h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh no..I thought your 'Farleys' response was hilarious..I was just running with it.

<>

Another sweeping generalisation I fear..And the fact you try to imply that it's a large proportion of the community when in fact it's just probably just where you live..I don't recognize your scenario around the many streets in my town.

More fundamentally...*women are not given a council houses when they have a baby*. They just aren't.

The whole story has the ring of Something Not Quite Right about it.

Odd, incidentally, what when somone challenges this kind of stuff, they're accused of not keeping their eyes open, not living in the real world...etc. etc. I can assure you I live in the same world. I see a fair bit of it. In fact...I speak to people living in some not very nice parts of it. But I still don't recognised the mentality portrayed.

Jasus ! Could it be that Nick and Dave are going to create a level playing field with no long grass to play hide and seek in ?
Let's hope that Labour's strongest backers are (Unite)d in their support.
All on the anniversary of VE day.

Here's another one or two for you to jibe at.
It only takes one bad apple.
Take care of the pennies the pounds take care of themselves.
There is safety in numbers.

More than likely you will get the chance to volunteer, and no doubt the redundancy package will be tempting. Some of you may take the package and get another job in the public sector. Don't worry though because if redundancy comes hard you will be offered training to clean up the rubbish created by others. Farleys and all. Finding real training for a real job might be a little more difficult.
Having 'reduced' a staff of 40 by 25% back in the 80's I know the game. Of course way back then it was a different playing field. Glad to say the company I worked for then still exists all be it on a smaller scale. A lot of training places and apprenticeships were lost and graduate sponsorship and intake took a severe bashing.

Just continue taking the piss I love it. Remember though that things are serious.

So who's denying things are serious? All I'm suggesting is that we are entitled to giggle at trite solutions to half-imagined problems.

I mean...subcontract everything to Visa. Sure - I totally get it: metal and paper money will be entirely replaced by electronic transfer within my lifetime. No question. But...what's that got to do with the price of fish?

So, as soon as a single parent drops a sprog, she gets a house? Interesting because when my aunt formally adopted the teenaged me, who'd been identified as having an emergency need for a home, we were told one would be available in 2 years.

My sister and her now fiancé, who had a son when she was 18, has saved a deposit to buy a house of their own faster than they've been allocated a council house.

There's a strong smell coming from AB: not quite sure what it is but it makes me think I'm stood in a field near some cows.

Why do you think that money is going out a fashion? Are you among the growing number of D.I.Y bankers ? Why do you get things cheaper if you pay by direct debit ? The question used to be ' How much off for cash ? '
You said that Visa make a profit so why not pay all benefit via a plastic card it needn't be Visa. You think about it. It's more likely to affect you than me.
Of course you are entitled to giggle just as I am entitled to propose trite solutions to half imagined problems.
Have a giggle at this - How about Ration Cards for 'deserving' cases ?

I can see you don't find my posts amusing HonestIago - Sandalista.
Obviously the girl on the phone was of the opinion that if she had a child she would get a flat. She either new more or had better connections than you. Or as you say 'She would drop a sprog ' and hand the responsiblity over to someone else. Social Services would get round to her eventually.
Good for your sister and fiancé they are to be commended on their behavior, but being a stupid old git I would rather they had been married.
I am getting on a bit, I have difficulty bathing, it could be me that smells but . Have you used a mouth wash lately ?

>>Obviously the girl on the phone was of the opinion that if she had a child she would get a flat. She either new more or had better connections than you. Or as you say 'She would drop a sprog ' and hand the responsiblity over to someone else.<<

Or she was fictional and you're a liar. Ladies, gentlemen, shall we have a poll to see which is more likely?

>>Good for your sister and fiancé they are to be commended on their behavior, but being a stupid old git I would rather they had been married.<<

I'm sure my sister will be inconsolable when she hears a mendacious and argumentative old man disapproves of her life. Seriously, she'll be rending her garments and begging for forgiveness.

>>I am getting on a bit, I have difficulty bathing, it could be me that smells but . Have you used a mouth wash lately ?<<

I have, thanks for asking. Apart from a bit of sweatiness, which we'd worked up together, the guy I've been with this afternoon had no complaints.

Smell must be coming from you, me old mucker. I've an idea - step away from the keyboard and see if it goes away.

They should never have cut spending on public bathing facilities and we wouldn't have this problem.

What fine representatives of your kind you are. Little wonder that the public sector gets a bad name. No doubt you will stand (Unite)d and raise your banners as the chop comes. The trouble is that your type often stay and the good ones who are quite capable of getting alternative work, cut and run. You should all be employed on short term contracts. I'll drop an email to Nick and Dave
How about it two names, are you proud of your associates. ?
Do you think they should be given ASBOs for carrying out gang rape on an old and infirmed person.

>>What fine representatives of your kind you are.<<

Why thank you

>>The trouble is that your type often stay and the good ones who are quite capable of getting alternative work, cut and run.<<

I work in one of the hardest schools in the country (not my assessment, but that of Ofsted) and I do an "Outstanding" job for 10 grand a year.

If you drop me an email using the email on my PS, I can prove this for you by telling you the name of the school I work at, links to league tables and a link to the results of our recent Ofsted.

See, unlike you, I can provide evidence when I'm accused of being a liar and a fraud.

>>I'll drop an email to Nick and Dave<<

Let us know what they say.

>>Do you think they should be given ASBOs for carrying out gang rape on an old and infirmed person.<<

It depends on the old person: in certain cases I'm open to persuasion.

Always a shame when otherwise interesting discussions degenerate to this.

I have no idea of the actual figures for single parents in council houses and the route they took to get there - I'm minded of the single mother that lives near my parents. She's never worked, got 4 kids and she lives on benefits. Her husband was shot dead in Afghanistan.

Anecdotes are meaningless in this particular debate.

Let's take this on another tack

An international study found that a 10% increase in benefits led to a 17% increase in single mothers. ("The Determinants of the Prevalance of Single Mothers: A cross-country analysis" Gonzalez, 2003)

At what point do benefits encourage behaviour? If we accept that taxation can be used to regulate outcomes, is it a fair extrapolation to say a cut in benefits may also impact outcomes in a positive way?

swl but for Two names amusement I just have to say.
"I don't believe it."

I can't agree that anecdotes are meaningless. I do agree however that there is little or no benefit in trying to create a debate out of every anecdote.

I never knew Ancient Brit was quite so ... Ancient!

From the Royal Commission Report on the Poor Laws in 1834 -

(In Battersea) "We have many illegitimate children; and we think that the numbers have increased of late years. If a young woman has two or three bastard children, and receives 2s.6d. a week for each, it is a little fortune to them. As soon as the children can run about, they can be taken into infant schools for 2d. a week, and kept from nine in the morning till five in the evening: so that the mothers can get their living by work or waste their time in idleness."

Did you have a hand in that AB?

SWL:

>>An international study found that a 10% increase in benefits led to a 17% increase in single mothers. ("The Determinants of the Prevalance of Single Mothers: A cross-country analysis" Gonzalez, 2003)

swl:

Not *quite* what the paper actually says. I'll get back with more detail - specifically on
a) why we shouldn't confuse correlation and causations and
b) why we can't treat correlations as though they were linear regressions
c) the difficulties in comparing between wholly different welfare systems, marriage markets and labour markets.

http://www.recercat.net/bitstream/2072/1020/1/876.pdf

A neat wee snippet from the abstract:

The results also suggest that single mothers are more prevalent
when female wages are lower

I've never quite got this idea/term/concept, or whatever you want to call it. Anecdotally I have had two relationships with 'single mothers'..in one case the 'father' had topped himself, shortly before the second sprog was born; and in the second case did a runner, the moment pregnancy was confirmed and no abortion was forth coming.

So lets have a bit of balance here. Unless a woman does a deliberate act of collecting some sperm in whatever way, purely to choose to have a child without the father being involved in any way financially..and that is all made clear in the arrangement either with him..or the lab, the father is just as morally responsible. It's just biology that the 'womb' happens to reside in the female's phenotype, the man is equally responsible.

It's just so bloody convenient when you don't have to carry the thing around for nine months..to live a whole different lifestyle, and not be caught up in the whole web of prejudice, gossip..urban myths etc that centre on the woman.

Anyhoo...

Yes, that paper *does* show a correlation between the generosity of benefits and single motherhood (ie never-married as opposed to divorced, widowed)...*but* labour markets and marriage markets are also significant factors.

So the study also says is that single motherhood is more prevalent when a) female wages are low and b) there are few men about in a position to give financial support. (the latter will be correlated with low male wages and high unemployment, of course).

Now - I'm not denying that in some areas, single motherhood on welfare has become an acceptable career choice for some women. It is a tragedy that this is the only path they see open for them. But the study suggests (doesn't it?) that the solution is poverty reduction via male and female employment. However that's to be achieved.

What the study *doesn't* suggest is that a reduction in benefits will yield a reduction in single motherhood. It reports a *correlation*, not a causation. And not a very high correlation, incidentally. (I'm not a professional statistician, but I do know one end of a Spearman's rho from the other). Certainly *don't* take from it that increasing benefits by £X delivers 1.7X more single mothers! (Or vice versa)


Certainly there's nothing in there to support AB's assumption of morally loose women choosing to live the life of Riley with their chip-tossing toddlers. Mainly because...well...it's hardly the life of Riley. You wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

Or their children's.

So there you have it swl, a 'debate'. Enjoy

On one hand they'll talk the hind legs off a donkey and on the other they'll play dumb or condemn you as a liar. Search long enough and facts figures and opinions can always be found to suit your case. If you sail too close to the wind they get upset, turn abusive and lay claim to being hard working, underpaid and unappreciated paragons of virtue.

What Two names says in post 318 < Certainly there's nothing in there to support AB's assumption of morally loose women choosing to live the life of Riley with their chip-tossing toddlers. Mainly because...well...it's hardly the life of Riley. >

What your post 351 indicates is that in those days < If a young woman has two or three bastard children, and receives 2s.6d. a week for each, it is a little fortune to them. >

It's all relative.