Tag Archives: Gordon Brown

News

Outgoing UK Labour government aims to make sex education compulsory

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Story here at MercatorNet. (H/T Betsy at RuthBlog)

The problem:

We have now had massive schemes of propaganda on sexual issues pushed at the young for decades. Schools arrange talks and brochures, demonstrations and films about contraception and abortion, making official links with abortion providers and with clinics which give youngsters contraceptives without parental knowledge or consent. Posters urge youngsters to consider whether or not they are lesbian or homosexual, and how to feel good about it if they decide they are.

The result? The teenage pregnancy rate has soared, and the problem of sexually-transmitted diseases among the young is now so huge that supermarkets and youth clubs have joined health centres and schools in giving information about how to obtain medical help for these potentially lethal illnesses.

Fewer and fewer young people are marrying. Of those who do, many divorce – especially if they have been living together beforehand. Many people in their twenties, attempting marriage, have had multiple sexual partners. Many girls bring to marriage a background of more than one abortion, with its consequent physical and psychological damage. Almost half of all births are now out of wedlock. Children born to unmarried couples have only a slim chance of remaining in contact with both parents by the time they reach puberty as most such relationships break up before then.

The secular left’s solution:

And into this grisly scene the government is bringing – yes, you’ve guessed it – more sex education. Under legislation now in Parliament (Children Schools and Families Bill), sex and relationships education will be a compulsory part of the statutory National Curriculum. Parents will continue to have the right to withdraw their children from these classes, but only up to the age of 15. After that they must attend classes which include information on “how and where to obtain information about health and sex advice” — to wit, your local family planning/abortion clinic. This is to ensure they get at least 12 months of amoral, utilitarian sex education before finishing compulsory schooling.

However, there is no opt-out at any stage for schools. Faith schools — which constitute a third of all schools in Britain — will have to teach a curriculum that starts with talking to five-year-olds about bodily changes, teaches “different relationships” (of which marriage is only one) from the age of seven, and everything else from the age of 11 — including same-sex relationships, contraception and abortion.

There was a time when I wanted to be a teacher. Can you imagine that? I thought that I would teach children English literature, mathematics and computer science. And I wanted to get married and to have children, too. Is this what I have to look forward to if I try?The government indoctrinating my children in self-destructive behavior? Who votes for these people on the political left, anyway? Why do we keep looking to government to “solve” our problems with government-run public schools and taxpayer-funded social programs?

The total cost to taxpayers of the family breakdown and out-of-wedlock births is 112 billion dollars a year in the United States, and it will only go higher as we keep using public schools to push children to engage in sexual activity as a form of recreation, without their parents’ consent.

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Videos

Hot Air and Michelle Malkin post new video of Michele Bachmann’s town hall

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I am happy because lots of major blogs are saying nice things about my favorite representative Michele Bachmann. (You can see all my posts on her here)

In a new video from a town hall meeting, Michele slaps down an idiot heckler.

She starts out by trying to inform the audience of the perils of nationalizing health care, citing the recent story about the 4000 NHS patients who were denied hospital beds for giving birth. So they ended up having their children in all kinds of nasty places.

The Daily Mail wrote:

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply – up 20 per cent in some areas…

‘It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown’s tripling of spending on the NHS.

‘Labour have let down mothers by cutting the number of maternity beds and by shutting down maternity units.’…

The NHS employs the equivalent of around 25,000 full-time midwives in England, but the Government has promised to recruit 3,400 more.

However, the Royal College of Midwives estimates at least 5,000 more are needed to provide the quality of service pledged in the Government’s blueprint for maternity services, Maternity Matters.

At the same time almost half of all midwives are set to retire in the next decade.

Well, as soon as Michele cites this story, some silly heckler starts to babble something about how similar things happen in American hospitals, like the hospital in MN. So Michele immediately shuts him down with this: “I’ve given birth here probably more times than you, sir.”

Click through to see the video either on Michelle Malkin or on Hot Air. And notice the positive reactions from Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey.

Also, click here for a picture of Michelle Malkin AND Michele Bachmann. Aren’t they lovely?

News

The most productive taxpayers flee higher tax rates

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UPDATE: Welcome readers from Pursuing Holiness! Thanks for the link, Laura! Laura knows about this from experience – she runs her own information technology business, and is scaling it back. Go read her post, too!

A few days back, I posted on the Cato Institute’s story about the New York businessman who shifted his residence to Florida to avoid paying confiscatory tax rates to the greedy socialists in Albany.

Well, that’s not the only place where this is happening. There is a reason why freedom-hating atheists had to build Gulags and walls to keep people from escaping their communist prison. When tax rates go up, the most productive citizens either stop working or they leave entirely!

Here is a story from the UK Times Online about the exodus of British taxpayers from Gordon Brown’s corrupt socialist regime.

Excerpt:

SOL ZAKAY, the billionaire property tycoon, is the latest entrepreneur to quit Britain after the introduction of a 50% tax rate on high earners.

…Zakay joins a growing list of businessmen and City financiers disenchanted at the new tax rate as well as the proposed changes to EU regulation of private-equity and hedge funds.

And here is a story from the Wall Street Journal about Maryland taxpayers fleeing their left-wing state’s tax hikes.

Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were “willing and able to pay their fair share.” The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would “grin and bear it.”

One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.

When the most productive taxpayers stop producing, they take your jobs with them. It’s called the Laffer curve. Maybe you progressives should read about it. Think about the way the world actually works in reality. And then ask yourself a very important question. A question that you never heard answered in Harvard Law School.

Who is John Galt?

UPDATE: Hot Air notes that IRS revenues are dropping rapidly. Gateway Pundit adds: 16K jobs lost PER DAY since stimulus passed. Gateway Pundit reports Democrats consider national sales tax (hurts the poor disproportionately, just like cap and trade), and China has warned democrats about printing more money.