Are you one of the 70% who ARE NOT a "Hard working Family"

[jjdarg]

Indeed the key thing is it allows children to learn to interact with other children at an early age - even a very well looked after child who has no time with his peers until they get to school will be be at a disadvantage.

The thing about marriage is not down to the government it is down to successive generations of people putting less and less value on it - and maybe the whole political correctness has got to a point where having a traditional marriage between a man and a woman is now seen in a similar vein to being proud to be British - e.g. a bit old fashioned and slightly bigoted.

Agreed there, on both points...To an extent.

On the first point, though, there is a limit to the value of sticking a child in nursery all day as opposed to having it occasionally or only part time. The value erodes after a certain point in terms of socialisation and can turn many children into little monsters because all they know is the socialisation of the playground (of course you could argue that that makes them good psychopathic managers later in life... :-))

On the second point, I don't believe it "just happened". Have a look at Gramscianism, the Frankfurt School and "the long march through the institutions". (I'll get my tin foil hat.)

Mind the Gap by Ferdinand Mount, and the The Welfare State We're In by James Bartholomew are both excellent well-researched books on the subject as well.

[tractor]

...

WSOS

However, many of the policies they define as helping "hard-working families" come from the Fabian/Gramscian ideas of eliminating parental influence on children, in favour of State control, and getting as many people as possible to pay tax and used to pushing paper for the Man permanently, so that from cradle to grave the minions have the sensation of a jackboot stomping on their faces repeatedly.

Take paternity leave - its proponents in Scandinavia where it originated were all about allowing the father to build a bond with the child, its proponents here are all about getting the mother back to work as soon as she has popped a sprog.

They've also made the family tax credit or child benefit (whatever it is called) favour a grouping with two people earning 50k pa versus a grouping where one person is earning 55k and the other is home taking care of the children, rather than sending them off to an institution for 8+ hours a day for communal upkeep.

Then there are the subsidies for the child care industry to the tune of several billion a year. So that a working mother may net £100 extra a month.

I would say take away many of the subsidies the gov't provides that allow employers to pay lower wages and let employers compete in a free market for labour rather than use a benefit and immigration system to artificially deflate wages. Used to be that minimum wage was a floor for many jobs, now it appears to be a ceiling thanks to subsidised mass immigration and low wages.

[/rant mode]

It was easy to see at its inception that it would quickly become National Maximum Wage for all those 'hard working families' they are working so hard to earn the votes of.

End all the subsidies.

[Platypus]

I have no interest in working hard, and never have had.

^ Me too

[jjdarg]

We're getting awefully close ourselves. As soon as I have my next contract in my grubby little mitts, we will be paying off the mortgage - so then excess cash goes to getting the pensions sorted and war chest for eventual daughters' uni costs.

[Platypus]

You're Goddamn Right!

I seem to have achieved early retirement here.

Giz a job, mate?

[SpontaneousOrder]

Indeed the key thing is it allows children to learn to interact with other children at an early age - even a very well looked after child who has no time with his peers until they get to school will be be at a disadvantage.

The thing about marriage is not down to the government it is down to successive generations of people putting less and less value on it - and maybe the whole political correctness has got to a point where having a traditional marriage between a man and a woman is now seen in a similar vein to being proud to be British - e.g. a bit old fashioned and slightly bigoted.

I think you're right when it's targeted in small doses. Obviously interacting and sharing with other kids will be beneficial (although there's nothing stopping stay-at-home mums/dads creating that environment too) - but studies show that being left with strangers for more than 20 hours a week is damaging to a child's psychology.

And i think that the marriage thing is down to state sponsorship of reckless sluttyness. When you socialise the repercussions of such behaviour, then you end up with couples that shouldn't be couples - or single parents. This has nothing to do with marriage - it's just that now more people who have no business being together, have children because the consequences tend to be negligable or even positive (especially given that they tend to be people without much ambition in the first place).

You're right though, about the institution of marriage being valued less (my other half knows it's meaningless to me - but she still wanted her day so we did), which I think is a good thing. People's happiness should be valued higher than propriety - it's just that removal of ideas of propriety, combined with rampant socialism, leads to the issues we see.

[vetran]

Hard working families are photogenic and of course Tory and New Lie floating voters.

Cuts and earnings related benefits have hit most family units.

its rhetoric.

The unemployed are denigrated so that the minority who are happy to live on benefits can be attacked.

The Lower end workers are being exploited by multinationals with low wages we don't want to shine a spotlight on those.

we need to be seen to support one of the groups.

[Contractoid]

Didn't realise an evening rant would spark such a debate and indeed a very good one! As a lifelong rebel to conformity I am resigned to being regarded by politicians and society as a whole as a social leper. What bugs me is the way that the collective momentum of politics/society/political correctness etc is marginalising the "Non Mainstream" (the politicians "Hard working families"). Add to that the emergance of the Child Worship culture we have imported from the US and you are left feeling like an outcast at times.

[jjdarg]

On being non-mainstream...

Try being a single-earner household with children...Definitely a political target for all parties. It is a "lifestyle choice" according to the Chancellor, and apparently we aren't pulling our fair load.

[d000hg]

Well unless your spouse died it is ultimately a choice, even if a seemingly obvious one