My father reached his 77th birthday two weeks ago. I love him dearly and I don’t like to disagree with him but in the last few years he’s become obsessed by, what he calls, the blight of single mothers. It started out with his bitching about the cost of welfare payments. He used to complain all the time about aborigines getting welfare until my youngest brother, who works for an aboriginal corporation near Lake Alexandrina, convinced him that, if aborigines were so well off, why did they have such short lives and high infant mortality rates compared to the rest of Australians.
As I say, he was sort of convinced that nobody would choose to live the way aborigines are forced to if they had a choice, but no one has been able to budge him on his attitude about single mothers. A typical conversation might go;
“How’s the weather in Adelaide, Dad, cold is it?”
“Shocking son, bloody shocking, I’ve kept the heater going full bore, day and night, but I can’t seem to keep warm, your mother and I spend half our lives in bed.”
“That sounds like fun, you’d be the envy of a lot of people.”
“Nah,” he’d say “gets boring with nothing to do after you’ve read the Advertiser, probably mean a new crop of single mothers though, I bet they get up to mischief when it’s cold like this.”
If the Adelaide Crows have a bad day, it’s the fault of those single mothers that are cohabiting with the players; spending down on Education, it’s all those little buggers from single parent families using up the school funds; crime rates up, the fault of single mothers unable to keep their children under control; more evidence of anti social behaviour, no male role models!
I don’t know how old the Professor is, but it sounds as though he’s suffering from the same syndrome as my father. I think it’s a mixture of ignorance and prurience; teenagers unlucky enough to get caught were either forced to marry the father or banished from their homes in my dad’s day so I doubt if he’s ever met a single mother in the flesh so to speak.
I suspect the same may be said of the the denizen of the Billabong. Maybe Mrs Bunyip’s not putting out these days, or perhaps the Bunyip fantasizes about young, nubile, women in their childbearing prime with flat stomachs, firm gluteals and moist ….. (have to stop now). Whatever the cause, there’s no excuse for his tawdry attempt at dumping on Gianna.
As far as I can see from the statistics here and here show that the proportion of Parenting Payments Single (PPs) is less than and increasing more slowly than disability payments. Projections of Commonwealth demographic spending show increasing spending for disability and static spend on PPs (the really scary projections are for Pharmaceutical Benefits).
Another paper entitled Habtemariam Tesfaghiorghis, (is this FaCS code for Read these Statistics at Your Peril) for ‘Projections of the number of Income Support recipients: 20012051’ is comprised of a set of income support projections aimed at providing a perception of the impact of demographic change on income support client numbers over the next five decades, 2001 to 2051. Briefly, the projections suggest:
There will be little change to the numbers of working-age income support recipients in the next 50 years, particularly among those aged 1544 years. This is a consequence of the slow growth of the working-age population.
Future increases in the working-age income support groups will be concentrated in the ‘immediate future’ between 2001 and 2011, and between 2011 and 2021, in the 5064 age group, primarily due to their strong population growth, as well as their higher rates of income support receipt.
In absolute and relative terms, most of income support growth will be concentrated in the 65 years and over population.
I’m not real good at stats (I’d rather take the lies, damn lies etc. approach) and perhaps Quiggers, Jason Soon or some of the other economists that visit this site could provide a better interpretation, but it seems to me that good old Stanley better stop worrying about payments to single mothers and start worrying about who is going to pay the taxes necessary to keep him in the nursing home.
And if he gets Gianna sufficiently offside then perhaps it will be today’s single mums that remind their taxpaying children of the shit that was thrown by those grumpy old bunyips in the Billabong Nursing Home. You don’t want to be sharing a kero bath with Bronny now, do you Professor ?
The Professor says
“In all her happy talk of the blessed event to be, Giana has not once mentioned who will be supporting her pride and joy.”
Could this be, because it is nobody else’s business, especially the Professor’s?
I agree (for once) with you Wayne. Bunyip is obviously not getting enough, poor chap. His only hope is to take matters in hand (which let’s face it, he has been doing in writing ever since he started blogging).
I’m a big fan of the Bunyip, but I confess I was a little taken aback by that post. I wonder if what got the old fella’s goat was nothing more than the fact that Gianna didn’t seem upset at her “accident”.
It’s not exactly clear from his post what exactly the Professor would have Gianna do (apart from taking a little more care).
Personally I like how Bunyip snipes at Gianna for not disclosing the identity of the father, while he refused to disclose his own. Still, I suspect Gianna feels she can get by without the Bunyip’s validation…
Well said Wayne! For a guy who blathers on endlessly about the horrors of the nanny-state, Bunyip’s displaying an alarming tendency towards channelling a particularly controlling Mother Superior on this topic.
“In all her happy talk of the blessed event to be, Giana has not once mentioned who will be supporting her pride and joy.”
Could this be, because it is nobody else’s business, especially the Professor’s?
Or, more likely, could it be because Gianna will be supporting her pride and joy?
Wayne,
Hear! hear! I’d stumbled across the Professor’s nasty little post too, and made a mental note to blog on it when I got time. Now I don’t need to, because you’ve said everything I wanted to express. Well done, and the Megan Gale image was nice too (although you should have made it a thumbnail so I could enlarge it). I mean, if I’m going to be a desperate old perv, I insist on doing it good and proper.
Damn fine post, Wayne.
Ditto from me too, Wayne. There simply is no excuse for underhanded sniping on that level. It’s unbecoming to any human being. I wonder if Bunyips slag each other off just for the hell of it?
There are not many bloggers who would hesitate sharing a fox hole with Wayne.
Gianna and her baby deserve every thoughtful word in the English dictionary; and Wayne expresses it with style!
I do, on occasion, stare into the existential abyss, ponder the nuances and shudders, and produce what some might refer to as ironic links.
Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
– Professor Dan Quayle?
It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.
– Professor Dan Quayle?
Yeah, nice one, Wayne. The fetid misanthropy (and misogyny, of course) inherent in the hard-right world-view is all the more apparent when applied to the particular, eh? I’d at least applaud Bunyip’s courageous ideological consistency if only he’d had the courage to put his name to it.
I could say something about bringing up children being a difficult job and a social good, too. I could mention that it is an undertaking no less worthy of remuneration than any other – that it is not the parents who are the parasites but those who resent investing in the generation upon whom the years of their own retirements depend. In fact, I think I will.
Poor Bunyip.
I support his stance – sort of. The more I see of people from the windows of my law office, the more I think that a ‘licence to breed’ might be a good thing. Not a compulsory licence – procreate if you will, but not at the expense of the tax payer. Leave aside the personal issue (no pun) of Gianna , who will raise her child to be a good citizen. But in our (increasingly libertarian) society there seems to be a significant percentage of girls (apology for being politically incorrect, but here gender is a valid factor) who give birth without much thought as to the cost of this infant upon others, but comfortable in the knowledge that society will cosset and support this new addition. Mother collects an increase in social welfare “income”; goes to more parties; leaves child with uncaring baby sitter; evicts father and replaces him with new man somewhat hostile to this brat-sired-by-another. Child uses up educational and health resources, police resources, does damage to fabric of society, uses correctional facility resources, and is forgiven by pillow fluffers. Soon we have a new generation of welfare recipients, many/most of whom will be adverse to the culture of contributing to society, (which means that they will be a nett cost/burden).
Back in the days when single parent allowance was a safety net to rescue the child from the poverty trap of its either none too bright or else overly amorous parent, well and good. But now it has become a right, and a ‘valid lifestyle alternative.’ A small percentage of lead- swingers can be carried, but as that percentage grows, the burden increase expotentially. Hence, perhaps society ought be allowed to give prior approval to those infants to whom it will divert other citizens money. Anyone can still breed, but not on my taxes.
Now, I will just put my ear plugs in place, and then post this item
Thomas
I was trying to make the point that, when it come to middle class welfare, I personally prefer payments to single parents over disability pensions to pusillanimous pretenders (sorry, just got on an aliteration roll).
The alternative for the future is to encourage new immigrants to bring their littlies with them and concentrate on growing masses more when they get here (we all know that they breed faster that tru blue aussies) so that there will be a new generation of taxpaying consumers to keep us babyboomers in the manner to which we have become accustomed. But you’re probably against immigration too, eh Thomas?
When you look closely at the figures, we are spending our welfare dollar much less efficiently than if we increased payments to single parents. Perhaps if we agreed to raise incomes to above the poverty level society wouldn’t suffer from many of the ills referred to by Thomas in his comment. And BTW, don’t press too hard for a licence to breed, the present Government might hear you and the last thing we need is increased bureaucracy in our bedrooms.
Dave wrote;
The Professor says
“In all her happy talk of the blessed event to be, Giana has not once mentioned who will be supporting her pride and joy.”
Could this be, because it is nobody else’s business, especially the Professor’s?
And I have to admit that that is exactly what i thought when I read Bunyip’s post. Along with that mildly uncomfortable feeling you get when someone farts at a dinner party.
At the risk of maintaining my sometimes deserved reputation as a mischievous supporter of RWDB ideologues like Roger Sandall and thus “unhelpful” as Chris puts it, Wayne et all (and I mean all not al) has certainly prodded The Professor where it hurts.
I do think he raises some valid arguments, although I agree he may have overstepped the mark in personalising his arguments in Gianna’s case. The overwhelming political correctness in cases like this is so pervasive that it required a lot more courage for him to raise the issue than I possess.
I’m intrigued by the fact that he’s revisited his earlier posting and written an apologia of sorts – which has actually made his position even less defensible. His case now seems to be that Gianna is tangential to his main point: that non-traditional parenthood invariably equates to
welfare bludging and the erosion of “standards”.
It goes without saying that any opinion that differs from his own – that might allow a much more complex understanding of the whole area – is imputed to a “politically correct” motivation. What sanctimonious, controlling bullshit.
He displays all the breadth of Margo Kingston on a bad day.
Ahhh what bollocks,
For a start, she suggests that she deserves some welfare back because when “…you think that I don’t drive a car, but my taxes pay for roads”…so she obviously doesn’t ride on buses, or catch a lift or two in friends’ cars then. Besides which, only about a fifth of the government’s grab from drivers (eg fuel taxes, stamp duty and registration) gets spent on roads anyway. So don’t come the wounded taxpayer by pointing at motorists.
Maybe the Bunyip is a bit out of line if he’s intimating that marriage is always the best environment in which to raise children. I’ve known a few men who, as husbands, fell more into the category of liability rather than useful breadwinner. But his general thrust is correct. Children are brute hard work, and staggeringly expensive. Until they’ve tried it, no one can know what it is like raising small children, utterly dependent on you for 24hr life support, through to teenagers whose contempt is tempered only by by the need for continued access to the parental purse. It’s a long, hard road, and setting out with two parents to share the load is, like, common sense.
And the prof’s surly opinion about those that would breed without the cash to pay for it is perfectly valid. I would rather be spending that 49 sundry sents in my marginal dollar on my own kids, not on paying for somebody else’s ‘right’ to ‘income support’. Whether this will apply to Gianna, I don’t know, nor do I care about her individual case. It is the big picture issue of the welfare mentality that worrys me. It might be terribly unfashionable, but I believe with rights come responsibilities. Of course you have the right to bear children. You have the responsibility to raise them without expecting other parents to pick up the tab. Note the key word in there is “expecting”. I’m not talking about those who fall on hard times and are forced into welfare dependence, I’m talking about those who go into something fully expecting to fund their experience from Treasury’s bottomless bucket.
As for this crap about parenting being an “undertaking no less worthy of remuneration than any other”, well, this just boils my blood. I think I mentioned that parenting is hard work. But I wonder if Rob Schaap has ever met any would-be parents that ever said something like…
“Gee, society’s been good to me, and as part of my social contract, I guess I ought to go and have children, after all, it’s a social good”.
Bull! They do it for themselves, not out of some hive-mind sense of duty.
The problem is, Rob, that I’m paying for and raising my own kids, and the notion that I should have to pay you to raise yours is offensive to me.
Am I selfish? Depends how you look at it.
As Bill Whittle puts it:
“…if Freedom is the credit card, and Responsibility is the monthly payment, it should not come as a surprise to us to realize that human nature says we want the spending spree, but not [to] put in the overtime to pay for it…”
Apart from the odd angry letter, my time is divided between work and children. I’ve changed thousands of nappies, done the sleepless nights, sat in the emergency ward for hours on end, taken the kids to sport etc etc and I still get to do half the housework. These things are the payments I make on the freedom credit card that I used when I chose to get married and have children. I also pay plenty of tax. Donning black armbands and issuing righteous utterings about people’s right to be paid for out of my tax dollars is not selfless behaviour, it’s conscience salving twaddle.
Hmm, and ‘apologia’ looks to me a like a bona fide wank-word
I didn’t notice much backtracking on his part, except perhaps in attempting to make it less of a personal attack and more of a general critique of single-parent welfare.
While he obviously supports traditional double parenting as the ideal, I thought the main thrust of his argument was against pre-meditated breeding where the main support is likely to be taxpayer funds. Presumably he would have much less difficulty with self-funded single parenthood.
This is one of those areas where conservatives can differ sharply from libertarians, although both are considered right-wing.
I would think that libertarians would have absolutely no trouble with non-orthodox family arrangements, but may have some reservations about taxpayer support. On the other hand conservatives will object on moral grounds.
The young woman doesn’t drive so therefore she desrves to get handouts from others [the taxpaying public] to support a child?
Sound logic from the wealfare establishemt.
I was very reticent about taking the Professor to task over his intemperate piece about a fellow blogger. And if he had the courage to put up a comments feature on his blog I would have sent this to him so that I did not expose myself to even greater ridicule. His is obviously a greater intellect, and, when unable to exercise his undoubted superior language skills, he always has the alternate of denigrating his detractors as lefties, (‘Dagging lefties for the fun of it is a particular weakness of the Professor’), supporters of increased taxation and proponents of fifth form economics.
I am also at the disadvantage of not knowing where Stanley is coming from. Is he, like my father the recipient of payments from the public purse ? At least my father was required to at least make a modest contribution to his superannuation fund; the fact that he has outlived the actuarial average and now lives, like the single mothers he despises, on the taxpayers of South Australia, seems to escape him. But I digress. I suspect that, if, as is widely believed, the Professor occupies a tidy sinecure at some tertiary institution, he would find it somewhat hypercritical to go public with some of his attitudes against his public servant colleagues.
What do I find on his blog today? Rather than retiring to the billapong (thanks Tim) to ponder the wisdom of his ‘gallows anecdote’ he spills even more spleen onto his screen by attempting to, both ascribe altogether incorrect beliefs to she who sells sanctuary such as; “she sees dipping into the public purse as nothing more than getting her fair share……. Gianna evidently believes it is a depository system in which one is entitled to withdraw whatever is put in.” and takes my name in vain when he writes “Like Wayne, she advances a dubious argument to defend her advanced sense of entitlement. In Wayne’s case it is the Professor’s someday need for the taxes that Gianna’s daughter will be paying to keep him secure and content atop his bedpan. Well, it’s a theory, but here’s a better one: What about cutting taxes now, so the Professor can stuff enough unconfiscated earnings in his knot hole to weather the Age of Incontinence in style, and also to afford only the better looking nurses for his blanket baths.” ”
Apart from the fact that the Professor seems to have the predictive abilities of Nostradamus in referring to the gender of the offspring under discussion, I’m sorry Stanley but it’s already been tried. Why do we have a COMPULSORY national superannuation scheme, a method of providing for your ‘age of incontinence’ paid for by, not the recipients of future superannuation largess, but by their long suffering employers.
You see, contrary to his inferences, I too believe that we pay too much income tax, but know from experience that, if it’s left to the individual, the vast majority of Australians would simply increase their alcohol consumption, lose more on the steeds, or at very least buy a bigger house and increase their mortgage payments rather than ‘stuffing unconfiscated earnings in his knothole.’ So Stanley’s plan that the tax we don’t pay would go into superannuation rather than to provide a safety net for unfortunates that find themselves in the parlous situation of not being able to feed their kid, is ridiculous. Because as I pointed out, just as aborigines don’t choose to live in the disgusting circumstances they find themselves, so women don’t deliberately get pregnant to become eligible for the single parent payment.
As I was checking the recent additions to this comments thread, I read one by Al B,
Hmm, and ‘apologia’ looks to me a like a bona fide wank-word
Al – ‘apologia’ means a defence of one’s statements or opinions. I’m not quite sure how this equates to a ‘wank-word’ but…hey: if it feels good, etc.
Must remember not to pick a fight with you woodsy.
“the Professor seems to have the predictive abilities of Nostradamus in referring to the gender of the offspring under discussion”
Interesting comment. The grammatical use of the female gender when referring to a person or persons of indeterminate sex has actually been around for some time now. I first came across it when I read John Ralston Saul’s “The Unconscious Civilisation” some years ago. I thought it’s another of those policically correct affectations, extending logically from the ridiculous use of the word “chair” to mean “chairman”, and so on. Certainly nothing to do with Nostradamus.
Incidentally I notice that John Ralston Saul is married to the Governor-General of Canada, something I was unaware of until I googled his name a few minutes ago to check the spelling. I guess he refers to himself as the first lady.
Ron, I’m starting to think you just drop this kind of reading into the blogosphere to tease me. What did you think of the book? Incidentally, I think His Excellency looks quite cute in his royal duds.
The criticism about bludging is daft. Like everyone else I have spent my working life contributing to a range of publicly-funded programs, some of which benefit others more than me personally. That is what tax is all about. We do not only pay for those bits we think we like or which we think we may get to use one day. How many of my critics have kids in school? Hey, you’re chewing up my taxes too, you know. Are you seriously suggesting that I should refrain from having children and yet pay for the education of yours?
Like many people raising a child I would expect to return to the workforce within 3 years. If the Right wants me to be entirely self-sufficient sooner than that, then it should be encouraging business to make the workplace child-friendly, for example with creches. (But hmm, wait a minute…doesn’t the Right thinks a mother should stay at home with the kids?)
More generally speaking, since this is not an issue confined to single parents, the Government too needs to do something about the lack of affordable childcare. After all, it keeps banging on about the fertility crisis and how we need to encourage recalcitrant working women to reproduce.
But I reckon the most narrowminded and idiotic responses have been those which have suggested that the future spouses/partners of single parents are incapable of loving and caring for non-biological dependents. Any step-parents or adoptive parents out there should be deeply insulted by the implication (also aired the other day by Bettina Arndt) that only biological parents are capable of raising children. And as someone has noted above, being biologically related to your offspring is no guarantee that you will be a good parent.
BTW to the person who thinks that using public transport is equivalent to driving a car, uh..think about it. A bus is a vehicle the size of three cars which can carry 70+ passengers and therefore is obviously not as much of a drain on resources as a car is. My use of the roads is proportionately far less than it would be if I drove around in a car. The cost to the taxpayer (and the environment) of the luxury of driving around in your own personal space is far greater than the use of public transport.
I have to confess I feel quite proud to be part of “blogdom’s post-moral majority”. If I had one of those sidebar review quote thingies, that phrase would be right at the top.
Chris, the book was lent to me by a friend (as I said in a comment a week or so ago, some of my best friends are lefties). What did I think of it? Well I won’t bore you with the details, except to say your predictions on that score that would be spot-on.
Ron, try Voltaire’s Bastards, a much more substantial read … then again, don’t …
No.
Gianna, how often do you see a bus running with “70+ passengers and therefore…obviously not as much of a drain on resources as a car is”. I’ll help you out here. The answer is for maybe a total of three hours a day, five days a week – ie ‘peak hour’. Here in the cold dark heart of the Commonwealth, it is far more normal to see full size buses patiently plying their routes with two to five passengers aboard. I was living in South Australia in the early nineties, when departmental figures showed that SA taxpayers were subsidising passengers on public transport around $5.40 per trip on the train system. The observation was made that the only services that actually broke even were peak hour. Besides which, my point was that your bus would have no road upon which to drive save for the government’s favourite milch cow, the private motorist.
I am in 100% agreement with you over the need to address the shortage of childcare. As soon as the government rightly drops its current crop of inefficient rebate and subsidy schemes, and simply makes it tax deductible, the problem will be solved.
Geoff, point taken…upon further consideration, I acknowledge that the authors of this blog appear to have a legal background, and that, when in Rome, I shouldn’t go knocking people for speaking Italian. Still, simple language is effective language if you’re participating in a public debate etc… I’ve re-read the Bunyip’s posts, and I’m still not seeing just where it is that he’s disparaging non-traditional parenting in general.
And, Wayne, the day the Prof winds back on his bile is the day I stop visiting the Billabong. For sure he’s baiting the western end of the blogosphere…and he does it well. But this predilection doesn’t automatically preclude his posts from containing otherwise meaningful observations. For what it’s worth, I believe him when, in respect to the issue of parental responsibility, he says “…but this is heartfelt.”
Moreover, Wayne, I am deeply unimpressed by the argument that the responsibility of looking after their own retirements is too big an ask for Australians. So you reckon the government knows better? Superannuation is the biggest dud out. Taxed on the way in, taxed while it’s in there, and taxed on the way out. Never mind various surcharges and other disincentives (like what, you ask? Oh, like having my retirement age upped by five years without so much as a by-your-leave). No, Wayne, people don’t always make good choices, but neither do bureaucracies, no matter how well intentioned. I have more faith in the individual. Other cultures don’t have old age pensions, and those peoples, uninfluenced by dubious promises of ‘cradle to the grave’ security (at someone else’s expense) damn well put aside for their infirmity.
I still support the Prof.
I appreciate his explanation of evangelism of a Church transmogrifying into welfare services – and here I am as retained solicitor for one such organisation – but someone has to do it.
The Tout family brought forth offspring when our “household income” was close to the cut off line for receiving child benefits – usually just above it. At that time I did work for young fathers wanting access to their children, and/or controls on what was done with the maintenance they paid, because the mother regarded the child as a dampener on her social life; and quite often the only rational explanation as to why she had more children (sired by another male) was to increase her welfare benefit. So why were we subsidising and thus encouraging the creation of children by parents whose social conscience was non-existent, or immature? Solved, if we allow the costs of child rearing as a deduction against income!
Does any woman’s childbirth concern us? Yes. If Donne’s funeral bell tolls for thee, so does the christening bell.
Woodsy mentioned immigration. There has to be a limit, old chap. In my farming days we had to know how many sheep could live in a paddock (and put on condition – that is grow wool and meat). Putting humans in a country is surprisingly similar. Put in too many and the system is distressed, and then all suffer, and it takes (a long time) and (lots of) money to fix it. Much better to keep it working, and improve its carrying capacity with an eye to the future.
But I do admire Woodsy’s fighting ability – would not want him charging at your fox-hole!
Oh bugger it! Why are we harasing Gianna about all this. I trust her child will flourish and grow. Maybe a champion footy player if a boy, or a blonde bombshell-to-die-for, if a girl.
Children create wealth.
Welfare payments for their support is investment.
A couple of facts to add spice to the opinions. Well starting with facts and shading into opinions as I go on.
1. Road damage is caused by Hertzian rolling stresses. Which in English means that 1 bus containing 70 people causes more damage to the road system than 70 people in 70 cars. Less congestian, more maintenance. Then maintenance causes congestion.
2. One bus with 5-10 people in it also causes more pollution and uses more fuel, when compared to cars containing 1.3 people each or whatever the average is.
3. Most single mums BECAME single. They were in a long term relationship, married often, and then were divorced/separated. That’s the big bulk of the welfare payments.
4. There ARE examples of those who get pregnant and have kids for the money. These are the ones that are rude and arrogant and call workers “mugs” and so stand out and hence lend a bad image to all single mums.
5. Sure biological parents aren’t all good, and step parents aren’t all bad. But the numbers show that the step parents are far more likely to abuse kids. And that growing up without a father is a dominant factor in a child turning out to be dysfunctional themselves.
Taking the last few points into account, we can see that if we look at specific examples there is every chance that the single mum is a great woman trying to do her best. But overall, reducing the incidence will help society, PROVIDING this is done in such a way that it does not penalize those mothers (and children) who are caught out.
“And that growing up without a father is a dominant factor in a child turning out to be dysfunctional themselves.”
For example, all those discredited studies showing he’s (if he) more likely to become a poof. I mean, do us right-whingers really want more Geoffs to infest this world? (Hi, Geoff! ;-))
(Not aimed at you, Patrick)
“But overall, reducing the incidence will help society, PROVIDING this is done in such a way that it does not penalize those mothers (and children) who are caught out.”
I agree. In theory, and all other things being equal, a child growing up with a father and a mother with whom she has a close domestic relationship is better off than one who does not. However, all other things are not equal, and theory does not equal reality. Couples are perfectly capable of being shit parents, and single mums and homosexuals are perfectly capable of raising good, well-adjusted children. To deny them this ability would be penalising them and their (as yet unborn or unadopted) children.
One can argue (as Bunyip tries to pretend he did) that parental payouts are excessive, or shouldn’t exist. I won’t go down the route — not being a parent (yet), or a significant taxpayer (yet), my qualifications don’t even match those of tblair’s delightful cronies — of trying to disagree, because I frankly don’t know either way. But one cannot question — as some, not Patrick, have done — Gianna’s fitness as a parent — or anyone else’s — based solely on the “she’s a single mother, who doesn’t plan to marry the father ‘for the sake of the children’! And she weighs the same as a duck! Burn her!”
Do you suppose Harry Potter put enough money back into everybody’s economy to cover a few welfare payments? I mean, she was a single mother on the dole when she wrote it.
It’s been five years since we had a raise in pay
And they disallowed my business lunches today
Somebody must have changed the rules of the game
So we’ve found a convenient scapegoat we can blame
It’s those teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(They’re too lazy to work)
Teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(They’re stealing our jobs)
Somebody ran this country deep into debt
I called up Congress, but nobody’s called back yet
Sometimes I get so mad I can’t think straight
We’re looking for relief and it feels so great to hate
All those teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(They’re on the Dole)
Teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(They’re speaking espanol)
Who’s to blame for the things we’re so angry about?
Who’s to blame for uprisings, downsizings, and the drought?
Who’s to blame for the end of the good old days?
Who’s to blame for that backwards-cap-wearing craze?
It’s those teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(Let’s build a thousand-mile fence)
Teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(It’s just common sense)
Teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(Like the Berlin Wall)
Teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
(Land mines and all!)
Teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs
I suppose a lot of the problem with this analysis is the small percentages involved.
If 0.1% of the population turn out to be hopeless criminals (I think that is about right, based on long term prison populations) and the % raised by single mothers is 5 times more likely (figure pulled at random for illustration purposes only) then the % of children from single mother homes who turn out bad is still only 0.5%.
So 99.5% of them are OK and shouldn’t be disadvantaged in any way.
This also completely ignores the question of cause and effect. Does becomming a single parent make you more likely to be a bad parent, or does being a completely useless individual mean you can’t raise children OR keep a relationship together, meaning you get lumped in with every other single parent.
In the later case, artificially keeping them in relationships wouldn’t solve the root cause of all the problems.
The young woman doesn’t drive so therefore she desrves to get handouts from others [the taxpaying public] to support a child?
Sound logic from the wealfare establishemt
Billapong
On occassion I take Tim Blair to task for what I see as the mindlessness of some of his attacks…
Chivalry for all?
The chivalry of men towards their female friends is a wonderful thing to behold. But I wonder — would there be a similar linking of arms and presenting of shields for a single mother-to-be who was a not-particularly-attractive or intelligent…