Proud to pay my taxes

[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....

[bmolsson]

Subsidizing irresponsibility only leads to more irresponsibility.

At least she is pro-life.......

[Adrian II]

At least she is pro-life.......

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?