Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
This from tomorrow's Telegraph. Where should we draw the line? How can this expenditure be justified?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9877213/Mother-of-11-gets-custom-built-super-council-house.htmlI'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,706
Probably because in the long term it is cheaper than the other options
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Eleven children or thereabouts was the norm with my grand and great grandparents and so on through the generations.
Because wages were higher in those days, people could afford to have many children and lived better than today.
Everyone started full-time employment at the age of 14 in my family's history, and part-time employment even earlier, after school or during the holidays.
Get a grip, Peter
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Are you from a long line of Utopians Alex?
Certainly prior to WWI women had many children because they had sex, also many more miscarriages and a high infant mortality rate. No electric light, no radio and no TV didn't help either. Some might have had the wherewithal to make a go of it, but not many - although we do tend to hear a lot about them, but for reasons of wealth and position more than anything else.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
P.S.
I remember one family locally that had two neighbouring houses knocked together to accommodate them. This was the late fifties. (nineteen fifties, that is)
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
P.P.S.
A lesson in the creation of large families...
[URL][/URL]
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
In those days Alex, people had large families because there was no contraception and usually because the husband wanted sex and it mostly ended up with children.
I think that if people can afford to have large families then that is up to them, but why should the State - through the tax-payers, keep paying out for people to have loads of kids.
Pay child-allowance for the first 2, maybe 3 at the most, but no more.
We are not telling people how many children to have, but they can't expect the State to pay for all of them, they must take some responsibility.
Roger
Guest 774- Registered: 1 Oct 2012
- Posts: 498
I'm guessing the woman in the report pops another one out as nursery looms to avoid being eligible to work...
If the child support system capped the benefit after 3 children maybe these people would think twice once they realised their money wouldn't be increasing any further.
"If it ain't broke, fix it til it is."
Guest 714- Registered: 14 Apr 2011
- Posts: 2,594
[QUOTE="Alexander D"]Eleven children or thereabouts was the norm with my grand and great grandparents and so on through the generations.
Because wages were higher in those days, people could afford to have many children and lived better than today.
I assume that post is tongue in cheek Alex, not too many people pre war had electricity and hot running water, let alone tv, cars, modern appliances and holidays. Most families 70 years ago would die for the poverty we have today.
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,883
I can only agree with all the previous posts except for 3. I fail to understand why the house/houses she is living in could not be properly converted with one large kitchen and one lot of services, there would be no need for a large new eco friendly house. I assume the housing association is building several houses on the plot of land not just the one as mentioned by the Telegraph.
Alexander it is a shame you do not watch TV, in last Sunday's episode of The Midwives which is set in the 1950's you would have seen exactly how families with far too many unplanned for children (no contraception) coped when living in just two rooms with the father unable to find a permanent job.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Guest 687- Registered: 2 Jun 2009
- Posts: 513
Politicians are often criticised for measures that people see as the encroachment of the 'nanny state', but continuing to pay for each and every subsequent child is surely the optimum example of the nanny state. Let us not forget that child allowance was to ensure that all children coud be clothed and fed in an age prior to the time when it was possible to avoid pregnancy. So why should the state pay for those who choose to not limit their families, surely like car ownership the number of children you have should be limited to the number you can afford.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
The 190 families with ten children who cost you more than £11million in benefits A YEAR
Yes, money could be saved here, if parents want big families they should plan and finance their family, themselves.
However there are other ways savings and sacrefices could be made.
£89m! MPs' expenses soar by more than a quarter in just a year
By Daniel Martin
The smoked salmon is 'awful' and the pork escallops are a 'disgrace': What peers said about their exclusive cafeteria (which costs us £1.44m a year to subsidise)
'The salmon in my sandwich today was awful. I hope something can be done': What one peer wrote in a letter of complaint
For every £1 spent in the cafeteria, the taxpayer provides a £1.07 subsidy
Peers receive a £300-per-day allowance to cover their costs attending debates
MPs stuff themselves on the cheap in the House of Lords thanks to £2.3m of taxpayers' cash
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
They could introduce a benefit cap on big family's striping out pension benefits entitlements for them that have big family's on benefits.
Remember the kids are innocent but the parents should lose out in retirement as they have already received big taxpayers help
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
besidses the costs there is still the problem of over population.
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Don't say sterilize them Howard The had ringers will brand you a Nazi
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
"
Number of Siblings, Religion, and Educational Attainment
Other things equal, one would expect the negative effect of large families to be experienced most forcibly in those groups that provided the least non familial support for high fertility, believing that each couple should produce only the number of children it can support. We would thus expect that non-Catholics (as compared with Catholics) would experience the most negative educational effect from large sibsizes.
By contrast, given the strong Catholic church commitment to large families (Blake 1966, 1984), one might expect that coming from a large Catholic family would not be as inimical to educational attainment as coming from a large non-Catholic one. Indeed, although in general, parochial schools have placed a great financial burden on Catholics, it is also true that such schools have provided a more supportive environment for the children of prolific parents than attention solely to tuition charges might suggest. As Greeley and Rossi have pointed out (1966, 273), parochial schools at times charged on a per family rather than a per child basis. Such schools are also known to charge less for each succeeding child in large families and to be generous with scholarships for those in need. In addition, families in Catholic parishes "network" with regard to children's clothing and other child-oriented resources. During the Depression, parochial schools often accepted the children of the unemployed without charge (Sanders 1977, 184-185). The parish frequently pitched in and helped the schools with whatever resources were at their disposal...."
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6489p0rr&chunk.id=d0e5664&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e5664&brand=eschol
http://www.academia.edu/802918/Revisiting_the_birth_order-creativity_connection_the_role_of_sibling_constellation
http://www.familyfacts.org/briefs/35/family-structure-and-childrens-education
It can be taken from the text above that, in years gone by, particular groups that held that large families were a good thing made great 'communal' efforts to accommodate them, it seems that 'we' as a country are doing our bit too.
I did a fruitless internet search to find statistics relating to achievement and family size, the operative word is 'sibsize', in the hope of discovering whether large families were good or bad for the individual children within them. There has been some work done on this, arriving at vastly different conclusions.
The issue (quite literally) being children, and not financial burden, it appears that there are a great many factors relating to family make-up that have been studied at length;divorce/single parent, being a popular area for study.
It is, after all, the children that matter most here. Yes Family Allowance could be tailored to encourage us all to have a 'reasonable' size of family, but curtailing FA is bound to lead to a greater number of children suffering. [yea! Well done the Conservatives.]
Perhaps rather by-the-way, but the Windsors
are one large family group. Can it be they that encourage such large families further down the social scale?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 687- Registered: 2 Jun 2009
- Posts: 513
Why blame the conservatives for a greater number of children suffering(see previous post),it is those who are irresponsible for having children they cannot support without state aid who would be to blame not a political party. I fully support the benefit system as a means of removing 'poverty' but not as career option for indolent and feckless parents. I was born in what is considered the poorest area of the UK akin to the scenario in Call the Midwives so I am not without experience,but what I do see is poverty quite frequently but not in the UK but real poverty as experienced by those in Bulgaria. So lets stop this drivel about creating poverty by instigating a reasonable level of child benefit,we have eliminated poverty on the scale once known in this country and replaced it with unjustified benefit entitlement culture. The state provides enough finances to everyone in need, what they can't do is ensure how it is spent.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
"Why blame the conservatives..."
-I had a dig at the Conservatives simply because this issue was being seen as one of money only and not 'children, as it should be.
"having children they cannot support without state aid"
-So, all benefits should be means-tested. This would mean great savings generally and would leave more in the pot to support those in need. I suspect that this is a little too perfect, and would lead to greater distress down the line, but maybe worth thinking about.
"So lets stop this drivel about creating poverty by instigating a reasonable level of child benefit,we have eliminated poverty on the scale once known in this country and replaced it with unjustified benefit entitlement culture. "
-Should we go back to the way it once was?
"The state provides enough finances to everyone in need"
-This is purely laughable.
Accidents of birth, hard work and all the hours God sends are unlikely to achieve this. Naturally, this all depends on what is 'need' and who gets to decide on those 'needs'.
Elsewhere we read (#12) that 190 families = £11m cost per annum.
1/ Is this likely to be arithmetically correct?
2/ Are the children of large families of no benefit at all?
Who is to know what drives a woman to become addicted to the hormones etc. of pregnancy? What, if any, might be the down-side of limiting a woman's desire to give birth? Can the natural drives that are part and parcel of being a human being be reduced to the penny-pinching level?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
My post @3 has been misunderstood.
It's message was that the children would be working part time before leaving school, and in full employment at 14.
While I accept that today, school education should be to at least the age of 16, however, there is less employment about, with 22% youth unemployment in Britain, and the State has abolished any chance of children gaining work experience before leaving school (see: nanny state and pc brigade with women with green hair telling everyone off).
When I went to school, many children I knew worked part time during the holidays or the weekends.
My mate did the milk-round before starting school, every morning!
Nowadays, half of children go to university, half sign on.
Children are taught not to work!
But there are some brave exceptions, such as 6th formers who work at Icelands to earn a few pounds.
My view is, children should be given some work-experience induction starting at the age of 11, 5 or 6 hours a week at least 15 weeks a year.
Booh!
Guest 703- Registered: 30 Jul 2010
- Posts: 2,096
Summary of the Child Poverty Act 2008-09 to 2009-10
"The Bill would provide a statutory basis to the commitment made by the Government in 1999 to eradicate child poverty by 2020."
However, the current government is looking at changing the definition of poverty as
A child is considered to be living in poverty if their household income is less than 60% of averages wages.
So by this definition poverty can never be eradicated
Alex, what you are suggesting is currently illegal for good reasons.