From The Independent:Families with more than two children will not receive tax credits or housing benefit for their third or subsequent children under a fundamental change to the welfare system.
I understand the need to trim the welfare budget.
I understand the perverse incentives created by welfare which have played an important part in the destruction of marriage, which manifest themselves in the stereotyped unmarried (or single) parents with lots of children and a surprisingly large income from the state. (Daily Mail: 'single mother of eight gets £2,200 a month from the taxpayer': yup, the story writes itself.)
I don't understand at all a desire to reduce family sizes, when the UK is already reproducing at below replacement levels. (Replacement is about 2.1 children per woman; the UK's is about 1.8.)
What is completely wrong, whether I can understand it or not, is a deliberate swinging of incentives towards abortion by arbitrarily cutting out larger families from the protection of the welfare state. If we are going to have a welfare state, why should it protect those undermining their health by smoking, people injured in dangerous leisure activities like rock-climbing, and people who have picked up venereal diseases from an immoral lifestyle, and not people who are bringing children into the world?
Churchil said: There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
Iain Duncan Smith, a Catholic, thinks, on the contrary, that this is activity which should be discouraged, by the edifying sight of large families on the bread line. Something has gone very wrong with our society.
A little reminder: here is Iain Duncan Smith's explanation of why he voted for Same Sex Marriage; in an interview during his brief and unhappy reign as party leader, he described himself as an 'Anglo-Catholic' and said he didn't go to individual confession.
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This is tyrannical totalitarianism. Penalisation of the God-given mandate to man and wife to procreate.
ReplyDeleteIf a society was generally living according to God's laws, most married couples would have over ten children. This used to be the case when people lived in harmony with the Catholic Faith.
ReplyDeleteI was a member of the Tory Party at the time of Duncan-Smith's leadership election.
ReplyDeleteI had, some years earlier, argued with his opponent, Ken Ckarke over abortion. I "knew" that IDS was a Catholic and disagreed strongly with Clarke over Europe.
At the start of the election campaign, there was no doubt I was going to vote for Duncan-Smith. Why wouldn't I?
But I was one of the last to receive my ballot paper. And by the time it had arrived, I was so appalled by the twisting and turning that he had done, I actually voted for my "enemy" Clarke.
I can't quite believe now that I ever wanted Ken Clarke to be Party leader. But It was impossible for me to support the two-timing treacherous Duncan Smith.
Nothing that he does surprises me.
First of all lets deal with statistics, and then principles.
ReplyDeleteThe average reproduction rate in the UK is probably about 1.8. The population should fall but it continues to rise rapidly because of heavy continuing immigration, most of it of non-EU origin.
In my local supermarket two days ago, over a period of say half an hour ,while having our coffee and observing the check-out line, I noted that the ratio of children from obviously Muslim families, judging by the dress of the women and other things such as the facial hair of the men, to be 6:1, compared with local children. And this in an area where even say five years ago this simply did not happen. Could it be that this is what D S has in mind.
Just a thought, although one which is more minds than those minds care to admit?
Now Principles. D S should not have voted for so-called same sex marriage. There is no such thing. No Catholic should ever use the term, let alone vote for it.. There are civil unions, but any such between two people of the same sex is not, and cannot ever be, whatever any system of law, anywhere, says, a marriage!