If not in operation at the present time then at some time in the future the state, which already has access to Rational Choice Theory (RCT), will be tempted to implement it.

The history of Rational Choice Theory can be summarised in this way; it is by no means new to suggest that people act rationally, e.g. Max Weber (1920), but such human actions were viewed as a complex cocktail of both rational and non-rational elements; of traditional or habitual action; of emotional or effectual action; of value-oriented action. Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) and Marcel Mauss (1925) looked at how ‘social exchange’ was embedded in structures of reciprocity and social obligation.

George Homans is said to have pioneered the establishing Rational Choice Theory in sociology in 1961. [1] During the 1960s and 1970s, Blau and then Coleman and Cook extended and enlarged his framework. By 1990 they had developed it into a formal, mathematical model of rational actions.

Basic to Rationality and Social Exchange Theory and all forms of rational choice theory is the assumption that complex social phenomena can be explained in terms of the elementary individual actions of which they are composed.

What distinguishes Rational Choice Theory from other theories is that it denies the existence of any kinds of action other than the purely rational and calculative. Hence, it can be accused of lacking sophistication and adaptability.

Detractors of RCT argue that where social exchanges are recurrent, rather than episodic, it is possible for cooperation to emerge as a rational strategy. They argue the randomness of self-interested rational individuals could not generate a stable social order on an economic basis. For detractor, social order can only be explained through the non-rational but normative element in the individual.[2]

Why should we be concerned about something as abstract as RCT ? 

The answer it that firstly, it is already being used against people at present especially in theUSand theUKand it is capable of extension into other arenas.

Secondly, the key phrase has already been given namely, that “… where social exchanges are recurrent rather than episodic, it is possible for cooperation to emerge as a rational strategy” between antagonists. Where, in our case, the antagonists are the judiciary and fathers it has potentially serious repercussions and what could be more recurrent than episodic than a father applying time and again to a family court to see his child ? This is how imperatives induce blindness.

Social Engineering already reduces men and fathers to Pavlovian responses in matters of child custody. There is no reason why the courts will not – if they have not already unconsciously done so – overtly deploy this tool to ensure their power remains unchallenged by fathers.

In addition, fathers uniquely endure peer pressure and societal expectations. The urge to “do the right thing” circumscribes men’s ability to forge new solutions. Their pride, their dignity, fetters them as slaves and they are little more than hostages to fortune.

Rational Choice Theory is logical and assumes rational decisions are made by individuals to random socials inputs. The elementary unit of social life is the individual human action. Even an apparently irrational decision can spring from a fundamentally sound choice.

It assumes that people are motivated by money and by gratification in a generally rational/logical manner. This allows for a predictive, model(s) of human behaviour to be constructed. Around 80% of the population, if not more, are presumed to be rational / logical thus when RCT is used it can be rated as effective.

Economics, where RCT is most common, has long appeared the most successful of the social sciences. The accuracy of its predictive abilities, vis-à-vis human nature, has been the envy of those in other Social Sciences.

Not surprisingly, other social scientists (sociologists, criminologists and political scientists) have adopted Rational Choice principles hoping to improve accuracy and predictiveness in their own field.

Today, RCT is already in use by Britain’s Home Office (Ministry of Justice). It is the foundation on which the Home Office’s ‘Situational Crime Prevention’ (SCP) strategy rests.[3]  This strategy seeks to guide society in a preferred direction utilising the tools RCT provides.

But whereas the original Rational Choice was economic in nature and assumed people were motivated by money and by the possibility of making a profit, this is not true in other areas of life.

Variations and substitutions have therefore had to be made to the original theory. Instead of profit the model contains the idea that all ‘actions’ are fundamentally ‘rational’ in character; that there is ‘social exchange’; and that people calculate the likely advantages and disadvantages they might experience (i.e. costs and benefits). [4] 

For the Home Office, a rational choice perspective assumes that offenders seek to benefit in some way from their offending behaviour. Thus the Home Office was able to modify the original concept and determine that:-

1. offending behaviour involves decision making (be it rational or irrational)
2. decisions invite costs and benefits in a criminal’s mind when deciding to commit a crime
3. that these decision are constrained, i.e. by time, cognitive ability and information etc and therefore the rationality of the offender will be ‘limited’ rather than the ‘normal’ gamut
4. the costs and benefits for the criminal to avoid repeat offending.
5. choice selection for an offender is event (crime) specific and therefore policies must be specific not  generalised

If economic action involves an exchange of goods and services, then social interaction (‘social exchange’) involves the exchange of approval and certain other valued behaviours.

If crime is the result of active decision making in response to specific situations and/or events counter measures must be equally specific.

This brings us directly to the brooding confrontation between the state exercising its power and the citizen’s rights or more precisely, between the Judiciary and the dispossessed divorced fathers.

Fathers, when dealing with divorce and custody, frequently battle alone before accepting defeat by the system. Occasionally they will be near the final stages when they realise that they are not alone against the system but one man among millions of others.

But by then it is too late, they have been sucked into the system and have become conditioned, like Pavlovian dogs, to follow procedures and humbly apply to court for access/visitation rights.

In the beginning a father is sure the evidence alone will be enough to win the day. When this does not happen they remain supremely confident that at the next hearing in a few weeks time any reasonable judge after viewing the data will find in their favour. For months they remain optimistic, but when the next court hearings come and go and do not bring that definite breakthrough doubts enter their thoughts.

Only many months, sometimes years, later do they realise the futility of the exercise and know that to ask for more time with their child is a forlorn hope.

To fathers these events and reactions are normal. To a Behavioralist the pattern is to be expected. But to RCT there is room to exploit the carrot and sick, the reward and punishment entailed.

The granting of visitation rights diminishes over time and repeated re-applications to courts for restoration of rights only diminishes the amount of time a father spends with his child.

Arguably, this is a direct result of courts not wishing to be seen as impotent in the face of belligerent mothers who are actually setting the agenda and the amount of time they are prepared to concede.

But why are the courts so intransigent, so insensitive ?

• are they ignorant know no better ?
• are they being deliberately difficult ?
• are they sexually/gender biased against fathers ?
• are they unaware that their actions ensure fathers remain ‘engaged’ in their game ?

But they could, of course, be perfectly well aware of Rational Choice Theory and be simply applying it to make absolutely certain that fathers remain ‘engaged’ in the their game.

If this is the case, one of the antidotes is for fathers to become ‘disengaged’; to ignore courts and court orders and/or to publicly disown their children before the presiding judge. This is the essential element of the Retreat Strategy advocated by Ivor Catt. It takes great courage to be prepared to take that stance and defy threats made by a court. Few have actually adopted it but when they have, they been successful.

The reason for this must be the father’s promise to the judge never to see write or communicate in any way with his children again (he becomes dead to them). This neutralises the mother’s challenges to the court’s authority and places the court on the horns of a dilemma.

Another antidote is ‘Collective action’. All RCT based policy is premised on the actions and rationality of the individual. ‘Collective action’ is known to present problems for RCT.

Planning for multiples of isolated individuals acting in concert becomes unpredictable.

Planning for multiples of united individuals acting irrationally but in concert becomes even more unpredictable.

But why should we busy ourselves looking for solutions and antidotes. Wouldn’t the best solution be to urge it to implode and hasten the structure to reach that point ?

At a time when there are hints of a standardised divorce regime across the EU in the future, we should be concerned at the ramifications for other social policy matters.

To work equitably such a system will have to be dumbed down. Those nations with high thresholds required before a divorce is granted will have to acquiesce in the face of those nations with lower standards, for it is within human nature – and the EU mandate – not to impose higher tariffs or barriers but lower them.

The European Commission as able to write in 2003 that with regards “Changing family policy” the EU is no official definition of the family. [5] Further it discovered that:

• “ …. the family does not figure among the common objectives of the European treaties …”
• “The European Union has no competence in the field of “family policies”, which come under nationalremit and aredefined and implemented exclusively by the Member States.”

Further extracts can be found at Annex A below.

If divorce is standardised across the EU, will child custody follow in its wake ?  What shape and form will such a regime take ? What will be its sting, i.e. the price fathers have to pay ?

Why should we believe that this and more might very well happen ?

The reason is that the EU is very much a case of ‘work-in-progress’. It is not yet complete.

Yet at its heart can be found radical feminists and lobby groups sympathetic to their cause. What have men and fathers to offer by way of competition and possible allies ?

The answer is almost a foregone conclusion; nothing and very little.

The EU is still evolving from an economic union to a political and thence to judicially one. It will surely follow in the footsteps of the great political and economic blocs.

Pax Romana was followed by Pax Britannica (1815), which was superseded by Pax Americana (1945).

If Europe is to fulfil its destiny as many ambitious politicians seem to want, Pax Europa is inevitable.

If that day does dawn what will it mean for men and fathers if we are not a strong voice at the heart of a distant government ?

END

Summer of Violence – The sudden eruption of violence in Norway and then a few weeks later in Britain, seriously questions the foundation upon which we all presumed our lives were based. Examining the background throws up more questions than answers. Indeed, the firm foundation from where we think we can pose our questions may itself be illusory – slowly crumbling as we speak. How could a ‘civilised society’ become that brittle and prove that fragile ? Has Europe become a “conundrum wrapped inside an enigma” ?  We ignore the possibility at our peril.

Anders Breivik is the self-confessed mass murderer who shot dead dozens of Norwegian young people this summer. On the same day (July 22^nd 2011) he set off a bomb in Oslo city centre killing yet more innocents. In so doing he triggered a chain reaction where his actions were disposed of by the Press as simply the twisted logic of a right wing fanatic.

 Right: Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, aged 32.

He is alleged to have political links with the far right and various ‘fringe’ groups and the media has tried to discount his import by variously displayed him in uniform and holding weaponry.

Will we ever fathom his puzzling behaviour ? Do we really want to fathom the riddle content to dustbin the issue ?  Is it safer for us to remain happily cocooned in a state of ignorant bliss ? Will it be easier to write him off simply as a psychopath ? There are many strands to these events and they may take us to dark places.

People who do not conform to the limited range of stereotypes acceptable to mainstream society are usually branded as evil masterminds or dangerous revolutionaries. This is usually how we ‘deal’ with a ‘slaughter of the innocent’.

However, this does not mean that single individuals cannot change the world in a twinkling – and we have only to lookatBin Laden (Sept 2001) and Admiral Yamamoto (Dec 1941) as exemplars in living memory. We should accord Breivik the same serious consideration we apply, for example, to Marx, Lenin or Islamist terrorists.

The August 2011 riots in London were allegedly triggered by a neighbourhood’s response to the police shooting dead a suspect. A large crowd then gathered outside the local police station demanding an immediate explanation. They all presumed him to be totally innocent but in fact he was carrying a firearm. In a ‘white’ area this would not be the expected response of the neighbourhood’ and the burning down of property would not have resulted. The following weeks saw ‘gangs’ blamed for the looting but as cases have processed through the courts this has become increasingly less likely. The British police have said little about the riots; the retaliatory nature of the arson would seem to indicate that the neighbourhood in north London did not feel part of society in general

The Norwegian police have not given the usual access to the Press who are thus unable to reveal anything from their interviews with the accused and coverage has been unusually sporadic as a consequence. The sub-text is that he has nothing important to say and the world should view him as either certifiably mad (insane) or a maverick ‘loner.’

What is agreed by sources is that he left a 1,500-page manifesto highly critical of Norway’s ruling Labour party for supporting Muslim immigration and enforcing “multi-culturalism”. Across Europe the fallacies and shortcomings of multi-culturalism are slowly being acknowledged by political leaders. Breivik, while confessing to the murders and taking police through his actions, denies committing any crime (criminal act) and has allegedly not expressed any remorse for his actions. This is somewhat reminiscent of captured IRA terrorists who always claimed in court that their murders were political acts and not criminal. Presumably, a political statement against his nation’s multi-cultural policy.

To understand the emptiness of the words ‘political act’ and the insincerity of the excuse for enacting terror, a reading of Mr. Tom Travers’ letter – a magistrate living in Ulster – to the entire legal and political establishment living in the South, i.e. Republican Ireland, is essential. [1]

When men commit murder, society and opinion shapers castigate them and label them as if rogue elephants. But when an equally lethal woman wreaks havoc murdering, say, children or families members, suddenly she is a human being with deep problem in need of help which we, as a society, must immediately address.

Buying into the dream

The vision of Europe’s ‘political pioneers’ was one of a future where peace and harmony would prevail; where differences that had caused wars were set aside; where the indigenous people’s ‘standards of living’ would not just grow but they would be economically secure against shortages. So much greater would be the disposable income and wealth of a federated Europe that the riches could be shared with migrants who would also contribute to the growing wealth.

The theory borrows heavily from the American model of integration and should have worked (ref. ‘the American Dream’). America’s previous deviations from the smooth path of integration have been occasioned mainly by Blacks in urban ghettoes and their ‘segregated’ status until the 1960s (ref.Los Angeles (Watts) Riots of 1965 and 1992).

The vulnerability which White, English speaking America now faces is that it is, or will soon be, outnumbered (projected for 2050), by Spanish speaking Hispanics who, as a group appear to make little attempt to learn the language (something of a highly noticeable trait among Asian females in the UK). Society is always in flux  but will the Hispanics dimension provide a prescient dichotomy that will emerge in differing forms as a cultural divide ?

Australia, once had so smooth an immigration policy that it as something of a backwater. However, that has all changed in recent years. Once a nation made up entirely of immigrants, “the most sensitive public issue” in the Aug 2010 General Election was immigration.

In a country big enough to be categoried a continent, Australia is trying to control the 6,300 asylum seekers that reached Australia in 130 boats in 2010 (thought to be highest number in 20 years), with the highest number coming from Afghanistan (2,700) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12005802). Approved immigration and quotas would appear acceptable to Australians but not the illegal entry attempts (asylum seekers).

In Aug 2011 the Australian government found itself locked in a battle with the courts over its right to negotiate a swap of refugees with Malaysia. Under the deal Australia would have sent 800 asylum seekers toMalaysia and would have received 4,000 refugees in return over four years

What we are not being told is that immigration numbers is a concern across all of Europe and Scandinavia. We have only a casual intimation in reports that this lies at the heart of Anders Breivik’s decision to act. Those countries that have tried to enact deportations have received ‘warning letters’ from the UN, e.g. China, Malaysia, France, Canada, Iraq to name but a few.

To date few political parties have publicly considered the implications of a discontented population – and only a few bold politicians have voiced the publics concerns. Yet viewed in the round the past decade has seen mounting discontent in the form of riots, arson and looting usually by minorities against the indigenous population

Where was this photo (right) taken ?

Was it in London during the Aug 2011 riots ?

No, it was taken in Denmark during the riots there in Feb  2008.

A quick resumee of riots, arson, and ethnically related civil unrest over the past ten years is unsettling.

If we begin at the year of the twin towers destruction in 2001, outbreaks of civil disorder of varying ferocity have been a yearly event in almost all western European and Scandinavian countries. The table below shows only those civil disorder outbreaks that are directly connected with immigration or Muslim issues.

Belgium, the very capital of a federated Europe united under one flag and currency, is not only disintegrating culturally with Islamic riots nearly every year but falling apart as French and Walloon speakers drift further apart. Racial conflict, once thought to be confined to the unique circumstances of America’s birth pangs and infant years have now burst upon the smug Europeans.

Hugely enjoyable films such as ‘East is East’ and ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ open a humorous window into the incongruities of inter-racial relations with their sometimes comedic and shambolic frictions. However, they both have a darker subterranean depth to them. For all the supposed blending-in and assimilation the main protagonists remain stubbornly wedded to the old life in the old country.

Sweden & Norway

If Norway came as a shock – the ethnic riots and later the terror of Anders Breivik – then so too must the events unfolding in Sweden have been met with astonishment.

Sweden’s population and population changes has seen it increase from just under 9 million (8,975,670) in 2003 to  9½  million (9,417,000)  in 2010. The number of immigrants rose from 63,795 in 2003 to 99,000 in 2010. Only about half that number, as the diagram below shows, left Sweden, i.e. emigrated  (http://www.scb.se/Pages/PressRelease____305658.aspx ).

Nearly one in five of the population has a foreign background and it is estimated that 15% of Sweden’s population is born abroad.

Left: Sweden – Immigration and emigration 1900 – 2010

In Noway the comparable figure is only 1 in 8. Immigrants and those born in Norway to immigrant parents constitute 600,900 persons or 12.2% of  Norway’s total population (in Britain 1 in 12 of the population were born overseas). Aanalysis by geographicla region reveals the composition to be  287,000 who have a European background; 210 000 who have an Asian background; 74,000 from Africa; 19,000 from Latin-America and 11,000 from North America and Oceania.

Of all Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents 54% had an Asian background (see Enoch Powell and multi-culturalism below). Statistics Norway notes – and so should politicians – that “17% are 20 years or older”.  [2] The converse is that over 80% are aged under 20 and this proportion (and social volatility) can only be expected to grow.

• “. . . Immigration reached record levels last year for the Northern European nation of Norway. In 2006, Statistics Norway (SSB) found that 45,800 immigrants arrived in the country and 22,100 people left, for a total net immigration of 23,700 people – 30% higher than 2005.“ [3]

Between 1990 and 2009, a total of 420,000 non-Nordic citizens immigrated to Norway and were granted residence there.

• 26% came as refugees
• 26% were labour immigrants
• 11% were granted residence in order to undertake education.
• 23% came to Norway for family reunification (someone already living in Norway
• 16% were granted residence because they had established a family.

Unfortunately this coincided with surges in rape and sex offences in both Sweden and Norway. By 2005 Norwegian headlines heralded this new concern – see “Norway, Rape  and Multi-culturalism”  (http://falseallegations.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/16/ and http://falseallegations.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/18/.

In 2009 Swedish headlines followed suit reporting that; “Sweden having the highest incidence of reported rapes in Europe – twice as many as “runner up” the UK” [4]

• “In Sweden, 46 incidents of rape are reported per 100,000 residents. This figure is double as many as in the UK which reports 23 cases, and four times that of the other Nordic countries, Germany and France.“

Over 5,000 rapes are reported in Swedenper annum while reports in other countries of a comparable size amounted to only a few hundred.
A report by the EU-funded Daphne II organisation revealed that “resident aliens” from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia made up the largest number of rapists (see also http://falseallegations.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/28/).

The Swedish media is trying to puzzle out why, after all the state’s hospitality in depth and welcoming programmes, these offences should be related to one ethnic minority. At the same time it is trying to grapple with how it should understand them.

“Why are they rioting ?” is the question posed – as if there were a rational answer to a secular, non-religious Sweden. The conundrum of “Why is this happening” has brought Swedes to the point where a research project has been launched to find out why young men burn cars.  Since answers will only be available in about three years, the Swedish media is continuing to investigate on their own.

We can speculate thatit will come down to personal ‘investment’ in society and personal ‘identification’ with it. We can also speculate that the analysis and model that will apply to ‘westerners’ will be straightforward and easy to implement. The analysis and model for the Asian (or Muslim) mind, we suspect, will be totally different.

The concept of ‘nationhood’  is not such a predetermined given among those from North Africa, parts of Asia, and the Islamic world in general. Muslims readily identify firstly as a religious group, who are a part of the world-wide Muslim community (Ummah) and apart from the rest of the world (it can be seen as a self-imposed isolation).

The Ummah is the greatleveller; the common denominator which allows all Muslims to refer to each other as ‘brother.’ For more on the problems posed by culture, tribal rivalry and religion see “An outline of the immigration pattern of the Pakistani community in Britain” http://www.hweb.org.uk/content/view/26/4/ .This source give an expression to how some Pakistanis see themselves and their non-participatory role in mainstreamBritain:

• “Many of the early Pakistani migrants toBritainhave been the most reluctant toattach a British identity to themselves. The main reason for thisattitude stems from their history with colonialBritain, whereattaching a British identity would ultimately mean accepting to be subjects of the British.”
• “With the effects of globalisation, Pakistani’s are also worried about losing their traditions, customs and values and hence hold onto the security of their close knit society with a hesitance in accepting anything ‘British’ “ – Jacobson, 1997, 185.

Greece and Turkey

All of this friction with the indigenous population has been undertaken by Muslims originating from various countries with young Turkish and Moroccan immigrants figuring highly in many of them.

None of this has appeared in theUK’s mainstream news media and it goes a long way to explaining the reluctance of several central European countries, e.g.France and Germany, to Turkey’s bid to accession to EU membership.  The British government appears to have naively seen this as ‘unreasonable’ by their European neighbours. As a result the British people have also been puzzled by implacable hostility to Turkey’s membership.

Left:  Rome - Muslim mobs roam the streets [allegedly] hunting for Peruvians and Ecuadorians.[5]

Austria and Luxembourg stand out as having no reported riots listed over the past 5 years and in the case for Greece though it has had far more riots in each year than any other country they have either been politically based or economically inspired, e.g. its huge debt and the terms of the IMF loans.

However, in saying that Greece now accounts for 90% of all detected illegal immigration into the EU. Some years ago it stood at 75%. Greece has 36% unemployment among the young and the invasion as they see it of immigrant using the Turkish border adds fuel to the social unrest. Official statistics put the number of immigrants at 15% of the population but many Greeks themselves see it as far higher, circa 40%. So while the demonstrators may campaign on economic, employment and debt issues, immigration is the strong but unspoken ‘undercurrent.’

Enoch Powell and multi-culturalism

Multi-culturalism was “the Left’s” solution to rising tensions brought about by growing immigration numbers and the increased social dislocation it produced.

It was a regime adopted by all socialist inclined political parties acrossEurope and was seen as a panacea and the antidote by the ruling cliques to what they saw as the very unreasonable attitude adopted by the far less well educated about the perceived threat posed by immigration. By definition, the ruling cliques did not live among these less well educated / working class. The situation looked far rosier in the Surrey commuter belt than it did in Birmingham or Leeds.

In Britain the rising tensions brought about by growing immigration numbers was first felt in the 1950s and 1960s when thousands of West Indians (Windies) were encouraged to settle in the UK to meet a labour force shortage. [6] 

• “Between 1948 and 1970 nearly half a million people [½ m] left their homes in the West Indies to live in Britain” – http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson11.htm

These immigrants went not to leafy Surrey or Sussex but to the bleak industrial areas of the Midlands and the North.

From Pakistan alone 50,0000 people entered Britain in the 18 months before the 1962 Immigration Act came into force compared with the 17,000 who entered between 1955 and 1960. [7]

The Pakistani population in Britain has grown from about 10,000 in 1951 to roughly 1.2 million today (circa 2010)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pakistanis.Pakistan’s government estimates there are over 7 million Pakistanis living overseas, the majority in the EU (2.2m) and North America.

And from the other part of the Indian sub-continent more than 60,000 Indians (mostly Hindus) arrived before 1955. Indians began arriving in the UK in large numbers shortly after their country gained independence in 1947. The flow of Indian immigrants peaked between 1965 and 1972 inflated byUganda’s sudden decision in Aug 1972 to expel 50,000.India and other countries accepted 20,000 and 30,000 Ugandan Asians were accepted by the UK.

The 1960s saw a “balance of payments crisis” in Britain with the IMF called in to assist. The amounts were trivial by today’s standards. All but essential foreign exchange was banned and the amount an individual could take out of the country was limited to £50 Sterling.

By contrast, the 21st century has seen rremittances sent by Pakistanis living in Europe increase from $US 74.5 million in 2003–2004 to $US 247.6 million in 2008–2009. [8]

It was the intellectual and academic Enoch Powell MP who stated the obvious in 1969. As a politician he paid the highest price and was chased out of office and polite circles. But viewed more than 40 years later his opposition to multi-culturalism and whatit would bring upon the indigenous peoples has been proven right. Drawing parallels with other civilisations he quoted from Virgil’s ‘Aeneid:’ [9]

• “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

A full reading of his Birmingham speech predicts many of the ills that social planners did not plan for but should have been able to envisage when a happily homogenous majority is elbowed into a seemingly second class role.

The rise and rise in immigration was obvious to the British public but politicians of all parties as if all were signed up to a conspiracy refused to discuss the matter and roundly condemned the BNP for raising it as a election issue.

Above: “Focus on People and Migration: 2005” UK. Source: ONS.

The table above shows immigration as a percentage of the population and the number of immigrants. The maroon coloured columns represent the number of total foreign-born persons in theUK population (in thousands). The trend line shows the percentage of the total population that immigrants represent, i.e. around 4% in 1951 but over 8% in 2001.

Until 2001 the trend line had always been less than or equal to the total numbers (i.e. the columns). It divergence after 2001 is either the fulfillment of part of Powell’s prediction – a second and third generation out-reproducing the indigenous population, or greater immifration.

Holding up a mirror to the EU

Did Anders Breivik look around Europeand conclude thatto mistrust government policy statements was the only feasible option ? We don’t know if he did or whether in doing so he was right. But governments deliberately misleading the public is nothing new or rare as the revelations by Julian Assange attest (ref. WikiLeaks, 2010).

Government statistics in the US and Britain divide their population into racial groups and number them as part of the population – though ‘discovery’ can take some effort in the case of the UK. The main categories used are White, Black and Asian with sub-groups within each.

Scandinavian statistics, Swedish, Norwegian, Canadian and Dutch prefer not to do this. Rather they only politely list immigrants by the country they have left and one has to guess their racial or religious make-up.

The result is the table seen here (left). From it we can discern falling birth rates among those of Nordic origins and soaring rates among Asia and Turkey (Muslims ?) and Eastern Europeans (Catholic and Orthodox ?).  Not only are Norwegians ‘out-birthed’ but they are a minoirty in mortality figures in their own country with only 414 deaths recorded out of a total of 1,537.

Enquires made to Sweden’s and Norway’s official statistical bodies reveal that they do not collect data of an immigrant’s religion, i.e. Muslim:

• “Statistics Norway does not register individuals by religion or membership in life stance communities. Therefore, we do not know who or how many persons in Norway are Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics, etc”

The same pattern of censored data appears atStatistics Netherlands.  They state they ‘do not have the figures for the number of deportations’ despite deportations being a political hot button for 5 years.

We tend to forget that there are Christian communities in both India and Pakistan (not  forgetting Anglo-Indians), and in the case of Egypt the Christians have been there longer than Muslims yet they and their churches regularly come under attack.[10]

Christians are banned from certain area of Egyptian life – not unlike apartheid or Jews who were barred from holding office in Germany in the 1930’s. A ‘caste’ system has emerged where Christians do unclean jobs. In May 2009 the government passed a law to slaughter all pigs inEgypt– pigs owned exclusively by the Coptic Christian minority (10%) and were used to help “process” all of Cairo’s waste and earn a living. Since the tensions of 2009 every year has seen churches attacked or burnt down by Muslim mobs.[11]

The “Arab Spring” has thus been unkind to Christians.

 Playing a blinder

When playing any sport someone who perform with a lot of skill, dexterity and as a result successfully trounces the opposition is said to be playing a blinder. Politicians have over the past 40 years taken this to new heights in the field of immigration and its public debate.

We are only now beginning to learn of the deliberate policy of misinformation regarding immigration into Britain and one suspects it is a pattern repeated all over Europe.

The Telegraph (23rd Oct 2009) carried the headline; “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser.” This astounding confession from within the bowels of Whitehall went on to explain how the Labour government knowingly:

•  “ . ..  threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a “truly multicultural” country.” [12]

Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, and ministers Jack Straw and David Blunkett, relates how the huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity” (diversity is the acceptable term for ethnic minoirities). Not content with the natural evolution Labour chose to accelerate it.

Judged against what Britain can produce these politicians measure up as intellectual pygmies. What possessed these little men with their shallow minds to reveal to the world that they are nothing more than political dwarfs ?

The government decision in 2000 to secretly impose mass immigration on the working class (and thereby suppress wages) was masked by a spurious public debate concentrating on the supposed economic benefits to the nation and the need for more migrants to bring even more prosperity.

Information supplied by our members and staff inside the Immigration Control Office to Michael Howard MP, then leader of the Conservative Party, enabled his to take the government to task in 2004 – 05 over its misleading “official figures”. Andrew Neather, explained:

• “The “deliberate policy”, from late 2000 until “at least February last year” [2008], when the new points based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration.”
• “Some 2.3 million migrants have been added to the population since then, according to Whitehall estimates quietly slipped out last month.”

Critics of immigration policy say the revelations show a “conspiracy” within Government to impose mass immigration for “cynical” political reasons. There has always been a suspicion of a link between the Labour Party and immigrants with Labour gaining most from immigrant votes in old industrial heartlands. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the think tank Migrationwatch, said:

• “Now at least the truth is out, and it’s dynamite.
• “Many have long suspected that mass immigration under Labour was not just a cock up but also a conspiracy. They were right.
• “It is the first beam of truth that has officially been shone on the immigration issue in Britain.”

Holland

The Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was perhaps the first to publicly call for a curb on immigration in 2002. He was deliberately murdered by, of all things, an “animal rights activist” (Volkert van der Graaf) on 6 May 2002.

Since then the return of failed asylum seekers has climbed the agenda and the expression “Normen en waarden” (i.e. norms and values) has become a catchphrase in the country.

The Dutch people ,traditionally very tolerant, have expressed increasing unease with sharing their homeland with foreigners who they say do not subscribe to Dutch values. [13] The Netherlands is not alone in questioning the merits of multi-culturalism and on-going immigration.

Plans were drawn up 5 years ago to deport (expel) 26,000 failed asylum seekers. At the time this was thought to represent one of the largest deportations in modern European history. In the event the ECHR intervened and its ruling means all EU governments find their deportation plans neutralised.

The sheer size of immigration numbers across Europe and their very continuation over many years hints of an industry operating in a grey economy. This industry may provide the logistics, funding and the documentation required. It may also provide the legal mechanism to exploit loopholes and thwart control and deportations.

Somalian refugee – and a former Muslim – Ayaan Hirsi Ali caused a furore when she agreed with Pim Fortuyn, that Islam was a ‘backward religion’ (Jan 2003).

Right: The V.V.D. party candidate,  Ayaan Hirsi Alis

Theodoor Van Gogh, who worked with the Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was shot dead by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch Moroccan Muslim in Nov 2004. [14]  The fact that she now goes everywhere with a bodyguard demonstrates that ordinary Muslims haven’t grasped the concept of free speech. Muslims are not allowed to change their religion – Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now an atheist – and to exercise freedom of thought can be heretical and not tolerated by Islamists. 

Asked why the V.V.D. had shifted more to the right she replied:

• “It depends on how we define right. They say we really have to change integration policy and this time they mean it.

Britain was still not up to speed with the shifting sands when Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party who had been invited to a meeting in Britain by a parliamentarian was refused entry and deported back to the Netherlands in Feb 2009. (He was later allowed to enter the UK).

Germany & Austria

Germany unlike many EU countries began its immigration history (wisely, many would say) with temporary status “guest workers” for Turkish migrant workers. But migrants do not come cheaply. They put a variety of strains on a nation’s infrastructure, e.g. education, health, transport, housing etc, as China is now finding out and which have been fully discussed in Britain with the recent arrival of hundreds of thousands from Eastern Europe.

German and Austrian governments are concerned that the aging population’s pension rights will not be properly funded by contributions from a smaller younger work force. Some experts, as of March 2011, predict that there will be a labour shortage in the coming years which is a cue for allowing more immigration fromEastern Europe. (An estimated 350,000 people of Turkish origin live in Austria).

The same arguments which were used in Britain in 2004 about an aging populations and a future pension fund shortfall (ref. Adair Turner) appear to have been used in Germany and Austria. However, this ignores the cyclical nature of births (estimated to rise after 2030) and the ability of government policy to directly affect family size.

Britain, unlike most western EU countries, had a very healthy national pensions fund (NIF) at the end of the 1990s which has only grown in the following decade. [15] Tony Lynes of the National Pensioners Convention predicted in 2004 that by March 2006 the NIF closing balance would be £24.5 billion ‘above the  recommended level’ and he expected it to rise to over £60 billion by 2010. In other words, about £48 billion above the recommended level (see Table above).

Adair Turner’s proposals for individuals to funds their own private pension involved yearly rates of saving that would have significantly dragged down living standards and required such huge capital amounts that they were totally impractical for the middle and working class.

The predictions of unfunded state pensions disregards the increased wage drift and increased contributions (based on a percentage of earned income) from a future smaller but economically more active and better paid work force. [16] Importing unskilled labour would only defer the switch to greater automation, higher productivity and higher wages.

Overlooked too in the conclusions of Adairs’  2004 report is the price, in benefit entitlements, the present economy is having to pay during an economic recession for migrant workers who have not ‘banked’ enough credits into the system.

Eastern Europe

In 2004 the UK government predicted 13,000 workers a year would arrive looking for work from the new EU member countries (most notably Poland), but the actual figure for registered workers was about 329,000 in just 18 months.

Only 2 or 3 countries of the old EU e.g. Sweden, UK, agreed to open their borders for migrant workers from the new accession countries.

 Left: Adult Polish employed in UK between 2003 – 2010.

By 2006 British minister were conceding that about 600,000 people had come to work in theUK from the eight nations which joined the European Union in 2004. None were illegal immigrants or asylum seekers (two categories often confused with migrant workers).

All of the 600,000 had correctly applied for and received documentation to work in the UK. Over half (62%) were Polish; with 82% were aged between 18 and 34, with 56% of all migrants working in factories.

Maintaining an equilibrium

Arguably the only thing tha thas prevented social eruptions prior to those witnessed in Aug 2011 was the off-setting effects of in-flow and out-flows. For instance, figures for 2004 show the overall migration number was made up of 359,000 people leaving the UK with 582,000 settling in the UK (these figures do not include illegal immigrants), producing a net gain of only 223,000 pa.

What is different in the past 2 years is the slump in migration, i.e. British and EU citizens leaving the UK. This fell to 368,000 in 2009 compared with 427,000 in 2008. An estimated 140,000 British citizens emigrated in 2009, the lowest number since 1999 and down from 173,000 in 2008 (see also Fig 1.8, below).
However, an estimated 590,000 people arrived to live in the UK in 2008 and a further 567,000 in 2009. A gain of 1 million in 2 years.

Once the origins of the immigration figures in to the UK are examined one immediately becomes worried as to the impossibility of their accuracy.

It would appear that they are mainly or partially based, according to ONS, on the International Passenger Survey, or IPS. Asylum seekers & their dependants not identified by the IPS.

The IPS is nothing more than a sample survey of people arriving in and / or departing the UK’s main airports and sea routes including the Channel Tunnel. Why Britain’s ONS should use this measure which relies on the total honesty of the respondee is unclear. [18]

An alternative to the IPS regime is the Long-term International Migration or LTIM. The latter is more complete and comprehensive, taking into account, for example, asylum seekers. The table above shows the figures from both measures with Net Flows showing striking discrepanies.

Asylum seekers

Foreign born individual who do not apply for a visa and/or work permits – and are thus not immigrants – fall into the Asylum or illegal categories. By definition the number of illegal entrants to the UK is unknown. Cumulatively it might be an additional 1 million – or far more if one includes the numbers given ‘amnesty’ from deportation by the various administrations , eg 1974, 1993, 1999 and 2008).  [19] In the case of Britain the annual cost of managing the asylum system in 2004 exceeded £2bn.

In 2002, there were more than 111,000 asylum applications to Britain– more than double the number in France. By 2004 Downing Street was claiming that people claiming refuge in Britain tumbled in 2003 by almost 35,000. [20] At the time ministers were hoping the 41% fall would lessen discontent over the politically charged issue of immigration of workers from Eastern Europe due on 1st May after the EU expansion.

However, as stated earlier, the expected arrival of a few tens of thousands from Eastern Europe turned out to be hundreds of thousands.

Above: Asylum applications  Source: Statistics Netherlands http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/veiligheid-recht/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2011/2011-3317-wm.htm

Asylum applications submitted in the Netherlands last year (2010) totalled 13,300 (see graph). This was a decline of 11% over 2009. More than 50% of asylum seekers were from Muslim countries, most notably Somalia and Iran.

France received 38,590 applications for asylum in 2000. By 2009, the highest number of applicants were registered in France (47,600 applicants) followed by Germany (31,800), the United Kingdom (30,300), Sweden (24,200), Belgium (21,600), Italy (17,500), the Netherlands (16,100), Greece (15,900) Austria( 15,800), Italy (17,670), Norway (17,140) and Switzerland (15,900). [21]

An ‘asylum seeker’ is defined as a person who flees their country of origin to escape persecution of his /her religious or political beliefs. This was the original intention of asylum laws. Later, in 1967, escaping “conflict” was added to UN Convention on refugees. [22]

In the 19^th century liberal Britain was seen as the natural haven for overseas anarchists / agitators. Karl Marx, Lenin and many others found refuge in the UK. Only after ‘The Siege of Sidney Street (Jan 1911), together with a few other public outrages was political asylum brought under firmer control.[23]

A variety of countries were prompted by both internal and external influences to enact restriction on immigration. Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was followed by Britain’s Aliens Act in 1914 and the US in 1917.

In recent years a new category of asylum seeker has emerged – that of ‘economic’ asylum seeker. This is broadly defined as someone who leaves their country purely to have a better quality life. Economic asylum seekers do not face any of the personal danger endued by political asylum seeker. Personified by the Vietnamese “boat people” of the 1970s and Cubans fleeing to Florida their journeys are not without personal hazard.

Given that there is much confusion in the media and in public debate generally about 1. asylum seekers, 2. refugees and 3. economic migrants, the following definitions from Migrationwatch may assist: [24]

• “Asylum seeker” means a person who has applied for asylum under the 1951 Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees.
• “Refugee” in this context means an asylum seeker whose application has been successful. In its broader context it means a person fleeing e.g. civil war or natural disaster but not necessarily fearing persecution as defined by the 1951 Refugee Convention, e.g.Hungaryafter the crushing of the 1956 uprising.
• “Economic migrant” means a person who has left his own country and seeks by lawful or unlawful means to find employment in another country.

What confuses the picture is that many asylum seekers are in fact economic migrants who hope to secure entry into the United Kingdom by claiming asylum.

Some asylum seekers and some economic migrants can therefore be justifiably categorised as economic opportunist. With the advent of special concessions for women claiming domestic violence at their port of entry, another category of opportunist has been created.

In 2001, 4.9 million (8.3%) of the total UK population were born overseas. This is more than double the 2.1 million (4.2%) in 1951. Immigration need not be permanent. For instance, although foreign-born persons totalled 1 in 12 of citizens in the UK they do not all stay. Just over a third (34%) of foreign-born migrants (inc. European and non-Europe) who came to the UK in the 1990s emigrated within four years of arrival (this re-migration also occurs in Canada).

‘Marrying-in’ versus ‘Marrying-out’

Migrants and asylum seeker once they have secured permission to stay will often seek to forge a new life for themselves. In due time settling down and having children will occur and this will necessitates marriage and/or cohabitations

Statistics Norway has adopted a novel approach to this phase. They have found that Norwegian marriage patterns show the country is becoming an increasingly diverse. Within society, more marriages are occurring where one spouse is Norwegians and the other an immigrant (on an annual basis). They outnumber the marriages between persons who both have an immigrant background. While this is the aggregated picture Statistics Norway notes that there are distinct differences among different ethnic groups of immigrants.

Endogamy and exogamy are the terms used to explain a tendency or patterns to marry within the tribe, cultural group or kin (endogamy), or to marry out of the group (exogamy). Muslims tend to be endogamy while other parts of Asia are the reverse, e.g. people from Philippines and Thailand. [25] This part of the overall picture of integration is one that is very muh overlooked and yet might prove significant.

The past two thousand years of European history has seen the ascendancy of exogamy particularly in the Roman, Attila the Hun, the Persians, Norman (e.g. Roger II of Sicily) and the British colonial period beginning in the 17^th century.

The tendency among Jews is endogamy (inter-family marriage) which has perhaps marked them out in Europe.  This has probably accelerated a separateness or a). historic sense of persecution and b). accentuated by the tenet that being born of a Jewish women bestows Jewishness. The pattern of inter-family marriage (e.g. second cousins) is today repeated by Pakistani immigrants.

Another similarity between Jewish and Muslim – and for that matter Hindu – weddings is the ‘arranged marriage’ (of which some are said to be ‘forced marriages’).[26]

Norwegian marriages where the man had an immigrant background and the wife did not, accounted for 13% of all marriages. Marriages where the woman had an immigrant background and the husband did not, accounted for 7% (in 2004). Just 11% of all marriages, totalling 2,600, in 2004 were between spouses who both had an immigrant background. Marriages where neither party had immigrant background accounted for 69%.

Specifically, of a total of 1,600 marriages, 3% of Pakistani men married a Norwegian woman and 3% married a woman with a different country background. The rate of Pakistani women marrying non-Pakistani men was even lower (circa 2%).

By comparison, men and women from the Philippines and Thailand had a rate of over 60% of marriages where the other spouse was either a Norwegian or non-immigrant.

Assimilation

Is the failure to integrate and adopt western patterns of living, cultural norms and behaviour the root cause of the unrest listed above ? If it is, then the choice that ‘multi-culturalism’ will be the road leading to a solution was wrong and faith in it misplaced.

From ancient history there appear to be two conflicting paradigms yet both models when used have been shown to succeed. One it the Roman (and Greek) option with which we are all familiar and has been the bedrock of progress the Western World for 2,000 years. In essence it is a “Unless you join us, adopt our habits and be like us then you must be against us.” A modern day interpretation of this doctine wass George W Bush’s “War on Terror” speech.

The second model is that of Persia – based on the city of Persepolis An empire , lead by Darius and Xerxes existing at approximately the same time as the Greek and Rome epochs (400 BC – 400 AD). It opted to embrace diversity and not to subjugate its diverse peoples to a common standard for money, buildings, clothing, or language etc. However, although both systems extracted tribute and respect / loyalty (allegiance) from their subject nations one suspects the Roman way was less subtle and more sharp edged.

In the past 20 years non-whites appear to pose a greater problem for citizens of Eastern European countries, e.g. jeering at football matches when African or Asian players are part of the visiting team. Military occupation in two world wars might be a factor in some nations’ reluctance to be welcoming to strangers or the Soviet years may have fostered an insular attitude. However, these seem unlikely candidates given the experience of other countries.

When former education minister David Blunkett suggested in 2002 that Britain’s educational system was being ‘swamped’ by immigrants the furore that erupted in the press was unimaginable. While the marginalisation of the majority was obvious atthe consumer level of life, Blunkett had stepped on the thin ice of a political no-go area and was castigated as tactless and gauche by the media. [27]

He was, nonetheless, giving voice to something that had been simmering over many years. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly made the controversial comment in the early 1980s that Britain was being “swamped by an alien culture”. In 2007 and again in 2009, the issue again burst to the surface.

It is too easy to point to Poles (Polish Resettlement Act 1947), Ukrainians (post 1945), and Hungarians when Britain accepted 22,000 of the 200,000 Hungarians who fled as refugees in 1956, as examples where integration and assimilation was made easy by their skin colour. However, in the mindset of the 1950s and 1960s, Poles and Hungarians were just as ‘alien’ a culture as Jamaicans and Indians.

For 2,000 years ‘The West’ has been all about political and cultural dominance or hegemony – a world view. Arguably those who were prepared to embrace ‘The West’ and it values (warts and all) have not looted and not rioted. Only a tiny minority rioted and looted, the vast majority left everyone in peace and therefore probably subscribe to the hegemony.

• “In twentieth-century political science, hegemony is central to cultural hegemony, a philosophic and sociologic explanation of how, by the manipulation of the societal value system, one social class dominates the other social classes of a society, with a world view justifying the status quo of bourgeoisie hegemony.” -   Antonio Gramsci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

An issue of the Brussels Journal from Sept 2006 contributes some useful insights and alternative views. It states that the only major political party in Norway that had voiced any serious opposition to Muslim immigration was the rightwing Progress Party. The party is said to attracts / receives about two thirds or even 70% of its votes from men. In contrast Socialist Left party, which is pro-feminist, attracts / receives about two thirds or 70% of its votes from women.

The parties most critical of the current immigration are typically male parties, while those who praise the multi-cultural society are dominated by feminists.

Looking at other possible explanations for why men seem more attuned to the potential and future consequences of mass immigration, the Brussels Journal states: [28]

• “Another possibility is that Western feminists fail to confront Muslim immigration for ideological reasons. Many of them are silent on Islamic oppression of women because they have also embraced “Third-Worldism” and anti-Western sentiments.”
• “Most Norwegian feminists are also passionate anti-racists who will oppose any steps to limit Muslim immigration as racism and xenophobia.”

If this has substance then they are caught in the vice of their own rhetoric. The stance struck by feminists becomes more unenviable when oppression complained of is seen as only coming from Western men:

• “American writer Phyllis Chesler has sharply criticized her sisters in books such as ‘The Death of Feminism ‘ . . . . . Chesler has a point. Judging from the rhetoric of many feminists, all the oppression in the world comes from Western men, who are oppressing both women and non-Western men. Muslim immigrants are “fellow victims” of this bias.”

An Inquiry has been set up by the British government to look at the causes of August riots and looting and why some areas were affected while others escaped. Darra Singh, currently chief executive of Job Centre Plus, has been appointed chair of the ‘Communities and Victims Panel.’ They will be looking at:

1. The motivation for a small minority of people to take part in riots
2. Why the riots happened in some areas and not others and
3. How key public services engaged with communities before, during and after the riots. [29] 

Whether they will get as far as the key components and the degree by which government mislead the public or the conspiracy not to inform the public about the momentous decisions being made over immigration numbers, is doubtful. Singh’s complexion and minority background will no doubt avert criticisim of an ‘establishment whitewash’ and this may appease the minorities but will it reflect the concerns of the host nation ?

In the unlikely event that both sides of the riot and looting story are told and weighed, the report will stand a high risk of being ignored . In time they will be forgotten in the same way that the reports into the 2001 racial violence have failed to be acted upon.

Turn back the pages to 2001 and we see reports analysing the rots of that summer (Bradford, Oldham and Burnley etc), concluding that it is the environment and external factors that need addressing. No blame is attached directly to the rioters and property destroyers. They are not admonished for a lack of self-control, a lack of moral compass, a lack of pride in their town and a lack of respect or personal responsibility to others.

There are a variety of telling touchstone test that can be made when the report is published. The Independent Review bodies were set up for each troubled town in the wake of the June 2001 riots is one measure and their key recommendations are amalgamated below (to avoid duplication): [30]

• Different communities lived “parallel lives”
• A meaningful concept of citizenship should be found
• Immigrants could take an oath of allegiance setting out a “clear primary loyalty to this nation”
• Open and honest debate about multi-culturalism in Britain needed
• Threat of “more serious” trouble in future unless action taken
• Council must communicate effectively to white people its spending on projects for ethnic minorities
• Greater integration of Asian people through community projects
• A series of violent incidents were sparked by a war between Asian and white drug gangs
• ‘Grinding poverty’ further exacerbated the situation
• Debate about identity, shared values and citizenship needed
• Majority of those involved in disturbances were young men

At the time all the areas were identified as being affected by high levels of unemployment, lack of a strong cultural identity and disenfranchisement of young people. Correspondingly, the awesome spectra of the Far Right was said to have stalked the same town areas and agitated unrest. Given the supposed spectacular success accorded to the Far Right in arranging for a full breakdown in law and order why did they wait from 2001 to 2011 to flex their muscles again ?

It later transpired that ‘the Left’ and Asian agitators had been at the forefront of the 2001 riots. A similar situation arose 20 years earlier at the time of the 1981 Brixton riots – now hailed by some on the Left as a heroic uprising. The savagery of the 1981 riot was unprecedented: [31]

• ” . . . some [people were] pulled from their homes for a beating by the mob.”

By Dec 2001 there was a flow of reports, e.g. Burnley task force; Oldham Independent Review; Denham Report, all analysing what had gone wrong and what were believed to be the factors. [32]

Of all the many interesting points made three were especially noteworthy;

• Firstly, the acceptance that instead of bring people together and creating ‘tolerance’, “multi-culturalism” appeared to have led to an undeclared and self-imposed ‘apartheid’ existence (with the rate of mixed-race marriage in the town at less than 1%).
• Secondly, in the year leading up to the riots there were 572 reported race related crimes in the Oldham area, not as one might suspect immigrant victims but rather 62% of the victim were White.
• Thirdly, a paranoid fear that parties of the Far Right might be conspiring, lead the Far-Left political groups to circulate rumours and agitate for civil commotion.

All of these items must have been a difficult fact for mainstream politicians to accept.

The Final Report for the 2011 riots (when it is published), will undoubtedly underline the deprivation and poverty of the neighbourhoods involved and a general lack of a formal education on the part of the rioters and looter. If we are lucky fatherlessness will be mentioned as “possibly a minor contributing factor.” but it is almost certain to mention the role of the Far Right as a direct contributing factor.

The Immigration game

If anyone thought that immigration and asylum seeking was a casual unplanned affair and the preserve of individuals finding themselves in dire straights, then a reassessment is desperately required. Immigration and asylum is now big business with huge profits for the traders and coordinators in human cargo. A typical story of the illegal refugee trade is that of 29-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil refugee who had paid people-smugglers £9,600 ($16,600 AUS or $15,000 US) for a “nightmare” voyage to Australia. In countries where many survive on a dollar-a-day, the misgiving must be where do these people obtain such large amounts of money.

A search of the Internet will reveal the extent to whish the paperwork and legal documentation can be arranged and even the latest legal ruling by the ECHR to be used to avoid and evade deportation. Advice on Immigration Tribunals decisions is also given.

• Asylum chances:
  Many people now try to figure out where they have the best chance to get a positive result from their asylum applications. This is very difficult to answer because it depends a lot on each separate case and on whether or not authorities believe that you are telling the truth.

Calculating in advance where the best financial deal can be struck who is most liekly to accept an application shoudl be no part of seeking asylum. An industry is emerging that is directly threatening the sovreign power of the state to control its own border in the manner it chooses. For instance, one website relates the developments of the European Court of Human Rights ruling in Jan 2011 which decided that Greece was violating the human rights of a refugee (in one individual’s case) by detaining him under ‘inhuman’ conditions and leaving him homeless. to the man in the street this asylum seeker had already made himself homeless when he left his own country. No one gave Marx or Lenin accommadation paid for by the tax-payer. The ECHR also judged that Belgium had violated his human rights by deporting him to Greece. Thus the advice was :

1. This means hundreds of “Greek” cases waiting for a decision before the ECHR are expected to be judged in the same way
2. All the countries having already decided to suspend deportations to Greece because of the decisions pending before the ECHR will have to decide if they will soon themselves examine the asylum cases of the people threatened by deportation to Greece.
3. European countries which have not yet stopped deportations to Greece will have to decide about it soon.
4. This decision will indiscriminately concern persons who have been fingerprinted and holders of pink cards inGreece.

Canada

Statistics Canada which normally prides itself on the presentation of its data is not very forthcoming when immigration, emigration and refugees numbers are sought.

The best that can be found are shown here (left)  based on the 1996 – 2001 Census.

The UK historically supplied most of Canada’s immigrants. In 1981 the UK was in first place with 18,915 immigrants. By 2009 the number had fallen to 8,154 and first place had been taken over by China at 30,770 with India in second place at 29,171 and the Philippines only a whisker below that level.

Canada is one of the countries that does not list immigrants by religion, however, in a table of the ‘Top Ten’ countries by immigrant’s origin, Muslim countries figure strongly. This is shown in the Table below but in an abbreviated form.

At the lower end ot the Top Ten table over 22,000 immigrantsate from Islamic countries – closely behind the 29,000 Hindus.

Canada’s planned refugee intake for 2010 has been set at 24,693 (a provisional total). Notwithstanding this, in 2009 Canada received 103,894 claims for refugee status; the most numerous single source was Mexico at 20,000. Therefore, a divergence appears to exist, i.e. between 24,693 and 103,894. A variance one would expect to be squared by deportation or refusals but this data seems hidden away. “Removal Orders” as they are referred to are difficult to find and none accord with data found elsewhere

Conclusion

The future prospects for Europe look profoundly ominous. There is a distinct perception of loss of identity among the host nation’s indigenous peoples – a feeling of being perennially overlooked (Appendix A).

Is this due in part to the pressure exerted by the organs of the EU giving no future option other than an integrated federal state where traditional nationhood may eventually evaporate.

Could it be due in part to the pressure exerted by social engineering to enforce tolerance of others, and thereby creating the very opposite of a liberal state, namely the intolerance of individuals who disagree or deviation from the prescribed party line ?

Could the emphasis on the identity of minorities and their rights be undercutting the sense of identity among the indigenous peoples ? New Zealand which has always had a large non-white population will probably not feels the same identity tensions or experience associated frictions. How this will play out is fascinating.

The complexion of Australia is changing and may be a factor in the peoples’ concern over immigration as an issue. A visitor to Canada in the last 10 years cannot help but be struck by the same change in urban areas like Toronto. The tension Europe is presently experiencing could be visited on either or both of these countries, The saving grace is that they are far roomier than any country in Europe and they may be totally unaffected.

It is to be expected that the work-a-day life of an immigrant is tough and up hill for the first generation. America, Canada and Australia all have long histories where this is true. However, by the 3rd and 4th generations assimilation and integration is usually complete.

Every ‘immigration industry’ that a country has had to face in the past was one of its own making – all that has now changed.

We have already seen men become discontent with the effects of measures to make  women as equal and to date these have been brushed aside as a silly concern or a phenomenon of no consequence. Could it be that in gifting ‘rights’ to an additional section of society we provoke Gresham’s Law ?

Are we chasing out the value of rights and debasing them by broadening the entitlement base ? Before we dismiss such ideas we should consider the impact of automatically extending any type of franchise if the result is a diminishing of the rights of the other section – the traditional holders – in society.

END

Appendix A

Tower block tenants’ furyathand-outs for refugees

 By Sandra Laville, Telegraph, 09 Aug 2001 [abridged]

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1336792/Tower-block-tenants-fury-at-hand-outs-for-refugees.html

• “They get free washing machines, fully-furnished flats, free travel to school,”  said Steve a 25 year old resident. “They have £150 mobile phones, drive Mercedes cars, carry knives and they are all trying to cop off with 14-year-old girls on the estate.” 

Forty years ago a new housing estate of 18 storey tower blocks at Sighthill in Glasgow’s northern suburbs opened to re-house families from the city’s slums. By the late 1990s with no local employment some 500 flats stood empty with their windows boarded up.

Then, without warning, at the beginning of 2001 a fleet of coaches arrived carrying 1,500 asylum seekers (men and women).They were placed in the 500 flats that had stood empty for years.

Before their arrival residents had watched as vanloads of decorators arrived to paint the flats earmarked for the newcomers. Locals from their crumbling and unheated version of the same flats saw a stream of delivery lorries bring new furniture for the flats which had been completely renovated, then fully-furnished with new kitchenware and fitted washing machines – and free travel to school for the children. The 1,500 refugees at Sighthill make up one fifth of the population.

In 2000 Glasgow city council was paid £20 million-a-year by the Home Office to house the asylum seekers in a 5-year programme that will eventually provide 8,500 refugees with a home in the city.

The Home Office’s money covers £165 a week for each refugee family and £120 a week for a single person. That compares to an average rent the council receives from tenants in Sighthill of £50 a week, leading to accusations that it is making money out of the system.

Norrie Gower, the chairman of the tenants’ association, blamed the council for not preparing the ground for the dumping of 1,500 people in a deprived area with a history of social and economic problems.

“People here are angry,” he said. “They think the asylum seekers are getting better treatment than they are. They wait months for repairs and they see the refugee flats fitted with new furniture.”

Nabila, 31, a mother-of-two who fled Somaliaeight months ago, lives in a two-bedroom flat on the 6th floor. She has a new three-piece suite, a nest of coffee tables and a washing machine, all provided by the council. In the corner of the room is a computer, a mobile telephone lies on the table and a stereo sits near the wall. Nabila, who receives £98 a week in vouchers for her and her 2 children (more than an unemployed UK citizen), said she saved her vouchers to buy the computer (circa £250).

Despite Scottish Office assurances that no more asylum seekers will be sent to Sighthill , the council’s building services division continued delivering more three-piece suites and beds in preparation for new arrivals.

Examples of academic sloppiness appear to be increasing. Newspapers can be expected to get their facts wrong, their metaphors mixed, generally get their wires crossed and even invent stories.

The entrails of the Murdoch saga surprises no one – in fact the public no longer has high expectations of the Press.

The public is also slowly learning to treat even data from Gov’t sourced Press Releases with the same degree of caution usually reserves for a contagious disease.

But text books and university papers are a different proposition.

Text books have a much longer shelf life.  If we can’t depend on text books what can we depend on ? Corrections and retractions are not that easily done.

Our faith in that last bastion of integrity has taken a battering with the revelation of exaggerations and inaccuracies overwhelming a book (pub’d by Allen and Unwin, 2007) and co-authored by Prof. Thea Brown and Dr Renata Alexander at Australia’s Monash University (the same Thea Brown  associated with Jennifer McIntosh).

Too often books that deal with topical political issues (and will sell well) run the risk of falling victim to reflecting only the fashionable views of their time. This could well have happened to Professor Thea Brown’s book, “Child Abuse and Family Law” – or it could be just be slovenly scholarship.

Left: Prof. Thea Brown

The problem is becoming endemic in academia whenever one author cites another without first checking the background of the research. The resulting wobbly statistics have been noted in English literature as far back as 1999 with ‘Counting the Cost’ (by the American, Betsy Stanko), and in a Jan 1995 Sunday Times exposé of the criminologist, Dr Susan Edwards. [1] Both were working on domestic violence data, both were or have been employed by the Met Police and both are connected to manipulating data.

In the case of Prof. Thea Brown’s book, “Child Abuse and Family Law” she not only cited data that was 10 years old but data which she knew to be inaccurate and would give the wrong impression.

Left: Dr Renata Alexander

Dr Renata Alexander is a university trained expert in legal matters and so between them there is no excuse for overlooking or corrupting data which, in any courtroom cross-examnation, could destroy their reputations.

In campaigning mode both Brown and Alexander have not been shy in writing articles for Australian newspapers (2004 and 2005) opposed to shared parenting. For example, in The Age (Dec 2005) Alexander wrote:

• “Forcing joint parenting and shared custody upon parents who are in conflict and unco-operative can be harmful to children.”

Facts can be an inconvenience, especially when the new Australian law was never intended to be ‘forced’ upon anyone and certainly not upon parents who are in conflict.[2] (see http://robertwhiston.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/25/ and  http://equalparenting.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/1/)

Little surprise then that Monash University’s Media and Communications Unit had to issue a correction – in August 2009 – for the incorrect statements made in the 2007 book.

These included a correction to the following paragraph thatappeared on page 20:

•  “Domestic violence is increasingly reported as a cause of partnership breakdown, with two thirds of couples in Australia attributing the separation to domestic violence and one third to severe domestic violence (FLPAG, 2001).”

Brown’s book clearly states that ‘one third of couples in Australia attribute their separation to severe domestic violence.’  This is incorrect and it misinterprets the data.

What Brown should have written was that from the survey, of the 65% of women in failed relationships who experienced domestic violence one third were assessed as ‘severe.’ 

The ‘severe’ level for men who experienced domestic violence in failed relationships was put at 55%.

The assessments as to ‘severe’ or not were not made by the couples themselves but by what one might describe as a lobby group.

Thus, at most it was 33% of 65% of couples whose separation could be attributed to severe domestic violence, and not simply “one-third” of all couples as inferred in the book. 

Brown’s book cites data from a 2001 report, ’Family Law Pathways Advisory Group’  (FLPAG)  However, the material relied on was not actually taken from the FLPAG report itself, but rather was drawn from a verbal presentation to the FLPAG Committee on which Professor Brown served.

Original data or raw data is often the best but Prof. Brown knew beforehand that the FLPAG report was not original or raw data, but based on an earlier Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) study entitled “Spousal Violence and Post Separation Financial Outcomes Study“,

In turn that AIFS study used the database of an earlier study called the “Divorce Transitions Project” to identify suitable families to interview.

Firstly, the FLPAG Committee should have checked the suggestion that the figures in “Towards understanding the reasons for divorce, Working Paper 20”, which were said to  identify family violence as accompanying factor or as a cause of, divorce, were an underestimate or not.

Secondly, Brown made the unscholarly mistake of building her book on a series of surveys going back many years and all inter-dependent on one another.

“Towards understanding the reasons for divorce, Working Paper 20”, by Wolcott & Hughes was published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 1999 and so was 10 years out of date and assembled for another political climate. Wolcott & Hughes had attempted to show that some 65% of women and 55% of men had stated domestic violence was part of their former failed relationship. However, the couples did notattribute their separation to domestic violence, it was the presenters to the FLPAG Committee who did. 

Professor Brown knew or should have known this, yet she failed to make this important distinction in the book.

Additionally, on page 111 of the book there is a statement which states that”some 30% of all marriages in Australia fail because of domestic violence“.  This statement is also incorrect because the figures relied upon are erroneous. 

END

[2] ‘Law ignores the reality of split families’ , By Renata Alexander, The Age, 16/12/2005.  http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/law-ignores-the-reality-of-split-families/2005/12/15/1134500961793.html?page=2 NB the law was not passeduntil 2006. (See also below).

Anti-Shared Parenting Campaign build-up   (2008 to 2011)

• “Children at risk in rise of shared care”, 4 March 2008 (McIntosh) Court sample was small – 77 cases involving 111 children.      http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/children-at-risk-in-rise-of-shared-care/2008/03/03/1204402365352.html 
• “Joint custody ‘can put kids at risk”,  The Australian, April 15, 2008  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/joint-custody-can-put-kids-at-risk/story-e6frg6p6-1111116063474
• “Equal parenting for divorced couples may be scrapped” The Courier-Mail (Aus), 30th Nov 2008.  http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24729425-3102,00.html
• “Shared parenting laws on way out”, The Australian. Oct 19th 2009 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/shared-parenting-laws-on-way-out/story-e6frg6n6-1225788103468 
• “Shared care laws damaging many children”, by Belinda Fehlberg, The Age (Melbourne), 26th Aug 2010. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/shared-care-laws-damaging-many-children-20100826-13tqm.html
• “Family law change ‘puts kids at extra risk”, The Australian, May 3rd  2011.   http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/family-law-change-puts-kids-at-extra-risk/story-fn59niix-1226048738629

Ref:

• ‘Shared parenting undone ?’ http://robertwhiston.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/25/
• ‘Australia’s Shared Parenting Experiment’ http://equalparenting.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/1/

Predicting the future number of re-marriages has taken a complicated turn of late with the publication of three Consultation Papers. All have a bearing on marriage and divorce.

Firstly, there is the Family Justice Review issued in Dec 2010; then the January 2011 revamping of the CSA, [1] and thirdly a tentative acceptance of Pre-Nuptial contracts by the Law Commission.

There is every indication that– all things being equal – confidence may well return to the marriage market. A ‘confidence’ normally associated with trading in the City of London and other financial centres around the world. But before any strategising can be done it is essential for look at the reasons for the ‘collapse’ of marriage since the 1960s.

1. Marriages reached their peak in Britain in 1971, the same year as the Divorce Law Act 1969 reform began to bite (see Fig 1)
2. Births to married couples have, since about that date, fallen
3. Illegitimate births, since about that date, have increased (see Fig 2)
4. The birth rate has now fallen below the replacement level
5. Fiscal, monetary and state benefit support to prioiritise married families have, year by year, gradually been withdrawn
6. Couples, one has to suppose, continued to form family units (and the same level as before), though less of them became marriages.

From 1956 to 1971 re-marriages actually exceeded divorces by (in ball park figures), approx. 20%. This was probably because re-marriages took place not just among divorcées but widows and widowers.

Between 1971 and 1984 further divorce and property larceny legislation was enacted and the numbers re-marrying gradually veered away from a parallel but surplus course to one of deficit for the following years. By 1986 the earlier surplus of, say, 20 % had been reversed into a deficit of 20%. (see Fig 1).

Far from increasing marital numbers by strengthening, marriage and remarriage, a 40 year long collapse began from an all time high in 1971 with ‘first time marriages’ taking the greatest hit (see Fig 2).

Fig 2.  Number  of  Marriages. (first time) England & Wales. 1961 – 1995 (thousands).

Opposite Trends

As if not wanting to know, successive governments have behaved like the proverbial ostrich and buried their heads in the sands. Presumably, they were wholly dependent upon and advised by the civil service, who saw no dangers in these trends.

During the same period (roughly 1965 to 1996), when the number of marriages and re-marriages were declining, the overall birth rate was also falling. However, divorce was increasing, demand for housing was increasing and illegitimate births were increasing. [2] The following graph shows the number of live births outside marriage, i.e. illegitimate (1961 -1997).

 Learning from Singapore

Guided by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), the hope of the present government is probably that they can bring a degree of rationality and reason to the present chaotic regime that impacts modern marriage and divorce (see Feb 7^th http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/does-relationship-education-cut-divorce ).  They might even be contemplating a reversal of the trends mentioned above.

All the characteristics found today in Western democracies, e.g. low birth rates, delayed family formation, limiting family size, a disproportionately larger older generation etc, were all identified in Singapore in the mid 1980s and by 1987 incentives and measures to counteract them had been put in place (see “The British Family” http://motoristmatters.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/26/ ).

The pension panic that grippedBritain less than a decade ago was already identified by Singapore as a threat in March 1987. Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister announced that incentives would be paid to couples to have more children (the reverse of China’s one child policy). Singapore wanted couples to have more children and preferably more than three.

So while Britain spent the same years unpicking the traditional family structure, and was forced to pay for the dubious privilege, Singapore went in the opposite direction and bolstered the family unit.

Singapore’s action is proof enough that the official UK claims that “. . .government of itself cannot influence family formation” or age of child bearing is a lie. Singapore did no more than Australia and New Zealand offered in the immediate post-war period, namely offering stable couples, i.e. married couples, a head start in a new land by assisting with housing costs and tax breaks.

DWP  Renaissance

The DWP’s Green Paper of a revised Child Support package may yet prove pivotal in giving couples a second chance. In this regard the pernicious inverse incentives will hopefully be tackled by the Coalition government.

The impact of child support payments, and their high setting [3] vis-à-vis income, has prevented further family formation (in the case of divorced couples), deterred further child births (except where it is extra-marital), dampened new household formation (in the case of re-marriage) and discouraged the unmarried from matrimonial entanglements).

 The effects of the proposed Child Support reform package (post 2011), might elegantly mesh with the ‘autonomy’ principle contained in the Law Commission’s perception of how future marital break- ups should be conducted using pre-nuptial contracts.

There is room in their suggestions for couples to pre-ordain what will be paid and in what circumstances. Whether ‘the powers that be’, i.e. Whitehall, the Law Commission, and the political will exist to allow this to happen is another matter.

One has to suppose that re-marriages exceeded divorces from the 1950s to 1971 either because certain incentives existed for divorcées, widows and widowers or in the alternative (and more likely), divorcing couples did not have obstacles placed in their way (other than money).

It will be interesting to see if the latest DWP paper (“Strengthening Families .. . ”, etc), actually does strengthen marriage, or reduces the number who divorce, or makes re-marriage more feasible by not placing obstacles in the way of those wanting to re-marry. 

Will the dual reforms of the DWP and pre-nuptial contracts effectively recalibrate re-marriage which today is put beyond the economic reach of most divorced men and women ?  Noises off stage from Norgrove, who is heading up the Family Justice Review – the third leg of the reform measures – may well torpedo any progress into the modern age. His panel’s Interim Report looks as if it is paddling in the opposite direction. There is something Hegelistic in Norgrove’s appraoch, ie the theory of the state positing that individuals are merely parts of the whole and therefore secondary to the state.

Pre-1969 divorce regulations demanded that a petition for divorce could only be granted where an ex-husband could make sufficient financial provision for his ex-wife to avoid her becoming a ‘burden on the state’, i.e. on the tax payer. And curiously, with more women in the labour force than in the 1950s, the DWP paper on reforming child support payments (see “Strengthening Families ... ”, etc), seems to be edging back towards the position of self-sustainability – albeit only in regards post-nuptial child support and in concert with pre-nuptial contracts (by making child support payments more reasonable ?).

The divorce reformers of the 1960s expected a short-lived surge in divorce numbers with a remarriage rate that would settle down at a stable parallel rate in the decades to come. This never happened.

Ruth Deech, once an ardent divorce reformer in the 1960s, is now certain of her errors and has set about opposing Lord Lester’s Bill for cohabitees. [4] This would give them the same sort of command control over a wealth and assets as female divorced spouse now enjoy in what is euphemistically termed ‘ancillary relief’.

Ruth Deech’s words of 10 years ago regarding ‘ancillary relief’ still ring true today:

• “Our ancillary relief is already a vengeful process and is based on the premise that all husbands should maintain their wives regardless of conduct, and regardless of her ability to keep herself. The pressure to settle . . . . .  make[s] it worse in every respect.” - Family Law Bill, Hansard, 24 Apr 1996 : Column 505.

More recently Deech said in a lecture at Gresham College (Sept 2009):

• “The notion of “compensation” recently put forward by judges as a basis for awards is unrealistic.
• It is covering up for the fact that our divorce rate is high because in part the law has made it easy, and we are punishing men and trying to limit the welfare liability of the state by making them pay over assets and pension funds.
• Perceptions of what might happen to their funds on divorce may affect men’s willingness to commit (and women’s, if they have means). This adds to the high cost to society of marital breakdown overall. ..  .”  [5]

Addendum :  Daily Telegraph (UK), 12 May 2011. Quote: Outdated family laws have fuelled an “alarming” rise in marital breakdown, causing “profound” damage to millions of children, a High Court judge has warned. [6] 

• “Mr Justice Coleridge in the family division of the High Court, said the current law governing divorce and cohabiting was “no longer fit for purpose”.
• He condemned successive governments for “ducking” politically contentious reforms with the result thatpre-nuptial agreements and cohabiting relationships were being legitimised by “stealth”.

Marriage Trends

“The British Family” was a four part TV series launched in Jan 2010 and narrated by Kirsty Young. The series was described by the BBC’s publicity machine as:

“a powerful and moving account of an experience that frames all of our lives.”

Irrespective of whether a child is born into a proper ‘traditional family’ or into a non-family unit (today usually titled ‘alternative life styles’), it is tempting to describe the above as trite and only stating the obvious.

If the stated aim of the mini TV series was to “tells the story of the British family from the end of the World War II to the present day”, then in the eyes of many who witnessed those changes it missed by a country mile in  key passages.

Those of us who are old enough to actually recall the 1950s and 1960s see the untruths in such programmes as plainly as carbuncles on a nose. The false impressions and wrong assumptions conveyed by the modern commentator immediately jump out at those that lived through the changes.

In true George Orwell tradition, this new truth is paraded as solid historical facts to a gullible younger generation who have no reference points. Modern commentator are not value free – they come with an agenda. Indeed, they want to set the agenda and if that means rewriting past agendas that’s no problem either.

When the ordinary lives of ordinary people are patronisingly shown as irrational, absurd and even bigoted, how can a contemporary audience is in the 21^st century to make sense of it ? Each generation gets by the best way it can and evolves as the times change. To insinuate that 20^th century society should have been as smart, switched-on and savvy as 21^st century society is ridiculous.

The narrator herself was born in 1968 and could not be said to be truly au fait with the workings of the world until she was 20, i.e. in 1988. It therefore calls into to question the validity of her perspective. The supremely confident attitude of the narration left no room for doubt in the mind of the ordinary viewer. The handicap of patronisingly looking backwards into very recent history could, however, have been neutralised by balanced and competent research.

Ms. Young therefore stumbled into all sort of problems because the researchers she depended upon were probably younger than she was (if they are anything like the TV researchers that contact me for programme material they are definitely fresh faced interns just out from university).

As tends to be the case in public life today, much of the programme was ‘almost right’ but ‘almost’ is never quite right enough and certianly not good enough for a historical document. For one thing its analysis superficial.  One very soon learns when dealing with TV programme makers is that regardless of the seriousness of the subject, it still has to make “good television.”

As if it was a fact, Ms. Young declared Britain, “has a problem with marriage”, and to paraphrase her other remarks, Britain fails in the marriages stakes and Britain is incapable of holding marriages together; we are the worst inEurope and apparently have been for decades.

But do the numbers bear that out ?  And if they do, whathas been changed to make marriage inBritain so uncomfortable a yoke to bear ? As will be shown later, ONS states “The 2008 divorce rate is the lowest since 1979.” 

It also supposes that marriage traditions and profiles are the same across Europe when we know from experience they are not (for example, politicians aren’t permitted to have mistresses in Britain but in France arguably it is the expected norm).[1]

One can expect TV programme and documentariy makers to get a few of the basic facts wrong, a few events wrongly interpreted or key individuals overlooked. However, when all the people interviewed were women one has to ask what definition of marriage and family is Kirsty Young working to ?

Is the female viewpoint the only one that counts ? The programme’s credits would certainly indicate a female bias; Director – Helen Nixon; Producer -Helen Nixon; Executive Producer – Louise Norman; Assistant Producer -Mora McLagan.

But over and above this the substantive failing – and this is all too common of TV programmes and modern academic papers alike – is in the numbers cited.

For instance, in the first 30 minutes of the hour long programme the audience was told that, “in 1946 alone” there were nearly 30,000 divorces which was “nearly 5 times” the pre-war figures.”

This is a factoid, i.e. a deception/misrepresentation enveloping a grain of truth. What was omitted was that:-

1. The high number of divorces in 1946 was due to special temporary legislation being passed allowing for “quickie divorces” (see Fig 1). Statistically, high divorce numbers were a blip, an anomaly due to legislation enacted to meet a post-war demand.    
2. That regime lasted until 1949 to allow for a backlog of marriages wrecked by infidelity and illegitimate children not fathered by the husband. In the Table below note the quantity of petitions based on Adultery for the war years. The ‘special measures’ were meant to be a ‘one off’ to clear the decks and allows for fresh starts to be made. Note the surge in numbers from 1946 to 1948 before falling back to its pre-war level. The most common reason at this time was “adultery” indicating that one of the partners had found ‘comfort’ somewhere else. Note too the equality between the sexes as to who brings the divorce petition.

A ‘fairer to the viewer’ use of numbers would have cited years such as 1938 and 1950. In 1938, after a small amendment to the divorce laws, marriage dissolutions increased marginally to 9,970. After the tumult of World War II divorces first shot up but then began to decline as society regained it equilibrium (see Fig 2 below).

How many of the audience would have known that during the last years of the war, and prior to demobilisation, the military authorities actively encouraged quick divorces (for troop morale purposes). In 1946 a goodly part of the wartime army was still either East of Suez or in Palestine.[2]  What today are called Dear John letters would have terminated any chance of matrimonial bliss and perhaps the military took it upon themselves as a social duty to maintain troop morale.

The alert reader will have noticed in Fig 1 that men and women before the war, e.g. 1938, and immediately afterwards applied for divorces in almost equal numbers. The pattern of modern divorces, however, sees 70% of divorces applied for by women.

The key facts and figures exclided by “The British Family” was the decline in divorce to 29,000 by 1950. It also omitted to mention the continuing decline to around 23,000 by the end of the 1950s.  [ As an aside, the comprehensive government publication "Abrstract of Statisitcs" did not include divorce data until the early 1950s ].

Fig 2, above, shows that the number of divorces actually continued to fall throughout the 1950s. Incidentally, these are the same statistics offered up to MPs for their consideration during the progress through parliament of the Family Law Bill of 1995. But Member of Parliament were given totals of 15,634 and 60,254 for 1946 and 1947 respectively (see House of Commons Research Paper 96/42).

Arguably these war-times differences, especially for 1947, threw a different complexion on divorcing numbers in the post war years and could have affected the judgment of MPs in 1995 (see Fig 2). It leaves the public asking which set of figures should we believe – the ONS or the House of Commons Research Paper data ?

Given that the Conservative Party’s planned policies for the British Family have been some years in the making and well publicised, the producers of Kirsty Young’s programme hardly touched on the cost of broken families or the historic context. The financial cost of broken families has been apparent to both Labour and Conservative Party but only the latter seems to have any appetite to deal with the issue.

The omission by the TV producers of divorce number gradually being cut by more than  half – from 60,000 pa (in 1947) to 25,000 pa, suggests they had more important items on their agenda. What didn’t qualify as a ‘more important item’ worthy of mention was the minor change in 1962 to divorce ‘lump sum’ payments which, some believe, allowed divorce numbers to begin creeping upwards again.

Déjà Vu

In the programme Kirsty Young looks back to enforced loveless marriages and then forwards to its modern replacement, ‘companionship’, as replacing the institution of marriage. This is sheer delusion. Loveless marriages exist now and they will continue to exist in the future. It doesn’t mean they are worthless and shoud be discarded – many couples rub along quite happily without being ecstatically in love all the time. How this desire to destroy marriages at the drop of a hat squares with putting children’s interests first, i.e. paramount, is not explained.

Ms. Young who at the age of 42, has already been both a wife and mother, been married again and become a step-mum, will doubtless find she will ruin along eventually.

Ms. Young was herself the daughter of divorcing parents and so must see herself as something of an authority on such matters. But there does seem to be an unwritten law that stipulates that; divorce begets divorce, and single motherhood begets  single motherhood.

Is she the first person in 2,000 years to identify the flaws and realise what needs to be done to shore up the weakness ? Has she forgetton the generation before her, the ‘hippies’, who confidentaly believed that they too had the panacea for society’s ills ?  Their ‘new age’ culture of radicalism was absorbed into politics – and arguably we have tossed out workeable mechanisms and replaced them with alternatives that barely function.

To arrive so confidently yet so unknowingly at this already passé situation is testament to the modern politically correct education with its selective hearing and selective views of history. It is the embodiment of a rampant disregard for numbers and empirical study.

We are lacking a rigorous resurgence of political thought and we badly need icons like Stephen Baskerville. We need the likes of philosophers Roger Scruton and John Gray to be active in this field to illuminate the social way forward and not leave it just to Prof Robert Rowthorn whose speciality is economic growth, structural change and employment.

Missing Statistics

Domestic violence, as we are forever being told affects all women equally regardless of class or category, Yet as can be so easily proven DV, assaults and sex offences affect women in the lower orders (single, poor, rented accommodation, low income/achievers, etc) in far greater numbers / proportion than the upper orders in society.

Divorce is no different (see Fig 3). ‘The poor’ divorce in greater numbers and the manner of divorce retribution, i.e. money transfers, ensures they remain the poorest in society.

No mention was made of any potential linkage between these sobering facts and child poverty.  It is no surprise that UNICEF found that despite child-poverty focused polices, more children in Britain were living in poverty in 2009 than 10 years earlier; and is it any surprise that the gap between rich and poor families has increased, not closed. This is a phenomenon that must not be mentioned except in whispered tones.

The ‘Standardised Divorce Rate’ allows us to compare ‘like with like’ and to compensate for the in-built bias caused by ther numerically larger unskilled or low-skilled ‘working class’ vis-à-vis the smaller in number higher skilled middle and upper income groups.

 Fig 3 shows us that the divorce rate is lowest among the “professional” class and highest among the ‘unskilled’. As the varying degrees of skill increase so the rate of divorce falls – unskilled (220); partly skilled (111); skilled manual (97); skilled non-manual (103); intermediate (83).

The only exception to this rule appears to be the figure for the unemployed at an envious ‘25’. Is the suggestion that unemployment is the antidote to being divorced ? Depending on how the data was collected unemployment could relate to those who have always been out of work or it could relate to those who lost their jobs before divorce proceeding s were begun.

The figure for the Armed Forces is not truly comparable as their lifestyle and pressures are not replicated in of “Civvie Street”.

Readers may have noticed that the data for Fig 3 relates to publication in 1984 and so was collected in the year(s) up to that date. The explanation why such out of date information is cited is because it is the last known data set that divided divorce by income and/or class. For over 20 years there has simply no comparable data collected and it was an omission I raised in a phone conversation with John Haskey several years ago. In the subsequent years we have no idea whether the pattern/distribution has remainsed the same or whether divorce have standardised as more women have entered the labour force (which is one therory).

The only thing British statistics (ONS) will tell the public is that:

• “In 2008, the divorce rate in England & Wales decreased by 5.1% to 11.2 divorcing people per 1,000 married population, compared with 11.8 in 2007. The 2008 divorce rate is the lowest since 1979, when there were also 11.2 divorces per 1,000 married people.” (See http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/div0110.pdf ).

 What are we to make from this amorphous figure ? Instead of structure and disciplined figures we get aggregation and obfuscation simply everywhere.

Singapore

If Britain “has a problem with marriage”, what is marriage and divorce like on the other side of the world ?

In 1987 – roughly comparable with data in Fig 3 – there were 23,404 marriages in Singapore and 2,708 divorces, i.e. 115 divorces for every 1,000 marriages. This figure included 4,465 marriages under the Muslim Law Act, which regulated the marriage, divorce, and inheritance of Muslims, and 796 divorces under the same act, for a ‘Muslim divorce rate’ of 178 divorces for every 1,000 marriages.

Marriages and divorces by non-Muslims are regulated under the Women’s Charter; these marriages totalled 18,939 and divorces under the same law were 1,912, i.e. a divorce rate of 100 per 1,000 marriages (http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-11817.html Dec 1989).

The non-Muslim community in Singapore, therefore, had a lower divorce rate in 1989. Apparently, for all ethnic groups the most common source of marital breakdown was the inability or unwillingness of the husband to contribute to maintaining the household. This sometimes led to desertion, which was the most common ground for divorce (Cf. adultery in the UK in the 1950 and irretrievable breakdown in the 1990s).

The suggestion is that the different ethnic groups react to divorce differently; the article believes Malay families would seek a prompt, legal divorce whereas the average Chinese or Indian family, for whom the social stigma of divorce was greater (and the barriers to legal separation higher), would seek to handle it informally or simply tolerate the status quo.

This attitude of Chinese or Indian families in handling divorce is reminiscent of that found in Britain prior to 1969, but for a programme already value-laden with a packed agenda there was no time to squeeze in a contrary perspective.

Also in 1987, Mr. Goh Chok Tong, the then First Deputy Prime Minister ofSingapore, announced incentives for couples to have more children. The pension panic thathitBritainless than a decade ago was already realised as a threat in Singapore (March 1987).

While Britain spent the years before 1987 and all the years thereafter unpicking the traditional family structure, Singapore went in a reverse direction and bolstered the family unit. The official UK claims that government of itself cannot influence family formation or age of child bearing is laid bare as a lie. Whereas, for instance, priority in the allocation of housing and primary school places in Britain is given to single mothers the priority in Singapore goes to couples. One reason why immigration to Australia and New Zealand was the success it was, is due in no small measure to the ‘family friendly measure’ introduced after 1945 and to the house deposit that each government offered new arrivals.

All the characteristics found in western democracies, e.g.  low birth rates, delaying family creation, limiting family size, a disproportionate older generation etc, were all identified in Singapore in 1986, and by late in 1987 incentives and measures to counter them were put in place (for more details see Annex A).

The Cost of Marriage

A very bleak picture of marriage can, and was, painted by Kirsty Young.  The numbers marrying are declining; the numbers cohabiting increasing and the numbers divorcing at a high level (circa 141,000 pa). But in reality we have been here before in the grinding poverty of the Industrial Revolution, and again in 1905 to 1912, when numbers marrying were depressed and cohabiting seen as a cheaper option. The allegation today that ‘cohabitation is increasing’ is only partly true. Cohabiting is a “flow variable” meaning that as one couple temporarily enters the status anther leaves (as opposed to marriage where one couple enters the status and stays there for a period of time).

If one approaches marriage as if it was flawless, pristine and the answer to all one’s prayers it is automatically being set-up to disappoint and be toppled. Marriage isn’t the best solution but the world has been waiting for thousands of years for a better, workable alternative without success, so it is the best that has been found to date.

No where is the aspiration to be married more debilitated than by the reality of having a limited disposable income. The average costs of an American wedding costs $22,360 and has 168 guests, who give 100 gifts that cost an average of $85 each, meaning the net loss to the couple is $13,860. An increase of $1 per hour in a man’s wages increases the odds he will marry by 5%. (Would an abolition of Equal Pay, one idly muses, remedy atleast in part, the inability of more young people to marry and relieve women of the fear of being left on the shelf ?).

A similar story can be told of wedding costs in Britain. The average wedding in 2002 cost £11,000 (an analysis for the US can be found at http://motherjones.com/politics/2005/01/richer-or-poorer and for Britain at  http://www.howtobooks.co.uk/family/weddings/costs.asp).

Companionship versus Matrimony

If we have entered a new epoch of companionship rather than matrimony it has come at a huge price. The trend in wealth generation of the 1950s and 1960s has been frittered away in the same way North Sea oil have been squandered. We have witnessed the creation of the Underclass - a 3 million strong army; over 4 million divorces; over 8 million people made unhappy, the transfer of millions of homes and centres of wealth.

If we have entered an epoch of companionship rather than matrimony, is that a result of freely availalble sex bought for a few drinks or a meal out one night and sold to us on a daily basis ?

John Haskey, who for many years produced social statistics for the population Trends (ONS) wrote in a Foreword [3] that:

•  “For the best part of thirty years we have been conducting a vast experiment with the family, and now theresults arein: the decline of the two-parent, married-couple family hasresulted in poverty, ill-health, educational failure, unhappiness, anti-social behaviour, isolation and social exclusion for thousands of women, men and children.”

The standardised rate of divorce, as shown in Fig 3, hits mainly the lower orders and the lower income groups adding to the poverty and misery that lax divorce laws engender (in theory, all groupings should equal 100).

In 1984 the ONS ceased data collection relating to the classes /occupations of couples who applied for divorces. Since that date there has been no further analysis. The table shown in Fig 3, above, published in “Population Trends” (1984), is therefore the most up to date available. [4]

In an attempt to get slightly more recent data we have to turn to Fig 4. This depicts occupation class, by martial status, i.e. lone mother and lone father compared with their married contemporaries. Significantly, fathers are more likely than women to be in the professional occupation class with its associated higher incomes than lone parents (mothers). In comparative and absolute terms they are on lower than average incomes, but there are variation within each grouping, e.g. lone mothers v married mothers v lone fathers etc. This creates “intermediate” socio-economic grouping (Fig 4). Although not directly comparable it gives us a glimpse of the dynamics at work.

Returning for a moment to the question / claim that Britain ‘has a problem with marriage’ we have only to look westwards to the US to see that it has had far more divorces even when its population was much smaller than today’s 300 million and before enabling legislation (Fig 5). [5]

The programme also spoke of  an increasing number of ‘shotgun weddings’ in the post war era, illegitimate births and unmarried mothers. By the late 1950 the audience was given to understand there were 70,000 illegitimate births per annum – not far short of the present day figure of 100,000+ per annum (a figure now disguised by the number of abortions conducted yearly, eg 185,000 per annun in 2004). [6]   

However, as Fig 6 shows, the ‘total live births outside marriage’ numbered only 63,000 by 1964 (not 70,000) and actually fell in 1973. It was only with the advent of the Finer Report, which increased single mother incomes, that illegitimacy began to increase again (see 1977 – 1982). [years of interest are shown in Red]. By 1976 the number of illegitimate births had fallen to approx.53,800. It was the post 1979 years that saw the greatest increases (Fig  6).

The actual number of lone parents in thousands and by category is shown below (Fig 7). Of the 5 categories (SM, divorcee, separated, widowed, lone father), it was never-wed and divorced women who topped the chart as Lone Parents from 1971 to 1997.

It is not true for the programme to state that children forget what their fathers looked like after having been away from home for so many years (implying that therefore it doesn’t matter if fathers are excluded).

The ‘dark little secrets’ which all normal families have, have always been existed and in themselves provide no good reason for change. Attempting to criticise  how society worked 50 years ago and deridingly question and mock its value system is a pointless excercise. Society was a lot more reserved then than it is now, and to judge it by today’s moral standard is narrow mindedness.   The expressing of personal freedom and fulfilment over collective duty and responsibility and the wearing of one’s emotions on one’s sleeve is positively a new development. Thinking of self first and “putting number 1 first” to the exclusion of all others is a modern phenomenon.

Millions of people were not ‘suffocating’ in loveless marriages prior to the 1969 reforms. If there had been, the figures for divorces in 1971 would have reflected this pent up demand – but only took advantage 74,437 (Fig 2), and of thee we can imagine that a goodly number / proportion deferred their divorce from 1969 and 1970 until the changes took place in 1971.

Arguably, prior to the 1969 reforms escapism was not an option. Couples could not run away from reality. Instead, couples either reconciled themselves or worked through their problems – and in so doing, inadvertently, put their children’s happiness first. In an era of dysfunctional and often a violent young people, especially girls, this reconciliation is an old truth being rediscovered.

At one point Ms Young is discursively dismissive of John Newsom’s “The Education of Girls” simply because it advises that a girl should have knowledge of nutrition values for her family, understand simple household accounts and live within the household income. Yet Ms Young forgets we now have a High Street bank advertising on TV that they go into schools to do that very thing.

We have Gov’t frantically working to get young people to understand dietary needs and the avoidance of fatty food or are laden with salt and which lead to obesity. Yet Ms Young’s considered opinion was that the advice from John Newsom is a “load of cobblers.”

Then take the bland assertion that marriage is today “complex” in a way it was not in the immediate post-war years. How was post-war Britain less complex ? Yes, the hot button issues may be different but that is not to concede that post-war life was not difficult (with rationing) and complex.

Being married to a millionaire (as Ms Young is), can ease many of those complexities that burden the less exalted mortals but it should not impact on accurate reporting.

The trend in Lone Parenthood is now ingrained and cumulatively rises at an almost constant pace (see Fig 7 above). To illustrate this, Fig 8 below, is a graphical represntation of the trend Illegitimate births from 1961 to 2007.

Fig 8. Illegitimate births (Eng & Wales)

An all-female production team should be professional enough to assemble for Kirsty Young a seamless, non- gender specific programmes free of fem-centric biases – but they failed. As a consequence the viewer received only one view of marriage, the woman’s.

All third parties, who could have been key people to understanding the changes, were missing from the line-up. The viewer was supposed not to notice that all the contributors interviewed were, in fact, women.

END

Annex A

So seriously did Singapore take the issue of declining births that incentives were introduced in the 1980s and increased in 1990 when couples were offered a tax rebate worth £15,000 for their 2nd child and if aged under 28 (part of the early child bearing programme). To underline their commitment to the family Singapore offers housing grant worth S$40,000 to young couples and this figure increases to  S$50,000 if they live close to their parents’ home.

Smallness has its advantages. Policies which a larger country would fight to get inplimented are facilitated in a smaller one. By the 1980s, the government of this small island had become concerned with the low rate of population growth and with the relative failure of the most highly educated citizens to have children. The failure of female university graduates to marry and bear children, attributed in part to the apparent preference of male university graduates for less highly educated wives - a characteristic singled out by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1983 as a serious social problem. In 1984 the government acted to give preferential school admission to children whose mothers were university graduates.

Source : http://www.un.org/Depts/escap/pop/journal/v10n4a3.htm 

” . . .  A series of policy measures or incentives have been introduced to support the “three or more” policy  [ referring to ministerial urging to couples to have 3 or more children].

These policy measures may be classified as follows:

1. incentives to ease the financial burden of child-rearing (tax rebates for third and fourth children, and income tax relief for up to four children),
2. incentives to ease the conflict between women’s work and child-rearing roles (child-care subsidy, rebates on maid levies; child-care leave, no-pay leave and part-time work in the public sector) and
3. modification of the earlier, two-child incentives in line with the new policy (priority in allocation of housing and primary school registration for families with three instead of two children).

However, the sterilization cash grant scheme, an incentive for low-income low-educated women to permanently limit their family sizes to two or fewer children, was retained. [Appendix I lists measures introduced at the time of the announcement of the new population policy in 1987].

In 1990, an incentive for earlier child-bearing, i.e. a tax rebate of S$20,000 (US$1 = currently S$1.40) for mothers giving birth to their second child before age 28, was also introduced. The purpose was to counter the trend towards later ages at child-bearing which, in the long run, would slow the rate of population growth.

The sterilization cash grant scheme was enhanced in 1993 by requiring only that the women agree to accept reversible contraceptive methods (instead of sterilization), and by the addition of educational bursaries for their children.

To date, there have not been any direct incentives for marriage. In 1995, however, the Government introduced measures to enable young couples to rent or purchase their own public housing flats and start their families earlier. These measures include lower rental and shorter waiting time for first-time applicants (who are mostly young couples) to rent a flatwhile waiting for their purchase units to be ready, and a housing grant worth S$40,000 to be put into the provident fund account of such couples to help them purchase a flaton the re-sale market (the sum is increased to S$50,000 if they chose a flatclose to their parents’ home, the higher incentive being in line with another government objective, namely, promoting inter-generational togetherness).”

Source: http://www.un.org/Depts/escap/pop/journal/v10n4a3.htm 

Appendix I

 The push for more babies [a summary ]

•  Tax incentives – No increase in child relief for first and second child but third child relief raised to S$750 effective Fiscal Year 1988. Mother needs only three General Certificate of Education “O” level passes taken in one sitting, instead of five, to qualify for enhanced child relief. Fourth child also qualifies for enhanced child relief, which is S$750 plus 15 per cent of mothers earned income up to a maximum of S$10,000. Special tax rebate of S$20,000 to be off-set against either or both the husbands and wife’s income tax liabilities for newborn third child. Another rebate – only for the working wife – equal to 15% of her earned income. Any excess of both rebates can be carried forward for up to four years.
• School registration – All disincentives against the third child will be removed. Children from three-child families will have the same priority as those from one and two-child families. Where there is competition for admission, priority will be given to children from three-child families.
• Child-care centres - The Government will pay a S$100 subsidy on all children, regardless of parents income, in government-run or government-approved centres, including those privately operated.
• Medisave - ‘Medisave3’ can be used, with immediate effect, for the hospital costs of a third child, whether delivered in a government or private hospital. But no overdraft of Medisave account is allowed.
• Accouchement fees [ confinement ] – No change in the fee for the first, second and third child. Fee for fourth child raised, from 1 January 1988, to S$1,000 for all ward classes, and to S$1,300 for fifth and other children. But delivery and hospital costs for fourth child, with a S$3,000 maximum, can be offset against parents earned income.
• Housing allocation - Families in three-room or larger (public) flats who want to up-grade their flats on the birth of their third child will get priority allocation.
• Employers attitudes to working mothers - Employers to be asked to be more understanding and flexible towards working mothers with young children. They should offer part-time and flexi-time work, extended no-pay maternity leave, and retrain women who rejoin the workforce. The civil service will lead the way.
• Abortion and sterilization counseling - There will be compulsory counseling before and after abortions to discourage abortions of convenience, and women with fewer than three children will be counselled before sterilization.
• Getting singles to mingle - The infrastructure of the Social Development Unit and the Social Development Section4 will be strengthened, and their activities and programmes widened.

Source: Business Times, 2nd and 5th March 1987

Footnotes:

—————————————

[1] Tory MP James Gray facing calls to go after marrying mistress (10^th Aug 2009). The Tory MP James Gray, who abandoned his wife – while she was fighting cancer – for another woman, is facing new calls to stand down after marrying his mistress. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6005681/Tory-MP-James-Gray-facing-calls-to-go-after-marrying-mistress.html. Cf ,Pres. Francois Mitterand’s mistress Anne Pingeot.

Introduction

Executive Summary

Contact enforcement measures have been the bane of divorced fathers’ lives for many, many years. The prospect, in 2011 of matching maintenance payments to contact is therefore a welcome development.

This is not to say that most divorced couples fail to reach agreement, they do, but there is a sub-set that does not and even among ‘well regulated’ divorced couples there are occasions when friction is generated when contact dates are broken.

Governments usually claim that it is impractical to link ‘performance related contact’ by the mother with Child Support (CS) payment performance by the father. As a result Child Support (CS) payments have been seen as largely separate from visitation (‘contact’), or visitation rights

No strategy has therefore been seriously considered at official level to counter an obstructive parent and consequently denial of contact brings no penalties to the mother while CS is still demanded of the father.

This is often termed “gate-keeping’ and is used indiscriminately to violate contact arrangements. Another term used is “implacably hostile” to describe a mother who will not abide by a court’s ruling. In the face of implacably hostility courts have chosen to be impotent and as a consequence fathers can no longer rely on the courts to enforce their own orders and for them to see their own children.

It has taken government a long time to acknowledge that ‘off balance sheet’ payments are made by divorced fathers even though they cannot make regular payments. This is a welcome step.

With government statistics we show how approx. 50% of fathers earn so little that their own standard of living (SOL) is slashed by making CS payments.

Child Support (CS) is a form of ‘taxation’ for fathers and represents a ‘wage’ payment to mothers. A divorced father is expected to fund his children as if he was still living with them but unlike a married father he has lost all his child-related benefits. He is not entitled to Child Benefits or Family Credits or the Married Couple’s Allowance worth an additional £2,800 pa. If he remarries his financial situation gets even worse.

Since 1995 governments have been asking – and fathers groups have been answering – what is the best way forward on the issues of contact, access, and child support (CS) ?

Every time an exit plan out of this impasse has been suggested it has been decried as too radical. Now time has finally run out. Patching up the current system is no longer a viable option.

Custody is the crux. The radical answer has to be a re-alignment of expectations and the introduction of shared parenting and shared residence. Both options have been introduced in other countries where the failures of their former system mirrored ours.

This submission will be controversial, and it is intentionally so, if we are to break out of the cycle of failure – a new approach is required and past attitudes need to be reappraised. Discussed is the option of abolishing CS altogether – given that it is uneconomic to collect and administer.

Are we content, in a liberal society to let divorced fathers ‘pay to view’ their children, or are we prepared to let them join in as real parents, and help raise them in their formative years ?

“. . . We know that one of the most significant issues for non-resident parents is when contact with their children is denied or withheld. This can lead to tension and hostility between the parents, especially where maintenance is still being collected through the statutory system.”

The two deterrents to counter contact being denied or withheld is firstly through judicial action by way of fines, withholding benefits or prison against the offending parent and secondly measures to reverse custody.

Regrettably, the judiciary has turned it back on these options on the basis that they are impractical or draconian and harmful to children’s well being while forgetting that a small number of exemplar cases and sentences is all that would be needed before the problem would fade.

The usual line of thought adopted by administrations is that it is impractical to link performance related contact by the mother with Child Support (CS) payment performance by the father.  In other words, Child Support (CS) payment has been seen as largely separate from visitation, i.e. contact. It is also rather convenient to see it in this simple way.

It is a peculiar logic to specifically bar any linkage which is usually on the grounds that the loss of paternal contact is deemed not to be in the best interests of the child. In other words, don’t punish the child for the defaulter’s sin of missing a payment. Yet maternal deprivation is increasingly viewed by some as child abuse. In this way “contact” (visitation rights) and CS are de-coupled.

Where any linkage has been applied it is, nonetheless, against the father for non-payment – if he fails to meet, for example, his payment schedule. This might result in an altered court order or a fine.

No linkage has been created regarding CS payment and permitting contact – or any default thereof. Thus obstructing contact brings no penalties to the mother and the CS is still demanded of the father and paid. This is a double standard.

Punishment

Linking non-payment of CS with access is often used in some jurisdictions, e.g. Canada, the US, UK and Australia, to punish the defaulting parent (i.e. the father). These jurisdictions believe that the child should see both parents so when CS is not paid the state is left with limited options. Therefore, it permits continued contact but punishes the father.

This punishment usually devolve down to garnishment orders, loss of driver’s licence (or even professional practice licence), temporary confiscation of passport, etc, which are all forms of ‘internal exile.’ Arguably such measures belong more appropriately to the former Soviet regime of the USSR. Meanwhile the cause of the non-payment is not addressed.

If the cause of the non-payment of CS is due to ‘gate-keeping’ and contact violations by the mother this goes unpunished. Sanction powers are already in place to deal with truculent mothers but the courts adamantly refuse to make use of them. Part of the answer is given in the following superficial comment by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss:

“Judges can fine, or jail, uncooperative mothers, but these sanctions are rarely used.”

- Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (Sunday Times, Feb 17th 2002 by Margarette Driscoll)

Saving face

“Implacably hostile” mothers present a problem not just for the trauma of children but to the judiciary. Rather than confront such mothers the judiciary backs down to save face.

Under the present regime reversing custody against implacably hostile is not a simple matter because the other party is not prepared or geared up to take on a greater parental role. He may not have suitable accommodation or employment that allows the flexibility required. In addition, his income will not change as the state will continue to pay welfare benefits to the mother.

If custody were to be reversed, would the system still expect him to make his CS payments ?

However, if a shared parenting or a shared residence order were the norm and in place beforehand any ‘reversal’, i.e. a temporarily reprimand giving the mother time to reconsider her behaviour, would not cause a great deal of social upheaval for either party.

Dis-incentives

Child Support (CS) is a levy on fatherhood. It is a taxation burden placed on them for continuing to fund children without any commensurate tax concessions reflected in their Inland Revenue “personal allowance” assessment. This form of taxation brings them no rights or privileges. On the contrary it takes away rights or privileges.

For mothers, CS is a wage paid by the state and the former husband, it comes free-of-tax and it does not affect her personal allowance assessment, Child Benefits or Family Credits.

Suicides and failed suicides, once a common feature of CS demands have tapered off dramatically since the adoption of a far less aggressive posture by the CSA.

Hypothetically, a divorced father becomes a single persons again with a Personal Allowance of only £7,475 instead of the minimum addition of £2,800 for the Married Couple’s Allowance (£10,275). He is obliged to pay tax on any income over £7,475 and not (£10,275, even though he may still be paying for the matrimonial home mortgage, his own rented accommodation and the upkeep of his children.

He does not have the benefit of state benefits or allowances since all these, since the last Labour government, are not payable to women only and not men. He is not able to share in Child Benefit or use Family Credits etc to off-set his expenses.

If a divorced father were still married his child costs he would be able to share in his wife’s access to benefits and Family Credits.

We have placed the accent on ‘low income’ families since this is where most of the CSA problems arise and were it adversely bears down the most heavily.

The state and the judiciary cannot make up their minds up whether ‘divorce’ means what it says, i.e. a complete dissolution, or only a partial dissolution.

If the latter, then a divorced father should be entitled to the ‘partial’ element of Child Benefits and Family Credit etc. This was a point initially conceded in Hockenjos v Secretary of State for Social Security) Court of Appeal, 2001 (The Times, May 17th 2001, “Jobseekers’ allowance sex bias unlawful”).

“ .. . . .The principle of equal treatment means that there shall be no discrimination whatsoever on ground of sex either directly or indirectly…” – Article 1 of Directive 79/7/EEC, and Article 3 & Article 4, and of Regulation 77 of the Jobseekers’ Allowance Regulations (SI 1996 No 207).

Poverty

The link that is made between CS and contact / visitation comes about through studies which show that more generous visitation rights actually induce greater CS compliance. Surveys also show that   “reasonable” levels of CS payments also induce greater compliance.

Wishful thinking by the state takes this flawed data and assumes that poverty among single parent families (usually a single mother household or SMH), can be alleviated by better CS collection methods. However, studies show that CS typically constitutes (at best) around 25% of the income requirements for a lone parent family, and this obviously decreases as a percentage with increasing PWC income.

It is the ‘low income’ PWC that need CS payments the most, but equally it is not uncommon for the former spouse of the ‘low income’ PWC to be unskilled and or on a ‘low income’ himself. This renders the ex-spouse unable to pay.

Statistics listed in Appendic A show a pattern that can be found in North America and Australia namely that about 2/3 of alleged ‘defaulters’ are on low-incomes, are unemployed, or debilitated with substance abuse, and/or have suffer from mental health problems (see also Quantifying below).

It was to address this that we suggested many years ago a uniform taxation and payment out of general Treasury receipts in place of a one-for-one payment contract for each SMH (single mother household).

Custody is the crux

Since 1995 governments have been asking – and fathers groups have been answering – what is the best way forward on the issues of contact, access, and child support (CS) ?

In all that time it would be fair to say governments have always asked but not listened and have thus been forced to come back to the issue time and again.

Any response today runs the risk of reiterating what has been suggested before and not accepted. However, the issue continues to be a running sore that another attempt seems worth while.

Expected norms

Any response today also has to conform with the expected norms of political thinking but if f we think ‘outside the box’ there is always the alternative of abolishing CSA altogether and assisting co-operation between divorced parents based on the need by one parent to secure child support and the other parent to take a more active role in his children lives.

There is a presumption today that a father is automatically responsible for his child’s welfare and that this has always been so but that is not strictly true. The following extracts are not intended to be polemic but to offer the opportunity to re-assess whether the script we work with at present is flawed and in need of a fundamental overhaul.

The mother of an illegitimate child became statutorily liable to maintain the child by section 71 of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. “Affiliation proceedings” was the only way in which a putative father could be ordered to pay child’s maintenance.

This was bound up with the Liable Relative principle and it is noteworthy that a husband was added as a liable relative only by section 41 of the Poor Law Act in 1927.

The National Assistance Act 1948 swept away the liability of parents to maintain children over sixteen, and of grandparents to maintain grandchildren, of children to maintain parents, and stepfathers to maintain stepchildren.

Section 42 of the 1948 Act became the only statutory provision to set out the liability of one person to maintain another. It stated that (a) a man shall be liable to maintain his wife and his children, and (b) a woman shall be liable to maintain her husband and her children. A woman’s children included her illegitimate children and a man’s children included any children of whom he had been adjudged to be the putative father.

From that point onwards, ‘the State’ assumed responsibility for the support of all such persons who were in need of support but did not have sufficient means. This tied in with the Beveridge Report (1943). The Beveridge report was opposed to “means-tested” benefits and. flagged up the dangers of creating ‘poverty traps’.

Child Support Act 1991, see Section 1(1), states that each parent is responsible for maintaining the child by ‘periodical payments’. As enacted, only fathers provided money maintenance – the mother’s contribution was actually an imaginary one.

Periodical payments are not in fact wholly spent “with respect to the child”, but include a sum expressly stated to be for the PWC (parent-with-care), whom no statute or rule of common law has ever held the other parent liable to maintain, ex matrimonium.

Rules relating to step children and ‘liable relative’ were different in the era from 1920s to the 1990s. We used to be frequently reminded that a 40% rate of fatherlessness (due to divorce) was nothing new since the 19th century saw the same rate of fatherlessness but due to widowhood. Since there was no welfare state widows in the 19th century had the alternative of seeking a new partner or remaining single Many managed to re-partner.

A return to this mode would assist the remarriage rates – as envisaged by the 1969 Act – but which have never reached their true potential.

If all CS was abolished and replaced by a Child Support Allowance for men then this would be attractive to men taking on a divorced woman and her family since it would be paid to him as step father. The same Child Support Allowance would be paid to the biological father while married and cease when divorced.

The biological father would therefore be relieved of the taxation of CS without suffering any cut in his ‘contact’ rights.

For separated fathers the toxic aspect of the present CS regime is that it fails to take into account the income of any new partner of the former wife. Figures vary but around 90% of separated women find new partners within 6 months of their former relationship breakup. It is inequitable to expect an excluded father to pay part of his income into a household that is already enjoying state subsidies and the unofficial earned income from a new (male) partner.

Quantify

The present situation is one where fathers pay child support (CS) monthly in the expectation of seeing their child. When, however, access (contact) is blocked or curtailed they have no fast recourse to a remedy, indeed, they have no remedy at any speed.

Suggestion. Would it be helpful if child support (CS) was paid monthly in arrears (or quarterly in arrears) and be performance related ? Paying in advance or concurrently limits the number of options open for countermeasures.

However, it would be wrong to give the impression that paying child support is a pandemic problem; in actuality it is confined to a tightly drawn minority.

• Firstly, the minority is confined to the unemployed, the disabled, the under-aged and the seriously ill.
• Secondly, the minority includes those where the paternal DNA is in doubt. In the late 1990s 16% of non-resident fathers traced by the Child Support Agency disputed paternity and in 7% of the cases DNA tests established that he could not have been the biological father.
• Thirdly, the low-waged though gifted no-fault divorce have not the wherewithal to ever provide adequately for themselves and thus cannot at the same time be reasonably asked provide for their children.
  • Fourthly, the remaining rump cannot or simply will not pay or if they pay it is irregularly. This might be for a variety of reasons. It is this sector, we suggest, that needs addressing – not the 3 categories above where the situation is more or less out of their hands.

The statistics provided in Appendix A explain how many fathers are assessed for CS payment and how many pay, the numbers who do not and by reason, e.g. unemployment.

Making Contact Work  

For over a decade it has been accepted that around 40% of fathers lose contact with their children and the bond between child and father is ruptured – often deliberately and permanently.

“Too many fathers lose contact with their children after an acrimonious divorce. That is about to change.” Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss interviewed by Margarette Driscoll (Sunday Times, February 17, 2002).

A distinct correction we would make to Butler-Sloss’s opinion is that it is not merely “after an acrimonious divorce” but in the subsequent pursuit of contact regardless of whether the divorce was friendly or not.

The Lord Chancellor’s Department (now Ministry of Justice) promised in 2002 to respond positively and “as a matter of priority” to the recommendations contained in “Making Contact Work” but nothing was ever forthcoming.

The subsequent PSA 8 talks petered out when it became obvious that fathers’ right views were not going to be considered.

Recent Studies

A poll carried out by Mishcon de Reya in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Children Act has led its authors to state that the Children Act 1989 is “not working” despite its good intentions. The poll (of 4,000 parents and children) revealed that:

* 38% children never saw their father again once separated

* 49% admitted to deliberately protracting the legal process in order to secure their desired outcome
* 68% confessed to indiscriminately using their children as ‘bargaining tools’ when they separated
* 20% of separated parents admitted that they actively set out to make their partners experience ‘as unpleasant as possible’ regardless of the effect this had on their children’s feelings

* 19% of children said they felt used in the separation

* 50% of parents admitted putting their children through an intrusive court process over access issues and living arrangements

(NB The fatal flaw in the Children Act 1989 is that 90% of it clauses admirably apply to public law but it was never designed to deftly negotiate private law cases. We believe that if a new Children Act is ever contemplated in future it should apply only to private law cases).

This Mishcon de Reya survey replicated findings by Bradshaw & Stimson et al 12 years ago into how often did the non resident father see his children. Some of their 1997 findings in the University of York interim report are displayed below:

Payments

The same study (Bradshaw & Stimson et al, 1997), found  that 77% of fathers had paid maintenance and those who had never paid were more likely to have been unmarried and had shorter term relationships with the mother of their child

In an earlier study (this time by Bradshaw & Millar, 1991, but also of other studies of lone mothers) it was found that only 57% of fathers made maintenance payments – later this discrepancy was discovered to be a bias in the ‘mother only’ questionnaires (it was realised that there was some deliberate ‘understating’).

One would have thought that given the evidence that ‘generous’ contact and ‘shared residence’ both  results in higher levels of CS compliance, and on a more regular basis, government would rush to adopt this option – but it has not.

Bradshaw & Stimson’s study found that the majority of the fathers gave “informal support” [money] and they gave more if they were not paying maintenance regularly (but 28% of fathers in their study had never paid CS and had never given informal support – see ‘Quantifying’ above.

The review has rightly picked up on the fact that this ‘informal’ paying over of money to the mother was not taken into account due to the rigidity of the CSA rules.

Resistance

All the time fathers’ groups were pushing hard for more contact and for the courts to enforce contact, women’s groups were arguing against it.

There seems to have been 2 or 3 reasons for this pushback; one was the fear of losing control of the children and the custody situation; another was the fear of losing of money; and the last was the claimed fear of spousal abuse. 

The first of these – the ‘gatekeeping’ phenomenon – has been extensively written about in the US and a summary is not required here. However, if clarification is sought, a brief overview can be found in Appendix B.

The rational for the second appears to have been that in sharing more of the child with the father, or worse, a shared parenting agreement the state-sourced income paid to the mother would decrease.

The third obstacle, namely fear of spousal abuse (domestic violence), has been exploded both by new legislation and measures altering police procedures. Claims of the potential for child endangerment were totally discredited when Justice Nicholas Wall’s published his 2006 report into the claims made by Women’s Aid against fathers being given contact. Of the 29 cases Women’s Aid listed none were found to have any linkage between contact, fathers and court orders. Resulting enquiries triggered by Women’s Aid’s claims revealed that it was not the fathers who presented a danger to children but the mothers (e.g. in terms of serious abuse, neglect, homicides etc). More details can be found at Appendix C.

Possible solutions

In the final analysis custody is the one single item that will solve the overwhelming majority of disputes because:

1. If one parent has custody and the other does not, then an imbalance is created.
2. If one parent has unlimited access time with the children but can veto or interrupt the other parents access time a master-and-servant relationship exists.
3. If one parent enjoys the apparent protection of the courts and the other parent feels frustrated by the courts then the imbalance is exaggerated.
4. If one parent feels able to flaunt court orders while the other parent knows they will incur sanctions for disregarding a court order, another imbalance is created.
5. If there is a presumption or unspoken assumption that mothers will gain always custody and fathers always be denied it a recipe for conflict has been written.

The remedy put forward by fathers groups to unblock what is often no more than an ideological log-jam, is shared parenting. This has often been decried but the criticism leveled at it reveals that its opponent have not fully understood what shared parenting entail and what varieties are available.

Despite its successful adoption in a variety of counties, e.g. Sweden, Australia, Belgium and some US states, and its ability to be implemented in a variety of subtle versions, the official view in England has historically been hostile.[1]

Rebuffs

In Oct 2002 the Coalition for Equal Parenting (CEP) met with Amanda Finlay, Sally Field and a LCD team to press for a fuller implementation of the 1989 Children Act. Over the previous months CEP delegates had met with LCD staff to ensure they understood what shared parenting involved. At the Oct meeting it was clear that the LCD staff still thought shared parenting was the same as ‘contact and residence’ in all but name (for a flavour of this dialogue see transcript at Appendix D).

The view of the ‘Coalition for Equal Parenting’ (CEP) in 2002 was that shared parenting was not merely the only way forward but provided a route to lower legal fees for clients and reduce governmental expenditure.

Further, if this route were not adopted the UK Treasury would face ever increasing bills for the social consequences until such time as they proved unsustainable.

Ministerial misconceptions

The most recent occasion when shared parenting looked as if it might have some chance of acceptance was in 2004. However, the pattern of apparent obstinacy and misrepresentation continued culminating in Lord Falconer intervention (July 2004), when he described dividing chiseler up as entirely different from dividing a CD collection: [2]

“There cannot and will not be an automatic presumption of 50/50 contact. Children cannot be divided like the furniture or the CD collection. It is more complex than that.”

Well, Lord Falconer, no its not. Dividing them up works very well in other countries and there is no reason why it should not work in Britain.

Lord Falconer lack of knowledge of shared parenting was revealed in his wording when he somehow imagined an exact split between both parents was intended:

 “[He]. . . rejected the idea of an exact split in contact arrangements as unworkable and not in the best interests of children”.

There is clear and unequivocal evidence that a sharing of custody and parental rights had existed prior to the Children Act 1989 and that the Act was intended to build on that basis but in actuality destroyed it.

The Law Commission in a little known paper,(Supplement to Working Paper No 96, 1985, discovered that joint custody awards were increasing in the 1980s and were especially popular in the south and midlands. [3] Upwards of 55% of all awards were joint custody, i.e. approximating shared parenting. Only in the North did this level taper off and ‘sole mother custody’ begin to predominate (see page 90). The distinct North South divide in custody settlements in the 1980s is displayed at Appendix E.

(See also an overview of Law Commission Report Supplement to Working Paper No 96, http://robertwhiston.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/12/  and “Twenty Wasted Years” http://robertwhiston.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/5/

Writing in the Daily Telegraph (Monday 20 Dec 2010) she says :

Women have won their battle for workplace equality and the gender pay gap is merely a result of mothers choosing to raise a family rather than focus on their career, a leading academic has claimed.

Her article “Gender pay gap ‘down to women’s lifestyle choices’,  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8212662/Gender-pay-gap-down-to-womens-lifestyle-choices.html) won’t come as pleasant reading for radical feminists. it might however strike a chord with those women chasing that elusive feminist rainbow of “having it all.”

She also warns that women who combine top executive roles with a family rarely have more than one child – and struggle to spend much time with them.

Her Daily Telegraph article continues:-

In a 12,000-word report to be published next month, Dr Hakim described new government policies to promote equality as “pointless” and based on “feminist myths”.

She said the pay gap has fallen to just 10% on the Government’s preferred measure and that it is a “waste of time” fretting about such a small difference. Dr Hakim claimed in a study called Erotic Capital earlier this year that the most successful people in modern society are those who are the most attractive in appearance and manner.

She believes women are now able to make an active choice about whether to have a family or enter a senior position at work. She says:

“In Britain half of all women in senior positions are child free and a lot more of them have nominal families with a single child and they subcontract out the work of caring for them to other women.”

In the report – called Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine – she says: “Equal opportunities policies have succeeded in giving equal access for women to the labour market.

“People are confusing equal opportunities with equal outcomes, and there is little popular support for the kind of social engineering being demanded by feminists and legislators.”

A government review by the Labour peer Lord Davies is considering whether to recommend that company boards should have to comprise at least 40% woman.

Dr Hakim argued in her report that there has been a “stalled revolution” because women have settled into jobs they actually want. She also attacked the idea that men and women have the same career ambitions and values and that women prefer to be financially independent. And she disagreed with the notion that women have a different, more co-operative style of management than men.

She goes on to argue that there are no short cuts to success at the top, which requires long hours and almost total commitment to a career, regardless of your sex. She told The Daily Telegraph:

“The long term trend is for more career-centered women who make it to board level. Levels are low at the moment because it is only in the last two or three decades that women have had proper equal opportunities. The next big issue for the work place is racism.”

[ Could it be that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s oringinally intended to benefit Afro-Americans but which was hi-jacked by Women's Rights advocates might return to its origins on both sides of the Atlantic ? - RW ]

See also “Pay Differentials – ‘gender rights’ move on”, May 2009 http://motoristmatters.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/9-3/ 

Ref:  “A poll cited in a recent issue of Psychology Today claims that 40% of today’s women would prefer a return to the gender roles of the nineteen-fifties.”

END

A tyranny, not a civilisation, treats people as if they were a disposable commodity – yet that is how the United States allowed Dr. Laine, a nuclear physicist, to be treated.

Mark Antony’s eulogy of 2,000 years ago is as true today as it was then – when we bury men the good they have provided for society is often interred with their bones, and their superficial legacy is one of faults – often grievous faults.

Dr. Laine was no ordinary physicist. For a longtime he was a consultant to the government with a security clearance so high that the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) considered he merited a personal “minder.”

But his value to the security of the entire nation made little difference to ‘Maximus’, the child support enforcement company in Tennessee. It made no difference to a Ms. Devonne Moore, employed by ‘Maximus’, that his value was far greater than her’s could ever be and significantly more important to the ‘defence of the realm’ than a mere child support enforcement company.

Why does this matter ?  It matters because Dr. Laine is now dead and in the opinion of Charles E. Corry, Ph.D,  Ms. Moore and ‘Maximus’ literally hounded Dr. Laine to death.[1]

It is barely credible that Maximus used bogus court orders issued by a court that doesn’t exist in the fictitious town of Maricopa, Tennessee, but that is the assertion made.

Had it not been for the huge scam in America of false bank foreclosure notices (i.e., counterfeit home repossessions orders), outsourced by Banks to overseas offices, eg Philippines, to cut down on the cost (and revealed on CBS and ABC), the matter of Dr. Laine and false court orders would be entirely incredible. But sadly it is not – it is all too real.

Reportedly, Maximus and Ms. Devonne Moore ‘hounded’ Dr. Laine and they repeatedly jailed him until the FBI told them enough was enough and to desist. Maximus had allegedly pursued Dr. Laine for child support he had already paid long ago !

This is a story repeated the world over wherever child support mechanisms, be they state run or privately owned companies working for the state, operate to fund a government that has decided to make divorce cheap and easy (but now realises it can’t afford such a policy).

In Britain we have had our own ‘Dr. Laine’ – he was Dr David Kelly, the internationally renowned expert on biological warfare. As a WMD weapons inspector he was hounded to death by politicians, many believe, for taking an ‘independent of government’ view. He was found dead – an apparent suicide but one doubted by many – in July 2003.

How the state and its apparatchik-like agencies toss men aside as if they were valueless and easily replaceable is astounding. In the 1990s when hundred of men committed suicide after receiving their ‘interim’ CSA assessments hardly surfaced as news worthy story (they had no idea that the ‘interim’ assessment was always 2 or 3 times the actual final assessment. All all they could see was the impossibility of living on £5 or £50 a month).  Yet when 3 or 4 women are mis-diagnosed with breast cancer at a clinic it received wall-to-wall coverage in the media.

The past 2 decades are littered with the corpses of the known and the unknown. People like Roger Whitcomb who established the radical UKMM. Knowing he was dying of cancer he divided his money and estate between a cancer research foundation and the newly emerging Men’s Movement.

There are others like the late Daniel Amneus author of “The Garbage Generation” who educated a whole generation. Who in the father movement could not know and appreciate Richard Gardner who brought Parental Alienation Syndrome to the world’s attention but who took his own life in May 2003 rather than live through the pain of reflex sympathetic dystrophy (a painful neurological syndrome)

The men’s and fathers’ movement is lucky in the calibre of men it attracts. All men regardless of income or social station in life are adversely affected by policies pursued by governments and thus they make common cause. The result is a unifying of diverse talents on an unparalleled scale.

We have the prodigious output of Warren Farrell (”The myth of male power”, and many other books), George Gilder’s perceptiveness (“Sexual Suicide”), the awesome analytical skills of Ivor Catt, people like Peter Tromp, in Holland, who translates in 5 different languages and many, many others around the world all now linked together by the internet.

END

——————————————————————————-

The following article written by Eleanor Wilson is taken from a New Zealand newspaper and dated 27th February 2006.

It describes how the risk of ‘poorer outcomes’ are multiplied when children are put “into care.” In Britain children who are taken “into care” feature strongly as ‘run-aways’, those sleeping ‘rough’ in many large cities and teenage prostitution.

We are, by now, all very familiar with academic studies that show that family disruption, i.e. a euphemism for divorce, lends itself to poor outcomes in the way young people cope with life – the taking of drugs, high alcohol consumption, higher pregnancy rates, poor schools grades and poor job skills later in life leading to lower paid jobs (higher mortality and higher morbidity rates).

It is an grave aspect that men’s and fathers’ groups have uniquely vocalised and brought to government attention for over 15 years. But it is, one has to admit, always been greeted with indifference and inaction in official circles. It was fathers groups who, in that now dim past, first put outcomes on the political agenda as a objective measure for assessing programes, policies and initiatives. No wonder it was  resisted for over a deade.

Damaged goods

The setting up of the Centre For Social Justice may prove to be the counterweight, the trigger, to overcome this inertia which one suspects has its origins in a sordid lust for social engineering experimentation by those who now have a reputation to defend and a university pension to protect.

All of these poorer outcomes manifest themselves in criminal court appearances for one offence or another, and often repeat offending. Fifty years ago this type of behaviour was given the umbrella title of “juvenile delinquency.” It is a phrase that has fallen out of fashion as new sub-sets of ‘professionals’ have sprung up to deal with facets of the problems it creates. Nevertheless, it soundly encapsulates every aspect of the problems teenagers and pre-teens create both for themselves and society at large.

It is interesting to note that the results of the survey were circulated to 9,000 doctors in Australia and New Zealand but informing the judiciary, it would appear, did not occur to the authors. Surely, this is the third leg that  makes a two legged stool viable ?

Executive Summary:

The study, carried out by Dr Michael Tarren-Sweeney with Professor Philip Hazell (both from Canterbury University), on behalf of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP).

The survey was based on a mail survey completed by child carers. The results, which were published by the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, was made using a sample size of representing 347 children “in care.”

It found that where courts had issued a  ‘care’ order and the children had parents or relatives also living in New South Wales (NSW), they had “exceptionally poor mental health and socialisation”, e.g. attachment difficulties, self-injury, sexual behaviour etc.

The most disturbed children tended to go through even more placements – as many as one a month – as a result of foster carers being unable to cope with some children. The turnover in foster carers further exacerbated the already psychologically damaged child creating a vicious downward spiral.

Pamela Turner, chairwoman of the Christchurch Family and Foster Care Association, said her 39 years experience as a foster carer had taught her to expect psychological problems in children placed into care.

“I think it’s the separation from their parents, basically, the separation from their own mum and dad, no matter how good the foster carers are and there’re some very, very good ones.”

- – <oo<0>00> – -

Fostered children ‘disturbed’      

By Eleanor Wilson, The Press:(Christchurch, NZ),  27 February 2006

Children in foster care are at high risk of experiencing mental health problems, according to the findings of a survey by a Christchurch doctor.

The study, carried out by Canterbury University’s Dr Michael Tarren-Sweeney with Professor Philip Hazell for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), looked at nearly 350 cared-for children and found they had “exceptionally poor mental health and socialisation”.

Tarren-Sweeney, a senior lecturer in child and family psychology at the School of Education, said the study was the first of its kind.

“More than half of boys and girls were described as having clinically significant psychiatric disturbances.

“These disturbances were complex and characterised by attachment difficulties, relationship insecurity, sexual behaviours, trauma-related anxiety, conduct problems and defiance, and inattention or hyperactivity, as well as uncommon problems such as self-injury and food-maintenance behaviours.”

He said ensuring there was proper psychological support for children and their carers was essential in the light of the findings.

Christchurch Family and Foster Care Association chairwoman Pamela Turner said 39 years as a foster carer had taught her to expect children in her care to have psychological problems.

“I think it’s the separation from their parents, basically, the separation from their own mum and dad, no matter how good the foster carers are and there’re some very, very good ones.”

The reasons for the children being taken from their parents could also contribute to poor emotional health. “I don’t think I know any foster children that aren’t emotionally disturbed or, in the long term, won’t have mental-health problems,” Turner said.

She said children often were moved from family to family and, even at a very early age, that could cause emotional and behavioural problems.

The most disturbed children tended to go through even more placements – as many as one a month – because carers could not cope, causing the children further psychological damage.

“If they’re moved around from place to place, they’re not going to form any attachments,” said Turner.

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, where a child has been affected by their mother’s drinking during pregnancy, and the impact of drug addiction in mothers also contributed to such conditions as hyperactivity.

She said some children had counselling through the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), if they had been the victim of a crime, or received some help from Child, Youth and Family services (CYFs), but support was not always available for them or their carers. [1]

“They have to realise, these aren’t like other kids. They’ve been through a lot,” said Turner.

The study, being published by the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, asked the carers of 347 children in court-ordered foster care and kinship care with relatives in New South Wales to complete a mail survey using child behaviour and assessment checklists.

Its findings are to be used by the RACP, which represents more than 9,000 doctors in New Zealand and Australia, to draw up a policy on healthcare for children in out-of-home care.

END  

News this week that Birmingham’s children’s social services have been adjudged as “inadequate” should come as no surprise. For ten years, Birmingham and a host of other authorities such as Haringey, have hung on by their figures tips and have survived despite incompetency and an absence of proficiency.

In last weeks edition of “Children & Young People Now” (CYPN), Tim Loughton MP, the Tory shadow children’s minister is reported as ‘waiting in the wings‘- presumably to swoop down on some ne’er-do-wells, social services, or badly functioning quangos.

CYPN, the official publication for members of the National Children’s Bureau and The National Youth Agency, describes him being ‘absolutely committed to the Every Child Matters agenda’

Mr. Loughton’s style is said to be to spend a lot of time speaking face-to-face with key figures and frontline practitioners – which can only be a good attribute.

In terms of policy he has made it clear that there is a “need to go through everything in the department’s budget to make sure it is justified”, which, bearing in mind the Victoria Climbie and Baby P affairs – and all the in-between fiascos – mount up to a formidable task for any new government and any new minister.

This brings us to a juncture that should concern many, and one that it is not spoken of, namely, what if the organisations the minister is speaking to are not representative ?

What if they are working to their own agenda ? How will he know their information can be trusted and their proficiency unassailable ?

The recent arrest of female paedophiles, Vanessa George and Angela Allen (2009) [1] and the opening of the trial and the opening of  the trial of Rekha Kumari-Baker, who killed her two daughters [2] (filicide) are the sort of cases both society and children organisations have yet to come to terms with.  (See Appendix A for a list of homicide terms).

Above: Vanessa George                             

Right : Rekha Kumari-Baker

The common assumption is that only men murder and whereas this is true of adult slayings it is not true of children slayings.

It wasn’t long ago that the NSPCC admitted:

“Yet, at the start of a new millennium, we do not know the true scale of child abuse and neglect in the UK.”

The Children & Young People Now (CYPN) report put one in mind of an article once sent to the magazine ‘Community Care’ in 2003. At the time ‘Community Care’ blithely described itself as the ‘leading social care information provider’ and ‘a must’ for all social care professionals’. It promoted itself as the champion for the interests and values of social care and how it had ‘helped shape’ social care policy over the years.

An ideal candidate, one would have imagined, for social workers to learn about perpetrator statistics, of child abuse, child murders, and the ages most at risk and the most likely perpetrator

However, the article which was submitted only a few months before the media turmoil caused by the tragic death of 7 year-old Khyra Ishaq (May 2008), proved too much for the editorial staff to digest.

When the first draft was enthusiastically embraced, verification was not unreasonably sought by the journal. Obligingly, appropriate tables and graphs were supplied – all sourced from the UK government, the ONS and US government data showing child death and perpetrator were supplied to Natalie Valios. An example of one of several graphs and tables sent is shown below (see Fig 1).

Fig 1.Child Homicides by age of victim and sex (Home Office Fig 4.4)Perhaps in 2003 it was not acceptable in certain circles to suggest that the hand that rocked the cradle was metaphorically the same one that wielded the knife. Re-draft versions were then requested and duly sent. Perhaps disbelief or incredulity forced them to overrule their mission statement (see Appendix B). In 2003 ‘maternal infanticide’ revolted the mind and was still a taboo subject. But by 2008, and after the Khyra Ishaq case, the writing was surely on the wall for all to see ?

There then followed a delay, from July 8^th 2003 until Sept 8^th 2003. For whatever the reason Katie Leason, the editor Community Care, then wrote saying:

“. . . . we will not be publishing it, primarily because we are not convinced by the arguments concerning female murderers.”

In effect she and Community Care were saying that government statistics could not be believe and should not be used to convince anyone.

Children account for between 10% and 20% of all homicide victims (in Australia, UK, Canada and the United States), so this should be of massive interest to social workers and their professional journal. [3]

One wonders if she applies the same criterion of rejecting objective facts for a cosier view of life in other articles that they publish ?

In the six years that have elapsed one has to muse whether she has had cause to re-assess her decision ?  The stated criteria of Community Care was that articles should be “genuinely interesting and useful”, or “ground-breaking and original” or “authoritative, accurate and well-founded.” The article they rejected was all of these things

Ordinarily government funded NGOs appear to take government generated statistics without query. Was it the inclusion of American statistics which mapped very well onto the British data that caused them to have cold feet  ? Was it that the American data was quite emphatic regarding the sex of the perpetrator whereas the UK data showed only the age and sex of the victim ?

Pictures talk

For every one graph that can be generated from British statistics 3 or 4 can be created from American data – the following are a sample available for examining solely child deaths.

Firstly, Fig 2 (below), taken from US data, shows the rate per 100,000 of all homicides by age including children from date of birth to 19 years of age.

Among US child homicides in the first week of life, 82.6% occurred on the day of birth (see Graph 3), 9.2% on the second day, and 8.2% during the remainder of the week. The increase and decay in US child homicides is shown in the graph below marked Figure 1 (the original US numbering has been retained for accuracy).                 

The next diagram marked “Graph 4 Murder in Families” related to US data on not just the number and age of children murdered but whether they were girls or boys. 

Note how ‘mothers’ are the dominant slayer of children followed by “other men” from which we have to deduce a transient non-permanent male associate. It is fathers who almost fail to register at all as slayer of children and only become visible in the ‘Total’ column for all ages.

Whichever way and method child murders are recorded – be it percentages, per 100,000 or concrete numbers – the indisputable fact is that most are slain by mothers.

It is not as if British statistics have been singularly remiss in failing to point this out, the statistical services of other countries (e.g. Canada, Australia), have been equally slow or even reluctant to highlight this problem (not least because it should inform judges when they consider awarding custody of children after a divorce).

StatsCan, in particular, has long been criticised by many individual researchers over a number of years for in-built bias and “glossing over” but the real surprise was Australian child homicide data.

In 2009 an amendment had to be rushed out correcting data in the National Homicide Monitoring Program 2006-07. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), which is responsible for the data was contacted and advised of its error.

The original report stated that 7 homicides involved a mother and 15 involved male family members (the full report can be downloaded from the AIC website). [4]. The corrected number of child homicides and the perpetrators are shown below in Graph 5.

            Graph 5. Child homicides by perpetrator relationship (2006-            2007) Australia

Without the monitoring by fathers’ groups and men’s health lobby groups this error and many others would pass by unnoticed. [5]

The AIC also had to acknowledge that their ambiguous use of words led to muddled conclusions. For instance, in describing a family as a ‘male family member and mother’ it failed to identify the key difference in homicides between where a biological father existed in the home and ‘transient’ father figures in single mother households (SMH), i.e. Graph 5.

In future reports the AIC has undertaken to employ classifications that provide a more detailed information of the relationship between child homicide victims and the offenders.

New Zealand is also realising the inconvenient truth that mothers are just as equally likely – some would say more likely – as fathers to kill their children.[6]

New child homicide findings by Victoria University researcher Ms. Liz Moore suggest the child homicide offending is split between males and females.

She examined the post mortem results of 69 children, who were among the more than 200 murdered between 1980 and 2003. Of the 69 murdered children, 42 were boys, and the majority lived within nuclear families with both their biological parents. Ms Moore said 30 of the children were killed alongside one or all of their brothers/sisters and most of the offenders acted alone.

New Zealand has legalised cohabitation and this transitory lifestyle might skew the perpetrator data within nuclear families – as this would include cohabitation – and this raises a question mark over the normal meaning of biological parent.

As alluded to earlier, Home Office data for the number of child deaths is woefully in adequate and where it is possible to isolate elements remains ambiguous for interpretation purposes.

Privately, individual police forces and the NSPCC estimate that as many as 100 children may be murdered every year. We only read of the most shocking. But that sort of figure won’t be found in the usual HO publications.

As far back as Sept 22^nd 2002 the ‘Daily Telegraph’ was reporting that Det. Insp. Bacon and his Sussex colleagues had researched 476 cases and found that:

• 61% never went to court because the culprit could not be identified
• 6% were thrown out by the judge;
• a further 6% were acquitted
• and in just 27% of cases were conviction secured by the Crown Prosecution Service. [7]

Det. Insp. Kevin Bacon’s additional comment in 2002 is probably more relevant to. As a member of the working group he described how violent men moved in “like cuckoos” on vulnerable single-parent families, abused the children, then evaded the law by moving away – presumably to strike again.

The parallels with domestic violence are uncanny. The victims are the same vulnerable

women in single-parent families and the perpetrator the same transient resident. This is not to imply a one-way street, on the contrary, Prone to Violence (by Erin Pizzey) long ago described how some women feel drawn to men they know beforehand are violent.

So where, one wonders, can Tim Loughton turn to for independent and reliable data ?

Its takes a second report by Lord Laming to provide us with the shorthand:

• two-thirds of the 183 victims were under five
• one third were less than a year old
• most were beaten to death, stabbed, smothered or strangled
• nearly three-quarters of the cases, the killers were either the child’s mother or father (and on rare occasions both)
• One-fifth of deaths involved the mother’s partner or new boyfriend
• Men [inc boyfriends, cohabitees, strangers, siblings etc] were twice as likely to kill as women

In an observation that is at the same time exasperating but which may at last focus the attention of all the political parties  Lord Laming notes that father have a vital role to play in keeping children save from abuse. [8] 

That cannot be in dispute but it will not help policy shaper to have spousal and biological fathers lumped together with ‘fathers’ who are mere cohabitees or this month’s boyfriend. 

Time and again – and the Baby P and Khyra Ishaq cases are classic instances – if a father had been allowed proper parental participation or access, by Social Services, or CAFCASS, a death or severe abuse could have been averted. 

END

Appendix A

• Filicide Killing of own child by a biological parent
• Neonaticide Killing of own child within the first 24 hours of birth by a parent
• Infanticide Killing of own child aged less than 1 year old by a parent
• Filicide-suicide Killing of own child by biological parent followed by suicide of parent
• Familicide Murder of own child and other parent followed by suicide

Appendix B

Contact arrangements endanger children, Community Care conference hears.  Sunday, 01, Apr 2007 12:00

http://www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/domestic-policy/children/child-abuse/contact-arrangements-endanger-children-community-care-conference-hears-$469986.htm#

 [ emphasis added ] 

Without question the Community Care Conference held in London on 29th March 07 was hijacked by woman for woman with the continued influence of the Woman’s feminist movement being its main player.

That any child is killed at the hands of a father or mother is a tragedy to say the least, it would seem however as in all such conferences emphasis is placed purely and simply on the actions of father’s in favour of mothers whilst the facts themselves paint a rather different picture as can be found in “Child Victims Of Homicide” by Christine Alder & Ken Polk (Paperback ISBN-13:9780521002516) and used by Cambridge University which clearly shows that

Children account for 10-20% of all homicide victims in Australia, UK, Canada and the United States. Unlike other forms of homicide where men are by far the most likely perpetrators, studies show that women are as equally likely as men to commit child homicide. The authors ask who are the most likely killers of infants–mothers or fathers? Who are the most likely killers of adolescents–family or outsiders? They also consider patterns in suicide/homicides. The book draws on Australian case studies and comparative statistics from the UK and North America, having read this book myself I am ever mindful indeed grateful that Lord Justice Wall at the outset of his 24th March 06 report into child homicide cases as presented to him by the Woman’s AID Foundation of England (WAFE) was motivated to state the following “Whilst I by no means agree with everything in it” unquote.

For herein lay a big question mark surrounding the publicly displayed human persona as apposed to the true agenda behind such woman’s and children’s organizations and so adequately explained by UK expert Erin Pizzey founder of the first Refuge, in the following Daily Mail article.

We for our part at the NSCFC will continue to lobby for parity in family law and if this means highlighting that the feminist movement is society’s number one enemy on this issue then so be it. Suffice to say I, as Chairman, truly believe that the family is the primary socialising agency in a child’s life. I also believe the family is the corner stone of any civilisation.