And another thing…

Were you? I thought that most sensible people had agreed with you.

Perhaps we’ll find the number of teen pregnancies falling with this initiative – if it ever comes to pass.

I don’t think that it can be forgotten, though, that Labour, itself, exacerbated the problem in the first place.

I think the policy, regardless of how correct it is, is going to be drowned in a fire of tabloid headlines and jokes about “gulags for slags” etc.

I agree that things needed to be done – but this is specific policy just feels like it is the wrong solution.

If we can’t curb teenage pregnancy, then more should be done to support the family and keep them together, not slap a tabloid label on the teenage mum and send her off to the asylum.

Anyhow, with your previous comments on the issue, you just might become the new Minister for Teenage Mums!

How so? The number of teenage single parents has fallen since this government came to power.

The first step is to stop paying them money. The problem is we have heard it all before and its too late, you will be judged on what you have done not what you say you are GOING to do.

“Teenage pregnancy”.

It’s all we hear. Like it’s the be all and end all.

What about the real damage to youngsters? I’m particularly thinking of the agenda which sexualises children.

The government’s ‘Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory’ Group which consists mainly of ’sexual health’ ‘experts’ is constantly promoting sex – and contraception. They want you to think that the more they get youngsters to use their services, including abortion, then the better society becomes. Fewer live births = the only yardstick because it legitimises these fake charities’ tactics, which just so happen to increase their client base of promiscuous young people.

It’s a bigger con than the Nigerian ex-Foreign Minister’s $16 million that’s on its way to you.

Look at this – “teach kids sexual pleasure“.

Stop taking ‘advice’ from these twisted individuals. They are damaging society by sexualising children, which greatly decreases their chances of developing permanent relationships when they are older and so the State intervenes in more and more lives.

Stop hitting the snooze button and just wake up!

Please!

What a remarkably stupid comment, Iain. Where are the facts to support your view that education has done anything other than improve over the past 12 years? Don’t tell me: exams are becoming easier and education is being dumbed down… give me strength.

Guido on his blogs has this issue down to a tee, Gulags for slags.’ It seems that Brown and Labour are stealing this from the BNP manifesto.

Excoriated and rightly so. Why is Labour’s answer always more intervention,more spending, more government?

The outcome for children in care is comparable with that of illegal immigrants. They’re hundreds of times more likely to end up being abused, hundreds of times more likely to end up on the dole. Care doesn’t work. Plain and simple.

Shame it’s a BNP proposal (see Guido)

British Girls for British Re-education Centres.

I’m sure the sisterhood will be pleased (and I’m not being ironic either)….

Tom, surely the proof of the failure of education to stop feckless breeding among the young is the fact that your leader feels it necessary to take the steps announced today. Workhouses. Very ‘progressive’!

Moorland Hunter and William Blake’s Ghost: So mainstream parties, before they adopt any policy, should check to see if the BNP has anything similar, and if they have, immediately reject it, thereby giving the BNP an effective veto on policy? Interesting…

Iain – So, no facts, then?

Shaun – as I said earlier up this thread, there are fewer single mums now than when Labour came to power.

richard – surely, the point of this measure is to have less governmet intereference, because the girl’s (usually a girl – check the statistics) family will bear more of the burden. And who said anything about putting kids in care? Are you sure you’re on the right thread?

“Shaun – as I said earlier up this thread, there are fewer single mums now than when Labour came to power.”

Then why the need for workhouses now if your policy was working? Or is it just a feint to appease the Daily Mail tendency?

‘I told you so’ are such cruel words…

It appears that Douglas Carswell could say the same given that Brown has backed his ‘right to recall MPs’ idea.

http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1025

P.S. Tom, I do like the ‘two fingers’ nature of your post.

Tom: “exams are becoming easier and education is being dumbed down… give me strength”

Ok, let’s assume exams aren’t getting easier. The corollary of that is that people who were educated in the 70s, 80s etc were obviously then less intelligent than today’s children. How else do you explain why you (that is, your generation) did so much worse in exams?

“So, I suggest that there be no council flats and no welfare benefits available to unmarried mothers under the age of 21. Instead they will be placed in ‘mother & baby homes’. Here they will receive academic education as well as parenting classes, plus courses covering all aspects of their social development. ”

As Guido has pointed out – this is apparently from the last BNP party conference.

Funny old world – no ?

Is there such a thing as plagerism in politics ?

http://order-order.com/2009/09/29/exclusive-browns-gulags-for-slags-policy-taken-from-bnp/

Although the incidence of teenage pregnancy has been decreasing the percentage of illegitimate teenage births has steadily increased under the present Government (as have teenage abortions).

“From now on all 16 and 17 year old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.”

What does this actually mean? All parents get support from the taxpayer in the form of child benefit.

However most teenage mums don’t get a key to a council house the moment they drop the wean – many of them tend to stay at home with their own mums.

Presumably such parents will not be forcibly removed from their family home?

So if it is about providing teenage mums who do not have family support with supervised accomodation then yes, great idea.

But why not say that a bit more directly? Or is it the speechwriters trying to appeal to the Daily Mail agenda – gulags for slags indeed.

Iain: “get yourself a list of the biggest dozen or so council or housing association estates in the country, go get the ofsted report for the schools that serve those areas – plenty of facts, they are hardly a state secret.”

And your claim, presumably, is that in every one of those areas, exam results have deteriorated in the last 12 years?

Mark M: “How else do you explain why you (that is, your generation) did so much worse in exams?”

Maybe because teaching has improved and so has investment in education (it’s called fixing the roof while the sun is shining. Look it up).

Shaun Pilkington: “why the need for workhouses now if your policy was working? Or is it just a feint to appease the Daily Mail tendency?”

Fair enough question, and not being privy to the PM’s thinking on the subject, here’s my take on it: the number of teenage parents has been reducing steadily, but took an upturn two years ao, suggesting (to me) that the decrease was less dependent on policy than on economic growth. And even if that reduction rate had continued, we’d still be dealing with the problem a generation from now. I’m too impatient to wait that long. If what the PM announced today is enacted, I would hope to see early results in the next nine to 12 months.

Indy: ” So if it is about providing teenage mums who do not have family support with supervised accomodation then yes, great idea”

I think this interpretation is the right one, but we’ll just have to wait for the detail.

I sense you’re not a very happy person, Iain.

Tom

You did not say anything along the lines of what was announced today. In fact you said ‘This post isn’t about policy, yet.’

But enough of the looking backwards. You know, or at least you should, that what was announced today is a firming up of what happens throughout the country, principally through Supporting Peoples central government grants to councils.

It’s not about putting people in care homes (or gulags) – that’s not what the speech says. It’s about expanding the provision of existing foyer schemes, and where these are not available about ensuring young people (and not pregant teenagers, that’s not what the speech say)both around parenting and keeping viable tenancies.

As such, it makes good sense. So let’s move on.

Tom, one of the key issues facing providers of these types of services, many in the voluntary sector, is the end of ringfencing for Supported People’s monies. In less scrupulous council areas (like the Tory Council in Canterbury) this is being used as an excuse to move funding away from supporting vulnerable people properly.

Would you commit yourself to investigating these abuses, and to lobbying for the re-intorduction of ringfencing, or at any rate some mechanism for ensuring that this laduable new government policy get implemented, and the successes of the Supporting People grants built on properly?

Further, would you challenge the Tories’ proposals for a lovely sounding but hugely iniquitous ‘General Powers of Competence’ legislation, which will allow Troy Councils to get away with cutting all the provision of this type that you now say you are supporting?

The idea of forcing ‘fallen women’ to live in Government run poorhouses (complete with on-site social worker) sounds like a fitting epitath to new Labour.

Yes, and how sucessful will that turn out?

For a lot of single teenage mothers, this might work. For the rest, who are not interested in responsibility (and who get their attitude from their parents), and are not interested in learning good parenting skills, they will be lauging at the government.

Britain is a sick and dying country, in a sick a dying continent. The G8 last week confirmed that.

The credit crunch did not come about by “greedy bankers” it came about my a lazy political class, and a stupid electorate.

Moral stupidity leads to economic malaise. well done on your period in office, you left us insolvent with a ponzi scheme paying govt debt for a short time and owing 100s of billions to the far east (have you told the electorate that fact yet?)

Stewart.

The iron grip that the Flat Earth Society still hold’s on this country is a huge part of the problem of under-age pregnancies, with a ram rod refusal to pursue modern sex education in favour of stuff that these people thought worked as well when we didn’t know any better. Thats without touching on the psycological damage which manefests itself in other forms such as alcoholism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_houses

Also, why on Earth is Gordon promising a referendum on Electoral reform when he’ll just be beaten with the “Labour can’t be trusted to offer referenda, even when it’s in their manifesto” stick over and over again…

Am I getting this right?! We’re going to take any teenage mother receiving child benefit (ie. all of them), seize them and put them in an institution. Presumably called “Brown’s Home for Fallen Women’. Even if they are married, or happily in a relationship. Or are doing perfectly fine raising their child as it is.

I guess this way we can monitor them 24/7 on CCTV and make sure that they raise their child in line with Balls-Harman principles. Probably take their DNA, tag them and stick them on a database, just to be on the safe side. The state always knows best, after all.

If I didn’t know better I’d think this was a BNP policy, not a Labour one. But I guess that’s where we’ve come to now…

Sigh.

I’m almost ashamed to say I used to vote Labour. Quite enthusiastically as well. It makes me so very sad to see what this party has turned into.

“Am I getting this right?! We’re going to take any teenage mother receiving child benefit (ie. all of them), seize them and put them in an institution. Presumably called “Brown’s Home for Fallen Women’. Even if they are married, or happily in a relationship. Or are doing perfectly fine raising their child as it is.”

No. No, you’re not getting this right. Moron.

Tom: Fair enough, I disagree with you but I actually have a better point to make the second time round, and hopefully one on which we can find some agreement (after all, bickering on the internet helps nobody).

Let’s say that the reason exam grades have gone up is because education is better now (this point doesn’t actually matter, but good to start off with some level of agreement), should that not mean that we should have harder exams to stretch the student even further?

After all, if everyone is getting A’s then wouldn’t it be better to really test our exceptionally bright students, to see how good they really are? If the average ability of a child in 2009 is higher than that of a child in the 70s then why measure against the 70s standard?

Hopefully you see my point. If we take my view that exams are too easy then the solution is to make them harder. If we take your view that education standards have gone up, then to get the best out of our students we should make the exams harder. It doesn’t matter which of us is correct, harder exams are a logical step if everyone is getting A’s.

@Tom Harris MP

“No. No, you’re not getting this right. Moron.”

Ooooh, you called me a nasty name. How terribly impressive, Mr Harris. I’m definitely reconsidering my disillusion with Labour now…

I’d have thought “From now on all 16 and 17 year old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes” would seem to suggest exactly that. I’m struggling to see why else he’d have said what he did.

Given your past comments on the matter, I’d have thought that would be exactly the sort of ‘tough action’ you’d support anyway?

Gordon, not content with taking us back to the 1930’s, now wants to take us back to the 1730’s.

All I heard in his speech was spend, spend, spend. Nothing about higher taxes, nothing about cost-cutting. Just more money down the drain to fund a glut of non-jobs and some rewarmed policy announcements that we’ve already heard before.

I see that Guido’s crew have already dubbed them ’slag gulags’

Very droll.

I wouldn’t hold your breath out for the 374 commentators of your last post to come and say sorry though; such are the internets!

A promise that will appeal to a number of voters. Of course, it will not happen until 2011. Failsafe. If this promise, along with a long list of others, is a confidence trick, (already a successful tool documented by one of Labours fake charities whom she funds to lobby back to her), then it is an election winner. Why is it failsafe? Because if Labour lose the next election they don’t have to do it. If they win the next election, they still don’t have to do it, they have a record of breaking promises.

I did say Gordon would not leave his job until he had destroyed the Labour Party.

He’s doing such a good job of it as well.

Tom, first some facts about education:

(from http://wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html)

A quarter of boys and 15 per cent of girls left primary school unable to read and write properly, Government figures show today.

Overall one in five 11-year-old pupils failed to reach the expected level in their national curriculum tests in English.

ONE IN FIVE!

I did some digging. I found an article in the Guardian, by Andrew Adonis , written in 1996, the year of the EEE speech,which to me, gives an astonishing and terrible insight into New Labour thinking on Education, and perhaps helps us to understand why education has gone backwards under New Labour.

By a complete and satisfying coincidence, Adonis wrote in 1996

“One in five of seven year-olds in London primary schools score zero in reading tests”

Of course, he was confident that in reporting this, he was able to place the blame firmly on the failure of 18 years of Tory administration. Not only has Labour totally failed to improve on this, they have ensured that the state system has now extended the timescale of failure by four years!

When the actual topic of young mothers came up, it caused a minor flutter; you were at the centre of it and as I recall wrote and commented upon it in the MSM, but I don’t recall you advocating the setting up of what are essentially workhouses (without work). The above extract is explicit about compulsion and supervision, is it not?

Some have cited GB’s “British Jobs for British Workers” slogan, which of course resonated with certain sections of the electorate, particularly the BNP.

I am not sure who thought it was a bright idea to take a very real problem, which, by the way, you were right to talk about, in an even handed and open way, and turn it into the sort of thing that belongs in a BNP pamphlet.

“No. No, you’re not getting this right. Moron.”

A response like that isn’t exactly inviting is it?

Look, forcing anybody into social care isn’t acceptable – in any society, and how on earth can you say it is?

“Homes” of most varieties have been closed down in the last umpteen years because they’re too expensive, open to abuse, and don’t do anything particularly constructive. Their existence also provided a terrible social stigma that blighted lives.

One of our relatives was born in Brownlow Street in Liverpool – they always made sure we knew it was in the women’s hospital, not the workhouse, because they were so very ashamed of their family’s poor circumstances. They were born just over 80 years ago. No party should even think of returning to those times, and that sort of shame.

There’s meant to be no shame in claiming benefit, not even for married couples. In this country young people can marry at 16 – are you and yours proposing to separate married couples by putting mother and baby into a home, simply because they’re too young to be parents?

@ Madasafish.

everything he does lends credence to my theory that Gordon is a Conservative ’sleeper agent’ activated a few years after becoming chancellor.

No other explanation fits.

Tom:”No. No, you’re not getting this right. Moron.”

Nice to see the skill of reasoned debate hasn’t left the Commons.

I’ve read your original article and agree with you. I’ve written to my local MSP about the subject many times, but never get a reply.

Ms Robinson was very proud of the fact the SNP had succesfully removed vending machines selling chocholate and fizzy drinks out of local schools, but could not see anything wrong at all in continuing to hand out contraceptives like substitute sweets! And it’s no working! VD, as well as pregnancies and abortions are the highest in Europe. And rising, with all the associated costs we (the working tax payers) pay for.

Personally I believe children should not be encouraged to engage in sexual activity whilst they are at school. Honestly, I’m 50 now, and it was far less prevalent when I was at school than it seems to be now!

I get citicised for “taking away freedom” by campaigning against it. Can you explain how a 15 year old with a baby to look after is “freedom?” It’s not. It’s hard work and not much fun at times! We need to get real! How is a kid contracting syphillis at 15 freedom? Or having an abortion with all the deep rooted emotional implications (and, I’m told, guilt) that can occur in later life?

If MPs also think these things are wrong, who exactly is it that’s responsible for allowing the system which clearly is not working to continue? It is a National disgrace.

Thank goodness there are some sensible politicians around.

I was disgusted with what you wrote back then because it just seemed to be a senseless and ultimately meaningless attack on one facet of the urban underclass.

What Brown suggested wasn’t remotely similar. In fact it was rather progressive: he suggested that society should take care of vulnerable young mothers, rather than merely funding their housing.

I thought Mandelson was supposed to be some sort of political savant. Where are the new, eye-catching gimmicks and dogwhistle policies?

Why has he let Brown go on stage with such a grabbag of rubbish, not least a policy that was proposed by the BNP?!

Astounding

Allan – you sound like the kind of dangerous person who is so naive and conditioned to despise anything religious (“Flat Earth Society”) that he’d rather let the State indoctrinate his young children in order to make them dysfunctional later on.

You think prostrating yourself to the State will help you in any way?

Maybe you will have the shame of being the very last person to realise that “modern sex education” doesn’t work in Britain.

Like sensible drinking, à la other places in Europe, hasn’t worked here by extending opening hours.

By the way, there are few people more ‘religious’ than the modern day, out-the-closet atheist, whose attempts at bullying and degrading others’ beliefs really gets on my goat.

I feel better for that rant.

Thanks, Tom.

Thank God for the morning after pill eh Tom? There may be fewer teenage pregnancies, but I bet you there are far more teenage girls having sex thanks to your sex education and the magic morning after pill.

When I was at school in the eighties, very few kids were having sex – now they are all at it. Instead of teaching them how to have sex and not get pregnant – maybe you should be telling them that it is wrong to have sex until you are at least sixteen.

“So, I suggest that there be no council flats and no welfare benefits available to unmarried mothers under the age of 21. Instead they will be placed in ‘mother & baby homes’. Here they will receive academic education as well as parenting classes, plus courses covering all aspects of their social development. The homes will be run by ‘matron’ type figures. The homes should not be ‘institution’ like, but at the same time there will be rules which must be adhered to”

BNP conference motion, as reported by Guido Fawkes today.

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear. What utter losers.

@ Stewart Cowen

Possibly ‘extending opening hours’ is not the most elegant choice of words when describing teen sex…

The right-wing blogs are having a field day with Gordon’s speech.

…….

I know, said Gordon, let’s reintroduce the poor laws.

Bravo, said Mandy, not looking up from googling David Cameron’s number.

I simply had to comment on this:

i have a broad cross section of family from independantly wealthy, through the middle classes in suburbs, to many living off the state on large council (or housing association) estates, in different parts of the country

you know ive been visiting my cousins on one of the largest council estates in the country for the 40 odd years ive been alive, and they now have great grandchildren by the hundred! and i have been and seen first hand the kind of school the kids are subjected to.

I have a similar family background and from my experience, things aren’t nearly so universally bleak as Ian makes out. Many schools do an excellent job in terrible circumstances. I’m a school governor of a primary school in a former mining village. The school was recently rated “Outstanding” by OFSTED. It’s “Value Added” is so high it’s off the scale.

There is at least one block of flats which is solely occupied by young single mothers and their babies locally. I know not what the arrangements are, and discovered this because I asked one of them the way.

I would prefer choices, but compulsion so far as the education is concerned when it is necessary.

It is a sufficiently serious problem that compulsion may be the best way. Better to address it realistically than not at all.

Quietzapple:
“There is at least one block of flats which is solely occupied by young single mothers and their babies locally. I know not what the arrangements are, and discovered this because I asked one of them the way.”

They are all now criminals due to their agreement to watch each other’s children while they are out working/signing on without being certified by OFSTED or whoever.

The issue of teenage mothers ‘gaming’ the system simply suggests the system is wrong. If kids are deliberately getting pregnant to get cash off the government then something has to be done.

However, a more general point is that the 16 year old’s body is hers and hers alone. Should the government really be looking into what a 16 year old gets up to in their own bedroom?

Stewart.

I don’t despise anything religeous, just the po-faced “im right because i have god on my side” attitude. If 8 years of George W Bush should have taught you anything it’s that assuming you have won the argument by bringing religion into the argument makes you look silly.

However, I don’t see any mention of another factor in the sex educaton debate, parental responsibility. Surely we should be bringing the parents of the soon to be parents together to ask why they let this happen. After all, where do we get most of our attitudes from?

Tom,

Re education. Industry and the best Universities are quite clear that there has been an alarming collapse in basic skills. UCL now don’t just offer remedial courses on entry, they have a remedial YEAR.

BTW. In 1968, at ‘A’ level, I got two Bs and a C. And a place at Oxford University.

They wouldn’t even look at me now

My ex, clearing out her late Mum’s house, earlier this year, came across her ‘O’ level papers. Showed them to the “kids” (25 to 34). All said they were far harder than their equivalent GCSEs.

To pretend other than that the education system has been dumbed down is simply to continue to damage it. In America, they call going to college, “going to school”. It is pretty much the same here. You come out with 20k+debt, and no guarantee of a what one once would have called a “degree level” job.

We used to have a really good, effective tailored system.

CFEs – trade and “blue collar”
Polys – professional jobs that did not require full-on academic study
Unis – that did.

We’ve destroyed that, and in doing so have destroyed the economy (why else do we rely on the City?) and I don;t see how we can repair it now.

Also, “orthodox” education is mind-numbingly blinkered. We sent our four kids to Steiner schools, where the simpe aim is “to produce free and responsible adults”. We have no regrets, nor do the children as they reflect on their education with some years behind them in the “real world”.

Oh and by the way, all are working, all self-sufficient; the only one to go to Uni went as a mature student to the Royal Academy of Music at 27.

As for what your mob have done to the system – it is shocking, utterly shocking.

As noted elsewhere, the teenage mums hostels has been BNP policy for a long time. As noted noted elsewhere, the BNP are far LEFT – not RIGHT. E.G They advocate a lot of nationalisation. This is NOT right wing policy.

@ Sergeant Plodder

Lest we forget, the Nazis are generally considered to have been extremely ‘right wing’ yet the very name (national socialist) implies left wing ideology was an essential component of their thinking.

The BNP are no different, with many policies that are considered extreme right, extreme left and all shades between.

Paul

Child minding is a rather important matter. I don’t support carelessness over it, and regulation is entirely reasonable, in the light of experiences with unqualified child minders 25 years ago.

I’d be interested if you can cite any unreasonable prosecutions of the kind you suggest. I suspect that those “caught” are usually pointed in the right direction if that is a reasonable option.

I don’t think it is new that British Law requires that cohabiting couples have mutual responsibilities, nor is it unreasonable.

Why should we pretend that someone claiming to be dependent on the state who claims support from another is not part of a couple?