Monday 15 July 2013

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's Eyesight Needs Checking...

...she manages to miss the elephant in the tower block:
Areas such as Ladywood, an inner-city corner of Birmingham, are utterly dominated by single-parent families. And the effects are devastating. On arriving here, the sense of a material and emotional poverty being passed down from generation to generation is palpable.
Also a sense of something else. Though she is at pains to mention that the place is home to white lower-income families, she doesn't seem to have interviewed any...
In Ladywood, relationships break down fast and frequently, leaving children to suffer the lifelong consequences of never knowing their fathers. Many of the single mothers I meet are keen to discuss their predicament. Most are clearly desperate to break the families-without-fathers cycle, but none of them seems to know how.
Really? Odd. If I can see something going wrong, I'll do the opposite of what the people who are going wrong are doing. That doesn't seem to apply here.

It's almost as if there are incentives at work..
Sisters Marie Jukes, 39, and Sue Smith, 43, have a depressingly similar story. Brought up by their mother after their father walked out when they were children, Marie and Sue are now both single mothers and have seven children between them.
While Marie - who recently split up with her partner of 18 years and is now raising her five children alone - admits she longed for a father figure when she was growing up, she believes children in Ladywood are now happy in single-parent households because it has become the norm.
Indeed, she claims it would be more unusual for her children - Jamie, 17, Jodie, 15, Jack, 12, Jordan, 11, and Jayden, eight - if they did live with their father. She now works 16 hours a week as a housekeeper and claims working tax credit, child tax credits and child benefit in order to support her children.
Alliteration is clearly in vogue:
Kim, who came to England from Jamaica 15 years ago, has a ten-year-old son, Tyrese, and daughters Tiffiny, five, and two-year-old Tati.
I suppose it makes it easier to fill in the benefit forms...
Of course, there was a time in Britain’s recent history when single mothers proliferated, but the context couldn’t have been more different, and the children they raised grew up to be responsible, useful members of society. During the two World Wars, millions of men died in conflict and it became the norm for children to be brought up by their widowed mothers. One of the key differences then, however, was that extended families played a crucial role in raising a child: grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles united to help provide the stable family life missing for so many present-day children.
There was also something else about Britain's demographic make-up then. But Yasmin doesn't want to mention it.
Ruth Haile, 33, has three children by two fathers. With neither father around to help at home, her 14-year-old son, Naeb, has become a father figure to his younger siblings. Ruth, who came to England from Eritrea in East Africa seven years ago, says she struggles to care for Naeb, Esrom, five, and three-year-old Lulia. Ruth says: ‘I was only 19 when I had Naeb, but that is normal in my country. ’
You meant, ‘my former country’, surely? As we are feeding and clothing your offspring, it’s not too much to ask, is it?

13 comments:

JohnM said...

Hmm! Let's see

In WWII the British Empire including colonies lost 383,800 (wiki) military personnel. Not all were British, some will have been female and some would not have fathered children by the time of their death.

Today we have nearly 2 million lone parent families with about 1 million of those children having no contact with the father.

The latter disaster appears to be an order of magnitude bigger than the former.

Anonymous said...

"Ruth, who came to England from Eritrea in East Africa seven years ago"
Why did we let her in? Was the benefits bill not big enough in 2006?

UnEnriched said...

Buy shares in bling'd up Y shaped coffins.

Anonymous said...

No woman should be able to claim the relevant benefits if her female child is named after a 'ho' from a (c)rap video or blacksploitation film. Similarly for boys I don't know if it still applies in France but all parents were given a list of acceptable names for their children. To the best of my knowledge there are no 'Beyonce-Lutralle's or 'ChakaKhan-Maybeline's in French school registers. It's bad enough with the home grown children of the rich and famous naming their children after the towns they were conceived in - I hope the child whose parents had THAT sh*g in Berkhampstead has a sense of humour - but the majority of them can afford not to be a drain on society. Also, in France, I understand it is taken into account whether the father of the child is paying towards supporting him or her. If not, and the mother is not making any moves to claim such support, then state aid is adjusted accordingly. It is assumed that if the child is due to a consensual act, then both parents have certain responsibilities. In this ultra-liberal, loony-left, political correct mess of a country, it is classed as nobody's fault and the State takes over the financial burden of someone else's cast-offs. I know the little b*stards didn't ask to be born, but then my wife and I stopped having children because we couldn't afford to increase the size of our family despite wanting to. Instead, we are paying money we can't afford to raise some other sh*gger's child. If I, as an Englishman, have the responsibility to pay for them, I demand the right to insist the kids have an English name (even Ethelred is acceptable - in fact, I would make it compulsory!).
Penseivat

Anonymous said...

Jamie,Jodie,Jack,Jordan,Jayden.
oooh,its like chav bingo.

Greencoat said...

Old Alibaba is rehearsing the Left's favourite party trick, where it promotes and endorses every kind of immorality and then when the disastrous chickens come home to roost, it looks around and says with wide-eyed innocence - hey, folks, how did this happen?

staybryte said...

From Yazza's article (BTW I love it when she gets her outraged moral guardian head on when there's some Daily Mail cash in it for her):

"There is no sense of a unified mission to save British children from the terrible legacy of increasing family breakdown."

"British" children Yaz?

JuliaM said...

"The latter disaster appears to be an order of magnitude bigger than the former"

And is cumulative...

"Why did we let her in?"

Did we even know she was here?!?

" I don't know if it still applies in France but all parents were given a list of acceptable names for their children."

I believe it does. I don't think France is the only continental country that does that either...

"...it looks around and says with wide-eyed innocence - hey, folks, how did this happen?"

Because it never actually affects them, they can do this again and again and again...

Twenty_Rothmans said...

" I don't know if it still applies in France but all parents were given a list of acceptable names for their children."

>I believe it does. I don't think France is the only continental country that does that either...


Denmark, Germany and Sweden have laws to prevent you from giving your child an outrageously stupid name, such as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Furor Teutonicus said...

It does. Germany does not have a list, as such, but if the Standesamt (Registry office) feels the name is questionable they can put the blockers on it, whereby the parent can appeal to the Amtsgericht, or the Verwaltungsgericht. (No exact equivalents in the U.K, but lower and higher court of appeal, would be close.).

However, what is on an official document, and what it is actualy called, or known as, are two different things.

For example, no Stendesamt would allow "Oy you fucking snivellin little bastard, get here now!" as a name, but you here many children being called it.

Mr Ecks said...


The scum of the state dictating even your name is the very essence of tyranny. Better a million idiot names than that. When the state is gone from schools and all of public life, when there are no more hand-outs and raising a child is hard work again, not a cash cow, then the general intelligence fostered by the struggle of life will again produce people with sound judgement.People who have neither time for nor interest in afflicting their kids with idiot celeb names.

rielouise said...

Wasn't she in some group in the eighties called Yazz and the Plastic Population?

JuliaM said...

"Germany does not have a list, as such, but if the Standesamt (Registry office) feels the name is questionable they can put the blockers on it..."

Although like Mr Ecks I'm not generally in favour of state control over our lives, I could make an exception for this one.