And Labour try to tell us that our society isn’t broken
I don’t know whether to feel anger or sympathy – angry that Alfie Patten, age 12, and Chantelle Steadman, age 15, are so stupid that they think it’s appropriate for them to raise a child, angry that their parents haven’t bothered to explain to them why they shouldn’t do something so irresponsible, or sympathy for the child who will forever have this idiocy hanging over them. (full story HERE)
*shake head*
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They could easily be grandparents in their twenties at that rate.
My initial question is why Social Services haven’t removed the baby from its ‘parents’ – the idea that *their* parents may raise the child should sound massive alarm bells since they’ve clearly done such a sterling job with little Alfie and Chantelle…
Does anyone believe anything that Labour says anymore?
I very much doubt it.
The picture above is a logical outcome of years of being told that the rest of society should not be ‘judgmental about the underclass’ and their lifestyle.
So are the ‘parents’ going to pay for the upkeep of this child, or will it be the benefits system?
Or as it should be called “the sponge known as the taxpayer”, which this venal Labour Government keep squeezing every time they need more cash for yet another repressive measure or cash for some mad IT scheme.
Very soon they will find that they have wrung out the last drop from us and that the taxpayers well has run dry.
When they start to PRINT MONEY to pay for this crap…………..that’s the time to get out on the streets and say to them………..ENOUGH!
The ‘mother’ looks very worringly like a younger version of Karen Matthews! That can’t end well.
It’s a tricky one. Would the child be better off staying with Alfie and Chantelle with their parents in close proximity, or would the child be better off in an adopted home? Not sure what the answer is, suffice to say that there doesn’t seem to be any sanity being injected into this appalling situation.
SH, the benefits system will clearly pick up the slack. Of course, if the parents of Alfie and Chantelle had to pay for the child, I think they might have paid a little more attention to what their children are up to.
Candid, now that you mention it, she does look similar! Too chilling for words.
“Would the child be better off staying with Alfie and Chantelle with their parents in close proximity, or would the child be better off in an adopted home?”
I’d vote for the adoption route, personally, if only to break the cycle of dependency on benefits that BOTH these ‘families’ are hopelessly mired in.
The fact that the immediate responses from the State (and, shamingly, from conservative politicians) are to say they deserve ‘help’ and ’support’, and that no action will be taken against them because it’s ‘not in the public interest’ shows just how broken our society really is..
This is a depressing case indeed. However I don’t see how you can infer from this that our society is “broken”.
I am not fan of this government but according to the statistics in the BBC coverage (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7889033.stm), pregnancies under the age of 16 have actually fallen in recent years (down by about 1000 in 2006 from 7836 in 1998). Not a huge drop granted but the trend is in the right direction.
Extreme cases like this have always occurred and I am sad to say always will. If if the Tories get in at the next election and stay in power for 10 years there will still be cases like this occurring.
Mark, I saw that stat too, although the pattern under Labour is still clear. For example, the IFS found last year that more generous government benefits leads to higher birth rates, particularly among low income groups, lone parents families have increased under Labour from 460,000 to 790,000 etc.
Furthermore, I find it extremely alarming that no-one in this story suffers any consequences. No restrictions on benefits, no conditions on benefit payments, no insistence that these children get qualifications, nothing. Labour have let family breakdown get out of control and the parents of these teenagers suffer no ill effects for being asleep at the wheel. Does that sound right to you?
Reducing teenage pregnancies to zero may be impossible, but removing peverse welfare incentives and getting tough with irresponsible parents is certainly not impossible.
Julia, you might well be right. For social services to recently take away a child from competent grandparents (threatening them with being cut off if they don’t comply) and handing the child over to a random gay couple, only to let this situation remain as it is, screams inconsistency.
LFAT – I agree with some of your points here and I certainly think there are too many perverse incentives in our system at the moment.
My objection was the way you appeared to be trying to extrapolate from this one extreme case to a general conclusion about society as a whole.
The murder of Stephen Lawrence was an ‘extreme case’ (there were – and still are – other racist murders), yet that became the focus for a sea-change in policing, legislation, etc.
OK, not all of it was good. But without that iconic case, would there have been a push to change anything?
Have been thinking about this extensively.
The expansion of the welfare state under New Labour may well have hideous consequences unless it’s stopped. At the exact time when people of low intelligence, who are mentally unfit only for unskilled jobs, are becoming obsolete thanks to a technology-based economy, their numbers are increasing.
What will these “parents” or their children ever do but live off the welfare state? The most we can hope for is that they’ll stay out of prison.
Apart from the fact that society & the economy cannot bear these costs much longer, I fear for our future even more as these people are natural fodder for an authoritarian government. I was arguing with a BNP member yesterday who went on & on about how such types need more “help” (they are as socialist as it’s possible to be when only whites are involved) & I just wondered how any kind of liberalism can even pretend to exist with a massive underclass dependent on the whims of our rulers.
You would have to artificially create unskilled jobs & corral unwilling people into doing them, at enormous cost to the majority in taxation, social losses & inflated prices of consumer goods.
There is a massive difference between honest folk who’ve fallen on hard times, like those who are now losing their jobs (or even the long-term unemployed, who don’t fit the stereotype in my experience) & those who live by dependency.
My whole attitude to life is based on the fact that the majority of people are rational & can organise their own lives without state control. It would be hell on earth if this situation changed.
It is a terrible sin to parent a child who has no hope in life & it is even worse for the likes of the Vatican & New Labour to foster the birth of people for whom I don’t see anything being done, short of a massive authoritarian state.
Am genuinely terrified of the abyss we’ll be staring into if these trends do not go into reverse.
You can call these harsh words. I think the real harshness is inflicting this kind of misery on society.
Do the parents or grandparents smoke? Or are the grandparents over 40? Or are they obese? All grounds for refusing adoption.
Oddly being just thirteen doesn’t seem to be much of an issue.
I’m going to grass them up to the council for some truly awful made up social crimes.
1} they don’t recycle tinfoil
2} put the bin out at night, not at 5 am.
3} These kids only eat four fruit and veg a day, not five.
4} the mother hasn’t changed all the light bulbs to the new ‘ecodim brand’
5} The father owns a copy of grand theft auto IV.
6} Their chicken dippers are not free range.
7} The mother wrote a school report on the middle east that didn’t use the phrase ‘totally unnecessary and inappropriate response’
8} The Great grandmother once bought South African oranges
9} There is an uncle who is partial to Roy Chubby Brown DVD’s
10} The Grandad votes Tory.
Kid will be in care by midnight.
Asquith,
To call all or even most welfare benefactors people of low intellegence is ridiculous and snobbish,it is more often a case of ignorance not intelligence.A lot of them know exactly how to work the system but are just lazy.Things are just too easy for them.Just because someone doesn’t want to be educated doen’t mean they are thick.A lot of this is parent apathy and peer pressure,I know this from personal experience,it is how I was brought up.
There is no personal or neighbourhood pride anymore,no stigma to being unemployed on benefits.No fear or neighbours,authority or family disapproval.Being a criminal is nothing unusual.
Where did morals and manners go???
I did not say that & would not say such a thing. I live on an estate where virtually everyone (me included) has a below average income & many are on benefits. You soon learn that a lot of them are decent people who are just trapped.
I do not vilify single parents, the unemployed or any other groups en masse, but there is a problem with the “underclass” (as opposed to the poorer sections of the working class) in that, essentially, their unskilled jobs are gone & there is no point “training” them for things they couldn’t do.
Some are pulling themselves out of the mire: I’ve known many very poor people better themselves & their path should be smoothed as it’s a nightmare now. But we do no one any favours by pretending that the irresponsible, who mindlessly have children for whom they cannot provide, are not there.
Why don’t they stop & think what they’re doing? I would make a terribel father, so I don’t have children. It is not hard to figure out.
“terrible”*
Not least because I can’t spell
“You can call these harsh words.”
No. I call it ’scales dropping from a liberal’s eyes’… And you didn’t have to get mugged for it to happen!
“Why don’t they stop & think what they’re doing? I would make a terribel father, so I don’t have children. It is not hard to figure out.”
But they see nothing wrong in it. It’s a way of life for them now – ‘Everyone does it!’ – and I sometimes wonder if WE are the mugs, because we are the ones paying for them to do it!
The murder of Stephen Lawrence was an ‘extreme case’ (there were – and still are – other racist murders), yet that became the focus for a sea-change in policing, legislation, etc.
OK, not all of it was good. But without that iconic case, would there have been a push to change anything?
It is true that it was a catalyst for change but not all of it was good and I could give you plenty of examples of where extreme scenarios have led to rushed and ill-thought out legislation. What about the Dangerous Dogs Act rushed out in response to a statistical blip in dog attacks and was widely accepted as very poorly conceived and drafted?
Legislation is best done calmly and dispassionately with full and proper reference to all the evidence and statistics. This current government have been dreadful at this sort of thing which is why I shudder every time I see an extreme example cited as evidence that things need to change. I fear that this lot just might feel that “something must be done” and then do totally the wrong thing which has umpteen unintended consequences and will have to be unpicked at great expense by its successors.
You terribel was surely a mistype Asquith,so I think we can allow you one child.;)
Yes Julia it is entrenched,what to do?we need a figurehead to start a revolution,in a refined quiet way of course.Absolutely no burning at stakes or lynching,much as I would like to.Someone that says no.
My personal figurehead was Maggie Thatcher,I know she is universally reviled but she was the first politician to make me feel proud to be british and to make me sit back and think,not easy I can tell you.I didnt agree with all she did but nobody agrees with everything do they.Before I was staunch labour only because I was brought up to think that they were for us and torys were toffs,but had never voted.So its the brainwashing cycle we have to break.Do they ever have a lesson in school where they discuss all the pros and cons of say unmarried motherhood for instance.From every angle moral,financial etc,though this may be hard with the ingrained leftism in education.
“What about the Dangerous Dogs Act…”
Agreed, also the rush to ban sporting pistols after Dunblane. But what both of those had in common was that they sought to control the wrong things – a legal weapon on one hand, and a breed of dog deemed ‘dangerous’ on the other.
Both should have addressed the people involved – the nutters at the other end of the gun and the dog leash!
The problem here is, this ‘extreme case’ is only extreeme because the ‘father’ is so young. There are plenty more across the country like him, but older. If this case causes people to take a long, hard look at the benefits culture, then I think it’s a good thing. And not before time.
“My personal figurehead was Maggie Thatcher,I know she is universally reviled…”
Oh, only by people that don’t matter…
“Do they ever have a lesson in school where they discuss all the pros and cons of say unmarried motherhood for instance.”
There used to be a project whereby young mums would be brought in to tell kids what it was really like – loss of freedom, etc.
I don’t know if it still happends, but if it does, it’s up against the ‘well, everyone does it’ culture. There needs to be much more condemnation of it in society. We need to be LESS ‘liberal’, not MORE.
What really annoys me is that people who are now losing their jobs and who have paid taxes all their lives get no more, and often less, than those who have never worked, I exclude of course those who cannot work. The ‘contract’ that once existed for the welfare state has totally broken down, no longer to help in times of misfortune, but to support whole generations in idleness. This was never the intention as Labour well knows and, sooner or later, something will have to be done before taxpayers give up on the whole idea. only the very rich and those on benefits can afford to stay home with their children or have more than two. I recall Charles Murray writing about the rise of the underclass years ago in the Sunday Times and being excoriated for it, but he was correct. I can’t imagine how it will be changed now since it has benn going on for so long but since the original idea of everyone contributing and receiving when in need no longer holds true it will have to be.
Nobody has directly mentioned the role the chequebook journalists have played in this. I would like to know how much The Sun have payed for their story.
There has been mention of Karen Matthews and it is impossible to believe that she would have carried out her crimes without the precedent set by the MSM with the Maddy story.
It is too easy to be a victim today, no responsibility taken, no blame attached. If that sounds like an ad for an accident claim, what do you think the story is about?
Shaun, I profusely apologise for your comment not appearing – it got stuck in the spam filter for some reason and when trying to restore the comment I may, MAY, have accidentally pressed Delete….
Just heard the boy has asked for a DNA test, not surprised in the least, would a girl that age even consider a boy that young and who looks even younger. I had doubts about that from the start.
Don’t get your hopes up, JuliaM
I don’t support Purnell or Grayling’s welfare reform policies, & I would be fairly modest such as capping child benefit at number 3.
Am still quite left-wing, at least by my own measurements, & dislike reading most blogs of the right
Oh Christ…it´s a disturbing picture.
Dani Major,about par for the course around here.Alcho pops is great for socialising.Some of the mothers can hardly see over the pushchair handles.
Ah yes, but guess what Alfie Patton’s father was up to? – and how he is milking this birth for $$$$.
The larger picture to all of this, as others have noted above, is the rise of a class of people for whom work is no longer possible. They no longer see their lives in terms of what they cn achieve or earn, but in what they can claim and how little they can do for it. No employer would ever be interested in them, as they are not really interested in work, and they pass this ethic down from generation to generation. Make no mistake, we are not talking about the WORKING class.
What can be done about them? Answer: Nothing.
This subculture will continue to spread as long as it is allowed to. No government will withdraw benefits as this will be seen as penalising the children. No government will remove the children to give them a proper chance in life as this would be illegal under human rights law. While children are born into this culture at a higher and higher rate, this subculture will continue to spread, their parents using them as a route to more and more money.
All the options for dealing with it are unpalatable, so therefore we will never deal with it.