Exageration of course.Would the Gunchester ( Manchester ) of the 1980s and 1990s or some parts of inner London of noughties be closer to Baltimore of the “Wire” or Tunbridge Wells?

“Why was an increased in these social problems triggered not by the introduction of universal welfare provision in the 1940s but following the enormous rise in social inequality in the 1980s?”

Inequality is higher now than at any time since the war, which is entirely consistent with the welfare state being one cause of the exponential increase in crime over the last 10 years.

“and is strategically designed to break-up social and political coalitions between the bottom and the middle”.

What “coalition ? This left wing narrative of “all of us against the rich” is pure fantasy. The middle (as in working people) are fed up of subsidising an ever expanding bottom – or hadn’t you noticed ? Working people have nothing in common with the underclass, that’s why they work to escape from and stay out of poverty, or do you think people just work for the hell of it ?

Yes, it’s piss and wind,
except
Sunder this narrative (and I do wish the use of that term were restricted solely to appropriate use in the arts, history etc and not used as a catch-all for whatever shite a politico is pushing that day/week/month) isn’t a million miles away from New Labour’s workfare and demonisation of the poor and benefit claimants. That too, is spin (narrative, if you really must) “intended to “other” and segregate “the poor” from the rest of society”

What is it you do for a living then, Twat Munro?

and I do wish the use of that term were restricted solely to appropriate use in the arts, history etc and not used as a catch-all for whatever shite a politico is pushing that day/week/month

I edited the piece to put that in, just to be clear…

I take it no-one has ever been to Europe. Despite having Welfare States, France, Germany and Sweden have nothing like the problems we have, wheras San Paulo, Rio, Cape Town et al have massive drug problems with welfare States.

Any ideas?

What is it you do for a living then, Twat Munro?

Any fule kno he’s a bus driver – (round the) bendy ones no doubt.

6. In many parts of Europe, they don’t penalise the married family structure so much, and do not incentivise single parent families.

I’m an accountant – what difference does that make ?

And “Bernard” with a name like yours I wouldn’t be quite so eager to take the piss…

” take it no-one has ever been to Europe. Despite having Welfare States, France, Germany and Sweden have nothing like the problems we have, wheras San Paulo, Rio, Cape Town et al have massive drug problems with welfare States”.

Any ideas?”

Less generous welfare, welfare targeted at what the left brand “traditional” families as in shock horror 2 heterosexual first married parents with their own children, stronger social structures, greater sense of community, laws that are actually enforced. That enough ?

Just to be absoluletly clear, we have the highest level of benefits for single mothers in europe, and the highest rates of single parenthood in europe. But it’s ok, apparently there’s no connection.

Nick @ 8

and do not incentivise single parent families.

So how do our benefits compare with the rest of Europe? Anyone with reliable figures?

Matt @ 11

Nice speech, but is any of that actually true?

There is a tiny problem with the hypothesis that it is all the fault of teh Evil Thatcher. The post war rise in crime started in about 1955, peaked in 1995, and has been falling since. Therefore it cannot be the eighties that are to blame. Nor can it be inequality that caused the post-WW2 high crime rates since the time with the lowest inequality, the late 1970s, had high and growing crime rates, while periods with much higher inequality, like the Edwardian era, have far lower crime rates.

14 – Are you absolutely sure that crime was lower in Edwardian Britain?
The Church and Police know that crime had its biggest jump in the 1980s. The heroin epidemic started, the masses of youth unemployment, the rise in poverty, the individulistic ethos which tore the old structures down all could be a bases for crime to rise.

All the cool kids saw the end of The Wire a year ago.

If Grayling wanted to look cool he’d be doing speeches about the menace posed to young girls by sexy southern vampires.

Chris Grayling’s comments are idiototic.

Chicago had over 500 murders last year.
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/12/chicago-records-500th-murder-of-the-year.html

The interactive Baltimore murder map is always worth a view.
http://essentials.baltimoresun.com/micro_sun/homicides/

There are pockets in England where people ”play” at being street dudes from The Wire though.

I think I drove past one early this evening opposite Stockwell tube station.

And there’s an estate in Battersea that has an inner courtyard area that reminds me of the drugs pit in the first season of The Wire.
I don’t remember seeing an old sofa dumped in the middle of it.

The Falcon Road estate near Clapham Junction was also a bit leery I remember.
The local Pizza Hut (only 500 yards away) used to refuse to deliver to it.
I know, as I worked therre.

The sofa popped up in ‘Gunrush’ on Sunday. Maybe that’s where Grayling got the impression the UK is like Baltimore.

I think people might be missing the point here – the reason Chris Grayling cited The Wire is that he knows journalists love writing articles about The Wire and will take any excuse to do so.

Every time Dominic West or Clark Peters opens their mouths in this country they get a full-page spread – lots journos love that show and will wank on about it forever, given the opportunity. That’s what Chris Grayling thought – Hmmm, here’s an opportunity to get my face in the papers and push our Broken Britain bollocks narrative.

Does anybody believe for a second that a) Grayling has actually watched the show or that b) Even one in ten Britons knows what The Wire is?

This is the British media class talking to itself to fill space in newspapers. That’s it.

12. No reliable figures but friends from continental countries are amazed at the benefits available here, especially housing benefit. In Italy many people live with their parents until they are married as their is less housing benefit for the unmarried/those without families.

I think it is time we re-examined the type of welfare system proposed by Beveredge and the various welfare systems( including the NHS) in continental Europe . I cannot see how a welfare system which allows multi generational dependency is the best system on offer as it takes away all responsibility from the individual. I do not think Beveredge supported the idea of a welfare system supporting or creating multi generational welfare dependency.

[11] I’ve had a look around for some stats and the only numbers I can find are from the ONS “Percentage of dependent children living in different family types”. In 1972, 7% of children lived in single parent families. In 1981 this was 12%, 1992 15%, 2001 20% and 2003 23%.

If anyone can find information on the amount of benefits paid to single parents then it might help Matt’s story. That it rose by 3% in 11 years solely under the Tories (1981-1992) compared to 3% in only two years solely under Labour (2001-2003), coupled with the “mean Tories, nice Labour” line on benefits does seem to give support to his argument, although without the actual numbers I wouldn’t want to draw conclusions.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/britain-not-as-good-as-%27the-guardian%27-said-it-was%2c-claims-top-tory-200908252007/

Sums up the ludicrousness of this sort of debased political discourse better than most.

@Matt Munro

Rarely has anyone demonstrated such original political insight as yourself. It is not at all the sort of painting-by-numbers hackneyed guff which is endlessly repeated by identikit reactionaries.

Well done.

I just realised why this thread sounds so familiar:

“We’re going to keep trying to strengthen the American family. To make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons.” – George H W Bush

“Hey, we’re just like the Waltons. We’re praying for an end to the depression too.” – Bart Simpson

@22 – And apart from a ridiculous name and some feeble ad hom – what exactly is your constribution to this or any other deabte?

By the way MM, comment #22 wasn’t an ad hom, it was a sarcastic criticism of your comments. Please learn the difference.

No it wasn’t ad hominem. Check the Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy
http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

“Just to be absoluletly clear, we have the highest level of benefits for single mothers in europe, and the highest rates of single parenthood in europe. But it’s ok, apparently there’s no connection.”

Hmm. Let’s see what the stats say:

The UK has roughly the same percentage of lone parent families as Sweden (UNICEF report – 16.9% of of young people aged 11, 13 and 15 were living in
single-parent family structures in the UK, compared to 16.8%).

The UK had 16.2% of children in households with equivalent income less than 50 per cent of the median, Sweden had 3.6%.

The USA had 21.7% of children with equivalent income less than 50 per cent of the median, and 20.8% in lone parent families.

So to recap:

The UK has the same proportion of lone parent families as Sweden, but more relative poverty and more crime.

The UK has a lower proportion of lone parent families than the USA, higher benefits, less poverty and less crime.

http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf

Between 1998 and 2008, benefits for lone parents increased substantially. And the percentage who were in work went from 47% to 57%.

http://www.poverty.org.uk/46/index.shtml

Nice cherry picking there Don. Technically your stats are correct, but you’ve left out the fact that the UK is among the worst in just about every category of child well-being. 20th out of 21 for number of children in single parent families, 22nd out of 24 for teenage pregancy. On the plus side, we’re 6th out of OECD countries in physical activity.

I suppose your overall point is that our performance isn’t related to benefits and it may well not be. I don’t think we can escape the fact that if a child was choosing where to be born, based on this report you wouldn’t pick the UK whatever level of benefits we have.

We really should be asking how Sweden can have similar levels of single parents as us yet they are 2nd for overall child well-being and we are 21st (dead last).

“We really should be asking how Sweden can have similar levels of single parents as us yet they are 2nd for overall child well-being and we are 21st (dead last).”

I’d agree with that. Some features of the Swedish system:

Much lower income inequality, child care is pretty much free (the state picks up nearly 90% of the costs), and there’s more flexible working for parents.

I think there is also greater expectation / requirement that parents will look for work in return for benefits (that’s certainly true of the Dutch and Danish welfare states – which also do pretty well in the Unicef study).

Charlie @ 20

“No reliable figures but friends from continental countries are amazed at the benefits available here”

Ahh, but are they amazed at the benefits, or are they amazed at the Daily Mail’s wild exaggerated figures? There is a distinction. The Daily Mail scour the Country looking for the most ‘outrageous’ (in their terms) figures they can find and them distort them, then present them as the norm.

“I think it is time we re-examined the type of welfare system proposed by Beveredge and the various welfare systems( including the NHS) in continental Europe . I cannot see how a welfare system which allows multi generational dependency is the best system on offer as it takes away all responsibility from the individual”

Close but no cigar I am afraid. What we actually need is to overhaul the economy and retool it so that we actively pursue policies designed for full employment at all other costs. Once we have full employment the benefits system will work as exactly as it was designed to do, a safety net.

Don @ 29

I think there is also greater expectation / requirement that parents will look for work in return for benefits (that’s certainly true of the Dutch and Danish welfare states – which also do pretty well in the Unicef study).

Again Don, you seem to be missing the rather obvious points that several other on the board are missing as well. How much time you ‘look for work’ is not relevant, unless of course, there is a reasonable chance that you will find suitable work.

All the jobs clubs, interview techniques, CV writing, lie detectors and snoopers in the World are useless there are enough jobs and a big enough incentives to employ those single mothers.

If there are two million free Eastern European workers with no ties and no childcare considerations willing to come here, why would any employee take on someone who can only work when her child is at school, when they need someone to work on a shift rota for example?

If you want to cut the numbers on benefits, you need to create enough jobs in the first place. You need labour to have the whip hand in the supply/demand dynamic.

As it’s getting all very Wire themed over at LC, I’ll post this comment over here too but please feel free to make other suggestions as to what TV series shoul dbe assigned to UK political parties…

New Labour has ‘The West Wing’

Conservatives have ‘The Wire’

I think the Lib Dems should snaffle the rights to ‘The Flumps’ right now before someone else does…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1mMQtk3IUE

@ 25 So being called an “identikit reactionary” without any attempt to actually adress anything I said isn’t ad hom ? I’d say it was textbook.

Don – I’m not interested in absolute or relative numbers of single parents (it’s interesting but not relevant to my point), but the amount of benefits that a single parent can claim in this country versus other European countries.
I’m confident that if you include the value of all benefits (housing, subsidised council tax, free school meals, subsidised childminding, free courses at college, subsidised transport etc, etc) rather than just the cash value of in hand benefit payments which the apologists forwelfare always trot out, you will find it to be significantly higher in the UK than elswhere. From personal experinece of living in Italy, in that country at least there is no comparison.

Jim – I don’t know if you saw a programme last week (on the BBC, thursday I think) which was about the governments attempts to get single parents back into work, but more than one of then said that benefits were too generous and that being on welfare shouldn’t be pleasant. They presumably have no axe to grind either way so why do you think they said that ?

MM, you weren’t being called an “identikit reactionary”. Your comment was being compared to the kind of comments identikit reactionaries make.

ie. the statement “your comment was stupid” does not mean the same thing as the statement “you are stupid”.

Please, please – learn the difference!

And she’s a troll – she makes no contribution whatsover to the debate, just slags off what other people have said with “opinions” lifted straight from the gruniad editorial pages. And she’s obviously drunk most of the time

As are you Matt.

PS: that is about you.

xxxx

“And she’s a troll – she makes no contribution whatsover to the debate, just slags off what other people have said with “opinions” lifted straight from the gruniad editorial pages. And she’s obviously drunk most of the time”

Now, see, *that* was ad-hom. Although I have no idea who you’re talking about.

Matt @ 35

“They presumably have no axe to grind either way so why do you think they said that ?”

Does it really matter why they (whoever ‘they’ are) said it? No doubt, I could find people who would argue that they struggle on benefits. Neither of which is really the point.

There is no point in making life harder for people on benefits in order to push them into work unless there are jobs for them to take up. If employers have real economic incentives to employ single mothers then those too lazy to work will find themselves losing out compared to their peers who will be vastly better off.

It is easy to find people all too willing to take a big stick to the poorest members of society, but few are willing to address the rather huge obstacle in the equation. I.e. how many of these workless people does the economy actually need.

Instead of arguing how low benefits should be, why not address the rather obvious issue; how many more jobs does the economy need to accommodate those who need jobs?

Matt @ 34

“I’m confident that if you include the value of all benefits (housing, subsidised council tax, free school meals, subsidised childminding, free courses at college, subsidised transport etc, etc) rather than just the cash value of in hand benefit payments”

You are not comparing like with like though are you Matt? Housing benefit does not reward the single mother, it rewards the landlord who houses the single mother. The single mother merely requires a roof over her and her child’s head; it is the private landlord that requires the profit.

As for child care, again the above applies, but seriously, you think British women get more childcare, college courses, transport than Swedish or Danish single mothers?

You really need to check out these Countries Matt.

Lord Tebbit is right!

Self-reliance is the key to success!

If the crack dealers of Moss Side worked longer hours and put more effort into putting rival crack dealers out of business, they’d have higher incomes and be able to buy more junk food and gangsta-rappa garments for their litters of picanninies

No Jackie, you daft racist, Lord Tebbit is rarely right, which is something you share you bigot.

“Housing benefit does not reward the single mother, it rewards the landlord who houses the single mother. The single mother merely requires a roof over her and her child’s head; it is the private landlord that requires the profit”.

Of course it does – it’s subsidised housing, the landlord in most cases is a housing association anyway, but that’s beside the point. If we are going to subsidise all needs then why stop at housing, you need food and water before shelter (to stay alive) so why not subsidise them as well ?

s for child care, again the above applies, but seriously, you think British women get more childcare, college courses, transport than Swedish or Danish single mothers?

Perhaps I do, but I’m fairly confident that the policy difference is most countries support the family

Matt @ 44

“it’s subsidised housing.”

Yes, but you cannot match the cost of that housing against that of a single mother in say, Germany and declare either system ‘more generous’. What the British woman gets is a roof over head, not the real finical benefit. One of those systems may be paying out less, but that will because the value of rents is lower, the single mother is not getting ‘more’ benefit as such.

“Perhaps I do, but I’m fairly confident that the policy difference is most countries support the family”

Go on, explain. How does a Government in Sweden make two people who hate each other fall back in love?

Jim – ain’t as simple as that. Institutional and economic factors might drive family break down or prevent more families from being able to marry in the first place.

Nick @ 46

Yes, Nick it totally agree with you, families breakdown for lots of reasons. That is why my toes curl at the mention of ‘supporting’ or ‘defending’ the family. How a Government can act to save a marriage on the rocks is beyond me. The best Government can do is provide decent, stable environments and hope that helps produce decent stable relationships.

Nothing Government can do (at least in a Western democracy) can stop a family breakdown. The number of people who embark on adulterous relationships is not going to be reduced by a thirty quid a week tax break. If money kept families together then Princess Diana would not have died a divorcee, would she? Nor would the various football players who have fallen victim to fuck and tells and lost half their incomes, nor would Cecil Parkison have tumbled his P.A. over a desk and got her pregnant either.

“Go on, explain. How does a Government in Sweden make two people who hate each other fall back in love?”

It doesn’t. It “intervenes” to make the lives of married pople with children easier, financially and socially. It has no role in arbitrating the hapiness or otherwise of relationships. What it doesn’t do is try and support any and all forms of relationship – or give people “choices” that are really just different forms of dependency. That’s the economic answer

The “phiososphical” answer might be that people in those countries are less selfish/individualistic and don’t put their own happiness ahead of their childrens, or societys. As in they haven’t swallowed, whole, the American conception of a “right to hapiness”.
There’s no evidence incidentally that people who leave unhappy marriages are any happier than they were before, suggesting that it’s their perception of the relationship, rather than the relationship itself, which is at fault.

Matt @ 48

It “intervenes” to make the lives of married people with children easier.

Why only ‘married’ people’s lives easier, though? Surely we should be trying to make everyone’s who has children’s lives easier? If we want ‘families’ to flourish then we need to make sure that all types of families are catered for, irrespective of what pathetic little prejudices the Right may have.

“What it doesn’t do is try and support any and all forms of relationship”

It is not the government’s job to determine what is and what is not a ‘good relationship’. Governments have to take into account what is happening in reality. Irrespective of the ‘Government’s ‘view’ on single parents, it has to accept that they are and will remain a fact of life. Removing benefits from single parents will only increase poverty and damage the children. I cannot imagine that any decent person wants to see that, to be honest.

“Parts of Britain are turning into scenes from the cult American TV drama Desperate Housewives, says Tory home affairs spokesman Chris Grayling…”

http://sedgemore.com/2009/08/suburban-britain-becoming-like-desperate-housewives/