Septicisle, I think that you’re missing something here. You can rail at the Sun for profitting from people’s misery just like Trisha, Jeremy Kyle and Jerry Springer but the truth is that she had thirteen children and they were taken into care. There is something very wrong about this (I’m sure not unique) situation – no matter how you want to look at it. It happened – the Sun just made it public – even if it wasn’t public – it still would have happened. And the rest of us who are footing the bill for the children in care are angry. What is the point of ranting against the Sun for just making public what is going on. Forget the spin, concentrate on thirteen children in care – and use your energy to try and make sure this doesn’t happen again.

The problem is the inherent hypocrisy of The Suns position. Surely, a 5-7 figure cash payout is a greater incentive to future abuses of the welfare state than those relative pittances that people currently receive?

A serious discussion needs to be had, to look into the benefits system, to try to curb misuse, to better help those who can work get back to work and to make sure those that need it most get the help they deserve [and need].

The Sun’s (and other’s) “reporting” of these issues run counter to any attempts at balanced reform. THey work to incite/re-inforce the anger of the working-class towards those that do abuse the system (and I am under no illusions here, I believe this is a significant minority, not a tiny one – though the example of Theresa Winters is an incredibly extreme example) and seek to represent the majority of people reliant on the welfare state as “sub-human”. There is no attempt to balance this with pieces focusing on people who struggle to get by on their benefits; or those that can’t find, or are unable to, work and the damage this causes to individuals, families and communities.

I am as angry as the next person that someone could have 13 children, all taken inot care and then get pregnant again, but she is not representative of the majority of people on state benefits. Of course I want a system that seeks to prevent abuse and misuse, but The Sun’s headlines are not the way to achieving this.

However, it is rapidly becoming the case that the general public are starting to believe that everyone’s a scrounger or out to abuse the system, that there are no deserving recipients of welfare (unless it’s them of course) and this is as much a contributor to “Broken Britain”TM as anti-social behaviour or inequality.

“this (I’m sure not unique) situation”

Why, do you have evidence that another couple continue to have children having had an extraordinary number of children taken into care? Or is your assumption based on nothing but your prejudice?

I wouldn’t wipe my arse with The Scum – I’ve been living, studying or working in Liverpool since before Hillsborough happened.

Nevertheless, this is a woman incapable of looking after her previous children and I see no reason to expect her to be able to look after a 14th.

She’s not a victim here: people like her give The Scum the excuse they need for attacking the benefit system.

Oh yes, spot on Shatterface.

Good point by Septicisle. And the Sun are at it again with their neurotic coverage of Baby P – now on the brink of being handed celebrity status.

Am I reading this correctly?

“The Sun’s exclusive on Theresa Winters, the woman from Luton who has had all thirteen of her children taken into care and is now pregnant with her fourteenth, ticks all the paper’s buttons. Broken Britain, scrounging feckless layabouts and of course the bourgeois journalists working for a “working class” newspaper sneering at their own target market.”

The Sun’s readers are working class, Theresa Winters is working class, Sun journalists are sneering at Winters, so they are sneering at their own target market? Because Sun readers and Theresa Winters are of the same class?

I think you might find that very many Sun readers would not consider themselves to be of a type with Theresa Winters, and would be quite capable of “sneering” at Winters without any help from “bourgeois journalists” because they strongly disapprove of her behavior and do not see themselves as anything like her – they may see themselves as hard-working moral individuals.

I fear I am misreading things and overreacting, and Scepticisle I don’t want to be hurling accusations at you on the basis of one turn of phrase, but I find this way of writing about the “working class” objectionable. It reminds me of (bourgeois) lefties who are baffled by why (lots of) working class people insist on voting Tory – why can’t they see that the Tories are their enemies and, you know, us lefties are their friends, trying to help them? And why do working class people support “cracking down” on “benefits cheats and scroungers”, I mean why can’t they see that’s an attack on poor victims of economic injustice, just like them?

@7 Luis Enrique,

I don’t think anyone is trying to homogenise the working class, or say that people shouldn’t be angry with abuses of the system. However, pieces like The Sun’s seek to polarise and misrepresent, because, for every person like Theresa Winters, or others abusing the system, there are many more who don’t abuse the system and others who don’t get what they are entitled to. The Sun inflames adn magnifies the heinous examples of abuse and either directly, or indirectly, sets people not on benefits against those that are.

This is not to say that there isn’t a role for investigative journalism in uncovering systemic abuses, just that there is a lack of balance in the representation of reality. Do you not find it at all worrying that it is seems to be becoming more acceptable to refer to seemingly anyone on benefits as a scrounger or a lay-about? Is this not devisive? Is it conducive to serious attempts at reform of the system?

I don’t think there is anything “bourgeois” about Sun journalists. They are extremely thick scum! I believe (unless I’m a victim of another urban myth) that they invented the story many years ago about Islington Council banning “Baa baa black sheep” and all the knee-jerks on the left immediately leapt to the defence of this wise decision by Islington. Is this another clever leg pull? So unless any of you actually personally know Theresa Winters and actually have proof that she had 13 children, etc..reach for the blue bag in the crisp packet.

I’m not pretending she’s a victim; that clearly isn’t the case, although who knows the exact reasons for why they’re not considered suitable parents. What I do object to is the Sun complaining about them being lavished with taxpayers’ cash which they’re only going to put towards having more children when the paper itself has most probably just given them equivalent of a year’s worth of benefits (if not more). This is where Lilliput seems to have missed the point.

Luis, yes you are reading too much into that one line. The point I was try to make is probably best illustrated by this older Sun article, where they sent a journo to a “benefits blackspot” to see if he could find work, and surprise surprise, a middle-aged hack in shirt and tie with the skills to work on a national newspaper found a few in no time, hence obviously everyone there on benefits is a scrounger. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article945842.ece
It’s that sort of contempt that I was attempting to highlight, and perhaps I didn’t put that across in the best possible way.

Leon,

I agree.

Septic,

Fair enough. Yes, the story you link to looks particularly contemptible.

I think you are conflating two issues: The Sun’s obvious hostility to the benefit system, and some idiots belief that the benefit system is bottomless. If this were a Right-wing Christian in America claiming God would provide we’d be telling her to get in the pill, but because this is someone who has accepted the State to fulfill that role suddenly we should accept it.

I’m not suggesting we should accept it, just that there are much better ways of solving the problem than the way in which the Sun is both proposing and covering it.

Septicisle: “It doesn’t really make much difference that I can’t think of anything less feckless than being perpetually pregnant…”

I think that’s too judgmental for a liberal comment blog post. Six or seven years ago, one of the tabloids ran a story about a family who live directly across the road from me. The story was unpleasant for its insinuations about benefit sponging.

When the story was written, the family comprised a dozen children, aged six to eighteen, living in two semi-detached houses knocked into one (I don’t know who pays for it). Grandma lived there too. They liked being part of a big family with younger members. As the youngest of six kids, I know first hand the joy of living in a big family, and that it is not a parental choice to be taken lightly.

The father across the road is locally known as a bit of a Walter Mitty, but he always works and is acknowledged as a grafter. I’ve had a single confrontation with the kids which was sorted out in five minutes. So what is wrong with breeding if you look after the kids? Or do we live in a world of test tube breeding and stored eggs that resents natural fecundity?

Oh, I’m not being judgemental, quite the opposite; just that I can’t think of anything more tiring and hard work than being pregnant perpetually, even if each of the children has been taken into care. It’s the clear desperation of the situation that offends me as much as anything.

Incidentally, A.N. Wilson in (naturally) the Daily Mail takes a rather different view, in what I think is one of the most openly fascistic comment pieces I’ve read: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1203596/A-N-WILSON-Shes-benefits-pregnant-14th-time–mother-sterilised.html

I got half way through Wilson’s article, but the best rated comments are a pleasent surprise.

Wow, that Mail article is disgusting. It’s almost beyond parody.

Theresa Winters’ story is a tragedy, I feel really sorry for how screwed up her life has become.

It’s a disgusting state of affairs but I hardly think the benefits system can be blamed, as the right wing press has attempted. Her case is hardly statistically significant is it?

@17

It’s good to see, no matter how bad things get, that even Daily Mail readers don’t want to force sterilise people. I think if the comments had been supportive of Wilson, well I don’t know what I’d think.

@7: Theresa Winters is working class

She doesn’t work, and probably has never done a day of work in her life. So in no normal sense of the term is she working class. I’d describe her as underclass, or in more everyday language, as scum.

Septicisle, I haven’t missed the point at all. The Sun is conducting business. Its buying and paying for a story that will sell a lot of newspapers and make more money then they paid for it. Its called commerce. Are you also against Jeremy Springer, Trisha Goddard and Jeremy Kyle? I’m more then happy to give this couple benefits – if they gave us something in return eg stop having children!

This is what I was trying to say on the post about child poverty when others preferred arguing about how to define poverty: how can we eradicate child poverty when it is deemed ok by society that adults who cannot financially look after themselves have children?

Finally, there is no doubt that this woman is suffering from some mental health issues and she is not being treated. To go through 14 births and neglect I don’t know how many of then exactly is not your average motherly behaviour. It may be that treatement and or sterilisation may be more humane then to allow her to carry on and on giving birth and having her baby taken.

Here is an interesting American organisation who offer cash for sterilisation to addicts –

http://www.projectprevention.org/letter/

Some of you guys and gals really do need to think hard about why you so dislike The Sun.

Eddy Shah and Rupert Murdoch changed for the better – thank goodness.

Margaret Thatcher was lionized by The Sun – so what?

The Sun were lamentable in their coverage of the Hillsborough disaster – but why don’t people stop making out the reporting was a trauma in itself. It was just lousy bias based upon the events at The European Cup Final three seasons before, not some kind of class warfare.

The Sun clobbered Neil Kinnock good and proper – probably just as well as Labour weren’t up to it then.

It’s all a long time ago, so move on and think about the story not the messenger.

As far as having 13 kids in care, no amount of understanding or blaming someone / something else stands up. It is a dreadful way for the parents to live their lives and to disadvantage the lives of their children.

Now just think if this article had been written in The Guardian’s Society section (in a more sober manner of course) none of you would have batted an eyelid.

@Cabalamat

No she has worked, she is on benefits following an accident in her last jobs. All you had to do was read both articles linked to here. Don’t throw accusations about you can’t back up.

An underclass is still part of the Working Classes. She has nothing to sell but her labour (and her story apparently).

“Theresa Winters is working class”

Wrong she’s welfare class. Which means she legally steals from the working class in order to continue her lifestyle.

Lilliput, you are absolutely right. It is Scepticisle’s ‘shoot the messenger’ article which has missed the point entirely. That the Sun gaves the family cash to run the story is neither here nor there. The Sun’s job is to report the news to its readership. The Sun isn’t responsible for this disgrace, its the government. If it wasn’t for our bloated undiscriminating welfare state the Sun wouldn’t have any story to report in first place.

“The ire directed at the couple is based around how they’ve cost the taxpayer “millions” with their selfish ways, and of course how the benefit system encourages such behaviour (it doesn’t; they’ve just abused it, but never mind).”

If the benefit system is so easy to abuse then such a selfish lifestyle needs no active encouragement. Wakey wakey Scepticisle, there are plenty of people out there happy to be selfish leeches if they think they can get away with it. Its called the free rider problem. Even if this is an extreme example, almost every working class person knows at least one baby machine milking off the taxpayer in a similar way. I live right next door to one.

Of course it’s the point – how can you complain about how they’re leeching the taxpayer dry when you’ve just paid them however much to tell their story without being a horrendous hypocrite – what are they going to spend it on other than furthering their “feckless” existence? The Jerry Springer etc comparison also doesn’t wash because they don’t pay those on the shows similar amounts – and at least they have something approaching a go at understanding why or proposing solutions rather than just condemning, nor do they have “exclusive” contracts with those they play host to. These threads are always eye-opening though, because it always brings out the very best in the commenters, as can be seen above.

@25 septicisle: Of course it’s the point – how can you complain about how they’re leeching the taxpayer dry when you’ve just paid them however much to tell their story without being a horrendous hypocrite

The Sun are a newspaper, and not a very salubrious one at that. They’re obviously going to be sensationalist and hypocritical if they think they’ll gain readers by it, because that’s how the game works. You should know that, Septicisle (and frankly, if you don’t, you’re too ill-informed to have an opinion on British society).

Furthermore, they’s no real cure for this, because the only cure that would work, censoring the press, would be worse than the disease. So waving your hands in the air and saying how terrible the Sun is, is a rather pointless activity.

Eariler you say: how the benefit system encourages such behaviour (it doesn’t; they’ve just abused it, but never mind)

You say this couple have abused the system. Surely a more reasonable discussion would be on how the rules could be changed, so people like them can’t abuse the system in future, and more importantly so people who actually deserve benefits can continue getting them, without the political climate changing so they don’t.

The Sun is conducting business. Its buying and paying for a story that will sell a lot of newspapers and make more money then they paid for it. Its called commerce.

The Sun are not just some cornershop, buying and selling for a profit, but the nation’s largest selling weekly newspaper and a major factor in the shaping of debate. And a large part of their commerce involves spurious claims to some moral high ground, so it’s reasonable to highlight their failings when they feed a culture they profit by deploring.

Charlieman: ‘So what is wrong with breeding if you look after the kids? Or do we live in a world of test tube breeding and stored eggs that resents natural fecundity?’

She isn’t looking after her kids, the State is. Clearly she can’t cope, even if she wanted to.

Left Outside: ‘She has nothing to sell but her labour (and her story apparently).’

I don’t think hers is the kind of ‘labour’ Marx was on about. As to selling the story, presumably the benefit people have been informed?

“Surely a more reasonable discussion would be on how the rules could be changed, so people like them can’t abuse the system in future, and more importantly so people who actually deserve benefits can continue getting them, without the political climate changing so they don’t.”

No, a reasonable discussion would involve discussing first if it’s possible or desirable to change the rules to prevent one family (or possibly, but that hasn’t been established yet, a very small number of families) from abusing the system. Generally speaking changing the law in response to one case isn’t a good idea. Clearly there could be side-effects of changing the law and it could impact on other people.

A discussion that goes beyond reasonable and reaches the level of constructive would discuss how Theresa Winters has herself been failed by the system & by wider society – just from reading the articles that are critical of her it still seems that she had no or little support to get into work after getting injured, she may be caught out by the housing benefit trap, she is cleary desperate to have children but doesn’t have the support to raise them and provide for them suitably (I presume that given the vitriol in the articles written about her, we’d know if there was some reason eg convictions that she was deemed permanently unsuitable to be a parent), she may have some mental health problems that have gone undiagnosed and untreated.

I do however like how Wilson managed to Godwin himself by suggesting a particular opinion was Nazi-esque, then expressing that opinion. That’s rare, even on the internets.

@Shatterface, I didn’t realise I had punned “Labour” and “Labour“

Cabalmat: I’m all for pointless activities even if it involves stating the obvious. I’m not in the slightest calling for censorship; if you can’t criticise a piece of “journalism” like this one for the reasons set out, you may as well give up.

@28 Shatterface, that little word “if’ was used by me for a deliberate reason. It wasn’t used as a simple conjunction, but was used in its conditional sense.

I wasn’t arguing in defence of Theresa Winters, merely sticking up for responsible parents who choose to have large families.

Nice to see a great article here about how useless the Scum is, always nice to be reminded how badly we are let down by our newspapers.

Daniel re: Comment 33

Newspapers don’t let us down – they’re not akward relatives or ex-boy/girlfriends.
We get what we pay for. Not surprisingly if you only pay 20 to 30 pence you don’t get much other than ads for mobiles and chat-lines. Pay more and the quality of reporting improves, a bit.
That’s why people look at the blogs to sift through the news + opinions.

Yep, they do let us down, they have a responsibility and stuff like this and beyond, helps perpetuate myths and spread ignorance.

I’m assuming that most of these children have been adopted. Am I wrong?

Circulation figures for the Scum have held at 3 million for 30 years – interestingly, the British press has the highest daily readership in the world (along with Japan)
http://www.eco.univ-rennes1.fr/digitalAssets/82/82867_british_press.pdf

3 million Scum readers (and a mere 400,000 Guardianistas) ………… why?

The answer to my own rhetorical question is that the Scum is expert at tapping into, and stirring up views widely held amongst a significant section of the UK populace (whether we personally agree with such views, or not).
In other words the house style of journalism has never been terribly interested in trailblazing, but rather the extent to which it can amplify or titillate EXISTING opinions of its readership.

If we take the case in hand nobody has offered any coherent explanation as to why this woman acted so irresponsibly (assuming she is not suffering some sort of serious mental illness) – despite a repetative series of catastrophic events she appears incapable of either ‘learning’ or adapting her behaviour to take account of her children’s needs not mention those of the wider community.

Given this vacuum it has hardly surprising that certain journo’s feel they have artistic license to offer their, aherm, ‘interpretation’ of events – safe in the knowledge that 3 million readers will be in broad agreement with their assessment of this sad and depressing case.

Where is the outrage? A N Wilson of The Daily Mail advocates eugenics and there is no outrage.

Baffled