Anyone else think this is...erm...wrong?

[eksdee]

its only in modern society thats its deemed wrong for people under 16 to have children

and? what is your point? in modern society there are also a lot more pressures and expectations put upon parents and young adults in general, kids or not. because something was okay in the past, does not make it okay today.

 

[Amanita]

Shows what one night of stupidity can do to you. Good luck to 'em all, babies are not an "easy" way into money.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Shows what one night of stupidity can do to you. Good luck to 'em all, babies are not an "easy" way into money.

Not so much one night as clearly a lifetime of below-average intelligence. Look at the kid he's clearly come from the shallow end of the gene pool as has she (read the phrase "Alfie's dad, separated", "Chantelle's jobless dad & 5 brothers". Children who do this are typically from split families that are long-term unemployed often "generationally unemployed").

In short, what you have there is yet another little burden you, me and all the working people who pay their taxes each month have to support. Sad to say this folks but this isn't that unusual in fact it's becoming more and more common:

Heres a few fun facts for you just to really add to it:

(1) Less than 2% of relationships formed under the age of 21 last more than 5 years. So what you'll have is another single mother occupying another council house drawing even more state benefits.

(2) The rate of child neglect/abuse is something like 5-6 times higher (anyone wants to see exact numbers google the 2005/6 study on this) amongst parents who conceived under 18 years old. I don't fancy that babies chances at turning out as a useful member of society.

(3) Last set of government stats place the number of single mothers under the age of 18 in gainful employment at under 30%. 2/3 that drop a sprog is another tax burden on the state. If you look at my graduating class from school nearly 14 years ago, out of 120 people 5 were pregnant at the time. That's 15 years ago in a posh comprehensive school. Does anyone honestly believe that ratio will have improved in the last decade and a half? Or that in the less fortunate areas that ratio isn't massively higher as people realise their best shot at a comfy life is child benefits and free housing.

So the question is, just how many more idiots like this can we afford to support? I know i know you're all going to say "Binary mate you're over-reacting" but this isn't one idiotic teen couple that's making my blood boil, it's the hundreds of these in every major town, nay thousands in many cases - EVERY YEAR. This is a topic that boils my blood to be quite frank.

All sucking at the government's teat for the next 40-50 years or longer because they've cottoned on that you can earn more in FREE money (thats right - totally free from the government) by opening your legs once per 9 months than you can in a regular job if you're an ill-educated layabout.

Gross generalisation perhaps. However i stand by my comments and quite frankly think that we need to have a difficult "fitness to parent" test in this country. Don't pass it? Ooopsie no benefits for you Ms Burberry!

Honestly Darwin must be turning in his fucking grave at the way we're supporting the bottom of the genetic barrel. Hell not just supporting, encouraging.

I'll end with a quote / rant from my favourite comedian, Bill Hicks. Bill had very strong views on this: "The "miracle" of single motherhood is spreading like wildfire folks if you check the statistics. Look at all my little miracles filling up my trailer like a sardine can. Thunk - Hello pizza boy delivery junior. Thunk - hello trucker junior. Thunk hello will work for food junior. I'll tell you what'd be a miracle - if she could remember the fathers name. No scratch that - i'll tell you what's a miracle - raising a child with enough manners not to talk in a movie theatre!!"

 

[ilaya]

hmmm.. the father is asking for a DNA test now after it emerged that other teenage boys have had sex with the mother...

what a suprise...

 

[Huntingtons]

Gross generalisation perhaps. However i stand by my comments and quite frankly think that we need to have a difficult "fitness to parent" test in this country. Don't pass it? Ooopsie no benefits for you Ms Burberry!

and by this you and your misses who passed the test can live in a country with a birthrate thats below 1. Your society crashes because there's noone to work in the supermarked, no one to drive the busses and taxis. no one to take the shittest of all shit jobs execpt the foreinger who you probably also want to ban.

fucking retarded idea.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

fucking retarded idea.

Because we can really sustain an endlessly growing welfare state.

I'll walk you through it since you haven't gotten the idea yet.

The council/government uses your taxes to pay benefits.

Your wage hasn't doubled in the last 10 years.

Benefit spending has more than doubled.

Ergo the governments choices are:

Control Benefit Spending.
Increase Taxes.
Decrease spending on public services or similar.

I know which i'd rather.

I'll thankyou very much not to put words into my mouth. Nothing against foreigners, except the ones that come over here, don't work and immediately start a family and claim benefits (see above).

Most of the non-brits i know are hardworking: A plumber, a computer security technician, a pharmacist, a social worker.

 

[Bugz]

(1) Less than 2% of relationships formed under the age of 21 last more than 5 years. So what you'll have is another single mother occupying another council house drawing even more state benefits.

How the fuck do you find out a statistic like that? What makes you think it is reliable?

(I shall have fun being in the 2%.

)

 

[Amanita]

Think of each of 'em kids as an investment, because someday those kids are going to be working and looking at you as a pensioner and going "waste of bloody resources"

My mother brought us up on our own (ok, through divorce), quite largely on benefits and we're turning into productive members of society! Its quite frightening!

Not all women who find 'emselves single and pregnant are benefit sponges and its not an easy life.

 

[CorNokZ]

1) Sell the baby and move out
2) Eat the girlfriend(LOTS of protein in that huge moose, as Bugz so well put it)
3) Be proud you had sex before all of your friends

That is how I would solve that motherfucking problem

 

[sayward]

I think there should be compulsory termination under a certain age. But then at 15 she's probably too old for that as she's old enougn to know better.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Think of each of 'em kids as an investment, because someday those kids are going to be working and looking at you as a pensioner and going "waste of bloody resources"

My mother brought us up on our own (ok, through divorce), quite largely on benefits and we're turning into productive members of society! Its quite frightening!

Not all women who find 'emselves single and pregnant are benefit sponges and its not an easy life.

I'll have a private pension thanks State pensions aren't exactly good!

Ama - I'm not saying every single mother is going to raise a bunch of unproductive brats who sponge off the state, you + sis's prove that some do turn out well.

I'm saying that the vast majority have cottoned onto the fact that dropping sprogs is a good way to get to the top of the council waiting list for a house, and to get a crapload of money free from the government for 18+ years per baby.

Some do in fact raise good useful members of society - but they certainly are not in the majority. I'd go as far as to say they are a minority.

Bugz - there was a study done in the late 90's. They took a sample of a few hundred that were all in relationships (London i think? Have to check) and asked them to write in once a year with their status and if they had changed partners etc. All the participants were aged 16/17 at the start of the study. Something like 2% of them or worse were still together after age 21. I think it had dropped to less than 1% by age 25 but dont hold me to that bit.

More power to you if you've kept a relationship going mate from a young age, but you are in the very small minority. Most people change as they age and mature, or alternatively as their lifestyle and situation changes. That's before we even start considering the stroppy / emotional teenager angle!

My thoughts on it can be summarised perhaps more concisely than my rant as:

"If you want to make mistakes, fine. We all make them in one form or another. However some people are abusing the system, and some people keep on making the same mistakes. The state (and hence it's taxpayers) shouldn't have to pay for people to keep on making mistakes. I defy you, any of you for that matter to look at that woman again in 5 years. If she doesn't have 5+ children by then and both "parents" are on the dole/benefits i will eat my hat."

 

[Amanita]

"If you want to make mistakes, fine. We all make them in one form or another. However some people are abusing the system, and some people keep on making the same mistakes. The state (and hence it's taxpayers) shouldn't have to pay for people to keep on making mistakes. I defy you, any of you for that matter to look at that woman again in 5 years. If she doesn't have 5+ children by then and both "parents" are on the dole/benefits i will eat my hat."

Some, not all. And not a majority. Anything is open to abuse.

If I couldn't guarentee that I'll have forgotten about her in five minutes I'd take you up on that

 

[sayward]

What I find really awful is that I know various young married couples, with reasonable jobs, who would love to have a baby, but who can't afford to, because one of them would have to give up work. Then they wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage etc. etc.

 

[CorNokZ]

This even made the danish newspaper and beat ya to it by having a kid that's 12y old that will soon also become a father

 

[Sparx]

Control Benefit Spending.
Increase Taxes.
Decrease spending on public services or similar.

Do you know anyone on benefits? if you did you would know that they are bringing new rules in to make it harder to claim benefits, if you are unemployed too long then you will have benefits cut etc. I dont know all the new rules off hand but a friend of mine who is on benefits was saying its getting alot harder to claim

Oh and you do realise its not just the lazy and stupid that are on benefits dont you? perfectly abled people who just lost their job in a recent mass redundancy season will also be on it too.

Dont be so closed minding in your thinking, i'm just waiting for you to say "oh and they will be spending their benefit money on booze and smack" then i will know for sure your a Daily Mail reader.

 

[Cozak]

Just saw a follow up article that has amazed me, heres a snippet of it..

Chris Matyszczyk at CNET blamed the pregancy on a low moral fibre brought on by Patten’s love of the video game, Saints Row 2, although the game has violent rather than sexual content. “I am sure that you, too, are only waiting for the first wise academic to declare that this sort of behavior is the fault of the video game culture,” he said.

13-year-old father Alfie Patten: The world reacts - Telegraph

 

[pikeh]

what a wanker.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Some, not all. And not a majority. Anything is open to abuse.

If I couldn't guarentee that I'll have forgotten about her in five minutes I'd take you up on that

I really can't agree that it's not a majority. I have good friends i meet up with a few times a month in all 3 emergency services, as well as probation and social services. Trust me, without going into a huge amount of depressing detail - it is common, and fast becoming a majority.

 

[Golena]

Oh and you do realise its not just the lazy and stupid that are on benefits dont you? perfectly abled people who just lost their job in a recent mass redundancy season will also be on it too.

Dont be so closed minding in your thinking, i'm just waiting for you to say "oh and they will be spending their benefit money on booze and smack" then i will know for sure your a Daily Mail reader.

Yes there's plenty of people on benefits that don't fall into the lazy and stupid category. You know what.. They are the people who are going to get the worst end of the stick since all the benefit money they should be getting to help them through a rough year while they find a new job will instead of been given to your average lazy idiot since they have been unemployed for longer and as such are first in the queue.
Just because there's a few people who deserve it doesn't mean we shouldn't still be angry at the vast majority of people on benefits that don't.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Do you know anyone on benefits? if you did you would know that they are bringing new rules in to make it harder to claim benefits, if you are unemployed too long then you will have benefits cut etc. I dont know all the new rules off hand but a friend of mine who is on benefits was saying its getting alot harder to claim

Oh and you do realise its not just the lazy and stupid that are on benefits dont you? perfectly abled people who just lost their job in a recent mass redundancy season will also be on it too.

Dont be so closed minding in your thinking, i'm just waiting for you to say "oh and they will be spending their benefit money on booze and smack" then i will know for sure your a Daily Mail reader.

Big post coming...

Ah nothing quite like a left-wing-liberal scorned is there?

See what i did i just lumped you into a stereotype just like you did to me

I use the Daily Mail for wipeing my arse with, thats all it's good for. Indy or FT usually, Times if i cant get either of those.

Why do i read those papers? Becuase i'm a snob sipping brandy in my drawing room looking out at the filthy commoners tending my 10 acre estate? Sadly not, my background isn't for a public forum but i can assure you i didnt come from anything like a priviliged background. To answer my own question, I read those papers because they actually give as unbiased a view as you will find in print these days, which i suppose isnt saying much. I like to hear the facts and make up my own mind about things.

Speaking of which, these opinions of mine are based on long regular chats with some old friends of mine in a position to have a damn good idea about just how common what i'm speaking about is.

I couldn't give a fuck what the Daily Mail writes, and i've only ever read the sun (and believe me i use the word read loosely) when i've found it on a train for the sole purpose of page 3 and trying to guess if the breasts are fake or not.

I have no objection to honest claimants - be they disabled or temporarily (the key word here) unemployed. Nowhere in the above (and if i did, please consider it a typo) did i say "everyone on benefits is a cheat or a scumbag". Or anything close to it.

What i did point out is that there are a growing number of families out there within which nobody has ever worked. And why should they? Why should they when they can just put their hand out and ask the state for more free money?

I'm not talking about the single mothers who made 1 mistake, i'm not talking about the disabled, i'm not even talking about those unfortunates who got made redundant recently. I'm talking about the hundreds of families (coincidentally, families that fit a very similar profile to the boy in the OP's article) in each city who have never worked.

Who will never work. Who produce child after child who will not work, because mum and dad never worked. Who will then go on to produce children as young as possible, so they can get a house and get benefits. There are hundreds, if not thousands of these people in every major city. I will bet pennies to pounds that boy's parents are "long-term unemployed".

I will eat my fucking hat if that boy gets to age 16 and doesn't have at least 2 more children by 2 more different mothers. I mean look at the girl - not even over the age of consent and already sleeping with 3 blokes a week (2 other boys dispute the paternity). It's clear she's trying so hard to get pregnant she's fucking anything that moves regardless of age.

I'll bet theres a bollard in the local town centre that she's fucked after a few beers!!! Man, barstool, animal, vegetable, nothing is safe in it's quest for a house and a few hundred quid a month free.

Are all young mothers stupid and trying to get pregnant on purpose? No of course not, some are good people that have an accident or make a mistake.

Are there large numbers within that demographic now because they've cottoned onto it being a fast way to a largely free council house and lots of benefits? Of course there are!

Ranting aside, I don't buy the claims about changing benefits for one second. They've had several of these "adjustments" since i've been in the working world and the news from the frontlines is that it makes fuck all difference. In fact i'd go as far as to say the only people the changes really hurt are the honest claimants, since the long-term sucklers at the state's teat simply adapt and change their stories/circumstances to fit the new criteria (again this is based on an informed opinion - see the top of my post).

If anyone disbelieves the above, take a good long hard look at that article, don't take my word for it then take a good long look at any number of police, social service, housing association or other public service blogs, reading the shit that goes on there DAILY related to this, then shutting their mouths and going away quietly (if you can't find any, i can probably point you at 3-4 good ones).

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

and by this you and your misses who passed the test can live in a country with a birthrate thats below 1. Your society crashes because there's noone to work in the supermarked, no one to drive the busses and taxis. no one to take the shittest of all shit jobs execpt the foreinger who you probably also want to ban.

fucking retarded idea.

Yes, sweden has such a low birthrate...

what a wanker.

Hmm, no. Actually not :-p

 

[fettoken]

 

[CorNokZ]

lol fett you crazy swede

 

[Amanita]

lots of stuff

Fair enough on most of it, but I love my idealistic "maybe they can change themselves" view, and I sure hope that one of the generations in that family do.

I just hate sweeping generalisations so much

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Fair enough on most of it, but I love my idealistic "maybe they can change themselves" view, and I sure hope that one of the generations in that family do.

I just hate sweeping generalisations so much

I think on some level we all hope feverently that even the scummiest of spongers will change, that even the nastiest of people can be nice. Sadly experience tells most of us otherwise.

Lets be realistic though, for every one or two that turn over a new leaf and become useful members of society, eight or nine dont. That's the core of the problem, especially given that those 8/9 will go and in turn have several children each, at which point we return to the start of the pharagraph and repeat ad infinitum.

I will defeat your damn rosy outlook on the world if it kills me!

 

[Huntingtons]

its all about the right method, i believe that almost everybody can be turned from their path (besides that fact that not everybody who gets children will raise them to be fucked up, and they themselves has the chance of changing it), its all about the right method. Like tellling a kid what he cant and cant do. some need to be explained the consequences, others need to get told straight up no, 3rds need something different etc.

Find the right method for each person and you will recover alot more people.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Not to get too much into the discussion, but;

I will eat my fucking hat if that boy gets to age 16 and doesn't have at least 2 more children by 2 more different mothers.

I hate it when people say that.

No one EVER eats their hat, or even f*cking own a hat to eat!

 

[Hawkwind]

How the fuck do you find out a statistic like that? What makes you think it is reliable?

(I shall have fun being in the 2%.

)

A drunken shag with a munter or farm animal does not count as a relationship!

 

[Uara]

Not to get too much into the discussion, but;



I hate it when people say that.

No one EVER eats their hat, or even f*cking own a hat to eat!

I've got about 5 hats at home, altho I never promise to eat my own hat if x or y occurs. Mainly because I like my hats far too much

 

[Platin]

Just saw a follow up article that has amazed me, heres a snippet of it..



13-year-old father Alfie Patten: The world reacts - Telegraph

That's silly, if the kid would have played more video games he probably wouldn't have ended up with a pregnant girlfriend or even a girlfriend at all.