This is just another example of how false the rebranding of the Tory party is. As you point out, Portillo was one of the people who pretended that he wanted a softer Tory party. Now he is out of politics the truth comes out.

The Tory party has not changed, in fact, if anything it is more Right wing now than it was under Thatcher. Most of the wets have gone, and the party and their cheer leaders, like Dale, are in love with the nuts of the Republican party.

I’ve just taken a glance at the LSE report. You say that in the Netherlands you can get EUR300/month on top of your rent. The way I read it you, can get a maximum of EUR 300 full stop. (The table I’m looking at is on page 25 – dial 13 on your Adobe reader). This would mean that the UK is indeed much more more generous – paying out up to 100% of rent in theory.

Am I misreading this?

#Sunny Hundal on Liberal Conspiracy was the first one to highlight the irony of Modernising Tories veering back to bad old habits.#

Irony?? What irony? Is a dog returning to its vomit irony? Shouldn’t that be…

“…was the first one to announce the wholly expected and inevitable sight of Modernising Tories veering back to bad old habits”

DID YOU REALLY THINK THEY’D CHANGED? DO YOU REALLY THINK THEY CAN?

Ok, so some of them might have formed a breakaway faction and called themselves New Labour…but so what?…they’re still Thatcher’s minions…it’s in the blood.

There is no coincidence that the number of single mothers rose drastically in the Thatcher years, her policies eradicated heavy industry and manufacturing,
consequently it was young working-class males who suffered high levels of unemployment. I remember reading a piece of research, (can’t remember the name of the researcher) whereby young single mothers were asked why they had chosen single parenthood, Surprisingly (not) it wasn’t because of the welfare benefits or the council houses but the fact that motherhood attracted a high status and there were no appropriate males around to become ‘social fathers’ ie high unemployment. Nu Labour have not addressed this either and I would suspect that while we see high levels of working-class males remain unemployed, single motherhood will continue to rise.

#but the fact that motherhood attracted a high status#

From whom? Daft impressionable teenage girls? It can’t have been young males, older married women or Daily Mail leader writers…what do you mean?

I don’t wish to defend the whole sweep of conservative family and welfare policy, but this post demonstrates its own superficiality in its own way. It is not about how stingy or easy the welfare system is, but also how it is applied and how entitlements are used to encourage potentially harmful behaviour. I am pretty sure in the Netherlands, for example, that single mothers are not automatically eligible for their own accomodation and might be required to live in communal residences.

Also, I am sure unemployment is a major factor in all this too, but it seems a bit shortsighted to “blame” Thatcher when the country as a whole has lower unemployment than the European average. I mean, if we aren’t that bad at all in one respect, why do we do so much worse in others?

7 I also read a similar report, might not have been the same one but:-
The single mothers actually believed that motherhood was high status, this was compared to the alternative of poorly paid jobs or marriage/partnership with an unemployed male. On balance, I would suggest that aspirations of motherhood amongst young working-class females results because it is still viewed as ‘high status’
8 ‘the country has lower unemployment than the European average’ but if you look at unemployment rates for the UK it is 6 per cent, of which 40 per cent is made up of 18-24 year olds. This trend started to occur under Thatcher, and I believe that when New Labour took office, the number was around 30 per cent.

@4 I wrote “on top of your flat”, not “on top of your rent”. Trip to the optician booked, I trust you?

As I had the misfortune to study comparative housing policy at Uni (dreary, I know, shame on me), some clarifications are needed. Bear in mind the OP didn’t aim at being an academic piece on comparative housing. I’d be incapable of doing that anyway. WARNING : the following may read boring to many:

In Holland your rent is subsidised. Bear in mind the Netherlands have the highest share social housing in the EU. Between 30 and 50% in Holland is social housing. These are rents that are forced to stay down by the government. There is a subsidy to cover on average 80% of this rent.

Before you say “Ha! Told ya, it ain’t 100% like those slobs in England”, hold your horses.

Because the so-called Dutch ‘benefit system’ is much more generous. And, sorry Tory trolls, but the more dependent kids you have, I’m afraid, the higher the subsidy, so much so that people will basically have enough to cover rents and housing expenses.

I’ll tell you more: according to benefit scheme known as ABW (general assistance benefit), a non-working lone parent family qualifies for roughly 12,200 Euros per year net guaranteed income and extra money if you have extra kids.Single people also get helped, but it’s a lower amount.Of course it’s means tested so they will check that you have no/little income, no assets etc.

I’ll tell you something else. Single people under the age of 21 have no entitlements and neither have persons born after 1971without dependent children. So if this isn’t a system biased towards helping lone parent families, then please tell me what is.

There’s even an extra “holiday handout” (yes, seriously) which is roughly 60/65 Euros for the summer.

The above is for people who have never worked (or they have, but only for very short periods), mainly very young people who haven’t manage to build up an employment history.

Because, otherwise, we’d look at a different benefit scheme, for those who lost their job, which covers 70-75% of your last monthly wage earned according to how long you were in employment. In all cases, lone parents have incentives. A working lone parent has tax incentives that non-parents are not entitled to.

So, to come to an end, stop saying that the UK system is the most generous and blah blah blah (i.e commenter @4). It is NOT true. If you consider welfare overall, it is not at all. This particular example was about the Netherlands, but there is the whole of Scandinavia, France and (partly) Spain that are much more generous and comprehensive.

@11. Ok but what do couples have access to?

What I really hate is the hypocrites who spend half their time criticising everyone out of work as idle, and then the other half gloating about they would never employ them. Apparently without noticing the contradiction. I’ve had just an unpleasant run in with some twat on another forum who was gloating about how he got away with sacking an employee for not declaring a spent conviction, it seems out of sheer spite, and not due to any problem with his work.

As I said on the university thread I would love to continue my brief carer but I am finding with my high functioning autism no will will employ me for jobs I can do and am qualified for. Telling me I can work doesn’t help.

Re OP: Excellent piece

Re Nick:

“Also, I am sure unemployment is a major factor in all this too, but it seems a bit shortsighted to “blame” Thatcher when the country as a whole has lower unemployment than the European average”

Sure, but then since 1979 UK unemployment figures only fell below the highest rate experienced from 1945-79 in 2007-8 (and since then have shot up again). That is, for the period 1979-2007, UK unemployment was persistently higher than the highest rate of unemployment experienced during the whole of the 1970s.

Thatcherite monetarism increased UK unemployment. Maybe our figres were – as a general trend – lower than Europes. But they were higher than what they had been.

Just saying like…

There is an objection to the attempt in this article to use casual asides to smear Murray (and by association Portillo) as racists for referring to statistics that show blacks in the USA to be less intelligent, on average, than whites.

Of course you can debate the value of intelligence tests and the reasons for the results of the tests (nature or nurture etc) when related to ethnic groups but the link between ethnicity and intelligence is not “alleged”, as Claude states, but factual.

Because this fact may be inconvenient to a liberal thesis it does not follow that anyone referencing it should be smeared as a racist.

It would be naive to expect Michael Portillo to adjust to the new style of conservative politics…as he belongs to a previous generation of bureaucracy where the public were happy to let the politicians, the bank managers and the tax man run the country, whilst trying to pretend they weren’t there. Hence, Michael Portillo was never at liberty to reveal his true feelings about the policies.

Now of course it is a bit more difficult to maintain a party line, and a personal line ‘under the jacket.’

Transparency is everything in Westminster now…but the same old arguments have jumped another generation. Twenty years from now, the left will still argue for the social, better employment rates etc. and the conservatives will continue criticising excessive welfare standards, whilst lining second homes and businesses with extra cash.

“Cue the Murrayite notions of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’”

Ah, but they aren’t “Murrayite” – they’re much older. The idea of a division between a deserving poor and an undeserving poor goes back to the beginning of the 19th century and underpinned the Poor Law system after 1834.

“We all know the UK is no.1 in the Western European table (pdf). But what’s striking is that it’s not just prudish religious countries with big families gathered around the dinner table like Italy (where sex education is not even allowed on the curriculum) that are doing much better. The ultra-emancipated Netherlands, as well as Sweden, France, Finland, Germany, you name them, can piss all over the UK’s figures.

Rest assured though, here comes the lazy rebuttal: “It’s because other countries don’t dish up a council flat and benefits to teenage mums. You get to stay home with your own mum and get a little bit of extra help on top of that”, wrote one libertarian commenter. Another myth.”

Hmm, as that commenter can I comment upon that myth (espeically as I’m pretty sure I referred directly to Holland)?

For example, this from The Times:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5208865.ece

“The Dutch Government still penalises single mothers under 18, who are expected to live with their parents if they become pregnant. Until six years ago the Government gave them no financial support. ”

Now I and the Times may be wrong but could you actually prove us to be so? What you’ve got above is about single parents, not teenage single mothers.

Care to dig up the correct figures for us all?

“Thatcherite monetarism increased UK unemployment. Maybe our figres were – as a general trend – lower than Europes. But they were higher than what they had been.”

Yeah, but I think you have, in some way, to account for that general trend. Cos we would say it is related to our relatively flexible labour markets and, in general, somewhat lower taxes.

On unemployment and benefits, why not this from Richard Layard (you know, the lefty, the Labour peer)

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard/welfare_to_work.pdf

“The rationale for welfare-to-work is simple. If you pay people to be inactive, there will be more inactivity. So you should pay them instead for being active – for either working or training to improve their employability.
The evidence for the first proposition is everywhere around us. For example, Europe has a notorious unemployment problem. But if you break down unemployment into short-term (under a year) and long-term, you find that short-term unemployment is almost the same in Europe as in the U.S. – around 4% of the workforce. But in Europe there are another 4% who have been out of work for over a year, compared with almost none in the United States. The most obvious explanation for this is that in the U.S. unemployment benefits run out after 6 months, while in most of Europe they continue for many years or indefinitely.
The position is illustrated in Figure 1. The vertical axis shows how long it is possible to draw unemployment benefit, and the horizontal axis shows how long people are actually unemployed, as measured by the percentage of unemployed who are out of work for over a year. The association is close, and it remains close even when we allow statistically for all other possible factors affecting the duration of unemployment.1
This long-term unemployment is a huge economic waste. For people who have been out of work for a long time become very unattractive to employers and easily get excluded from the world of work. So it often happens that employers feel a shortage of labour even when there are many people long-term unemployed, with the result that inflation rises even in the presence of mass unemployment.
Thus a major objective must be to reduce or eliminate the long-term unemployment caused by welfare dependency.”

@18
Until six years ago the Government gave them no financial support. ”
Well, now they do, don’t they?

Nevertheless, The Dutch figures and policies I mentioned above to refer to lone parents from the age of 18 on. Under 20 they’re still teenagers aren’t they?
Note what is classed as “teenage pregnacy” in all studies refer to people who give birth under the age of 20.

You may already know that to give birth at 18, you may have sex when you’re 17 years and 3 months old. Unless I’ve gone totally insane, the people we’re talking about are teenagers.

Now, when we talk about lone parents in the UK, the percentage of single mums may be quite high, but that of single mother under 18 in council flats is absolutely negligible. Here’s some hard figures (courtesy of poverty.org.uk):

In the UK in 2007, there were 9,000 pregnancies among girls conceiving before the age of 16. Only two-fifths resulted in births and the other three-fifths in abortions. That is 3600 people in the whole of the UK. Even if each and every single one of them then proceeded to applied for a council flat straight from their maternity ward, that is roughly between 2 and 3% of all council tenants in the UK.

So we the casuality that council flats and benefits allegedly have on teenage motherhood is spectacularly unfounded. It does NOT have a leg to stand on.

Incidentally, but this is my opinion, whoever things anyone could be tempted by the current state of disrepair the country’s council flats (with some exceptions) really needs to go out a bit more and expand their social connections.

@ Nick 19

But something noone ever mentions is that (pre-crisis, that is), when Tony Blair used to boast about the lowest unemployment figures since the 1970s, he would also forget to mention that the type of employment had changed significantly and generally not for the better.

In 1975, 95% of the workforce would be in employment like in 2007. But in the latter case, the 95% in employment includes a percentage of 10- 12% in casual/temporary labour and another chunks in part-time (havent got the figures of PT right now on me) work. Hence levels of job insecurity that were largely unknown 30 years back.

In 2008, around 4½ million employees aged 22 to retirement were paid less than £7 per hour. In total, two-fifths of all part-time workers were paid less than £7 per hour in 2008.

“Note what is classed as “teenage pregnacy” in all studies refer to people who give birth under the age of 20. ”

Is it?

“http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/policy-publications/opportunity-for-all/indicators/table-of-indicators/children-and-young-people/indicator-3/

3 Teenage pregnancy indicators (England):

* a) a reduction in the rate of conceptions for those aged under 18; and
* b) an increase in the proportion of teenage mothers who are in education, employment or training.

Baseline and trends:

a) Baseline year –1998. The under-18 conception rate fell between 1971 and 1981 and then rose until 1991. The rate fell again until 1995 but then rose following a contraceptive pill scare, reaching a peak in 1998. Since 1998, the rate has fallen by 11.8 per cent. The rate for the year 2005 is 41.1 per thousand females aged 15 to 17, the lowest rate for 20 years.

b) Baseline data based on three-year average for the years 1997–99. The proportion of teenage mothers who are in education, employment or training in England has risen slightly from 23.1 per cent for the period 1997–99 to 31.5 per cent in the period 2005–07.”

That’s just from a quick Google but it certainly looks like the DWP is talking abut under 18…..

And if the Dutch and English benefit systems for those who conceive (or give birth) under 18 are different…..

Teenage pregnancy is defined as a teenaged or underage girl (usually within the ages of 13–19) becoming pregnant.

Worstall, google “teenage pregnancy 13-19″ or similar wording and your computer will probably crash under the weight of studies, statistics, essays, articles, tables and the rest. Look at this. Or look how trends are studied comparatively and internationally here.

Or, for instance closer to home, look at how NHS studies refer to teenage pregnancies 13-19 with three specific age brackets in mind: the under16s, the under18s and the under20s.

The bulk of “teenage pregnancies”, by the way, is confined to the 16-20 group, and the incidence grows particularly within the 18-19 age bracket.

More for our mate Worstall.

All comparative teenage pregnancy statistics (those infamous ones that refer to the Netherlands having the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe and the UK as the highest) refer to the age bracket 15 to 19.

Look at this document from UNICEF (“Teenage birth league”, page 6 of 36 on Adobe). It refers to “the number of births to women aged below 20 per 1,000 women aged 15
to 19″.

So, now that your attempt at splitting hairs failed miserably, take a look at all the facts given above (i.e. the negligible percentage of lone teenage mums living in council flats in the UK) and take your blinkers off.

“So, now that your attempt at splitting hairs failed miserably, take a look at all the facts given above (i.e. the negligible percentage of lone teenage mums living in council flats in the UK) and take your blinkers off.”

Skimming through that LSE report it doesn’t actually break out teenage mums. It just says that 47% of lone parents live in social housing. Which isn’t the number we want at all.

What is the percentage of teenage mothers that live in social housing on their own tenancy? I don’t see that you’ve provided that anywhere.

And what we would really like to see is: what portion of teenage mums live in social housing in the UK as against the portion of teenage mums who live in social housing in Holland. If, as my original allegation was, there is a difference in provision of social housing for teenage mums in the two countries that is the statistic which would show us that there was.

As to complaining that I split hairs, well sometimes around here it’s really rather important, isn’t it? We do get thrown duff statistics here from time to time you know…..

Fuck off, Worstall.

“In 1975, 95% of the workforce would be in employment like in 2007. But in the latter case, the 95% in employment includes a percentage of 10- 12% in casual/temporary labour and another chunks in part-time (havent got the figures of PT right now on me) work. Hence levels of job insecurity that were largely unknown 30 years back.

In 2008, around 4½ million employees aged 22 to retirement were paid less than £7 per hour. In total, two-fifths of all part-time workers were paid less than £7 per hour in 2008.”

Ok, but how much of that is a function of women with children entering the labour market, individuals who in previous decades would have relied more exclusively on a male breadwinner? What was the percentage in the 1970s? You really might not be comparing like with like with that sort of claim.

Worstall, to be honest I have provided dozens of studies of statistics and it’s all there for every one to see and I know your strategy because you do it whenever you comment on each and every post on LC. Like you’ve now given up on the absurd statement that “teenage pregnancy refers to under 18s only”, because it’s obviously been exposed as bull, you’d then shift the goal posts, move onto some other hairsplitting diatribe and argue the toss about the semantics of a preposition or something.

“”what portion of teenage mums live in social housing in the UK as against the portion of teenage mums who live in social housing in Holland.”

Well, hello? It really isn’t that complex. Look: 35% of the Dutch population (in some cities even 50 per cent) live in council houses in and their percentage of teenage mums is much lower than the UK, obviously the percentage of teenage mothers living in council flats is going to be MUCH lower than in Britain, where social housing accounts for 18% of the stock and under 19s pregnancy rates are the highest in the EU and women are more likely to be in a low-income household than men.

Teenage parents and council flats as a correlative means nothing as to the causes behind Britain’s high level of teenage pregnancies.

Poverty is a much more consistent indicator than getting up the duff for the sake of a decaying crumbling council flat (not to mention the palatable prospect of having all the chores suddenly on you if you leave your parents in the midst of your teens) .

For instance, tha fact that “Teenage motherhood is seven times as common amongst those from manual social backgrounds as for those from professional backgrounds”.

Try this also:

“In many areas of occupation, more than a third of full-time women were paid less than £7 per hour in 2008. In all occupations, the proportion of men paid less than £7 per hour was lower than that for women. “Whatever low-pay threshold is used, the proportion of working women who are low paid is around twice that of working men.”

Pay people more and better and they will work.

Someone on this thread (#7 and #9) mentioned the fact ” that motherhood attracted a high status” amongst girls under 20s. Obviously my own personal experience is no evidence, let’s be clear about it.
Yet personally, (and I’m probably gonna get a lot of stick for this) out of my friends, acquaintances and former school mates who ended up giving birth in their teens I had the impression that having a baby was almost like a way to avoid the pressures of the “rat race” and the prospect of one atrociously badly paid and unrewarding job after the other. Mostly they were all supported, at least emotionally, by their families, and got sympathy and support in a way that they wouldn’t have had they been left to find a shitty job on their own once out of school.

In any of those cases, however ( I maintain, I appreciate that’s no evidence) “benefits” and “council flats” were never a relevant factor at all.

#28
True. But a good number of those females now in work are countervailed by the hundreds of thousands of young people 18-21 parked at University in 2007 (hence officially not replenishing dole queues), numbers that you wouldn’t have had, say, in 1977.

It is true that in 2002, 70 per cent of working age women were in employment, (a rise of 10 per cent since 1979).

But in 1978 full time uni students were just over 400,000. In 1996 they were 1.1 million (see here) and 1.97 million in 2007 (see here).

That is quite a lot of extra people that the job market doesn’t have to worry about for at least 3 years.

“Well, hello? It really isn’t that complex. Look: 35% of the Dutch population (in some cities even 50 per cent) live in council houses in and their percentage of teenage mums is much lower than the UK, obviously the percentage of teenage mothers living in council flats is going to be MUCH lower than in Britain, where social housing accounts for 18% of the stock and under 19s pregnancy rates are the highest in the EU and women are more likely to be in a low-income household than men.”

I am not sure that is as trivial or obvious as you suggest. What we are interested in is the proportion of teenage mothers who are in council houses (compared with other low income families), not the proportion of council houses that are filled by single teenage mothers.

Never in the history of human kind has so much drivel been written by so few.

Namely Tim (I pissed off and left the UK, even though I used to work for the UK independence party.) Worstall: I guess Timmy does not do Irony. Thankfully, other wise he would use up even more space on here with his pompous lectures on the history of various economists who nobody gives a shit about.

I say history, but it is really only Timmy’s interpretation of history, which of course is about as accurate as you would expect from someone who joins the UK independence party and then buggers off to live in Europe , and writes cobblers for various American wing nut publications..

Nick, if I find the link I’ll happily post it, but one thing I have at hand right now and it’s a study from the Centre from Research in Social Policy. At the time of their research (published 2005),

“around three-quarters of young mothers were living with a parent or guardian (76 per cent) compared with 88 per cent of pregnant teenagers and 97 per cent of those who were neither mothers nor pregnant”.

Hence, we can only deduce that less than a quarter (that is, up to 24%) will not live with a parent or guardian. Some out of this 24% may share with a partner or mates. Some others may well live alone with their kid and out of this group, a percentage will apply for a council home.
Hence, only a tiny minority of teenage mums will enjoy the pleasure of receiving alone and lonely one of Britain’s gorgeous, large, state-of-the-art, perfectly maintained and lavishly funded council homes.

Just put your soul at rest. There aren’t millions of single teen mothers populating humongous Soviet-size council estates.

“Hence, only a tiny minority of teenage mums will enjoy the pleasure of receiving alone and lonely one of Britain’s gorgeous, large, state-of-the-art, perfectly maintained and lavishly funded council homes.”

I must say the ones I’ve seen around London seem pretty good to me (we’re talking Islington and Lambeth). Better than the flats I could afford to rent when I was on a 20K salary anyway.

@34
Then what can I say, you need to broaden your views.
This is a first. Something I never thought I’d hear in my lifetime: the state of council flats in the UK is “pretty good”.
Maybe you could work in PR for the Government and fend off request to finally channel more money towards council houses.

“I must say the ones I’ve seen around London seem pretty good to me (we’re talking Islington and Lambeth). Better than the flats I could afford to rent when I was on a 20K salary anyway.”

Nick, I’m absolutely sure that the lovely council flats in Islington are simply charming and extremely well kept.

It’s like saying the level of shops, cars and clothes around Zone 1 and Zone 2 of London is representative of the whole country. This shows a lot about your warped view of the world.

If you’re at a loose end this weekend Nick, how about taking the train down to Hastings or Bognor, or up to Scunthorpe or Middlesborough, or if you’re not feeling so adventurous, try Peckham, Croydon or Crawley and have a look round the council estates, then maybe your view will carry a little more weight.

“Better than the flats I could afford to rent when I was on a 20K salary anyway”

That shows how inflated the property market is in the this country.

“Better than the flats I could afford to rent when I was on a 20K salary anyway”

That’s exactly the point – the flat I lived in when I had my first job got so cold that the toilet froze over in the winter. Welfarists talk as though Mr/Ms average salary are all living in dockside penthouses and driving around in Ferraris. That’s the warped view of “normal life” you acquire when you grew up in leafy suburbs, went to a Russel Group Uni, bummed around Goa for a few years and then moved to Islington when the trust fund kicked in. Believe it or not, some people work hard, for quite a lot of years before they earn 20k. That’s why they get somewhat irked when other people get the same standard of living handed to them on a plate.

“That’s exactly the point – the flat I lived in when I had my first job got so cold that the toilet froze over in the winter. Welfarists talk as though………”

Nobody gives a shit what you think, or where you lived. The very fact that you use words like welfarists shows that you have come straight from troll central.

Tthe Royal family, most farmers, Tory Mps, Bankers, Barristers, arms dealers, the Britsih army,navy and airforce, policemen, doctors, nurses, teachers, prison officers, are all living on a form welfare.

#37
Hilarious.

Matt#37 put the violin away and put a jersy on.

“Tthe Royal family, most farmers, Tory Mps, Bankers, Barristers, arms dealers, the Britsih army,navy and airforce, policemen, doctors, nurses, teachers, prison officers, are all living on a form welfare.”

Quite right. Abolish the lot, I’d say:)

You have to admire Tim Worstall’s trolling though. He diligently comes here every day trying to split hairs and muddy the waters so he can feel better by telling himself he’s taught the lefties through his apparently superior sense of the facts. And he keeps shifting the goal-posts when caught out.
The other day he was telling me on his own blog that the British weren’t so bad in invading India because it had been done for centuries anyway. And also, Enoch Powell wasn’t so bad… etc etc.

Claude @33, correct me if I am wrong but that percentage appears to apply to young mothers who have just finished compulsory education only (i.e. 16), which doesn’t sounds like all teenage mothers by any means.

I am not sure if what Timmy is doing is trolling exactly either. There are a couple of questions about the logic of this post that have never really been addressed, especially considering the evidence presented elsewhere that although welfare systems in Europe are often more generous, they are often structured differently. It seems like a reasonable discussion.

“It seems like a reasonable discussion.”

It was – Tim always is. But then, the lefties will generally say that fundamental disagreement equates to trolling. They can’t win the arguments, so usually resort to gags, deletions, abuse.

On the topic, the key difference between continental europe and the UK when it comes to choosing to live your life on enefits is, it seems to me, the absence of “shame” in the UK. No one appears ashamed to be a parasite – in Holland and Germany there is still a powerful work ethic across social classes. Less so in France and I’m not familiar with other countries. But in Holland in particular social pressure is, I’m certain, wholly against a life on the dole. As it is in much fo the Uk, but not among the underclass where the dole is seen as an entitlement, where work is to be avoided, and where there is no shame at all.

Now, as to why that should be… well, I’d plump for our catastophic education system, easily the worst in the developed world, where socialist ideology still reigns supreme.

where socialist ideology still reigns supreme.

you know what would be great Frank? If you could stop trolling LC and go off in a huff and pledge never to write a comment here again like you did on CIF. That would be absolutely fantastic. No one would give a crap like they don’t on CIF. and the conversation would be so much better.

The real question of course you have a person who has never worked for twenty years, who are these employers who are going to risk taking him or her on.

Disabled person like myself I’ve now hit 750 applications for work, I’ve had three replies, one was to F*ck off.

The real question of course who are the employers who wish to employ the misfits of society, I do not know them if you do please let me know.

You really need to work on your insults Sunny – telling anyone you disagree with that they’re a troll isnt very imaginative. But then, it’s probably as much as I’d expect from someone who, in writing about the BNP appearing on Question Time as a result of their electoral success, still manages to claim that the “no platform” policy works.

Oh, and accuses TimW of trolling CiF too.

I left CiF because of their ignorant and counter-productive censorship btw – a policy you’re keen on I know, but not one I think that has much credibility, or one that is productive or effective in the long run. But I guess if your definition of “much better” conversation is everyone agreeing with you, then I suppose keeping your fnger on the gagging button is a real winner.

Stil trying to figure out how that is “liberal” mind…

@42 Nick

Tell you what, Nick: why don’t you find the figures that fit in with your pre-conceived idea and stick a few links up here so you spare me a bit of work, instead of continuously argue the toss in the hope that you can prove what can’t be proven? Cos I’m sure you and your mate UKIP Worstall are havin a right laugh.

The study linked above actually refers to girls aged 16,17,18 until they’re eligible for the EMA.

However, I could shower you with more figures, yet it wouldn’t matter as your mind of is obviously made up already. All black and white, right and wrong, work-your-ass-off-for-20K-vs-teenage-scroungers.

As a last ditch attempt, I could show you that,according to this, “there is no evidence that teenage mothers become pregnant to get housing and benefits. Most have little knowledge of housing before getting pregnant and what they do know often turns out to be wrong. Seven out of ten 15- and 16-year-old mothers and around half of 17- and 18-year-olds stay living at home, [while] 49 per cent of the public think young mums get pregnant to get council housing, according to our NOP poll”. (pdf here)

I could show you how the same findings are backed by the ESRC here, with the added “the belief held in some circles that teenagers only get pregnant to get a council house is not backed by facts”.

I could quote Pete Childs and Mike Storry’s Encyclopedia of contemporary British culture, saying that the percentage of teenage single mothers in council homes are “fewer than three per cent”.

I could remind you that council housing is not automatic for under18s, because people under 18 are not legally able to hold a tenancy and that, of those who do not stay at home, most go into mother and baby hostels or temporary bed-and-breakfast accommodation, semi-supervised housing units or floating support (which I’m sure sounds like a lot of fun), before getting a flat of their own.

I could point out to research published by the Institute of Housing showed that teenage mothers made up between 2 and 14 per cent of local council lists.

@43 Frank Fisher

“our catastophic education system, easily the worst in the developed world, “
To come up with such a sweeping statement, I trust you to have gone to school (and maybe sampled Uni too) in at least 15 different countries. Can’t you stay put? Is your name Nicholas Anelka by any chance? Or is your dad a diplomat?

########
One final thing:

No-one out of all the smart arse trolls that have been commenting have actually bothered to answer this single, if brutal, question. If they want those council flats so bad, why do UK teenage girls have by far the highest abortion rates in the EU?

“Nobody gives a shit what you think, or where you lived. The very fact that you use words like welfarists shows that you have come straight from troll central.”

And where do you come from ? I’ve been contributing to this blog for 2 years. All yo do is recycle guardian editorial and ad hom anyone who disagrees with you.

“The Royal family, most farmers, Tory Mps, Bankers, Barristers, arms dealers, the Britsih army,navy and airforce, policemen, doctors, nurses, teachers, prison officers, are all living on a form welfare.”

Why not social workers, housing officers, probation officers ?

What excatly is your point, that anyone who gets paid by the state is on welfare ?
With the exception of the Royal family (the only genuine comparison) your list is of people who have something called “a job” who constribute, who won’t be dependent on handouts all their lives, some of them might even employ other people.

I’ve gotta say I’ve noticed a serious deterioration in the quality of detabe on this blog recently. Name calling, bad language and ad hom are becoming more common and genuine debate less so.

I put it down to the dawning realisation of many lefties that their days of theatrical coughing at smokers outside Ikea are numbered, even so, if this blog is really only supposed to be a talking shop for hard left neo socialists then the word “liberal” should be removed from the title because many contributors here don’t appear to know what it means.

@49
Oh yeah. Only a couple of days ago every post was being spammed by white supremacist proto-BNP types.

Thats a clever little switch around you have done there Claude. The evidence you marshal against the Portillo/Murray claim is useful but doesn’t quite reach the point they are trying to make. Especially considering that Murray is, in some respects, an enthusiastic proponent of more cash benefits if they aren’t associated with any perverse incentives: http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/01/charles-murrays-in-our-hands-left-or-right/

When we point that out, suddenly it becomes our job to find the figures to refute your not-quite-a-refutation.

Having said that, it would be interesting to see those comparative figures. But it seems they are slightly beyond Google’s powers at the moment, so I’ll try to look further when I am next in a suitable library.

@51
You do realise that in #47 I pointed you towards certain links all concluding that the number of teenage mothers housed alone in council homes is a very small minority, don’t you? Hope I didn’t waste all that time for nothing!

In the meantime, yes, you do that. It’ll be an eye-opener and I’m looking forward to your findings.

As for Murray’s proposal of a flat hand-out for everyone (of which 3000 dollars to go to health insurance etc) I’m yet to understand how that sits along with his Underclassproposals “to take benefits away from single parent families” and with “those who cannot afford their families should give their babies up for adoption or that “Other single parents should take whatever work they can to survive.” Did he change his mind as he went along?

Also his stuff about IQ and race is pseudoscience. His methodology is wrong (for instance assuming that intelligence must be primarily genetically based) and there’s a whole range of literature out there that exposed the weakness of his opinions (dressed up as ‘findings’). Try this, for example.

Claude, keep up the good work, ignore twat Munro, he mithers on but never goes away so he can’t be that bothered by having his ideas exposed.

Glad to see the Bink BNP spammer is gone, for now…

Well yes, thanks for those Claude but if you look at those links, the ESRC links to YWCA, and the YWCA links to another study press released here: http://www.psi.org.uk/news/pressrelease.asp?news_item_id=37

Which says:

“one third of teenage mothers were in local authority housing with a further third on the waiting list.”

Which is… well more than 3%. It is interesting how these things transmute from organisation to organisation.

And polling data isn’t especially good at indicating people’s actual economic preferences. I know it might look like it sometimes, but we don’t wander around imagining everyone as some rational choice calculator. Incentive structures become instantiated in other ways than explicit decision making.

Hi everyone,

I deleted all the BNP comments earlier today. There will be a quicker turn around time in future in getting rid of them.

54 – Nick,

Both “one third of teenage mothers were in local authority housing with a further third on the waiting list.”

and

“the percentage of teenage single mothers in council homes are “fewer than three per cent”.”

can both be correct statements – teenage single mums are a small proportion of the overall number of people in social housing, which is what Claude was saying.

Claude – excellent article and comments.

Thank you Nick, I see your research is starting to provide us with the goods.

Still not what you were looking for though, is it?
Because the link you (kindly) provided, from 1998, also says that: “There was no evidence to suggest that women became pregnant to get council housing or social security benefits. Most of them had known little or nothing about housing policy or benefits before becoming pregnant and the little they had known was usually wrong. ”

Fact is, studies differ according to when they were published and the age considered. But one thing for sure, teenage single mothers housed by local authorities continue to be a minority and evidence keeps pointing out that “benefits” was not a factor towards pregnancy.

Ignorance may have been one, deprivation may have been another, social status may have played a part, lack of career opportunities perhaps, family history maybe, but the idea of that landing a council flat is behind getting pregnant at the age of 13-19 is and remains totally unsubstantiated.

Twat Munro

“I’ve gotta say I’ve noticed a serious deterioration in the quality of detabe on this blog recently.”

Sorter troll…..I come on here and shit everywhere, and then whine when I get called on my busllshit.

As I said, nobody gives a toss what you think.

I think you’ve already said that Sally. Why don’t you go and have some chocolate ?

“Claude, keep up the good work, ignore twat Munro, he mithers on but never goes away so he can’t be that bothered by having his ideas exposed.”

I’m fairly sure you’ll never manage it, arsehole.

Claude – that research must be based on self disclosure, which basically means someone asked a teenage mother:

“Did you have a baby to get a council house” ?

and they answered

“No”

Which is about as scientifically valid as saying to an alcoholic “Are you an alcoholic” and them saying “no”, and then publishing a paper saying there are almost no alcoholics.

The point you are missing is that if very early pregnancy is normalised in a family or community, many in that community will not question it, or analyse the reasons behind it. They may not even be aware “why” they are teenage mothers and even if they were they would probably be unwilling to openly admit it to an outsider.

@52

Sorry Claude but you’re playing the racist card again. The reason for the disparity between average IQ levels for racial groups is probably a mixture of nature and nurture but to deny the possibility of a genetic component (because that would contradict your racial equivalence agenda) is disingenuous.

It’s like saying that there is a disproportionally large percentage of black footballers in the NFL and Premier League because the intellects of blacks are not valued rather than because they tend to be superior athletes.

This is why I nitpick on matters statistical:

“Both “one third of teenage mothers were in local authority housing with a further third on the waiting list.”

and

“the percentage of teenage single mothers in council homes are “fewer than three per cent”.”

can both be correct statements – teenage single mums are a small proportion of the overall number of people in social housing, which is what Claude was saying.”

They are two entirely different statements.

1) The percentage of people who are teenage mothers who are living in council (or social) housing is x.

2) The percentage of people who are living in council (or social) housing who are teenage mothers is y.

They are entirely different statements making entirely different points.

Unless we differentiate between the two we won’t in fact know what is happening: and if we don’t know what is happening then there’s no possiblity of even identifying whether there is a problem let alone solving it if there is.

Why are people so defensive when things like this are pointed out? It seems clear and obvious that we want to distinguish between the two.

@61 – Pagar, any credible scientist in the field will tell you there is without question a herieditary component to IQ. If there weren’t, you could teach a rat to programme a computer. Only idiots, or people stuck in the 1970s deny it.

The intersting debate is what is the size of the heritable component (reasearch varies at between 40-80%) and how it is developed through intteractions with the social environment.

there is without question a herieditary component to IQ.
No-one denies that. What’s being debated is the fact that a certain chap sees it as the overwhelming factor. Which is bullshit.

@61 Pagar
Quit that racist bullshit about “athletes”, will you?
Use that brain of yours. Look for instance at the percentage of black football players in the then Football League until the late 1980s. Back then, the percentage was infinitely lower than now. Showing that it’s nowt to do with ability, IQ or other, it’s to do with the cultural and social access they gradually gained to the sport.
Like, there are no “Asian” football players in the Premier League now. Surely you wouldn’t want to argue that they’re genetically inferior at football, or would you?

This is absolute crap! I can’t believe we’re even discussing it here!

Why dont you just say that crap plain and simple? That you think certain people are thicker than others according to the colour of their skin? Cos let’s not beat around the bush, that’s what Murray and his fans think. Just come clean and say it.

@60 Matt Munro
That is wholly unfair. Until now, Matt I haven’t joined in in all the insults directed at you but when you reduce a whole debate and a whole of figures and studies into such a shallow and dismissive comment then, frankly, I can see where your detractors come from. If you can;t be arsed to read the whole thing (which is fair enough, it is getting tedious after all), at least have the decency not to type up crap for the sake of it.

@62 Tim Worstall
Unless we differentiate between the two we won’t in fact know what is happening
You can nitpick and differentiate as much as you like, fact remains the idea of that landing a council flat is behind getting pregnant at the age of 13-19 is and remains totally unsubstantiated. Whichever bit of statistics was regurgitated on this thread confirm so. Unless you come here and prove it otherwise with hard data and not a Littlejohn article.

“You can nitpick and differentiate as much as you like, fact remains the idea of that landing a council flat is behind getting pregnant at the age of 13-19 is and remains totally unsubstantiated.”

As does your assertion in the post at the top that this doesn’t happen. You are the person who made the post, it is indeed up to you to prove your assertions in it.

Just so as to make it clear: is there a difference in access to public housing (whether we describe that as “socal housing”, council housing, housing paid for by taxpayers) by teenagers who become pregnant and then go on to have that child between Holland and Britain? If there is, is that of any use in trying to explain the difference in the rates of teenagers who have such children?

It’s not a right wing question, not a left wing one. It’s simply an exploration of the most basic economic point, that some incentives matter.

As you’re the guy that’s done the degree in this, as you’re the guy that has all the statistics at your fingertips, can you tell us please?

So far you haven’t, you’ve even go so far as to try and tell us that the percentage of public housing occupied by teenage mothers is somehow indicative of the percentage of teenage mothers who occupy public housing. That’s bollocks as you well know.

So, do you know the figures or not? Are you making a baseless assertion or can you prove what you assert?

@ 64 “there is without question a herieditary component to IQ.
No-one denies that. What’s being debated is the fact that a certain chap sees it as the overwhelming factor. Which is bullshit.”

But 80% is an overwhelming factor wouldn’t you say – what a lot of people fail to understand is that the heridary component only sets the potential for inteliigence – if it’s there but not “nurtured” (i.e by a bright working class kid going to a state school or having disinterested parents) then it may as well not be there.
Coversely if it’s not there then no amount of “nurturing” will make much difference (i.e the Royal family). Meta-reasearch shows that apart from abuse/neglect, nurture makes no measurable difference to outcomes – try reading “The nurture myth” – So the idea that nurture is the overwhelming factor is clearly also bullshit.

@65 Tim Worstall

So far you haven’t, you’ve even go so far as to try and tell us that the percentage of public housing occupied by teenage mothers is somehow indicative of the percentage of teenage mothers who occupy public housing. That’s bollocks as you well know.
How many have you had tonight?

is there a difference in access to public housing (whether we describe that as “socal housing”, council housing, housing paid for by taxpayers) by teenagers who become pregnant and then go on to have that child between Holland and Britain? If there is, is that of any use in trying to explain the difference in the rates of teenagers who have such children?

Worstall keep up, will you? There’s a whole thread here, just read it. There is currently no difference in access.
Of course, referring to Britain, you are free to think that going into mother and baby hostels or temporary semi or fully supervised bed-and-breakfast accommodation, or housing units or floating support (as it’s government policy for those under 18) is what turns those teenage girls into baby-making machines.

As does your assertion in the post at the top that this doesn’t happen.
It shows how futile ‘debating’ with you is. Because I’ve lost count of the literature I’ve posted from a variety of sources that says it’s bollocks that the two are related but you’re still playing ignorant.

Having said that, I maintain, no-one’s tackled this one yet, so I’ll simply repeat:
if British teenage girls want those council flats so bad, why do they [British teenage girls] have by far the highest abortion rates in the EU?

Because abortion is easier to get in the UK maybe ?
Or perhaps because some pregnancies are badly timed/accidental/to the wrong father ? You only need one child to qualify for a council flat so I don’t really see what relevance the question has.

@65 Worstall
See how manipulative you are? You put: “You are the person who made the post, it is indeed up to you to prove your assertions in it.”

Not quite. The OP was related to Mr Portillo’s totemic notion that:

“State handouts devalued education, discouraged work and marriage, encouraged teenage pregnancy and undermined parental authority. The same has happened to the poorest people in Britain, only more so“.

State handouts discourage marriage? How the fuck? How? How in the holy name of Jesus? I can even tolerate the notion that they “discourage work”, though I thin kthat’s superbollocks too, but marriage for fuck’s sake?

So here it is. An influential media bloke and former senior Tory goes around perpetrating such sweeping statement without an ounce of evidence. Not an ounce. Then quoting as Gospel a proto-racist American who think people can live on 7,000 American Dollars a year (that’s £350 a month) and no benefits whatsoever no matter what personal shit hit him whether redundancy, physical issues, depression, bereavement, who knows.

That’s what the OP was about.

@64

Like, there are no “Asian” football players in the Premier League now. Surely you wouldn’t want to argue that they’re genetically inferior at football, or would you?

OK. What odds would you give me on a white man winning the 100 metres in 2012?

Why dont you just say that crap plain and simple? That you think certain people are thicker than others according to the colour of their skin?

I don’t. That would be stupid. To believe so would be racist and it clearly does not reflect the reality. However I think you are deluded because you do not wish to debate on the basis of evidence.

Sadly, you are blinded by a tempting but irrational credo.

@ 68 Matt Munro:
Ignorance plays tricks, doesnt it?

Because abortion is easier to get in the UK maybe ?
No it isn’t. The law says 24 weeks in the Netherlands. And 24 weeks in the UK (barring extreme life-saving circumstances where it can take place up after 24 weeks, which accounts for 0.1% of all abortions)

Or perhaps because some pregnancies are badly timed/accidental/to the wrong father ?
And that would happen so overwhelmingly in the UK? God bless us then, mate.

You only need one child to qualify for a council flat so I don’t really see what relevance the question has.
You’ve got to hand it to those teenage chavs, though. They really have it all planned out, the cunning shazzes. There it is, according to Matt Munro: get up the duff with one kid, pronto, get into a dorm for single mums and then from that moment on keep having abortions.

I said it on another thread, Munro. I think you’re a comrade and you’re ripping the piss out of all of us here. If thats the case, then fair play.

@70 pagar:

“OK. What odds would you give me on a white man winning the 100 metres in 2012?”
OK. What odds would you give me on an East African man winning the 100 metres in 2012? Yet, aren’t East Africans black athletes too?

The distinct lack of understanding of the teenage female mind is clearly evident in this entire debate. Jeez. The fact that it has not been mentioned says a lot (but then, I would expect as such).

Obviously I cannot speak for all girls, but the general reason for excessive premarital sex which inevitably ends up in unwanted pregnancy is not for the wish of a council house or benefits, but due to a lack of self-worth and the need for affection. If you want to combat teenage pregnancy, which in turn leads to a strain on council house waiting lists, then you need to deal with the lack of value placed on young women in society both from an external point of view (i.e. the media etc placing too much emphasis on women as sexual beings) as well as in the internal family unit. You ask someone under 18 who intentionally got pregnant – she won’t say “I needed a council flat”, she’ll probably say “I wanted something to love that would love me unconditionally”.

The “Have a baby, get a council flat” argument needs to die a painful death because it misses the real issue completely which is the endemic lack of self esteem in girls and young women in this country, and instead demonises the very people who need support and empowerment.

“So here it is. An influential media bloke and former senior Tory goes around perpetrating such sweeping statement without an ounce of evidence. Not an ounce. Then quoting as Gospel a proto-racist American who think people can live on 7,000 American Dollars a year (that’s £350 a month) and no benefits whatsoever no matter what personal shit hit him whether redundancy, physical issues, depression, bereavement, who knows.”

Err, you’ve missed something here. The American bloke is indeed saying that the incentives provided by welfare *as it is currently provided* do indeed act as a disincentive to marriage etc etc etc. He thus suggests that we deliver welfare in a different manner, one which does not provide such sisincentives. I strongly suggest you read that Crooked Timber post on it if you’re not willing to actually read the book.

He makes his points very well.

Certainly it’s one of the sources that turned me towards the idea of replacing the current welfare state with a straight basic citizens income.

“if British teenage girls want those council flats so bad, why do they [British teenage girls] have by far the highest abortion rates in the EU?”

As you want an answer to this so badly, here it is. British teenagers have the highest conception rate, thus they have both the highest abortion and birth rates.

That still doesn’t change the point that British teenagers might have different incentives to carry a child to term than Dutch.

“OK. What odds would you give me on an East African man winning the 100 metres in 2012? Yet, aren’t East Africans black athletes too?”

Simply shows the idiocy of dividing the world into “white” and “black”. Especially as we know via DNA studies that the various different skin colours have developed independently more than once.

We would expect the winners of the 100 and 200 m in 2012 to be of west african descent, (lots of fast twitch muscles) and of the 5,000 to 10,000 metres to be of east african or north african descent (is that to do with slow twitch muscles or lung capacity?). I don’t know whether the stories of west africans not making good swimmers because of heavy bones are true or not.

But what this sort of distinction between different gene pools shows (and we can make other such, like carrying a gene or two which protects against malaria, as many west africans do, but when that gene mutation is inherited from both parents causing sickle cell anaemia…or we can look at the prevalence of lactose intolerance in east asia) is the absurdity of what is commonly called race. There is no such thing as “black” genetically. It’s also very difficult indeed to argue that there is something called “black” culturally either.

There are indeed DNA differences which go deeper than simple melanin content in the skin but these are greater within that group commonly called “black” than they are between that group called “black” and those not so described. Africa itslef contains greater genetic variation than the rest of the world outside Africa does.

Tim W’s observation further shows me how in the rented housing sector, a pure free market delivers total shit. People who fall between social housing and being able to afford to buy are stuck in the Thatcher-reformed private rented sector, and therefore get fleeced by letting agents in rent and ‘admin’ charges of hundreds of pounds in return for substandard accomodation and poor service. Private landlords can make a profit on rent above their mortgage payments and get a ‘free’ house at the end of it, while housing associations deliver great properties at affordable rents becuase they’re not purely profit driven. The answer is to socialise it more as far as I can see: it’s the private market letting agents who are the real parasites not social tenants.

@73, @75
I concur. Completely

@74 Tim Worstall
“As you want an answer to this so badly, here it is. British teenagers have the highest conception rate, thus they have both the highest abortion and birth rates”.
OMG! Not at all. The incidence of teenage abortion rates in the UK as against births is much higher than other countries. So the two don’t follow parallel patterns. Try another one.

“Simply shows the idiocy of dividing the world into “white” and “black””
Wow! Worstall and I agree for once.
Except that it’s your idol Charles Murray (whose “Bell Curve” is scientifically flawed at all levels, a true joke) who makes no distinction between East Africans and West Africans.

Which, even in itself, would be an incredibly lazy, ignorant and ill-informed statement, as sports results vary immensely withinWest Africa as well as withinEast Africa. Even within Kenya, for fucks sake. [Did you know that most of their long-distance runners stem from a small Kenian region only? Did you know that most professional Italian cyclists come from the North of Italy? See how absurd this already is?]

Murray just talks rubbish about the IQ of “black people”, just like that. “Black people” and “white people”, in blocks. Incidentally the whole IQ crap has already been exposed as a scam (read this study about the how IQ is not at all the defining factor – let alone in the way used by the bald racist).

More: what are the chances of a non East-Asian winning the next ping pong World championship? Of a non-white winning the Tour de France? Of an English player been signed by Arsenal FC? Of a Portuguese winning at skying? This is all absurd and as such it has zero credibility.

“Except that it’s your idol Charles Murray”

I’ve never made any comment at all about the Bell Curve, Not even read it. I have purely and solely recommended his idea about replacing the current welfare state with a citizen’s basic income as laid out in his book “In Our Hands”.

We’ve been over this sort of ground ehre many times before. That Enoch had some racist ideas doesn’t mean that his views on, say, monetarism, are either right or wrong. Sunny argues that Bose’s alliance with fascists doesn’t make his fight for Indian independence wrong (although I do disagree there but that’s another matter).

It’s entirely possible, in fact I would say necessary, to distinguish between good and bad ideas whoever they are proposed by.

Would kittens be cute whether or not Nick Griffin said they were or not? No, the cuteness of kittens is entirely independent of what Nick Griffin says and any other views that he might hold.

Similarly, the rightness or wrongness of a proposal to alter the welfare system is entirely independent of what Murray has said elsewhere about IQ.

Saying ” I refuse to consider this idea because, look, look, he’s a racist” is lazy.

[apols for digression from main subject of post]

Matt Munro, I you haven’t read Cosma Shalizi on IQ heritability already, I think you’ll find it interesting.

Although I can understand it on one level, I don’t see why people get so hysterical about the Bell Curve idea … we’re only talking about bell curves (showing the distribution of IQ by race) that have their means shifted a few points to left or right of each other, aren’t we?… the vast majority of the IQ distributions of the races (however defined) overlap, and knowledge of an individual’s race tells you very little about their expected IQ. As it happens, I suspect Murray got lots wrong (I’m not really familiar with everything he argues), but I don’t see the problem with the idea, a priori, that there are some differences in average IQ between the “races” (and this isn’t because I’m assuming Anglo-Saxons will be the smarter ones … if it turned out that I was a member of the slightly stupider on average race, why should I care?).

Tim, if Claude is right that teenage abortion rates relative to conception rates are higher in the UK, what does that say? My tuppence is that I largely agree with Claude on the substantive points in this debate, although I do wish people on this site would engage with Tim as a discussant in good faith (which I think he is) rather than being so hostile. If he’s wrong, it should be possibly to explain why calmly. I know it would be nice if he capitulated a bit more often (on this topic, I think he could concede a few points), but “admitting when you are wrong” is a quality sorely lacking from the internets, and Tim is better than most at it, imho.

Excellent work Claude, keep it up and I love how Twat Munro’s name is catching on, lovely stuff.

+1 at Luis. Tim can be maddening from time to time, but he’s arguing in good faith, unlike FrankFisher (and, indeed, some of the more virulent left-ish near-trolls on the site)

I would say Claude’s arguing in very good faith John B…

*rolls eyes*

Claude is an informed and talented commentator. That’s why we are here in the first place.

Great.

Yup, there’s absolutely no way I was including Claude in the ‘left-wing trolls’ bracket, sorry if anyone got that impression.

Some actual facts on the channel 4 fact check website and here..
http://vikingmatt.wordpress.com/

.. essentially he is lying through his teeth as far as the figures are concerned.

I am making my first contribution to this site by asking something quite simple and direct. Is there anything wrong with arguing that we should not be using taxpayers’ money to provide for people who do not / will not help themselves? Surely Portillo is morally right? I live in an English slum where there are large numbers of predominantly white, welfare claimants, despite there being frequent vacancies at the various warehouses and distribution outlets nearby. When Polish, Russian, and Thai people arrive in the town they look for work relentlessly until they find something. When they are out of work or initially seeking it, it is all they talk about. In conversation with the white underclass, the conversation is very much different. There is no talk of work, or even lamenting that good jobs are scarce. Their outlook is fundamentally different. What pocket money they receive from the state is wisely spent of course – on fags, cheap beer and takeaways. Very few seem to take up a course of study and stick to it. Few seemed frightened or unduly concerned at the state of their lives. I do not watch Jeremy Kyle, but when I recently caught an episode I recognised the people on the TV as the very same kind of people that live on my street. I do not know if any of the bloggers here live in areas that can be characterised as slums but, perversely, I strongly recommend a stint in this environment. Though it has darkened my vision of human nature, it has provided me with a much more realistic picture of life. In this comment I won’t go into the pitfalls of welfare provision in detail, suffice to say that I see it promote evil nearly every day of my life. The houses that are provided courtesy of the council are often trashed, and private landlords frequently evict badly-behaved tenants. Where the landlord is not a live-in, very little care is taken to ensure tenants are of good character. Not a pretty picture, notwithstanding the expected variation from house to house. But certainly not the “New Jerusalem” the left used to speak of. Something has gone wrong and Murray, Dalrymple et al cannot be dismissed as easily as some would like. Unless I have gone entirely insane, there seems nothing too unreasonable with calmly stating that there is a section of society which does not know how to live, and furthermore, does not want to be told how to live either. Do not assume I am a reactionary / Daily Mail reader and so forth. I am stating it as I see it. To that end I think the social pathology I witness at first hand will not subside by modifying or increasing state handouts. Human character seems to deteriorate in the long-term through blanket state provision. It seems to bring out the worst in people.