reducing tax liability. I suspect the crude story is that taxpayers - rather than the "rich" per se - pay for the poor.

One aspect that should not be lost sight of though, is that a lot of this redistribution is intertemporal rather than interpersonal. People who at one time are taxpayers also get a lot of state benefits in certain contingencies (retirement, unemployment). The poor are also a surprisingly changeable group - lots of movement in and out of poverty, which rather gives the lie to the idea that they are a permanent class of low IQ people[1].

[1] And don't get me started on IQ as a immutable characteristic...

[Papewaio]

If everyday you are told about and shown sex as if it is 100% normal you will be more likely to participate in it. On top of this if you live in a run down, dysfunctional area where violence and gang activity is the norm it becomes ever more likely. This is not to say the girl and mother did not play a significant part in their choices, they did, but society has helped cause the failure, to get away from that would be absurd.



How can you blame society at the same time allow personal choice? It is normally one or the other.

If they choose it is their responsibility.

As minors society needs to protect them if their parents cannot. Where is their father as their mother is not capable when all three of her daughters are under 18 and pregnant.

Also you are blaming the environment in which they live. Fair enough, we do get influenced by our peers. But what percentage of them are underage and pregnant...surely if some chose not to go down that path it shows that the rest are choosing to do so and hence it is their choice not societies.

Since the majority of society seems to be against underage pregnancy and have laws against underage sex then surely these children need to be protected. Society is not to blame in this situation, it is going to have to pick up the pieces.

And yes it is automatically eugenics when the government is changing the viability of portions of the population having children. In Australia the government gives $2000 per child born (there are other benefits)... Now if the amount varied say $20000 for middle class and $200 dollars for those on the dole that would be a form of eugenics as it would be favouring one group above another...

[English assassin]

Fascinating fact. I suspect it's the benefits, not the taxes, that have the biggest effect. (In fact I know it's the case, if you look at other inequality measures such as Gini coefficients). A lot of households may have zero income before benefits - eg state pensioners, unemployed, disabled - but then get a living income from the state. Tax rates are higher for the rich, but broadly speaking are reasonably proportional - especially as the rich are quite good at reducing tax liability. I suspect the crude story is that taxpayers - rather than the "rich" per se - pay for the poor.

One aspect that should not be lost sight of though, is that a lot of this redistribution is intertemporal rather than interpersonal. People who at one time are taxpayers also get a lot of state benefits in certain contingencies (retirement, unemployment). The poor are also a surprisingly changeable group - lots of movement in and out of poverty, which rather gives the lie to the idea that they are a permanent class of low IQ people[1].

[1] And don't get me started on IQ as a immutable characteristic...

These are all good points. Its right that the benefits have the greater effect, there is another page on the ONS website, I think the one dealing with how the Gini coefficient has varied over time, which notes this.

The intertemporal point is also a good one. Consider the premium this puts on the stability of whatever agency it is you pay your "taxes" to in your seven fat years. A particular problem for pensions, of course, where the government is in effect defaulting on the promise it made/makes to NI payers (by which i mean those who have paid NI in say the past 20 years in the exoectation that when they come to retire there will be an OK state pension will not have those ecpectations met), and yet the private sector is not a great deal better (Equitable life, anyone?). Who do you trust more, companies or politicians. Personally I trust the private sector but again that is a point on which reasonable people could differ...

The movement in and out of poverty is also a vital point and one frequently overlooked in political rhetoric. I think it was the Kings Fund investigated long term poverty about 18 months ago and found that as a wide spread social phenomenon it didn't really exist in the UK. (I can't remember but I think they MUST have excluded pensioners to reach that conclusion). Not, NB, that there was no poverty, and not that there might not be some people who spent a long time in poverty, but that over time people moved into poverty (divorce, losing a job, illness) and out again (retraining, new job, etc).

I must say I found that rather a positive finding, taking the view that life always has a few ups and downs and the government can hardly be expected to prevent that. Although I appreciate the labour party has to pretend that there is widespread and persistant poverty for its own reasons, which is fair enough.

Happily no one has yet mentioned IQ per se, or genetics which I see raised its head in AS's post. I am guilty of referring to "stupidity" but by that I meant a compendious (and possibly circular) general inability to make the "right" decisions. It could as easily include someone who was clever but lazy (someone who, say, posts on an internet forum insterad of doing his work...) Certainly not a lack of ability to shuffle funny little triangles and squares around on a piece of paper....

[Adrian II]

I am guilty of referring to "stupidity" but by that I meant a compendious (and possibly circular) general inability to make the "right" decisions.And I am guilty of using the term 'poor' as a dustbin for people who are unable to fend for themselves for a variety of reasons I mentioned (see above). That's why I don't agree with your focus on finances, Simon. Social problems do not all equate to poverty, but (relative) poverty compounded by social, physical or psychological handicaps is a serious problem and people tend to become stuck in it. And as JAG stated, there are neighbourhoods where such problems are endemic. Living is such neighbourhoods is not a life style choice, gentlemen, and getting pregnant at the age of twelve is not part of life's ups and downs for most girls.

EDIT
I almost forgot Mrs Atkins is a case in point. She 'makes' 30 grand a year, but I think we can agree she has a problem nonetheless...

[econ21]

That's why I don't agree with your focus on finances, Simon. Social problems do not all equate to poverty, but (relative) poverty compounded by social, physical or psychological handicaps is a serious problem ...

Yes, the problem is not purely financial, it's just that outrage at the £30,000 per year subsidy was the starting point of this debate. I admit I'm not enraptured by it, but I am not convinced it should be cut.


...and people tend to become stuck in it. ... and getting pregnant at the age of twelve is not part of life's ups and downs for most girls.

But it may just be part of life's ups and downs for these girls. I suspect a lot of girls who do get pregnant early go on to have good lives and bring up fine kids. Especially if supported so they can continue to study, raise their kids in decent accommodation etc. Sure, it's harder for them and of course it's a mistake to get pregnant so young. But plastering the faces of some of the youngsters affected over the tabloids and lambasting them in public seems uncharitable and ugly.

[Adrian II]

But plastering the faces of some of the youngsters affected over the tabloids and lambasting them in public seems uncharitable and ugly.Um, who are you trying to convince? ~:) This is exactly what I wrote earlier in the thread, particularly because I know how my dear colleagues of the tabloid press tend to operate.

[KukriKhan]

Fascinating discussion.

Still, I thought the gist of the thread-starter was "Little girls are having sex, and someone needs to be punished." The debate, from there, was an examination of who that should be: the girls, their protector, or the village-at-large.

One little factlet that got kind of skipped over back there was the NZ teen pregnancy rates. The impression I got of the reaction to the statistic was: 'Well, it's a culture thing'.

I'd like to look at that more closely; does anyone think that the extended-juvenilization of our teens in the First World post-industrial society is beyond its use? I mean this: before the Industrial Revolution, child labor was not only legal, but necessary and expected. During the IndRev, we outlawed child labor, and made those 11-18 year olds go to school. One effect of this was the expansion of the definition of 'chilhood' way beyond the onset of puberty.

Is it time to re-look at our definition of adulthood and childhood? Specifically, for what 'interests of society' do we continue to oppress teenagers, and deny them the same freedoms we over 18's enjoy? Why not confer adulthood and full citizenship to all residents as soon as they are biologically able to reproduce themselves? With all attendant responsibilities, of course.

Or am I just trying to solve an insoluable problem by redefining it? ~D

[A.Saturnus]

Happily no one has yet mentioned IQ per se, or genetics which I see raised its head in AS's post. I am guilty of referring to "stupidity" but by that I meant a compendious (and possibly circular) general inability to make the "right" decisions. It could as easily include someone who was clever but lazy (someone who, say, posts on an internet forum insterad of doing his work...) Certainly not a lack of ability to shuffle funny little triangles and squares around on a piece of paper....

But these two are highly correlated. You may think that IQ is something ivory tower scientists like to play with (and that is not entirely wrong) but its predictive power is unquestionable. High IQ people are more succesful, earn more money, have a higher social status, are less prone to deviant behaviour, are healthier, more attractive and live longer.

Aside from that, what you oversee is that Mrs Atkins and her kin make perfectly reasonable decision from a certain point of view. Those decisions are only not meant to make them - or you - happy. It is a basic strategy for gene transport vehicles such as Mrs Atkins to increase the number of offspring if the control on their environment is low. That way, chance increases that some of her gene-copies make it through. If you have higher control on environment, you can afford to invest all in few siblings.
You may not like sociobiological explanations, but rejecting them doesn't help if they are true.

[English assassin]

Ah, sociobiology. I'm all in favour of it, for ants.

I don't actually object to sociobiology, at least when it is deployed by biologists rather than being some just so stories a half baked political philosopher jots down.

But, in one of my favourite concepts du jour, it falls into the trap of nothing buttery. Ie, it is one thing to say the human organism exists to transmit its genes to the next generation. It is another to say the human organism exists to do nothing but transmit its genes to the next generation.

In this case, if it is the case that poorer women have more children than richer women, I'd need to be persuaded that we had to look beyond the wider range of fulfilling choices available to richer women.

We'd also have to check we weren't confusing cause and effect, after all having children and stopping working or working part time will pretty quickly have an impact on your income. Hey presto, poor women have more children.

[Papewaio]

High IQ people are more succesful, earn more money, have a higher social status, are less prone to deviant behaviour, are healthier, more attractive and live longer.

Which caused which?

Did having more money create a higher social status, better food, more free time, access to more learning material and hence a better exercised and feed brain.

etc

[Adrian II]

(..) this http://www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=69 is the social exclusion unit report on teenage pregnancy.And this (link (http://society.guardian.co.uk/children/story/0,1074,1492434,00.html)) is the disappointing message that it's £40m-a-year 'teenage pregnancy strategy' doesn't work.

In her first interview since her post-election return to the government, Beverley Hughes told the Guardian that ministers had "reached a sticking point" where their efforts could not by themselves solve the problem of teenage pregnancy.
Mrs Hughes has come to the staggering conclusion that a helping hand from parents might actually help the Government succeed where it fails in educating children about sexuality.

All the evidence showed that "we really need parents to now see themselves as making an absolutely unique and vital contribution to this issue ... It is a contribution that I don't think anyone else can actually make".
On the other hand Mrs Hughes, who is the mother of two adult daughters and a son, admits her generation may be out of touch with adolescent sexual attitudes and issues -- if not actually with their own sexuality, a subject mercifully left untouched in her press conference.

Ms Hughes acknowledged that initially she felt uncomfortable discussing sex and relationships with her children, partly because her daughters were so much more informed about sex than her own generation through information gathered from sources such as teen magazines.
During the press conference it transpired that the problem is really only concentrated in poor areas: in some inner city boroughs more than one in 10 teenage girls becomes pregnant. In the subsequent expert round-table discussion Dr English Assassin, of Assassin & Appleton Consultants, stated that poverty is really a fleeting phenomenon and not part of a complex of obnoxious problems compounded by other physical, social, psychological and educational handicaps. Prof A.Saturnus of the Genetics Department of McDonald's Hamburger University favoured a Kwik-Fit approach to gene transport vessels like Mrs Atkins of 'baby factory' fame. The session ended on a brief presentation by AdrianII of Ad & Frag Comic Relief Productions suggesting that the Dutch aggressive campaign for sex education in schools and other public institutions since the 1970's had nipped this problem in the bud in their country.

[KukriKhan]

We've solved 75% of the problem, then:

ship all unwed underage mothers & offspring to Holland! ~D

Now: about those pesky unwed fathers...

[A.Saturnus]

If it works for ants, why shouldn't it work for humans?
From an evolutionary point of view, the only purpose of an organism is to provide evolutionary success to its genes. Everything that doesn't serve this purpose is a waste. Denying that will lead at some point to the necessity to throw some unscientific hokuspokus into the ring. Of course, that doesn't mean everything humans do serves this purpose, the genes hold humans on long leashes.
The weakness of sociobiological explanations is that they are ad-hoc. But if we have an effect on population level that seems to be culture independent and in line with evolutionary logic, they have a good plausibility. Though, if you have a better explanation...

When we evaluate causation, we have to consider that children from poorer families will have more offspring later.


Did having more money create a higher social status, better food, more free time, access to more learning material and hence a better exercised and feed brain.

That is indeed the question and there's a controversy about the answer. In my opinion, the fact that average IQ has increased in the last 50 years points to the assumption that it works as you said, at least partly.

[Papewaio]

If it works for ants, why shouldn't it work for humans?
From an evolutionary point of view, the only purpose of an organism is to provide evolutionary success to its genes.


Well because we can think (memes) so maybe we are at a crossroads of having two sets of purposes.

One purpose for the genes to propagate.
The second purpose for the memes to propagate.

Of course the two can be in conflict, no intersection or symbiots.

The most successful would be when the memes and genes help each other. I think that humans so far have more or less proven that the two working together is quite powerful. If anything though it is the memes that contain the most power (E=mc^2).

[English assassin]

From an evolutionary point of view, the only purpose of an organism is to provide evolutionary success to its genes. Everything that doesn't serve this purpose is a waste. Denying that will lead at some point to the necessity to throw some unscientific hokuspokus into the ring. Of course, that doesn't mean everything humans do serves this purpose, the genes hold humans on long leashes

In the light of the last sentence, with which I agree, do I need to answer this question:


If it works for ants, why shouldn't it work for humans

Anyway, it may well work for humans, its not the belief but a simple minded application I object to. Not every feature of an animal exists for some evolutionary advantage. Some features may carry a significant disadvantage provided they have sufficiently large counterbalancing advantages. Presumably being slow is not per se an advantage for the tortoise, and the peacock could be forgiven for wishing peahens were easier to impress.

IMHO some of the popular language of sociobiology is redolent of lamarkism or even, god forbid, design, although obviously the likes of Wilson avoid that.

[BDC]

I suspect part of the reason it looks like poorer girls get pregnant more is that richer girls just get abortions immediately.

[Adrian II]

The weakness of sociobiological explanations is that they are ad-hoc.Quite. They often try to explain behaviour that has been labelled problematic for cultural reasons (criminal, homosexual, sexually precocious) without being properly defined. In other words: in another type of society from ours, sociobiology might well be labelled problematic and its proponents locked up for antisocial behaviour. Nonetheless, as you stated, there may be underlying cross-cultural behaviour patterns rooted in evolutionary psychology and labelled differently according to each specific culture. This suggests that for the purpose of such research one should define behaviour in ways that are as devoid of cultural prejudice as is possible.

Mrs Atkins family seems to be a case in point.

I've looked into some numbers and the real problem appears to be somewhat different from the official definition of the teenage pregnancy issue.

According to Table 3.1 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=9001) of Health Statistics Quarterly (I can't copy the Excel spread here), teenage births have been falling since the mid-1960's In 1966 there were 86,700 births to women under 20; in 2003 there were 44,200. Of the 97,100 women under 20 who became pregnant in 2002, only 7,900 were under 16, and a large portion of these conceptions - 55.6 per cent - ended in abortion.

The real problem seems to pop up in Table 3.2 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=9000) (Live Births outside Marriage) where the percentage of births outside wedlock under the age of 20 has shot up from 26.1% in 1971 to a haunting 90.2% in 2003. The precentage of births out of wedlock for all mothers' ages went from 8.4% in 1971 to 42.4% in 2003.

The real change seems to have been in the attitude toward marriage as well as notions about what stage in a woman's life is most suited to childbirth. Throughout history gazillions of mothers have given birth at 18, yet in today's (British) society the mean age is 28 and rising.

I take back my all too simplistic remark about Dutch sex education. If there is a difference between our countries, it would be in the wider educational context, where Dutch schools seem to be much more involved in the drive to make children (particularly girls) aware of their true lifestyle choices (as opposed to the commercially advertised ones) and the responsibilities that come with them.

[Papewaio]

IMDHO

Strange thing about welfare though is that it may overall for society decrease the number of births.

If you don't need kids to look after you in old age because the government will look after you then the incentive to have ten kids diminishes.

A lot of countries without government welfare have to rely on family welfare and hence those families are far larger.

So although these girls are having children for possibly the welfare benefits the vast majority of members of society the welfare benefits of the system as a whole will slow down their rate of birth perhaps.

[A.Saturnus]

Well because we can think (memes) so maybe we are at a crossroads of having two sets of purposes.

That's why I said long leash.


Anyway, it may well work for humans, its not the belief but a simple minded application I object to. Not every feature of an animal exists for some evolutionary advantage. Some features may carry a significant disadvantage provided they have sufficiently large counterbalancing advantages. Presumably being slow is not per se an advantage for the tortoise, and the peacock could be forgiven for wishing peahens were easier to impress.

That are all good arguments that the sociobiological explanation might be wrong. They don't imply that it is wrong. It is scientifically reasonable to accept the most plausible explanations. Thus, provide an alternative that is more plausible or accept this.


This suggests that for the purpose of such research one should define behaviour in ways that are as devoid of cultural prejudice as is possible.

I think that is the case here. "Control over environment" and "teenage pragnancy" are both concepts that can be defined in a non-evaluative way.


I suspect part of the reason it looks like poorer girls get pregnant more is that richer girls just get abortions immediately.

I don't know the correct numbers but I assume that poorer girls have more abortions than rich ones.


A lot of countries without government welfare have to rely on family welfare and hence those families are far larger.

So although these girls are having children for possibly the welfare benefits the vast majority of members of society the welfare benefits of the system as a whole will slow down their rate of birth perhaps.

That is a widespread view but I reject it. Common sense would tell us that many children that have nothing are not a better family welfare than a few children that have nothing. In fact, I would claim that high birth rate is a cause for welfare problems, not a remedy of it.

[English assassin]

I don't know the correct numbers but I assume that poorer girls have more abortions than rich ones.

Its the other way around.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3849119.stm


That are all good arguments that the sociobiological explanation might be wrong. They don't imply that it is wrong. It is scientifically reasonable to accept the most plausible explanations. Thus, provide an alternative that is more plausible or accept this.

I think it is self evident that not every animal characteristic exists "because" that characteristic itself confers selective advantage. eg the slowness of tortoises. In the human context, an example would be homosexuality or sickle cell anemia, both of which are clearly not very good for that particular organism's chances of getting its genes into the next generation.

Provided you are SURE, when putting forward a sociobiological explaination, that you are focussing on the correct trait (the toughness of the tortoise rather than its slowness, the resistance to malaria rather that the disease) all well and good. When it comes to explaining human behaviour that essential chain in the argument is not easily satisfied IMHO.

Plus and entirely seperately so many sociobiological claims are unfalsifiable. why does homosexual behaviour occur, for instance? You could put forward explanations that MIGHT be true, but can you put forward any that can be tested?

Not testable = not science ((c) Karl Popper et al)

[Kraxis]

The real problem seems to pop up in Table 3.2 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=9000) (Live Births outside Marriage) where the percentage of births outside wedlock under the age of 20 has shot up from 26.1% in 1971 to a haunting 90.2% in 2003. The precentage of births out of wedlock for all mothers' ages went from 8.4% in 1971 to 42.4% in 2003.
Just remember that a lot of children weer born in marriage but perhaps only 6 months into it, meaning the good night of fun didn't happen inside marriage. And the will to marry was not eaxactly that much better, but it was a simple fact that in many countries you couldn't even get a flat unless you were married. Kind of puts things into a perspective. Marriage was forced onto many from the outside.

[A.Saturnus]

Its the other way around.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3849119.stm

I stand corrected.

Sociobiological explanations can be falsified in principle. Distribute families randomly over two conditions, one with high control over the environment and the other with low and see who gets more pregnancies. Unfortunately, those reactionary fools in the ethics commissions for scientific research don't agree on the necessity of this. (j/k)
Since that is not possible, we have to use correlational data. If you do not accept the validity of these, you have to reject not only sociobiology but also most of sociology and a number of other scienitifc disciplines. Sociobiological explanations are not worse than others for the behaviour of populations. In fact, at least they base on a rigorous scientific theory.

Not every quality of an organism may have an adaptationist explanations, but an unproven explanation is better than no explanation. If someone can give a reason why the tortoise is slow, that's better than saying "it just is so".

[Papewaio]

That is a widespread view but I reject it. Common sense would tell us that many children that have nothing are not a better family welfare than a few children that have nothing. In fact, I would claim that high birth rate is a cause for welfare problems, not a remedy of it.

A lot of agrarian families have lots of children to create the labour for the farms and to look after the parents in old age.

As government welfare increases and higher trained jobs increase the amount of children diminishes.

[Papewaio]

If someone can give a reason why the tortoise is slow, that's better than saying "it just is so".

A tortoise is slow for the same reason you don't see 100m sprinters in chainmail...