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Thread: Proud to pay my taxes

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    Senior Member Senior Member English assassin's Avatar
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    Default Proud to pay my taxes

    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..." ( this too is a JOKE.)
    Last edited by English assassin; 05-23-2005 at 12:35.
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  2. #2
    Time Lord Member The_Doctor's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    I agree with you.

    It is always society's fault, never yours.

    Poor society, it gets blamed for everything.

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    Member Member Spetulhu's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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!
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    Medical Welshman in London. Senior Member Big King Sanctaphrax's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Oh my god...what kind of a name is T-jay?! That's horrific!
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    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by English assassin
    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.
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    Master of Few Words Senior Member KukriKhan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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?
    Be well. Do good. Keep in touch.

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    master of the pwniverse Member Fragony's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    @subject

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

  8. #8
    Senior Member Senior Member English assassin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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.
    "The only thing I've gotten out of this thread is that Navaros is claiming that Satan gave Man meat. Awesome." Gorebag

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    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by English assassin
    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'?
    The bloody trouble is we are only alive when we’re half dead trying to get a paragraph right. - Paul Scott

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    master of the pwniverse Member Fragony's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianII
    Could you or Fragony point out a politician who blames this sort of situation on 'society'?
    Are you really asking me this?

  11. #11
    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by Fragony
    Are you really asking me this?
    Are you short of examples?
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    master of the pwniverse Member Fragony's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianII
    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.

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    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by Fragony
    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.
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    Chief Sniffer Senior Member ichi's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Society doesn't make girls pregnant, sperm does!
    Stay Calm, Be Alert, Think Clearly, Act Decisively

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    Senior Member Senior Member English assassin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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?
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    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by English assassin
    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.
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    master of the pwniverse Member Fragony's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianII
    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.

  18. #18
    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by Fragony
    (..) '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.
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    master of the pwniverse Member Fragony's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by AdrianII
    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?

  20. #20
    Magister Vitae Senior Member Kraxis's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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?
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    probably bored Member BDC's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Heh, what a mess.

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

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    A very, very Senior Member Adrian II's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by BDC
    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.
    The bloody trouble is we are only alive when we’re half dead trying to get a paragraph right. - Paul Scott

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    Ambiguous Member Byzantine Prince's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by Big King Sanctaphrax
    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!

  24. #24
    Pinko Member _Martyr_'s Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Excellent points AdrianII !
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  25. #25
    Arena Senior Member Crazed Rabbit's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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
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  26. #26
    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
    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.
    Last edited by Xiahou; 05-24-2005 at 00:09.
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  27. #27

    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    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?

  28. #28
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    This is just another form of Eugenics.
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
    Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat
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  29. #29

    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by Papewaio
    This is just another form of Eugenics.
    Inverse eugenics - only the jerks breed?

    Quote Originally Posted by Big King Sanctaphrax
    Oh my god...what kind of a name is T-jay?! That's horrific!
    THAT's where blaming society comes in.

  30. #30
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: Proud to pay my taxes

    Quote Originally Posted by NeonGod
    Inverse eugenics - only the jerks breed?
    Exactly the government is picking certain groups to breed above others. It is eugenics of goblinisation....
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
    Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat
    Pape for global overlord!!
    Quote Originally Posted by English assassin
    Squid sources report that scientists taste "sort of like chicken"
    Quote Originally Posted by frogbeastegg View Post
    The rest is either as average as advertised or, in the case of the missionary, disappointing.

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