New Conservative peer Howard Flight has issued an "unreserved" apology for saying child benefit changes would encourage the poor to "breed".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11837538
What \ lovely bunch they are. So in touch with the people
Thats shocking. Doesn't he realise that the poor don't need any encouragment to breed.
Ridiculously out of touch.
pretty amazingly stupid/biggotted thing to say.
Can someone explain exactly what was offensive about the remark. Not a troll - what exactly is it people are incensed about? Was it his use of language, or was it the actual comments about middle class people finding it too expensive to have many children?
i mainly agree with him
Really I think its two things:
The fact he is about to become a David Cameron nominated peer makes anything he says open to more attack than usual by the labour party.
I also think people take exception to the term "breeding", but I don't.
To me his point wasn't about the poor really, what he was saying was that the middle classes would be put off having children. I agree with this.
The usual suspects will be incensed and along soon to give you the low down Simon 🙂
Troll
I think it's apparent, after this sort of thing happening time after time, that CallMeDave's assertion that the Conservatives have changed is complete rubbish. All that's happened is that a small clique of supporters gathered around Cameron are trying to run things from the centre in exactly the same way that Blair did in the Labour party.
The party itself is still made up of complete trash. I watched the conferences and witnessed Cameron's attempts to woo the nation with promises of change and whenever I found myself starting to think that he might have something, I just looked at the audience.
Eurgh.
"We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive."But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible."
Its not a really bad thing to say, if he took out the word breed with its negative imagery of pests and replaced it with having children it would have probably gone un-noticed...
Isn't that the usual STW oppinion?
Isn't castration regulalry muted as a method of poulation controll amongst the lower classes?
Yes castrate one generation of the ****less sub working class and save the country billions ,and the need to build anymore social housing on green belt .
If we give em a chance, I'm sure they could think of a [i]Final solution[/i]......
It is offensive because it is true.
Meanwhile the 6 O'clock news has Millipede being told that scroungers have an easier life than those that work. He Agreed and said the Labour had not done enough to reform welfare and make work pay.
Good effort to stir by the beeb, paraphrasing as "encourage poor to breed".
I'm struggling to see what was wrong with what he actually said, other than the possible negative connotations of "breed", although he actually used that word about the discouraged middle classes, not "those on benefits" (or "the poor", as the beeb prefers).
He may have used slightly colourful language, but the only thing I can see wrong with what he said was the apology.
It is not true.
People on benefits do not have kids to get more benefits or to get housing.
Its elitist tosh.
When I read his comments I thought the cause of the objection wasn't the language but the inference that a middle class child would be of more value to society than a child born to a couple claiming benefits.
Well if it is well educated ,brought up properly with some morals and gets a job it will be.
It is offensive because it is true.
If it was true there would be no need to apologise.
[i]Mr Cameron said: "I don't agree with what he said and I am sure he will want to apologise for what he said".[/i]
The truth is never offensive. Well not in [i]my[/i] world anyway.
TJ the mrs is in family law, yknow care cases etc and i can assure you that they absolutely do have kids to get more benefits or housing.
you find it offensive because of who said it.
So are we happy to place a value on a newborn child's potential based upon its parents?
They do have a tendancy to influence its life choices
they absolutely do have kids to get more benefits or housing.
'They'
Well that's a score for the Tories then, another 'they' that don't matter to 'us'
Stoodents, effnicks and scroungers, who's next?
Nonk - rubbish - there is research done on this and this myth is comprehensivly demolished
I find it offensive because its an nasty elitist stereotype denigrating benefit claimants based on bias.
What makes me laugh He subtracted what there intensions are
Just hope though's whom voted for them are Happy and are
getting what they wanted!
muppetWrangler - how about we say that everyone has the right to have as many children as they want, just as long as they don't expect other people to pay for them ?
CallMeDave's assertion that the Conservatives have changed is complete rubbish
I hope you don't think Labour changed their way they chuck money down the drain between the 70s and their last government do you?
I'd imagine it's a score draw between th 2 parties if you were to be keeping count, but it's always those with the big gobs and clever opinions that enjoy pointing it out....
oh ok tj you are of course right.
the fact that on a near weekly basis we hear it from the horses mouth means nothing at all.
🙄
Edric 64 - MemberThey as in the parents in reply to the question posted above my post
You posted while I was replying, edited to make sense.
jeremy i think a small number of people do have children because of the benefits/better housing it can provide. it is however a v small number and it probably amplified in mrs nonk's world as she works with families in/around the care system
i think it's also nonsense to say that the loss of £20.30 child benefit a week would put a middle class person off having children. This betrays a complete ignorance
lifer
does it help you if i replace the word they with people?
can you manage with that then or is it still a bit much for you?
winstonsmith
thanks very much.
it staggers me tj that you think this doesnt happen.
TandemJeremy
What \ lovely bunch they are. So in touch with the people
and
TandemJeremy
People on benefits do not have kids to get more benefits or to get housing.
Two sweeping statements. You want to open your mind a bit.
it staggers me tj that you think this doesnt happen.
That's probably because this :
[i]"i can assure you that they absolutely do have kids to get more benefits or housing"[/i]
suggests that poor people have kids to get more benefits or housing.
They do not. The fact that it happens, doesn't prove the point.
i know many an aristocrat(i really do) who have kids just to keep the trust going and therefore avoid massive taxation.
i also have worked in social services, the gov have no real idea. posh bubble plus westminster bubble? how far removed can you get.
Cranberry. As someone that has no desire for a child I would probably be considerably better off under the sort of system you propose, but how exactly would it work?
Would there be no assistance offered to parents, no tax breaks, no maternity/paternity leave unless you can provide cover for the period of absence, no public health care until the child has grown up and paid enough tax to warrant inclusion within the system. And what if someone does have a child more than they can financially cope with, what do we do with the child and what happens to the parents in order to make sure it doesn't happen again?
ah well fair enough ernie but i didnt say all poor people did i?
folks do do it though.
Nonk is right. This happens. I KNOW people who have had kids to get council housing. We need to support people with kids, and coming from a working class family I absolutely abhor elitism, but I can't stand idleness either.
That said a teenage mum with a council house extorts less than a tax dodging cash only builder or a zurich based banker. So loopholes and false incentives need closing wherever they exist.
I have to agree with his remark, I also agree that because it comes from a tori its found offensive,
I also know alot of Parents who are benefits have more children to get more benefits, too many people know how to exploit the system. Generally because my old lady is a social worker and my inlaws are foster carers.
But what would I know, I come from the blueist county in the country North Yorkshire.
i didnt say all poor people did i?
No you didn't. But the article which this thread refers to says : [i]child benefit changes would encourage the poor to "breed".[/i]
poor remark, and outdated language that has no place in modern politics. people are greedy/selfprotecting and will get what they can where ever they are from in the strata.
I thought Camerons gaffe was better!!....
tang, that sounds a very dark appraisal of humankind. I'd like to think that there are plenty of good and selfless people alive today.
If Cameron really did say that on the spur of the moment then credit where it's due it's comic genius.
you are most 100% right muppetw, my point is unscrupulous behavior is not class specific, just part of human nature.
It really does not happen apart from very rarely. This is the fact. <Much research backs this
Nonk _ I suggest you read Winstons post again and stop believing the tory propaganda.
Donald Hirsch, a poverty expert at the Centre for Research in Social Policy in Loughborough,
He dismissed the unspoken theme that people chose to have children in order to reap the available benefits. "It doesn't make sense – the benefits system is not generous enough. Your odds of being in poverty are much greater if you have children than if you don't, and your odds of being in poverty are much greater if you have more, rather than fewer, children."
Rhian Beynon, a spokeswoman for Family Action, which supports vulnerable families, said: "The welfare reforms will hit larger families very hard. It is not fair to assume that these families have a deliberate strategy of enlarging so as to obtain more benefits. It may be that people with large families have previously been in work but lose their jobs because of the recession."
ernie.. absolutely, but my post was in diret response to tj saying that it does not happen.
Nonk - and all the experts in social policy and research I have read but cannot find now show that this does not happen ( apart from perhpas very occasionally)
tang; agreed, gits come in all shapes and sizes.
read winstons post tj...and agree with it.
you as i recall where outraged because this does not happen.
i was telling you that in our world it does on a weekly basis.
as a percentage it may not be huge but i/us/me and her see enough of it to be fairly depressed by it.
nice backpeddle there.
Its a tiny amount. Not a reasonable basis to make policy on.
Its all about demonising benefits claimants as the undeserving poor. Its about creating moral panics and scapegoats.
And its worked as teh gullible fools outing themselves on this thread show.
He seems to be making sense to me. It's a (almost universally accepted) fact of life that if you give people an incentive to do something, it will increase their propensity to do it.
In the case of people on benefits having a disproportionate number of kids, it's not going to be a good thing for society.
Seems odd to me that you'd look to social policy to answer an economics question...
anyone been reading steve bell strip in the guardian this week? class.
how is it a backpedal?
how tiny is the amount?
i dont know and neither do you? and if you post some report that you believe has all the answers then you need to stop pointing the gullible finger.
i dont want some ****y stw row tj because to be honest with you i wanted to be irritaed by the stuck up fek but i cannot deny that he has SOME basis for his point.
his choice of language is apalling that i grant you.
If you read the article, "Welfare cuts will encourage poor to breed" is a pretty vicious paraphrase. Breed almost infers that he sees the poor as a different species, but he actually used the term in relation to the middle classes 😆
The Evening Standard (they did the actual interview) quote is as follows:
“We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive, but for those on benefit there is every incentive,”
And its worked as teh gullible fools outing themselves on this thread show.
Don't forget to demonise anyone who does not agree with you.
Cranberry - you mean like the tories and benefit claimants?
TJ your rules on internet debate clearly state that the first poster to resort to insults has lost. 😉
In his defense I have heard the 'breeding' word used with a straight face. A good friend is a Viscount, and he openly talks of child berth among his own children as 'breeding'. Did make me laugh at the time. But it does show a need to reproduce in order to keep what they have going. No excuse for a politician to use this language in the current climate.
If you read the article, "Welfare cuts will encourage poor to breed" is a pretty vicious paraphrase. Breed almost infers that he sees the poor as a different species, but he actually used the term in relation to the middle classesThe Evening Standard (they did the actual interview) quote is as follows:
“We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive, but for those on benefit there is every incentive,”
There is "every incentive" to do what ?? The word "breed" clearly applies to both middle and poorer class.
TJ lets face is as a socialist are you really going to lose face and agree with anything said by the right of centre even if it were true ,or a good idea?
I am no socialist. Ask Ernie.
I don't mind good ideas no matter where they are from. This however has no real basis in fact, is designed to vilify benefit claimants and simply stinks of bias and hatred.
I would just like to express my general disgust at this sort of thing, as would my brother Keanu, my sister Destiny-Marie and everyone who has ever bought Le Coq Sportif nylon leisurewear from JJB Sport.
And your cousins Chardonnay and Tyson do they feel the same way?
They're actually on side with it, but Chlamydia and Terminator-X are furious.
I find it offensive because its an nasty elitist stereotype denigrating benefit claimants based on bias.
Meanwhile, in the real world:
[img] 
[/img]
Euthanasia anyone?
She's my youngest, teachers all have it in for her, but she's never not done nothing, right?
Meanwhile, in the real world:
Meanwhile in the real world she's in prison.
What's your point ........ O guardian of extreme right-wing quasi-fascist values ?
[b][i]"I am no socialist. Ask Ernie"[/i][/b]
It's true. I can confirm that TJ is a pseudo-lefty Guardian reading bourgeois liberal.
She's my youngest, teachers all have it in for her, but she's never not done nothing, right?
Kin teachers all poncy barstewards wot went to college an ave kin loads of olidays
"the poor"
"breed"
disgusting language
The poor should be spayed ?
Thank you Ernie - I knew I could rely on you
While you all squabble as per, the real point of the thread has been lost.
The comment is offensive because it's language completely de-humanises the 'poor'. Animals breed, people raise families.
It matters not one whit that he's apologised. He may well have been censured by Cameron in public but you can bet he's been given a hearty pat on the back behind closed doors. All of these things keep adding up to portray the 'poor' just as the govt, would want and as the comments on here prove, the fear and loathing escalates.
Keep on sucking it up, it's a tory dream come true.
New Conservative peer Howard Flight has issued an "unreserved" apology for saying child benefit changes would encourage the poor to "breed".
The guy is an idiot- even if he believed that was the case he should have had the nous not to say it- or not to say it with a less insulting choice of language. Cameron needs to get a grip and stop giving jobs and honours to the old loony right.
However family allowance/child benefit was introduced to encourage people to have larger families to help repopulate the country after WWII therefore it is designed to incentivise people to have children or to put it in Flight's language to "breed". So in that sense he's correct.
By removing family allowance/child benefit from higher rate tax payers they are being disincentivised to have have children, however the basic rate tax payers' incentive remains in place so whilst they're not being incentivised further neither are they being disincentivised.
Its ridiculous that the top 10-15% of earners like me are essentially being paid to encourage us to have children. However its equally ridiculous that in a country of 60 million heading towards 70 million we should be incentivising anyone to have children.
people raise families.
Apart from the ones who behave like animals!!
Keep on sucking it up, it's a tory dream come true.
Aye, too true.
Well said trailmonkey.
I'm always a bit sceptical of the claims that having kids to get houses is a widespread problem. There were 9 girls in my year who got pregnant between the ages of 13 and 16, and none of them did it to get a house, or away from their parents.
One got pregnant at 15 deliberately to stop her 26 year old boyfriend from leaving her. She's now 30 and has 5 kids by different dads. She works full time though, and still lives with her parents.
One got pregnant at 14 because her boyfriend (same age) told her that he was sterile, so they didn't need to use contraception. She had an abortion.
All the others got up the duff because they didn't think it would happen to them, as if being sub-16 was a magic defence against pregnancy. None did it as a career choice.