I would say that Child Benefit itself was always a really bad idea, and real reform should get rid of it altogether.
This is because it rewards the wrong thing. It incentivises having children, whereas the state should only incentivise having children in circumstances which are advantageous for society. Since Child Benefit is awarded with the birth of every child regardless of circumstances, it has put rocket fuel behind Britain’s astronomical rate – and rising – of fatherless children born to elective lone mothers.
The rationale for this is, first, that welfare benefits should be focused on solving child poverty. This totally ignores the fact that lone parenthood is itself a major cause of child poverty; and no less important, that even more than material goods children desperately need their fathers.
The second great cry that went up when Child Benefit was first introduced was that benefits for children should be given to the mother alone, because men are feckless no-goods and would only blow such money on drink and fags. And then people were surprised that young men felt marginalised and felt no need to anchor themselves to a wife!
The unmentionable fact is that Child Benefit has been a disaster and should be replaced by incentives for marriage in the tax and benefits system — incentives which in turn do not penalise single-earner households. But that, of course, would require courage to face down the shibboleths of the left. And that is one thing that the Cameron government shows a near-pathological aversion to displaying.
Foreigners are to be offered free treatment for HIV on the NHS for the first time under controversial plans backed by ministers.
Those from abroad, including failed asylum seekers, students and tourists are currently barred from receiving free HIV treatment – unlike other infectious diseases.
However, the Government is to support proposals recommended by peers which will end the “anomaly” and allow free treatment even for those not legally settled in Britain.
[…]It typically costs up to £7,000 a year to treat someone diagnosed with HIV and an average of £300,000 per patient over their lifetime with the disease.
[…]The number of people being treated for HIV in this country has trebled over the past decade and almost 100,000 people are thought to now suffer from the disease. Only one in three people with HIV was born in the UK.
However, the infection rate in this country has doubled in the past decade – and the number of infections acquired within the UK exceeded those abroad in 2010 for the first time.
[…][T]he decision is expected to spark renewed concerns over so-called health tourism, which the NHS has recently taken steps to address.Entitlement to free NHS hospital treatment is based on a patient being “ordinarily resident” in the UK.
Anyone else is supposed to be charged for the full cost of any treatment they receive unless an exemption applies to the particular therapy.
Hospitals must take reasonable measures to recover any debt and most have overseas visitors’ managers to do this. However, last year it emerged that so-called “health tourists” have taken at least £35 million of free treatment over the past eight years.
The costs fall disproportionately on certain hospitals, particularly those close to Heathrow and other airports.
In a previous post, I pointed out that Britain is now broke. Shocking, but there it is.
The Sansone family is not getting any apologies after they were put through hell by school officials, social workers and police last week.
And, the smoking gun — a child’s drawing that triggered the whole thing — will never be seen.
“I am really sorry that the family is as upset as they are, but we followed proper standards and procedures,” said Alison Scott, executive director of Family and Child Services for the Waterloo Region.
She told QMI Agency if the same situation happened again tomorrow, her organization would do the exact same thing over again.
“I do not see any need for our agency to apologize for fulfilling our mandated responsibility,” Scott said.
The drawing that startled the teacher, who started the domino effect, has vanished.
Scott told QMI Agency it was drawn on a white board and had been erased. She doesn’t know if anyone other than the teacher ever saw it. She also doesn’t know if anyone took an image of it.
Jessie Sansone, a 26-year-old father of four, was arrested at his children’s school, strip searched and held by police, told he was being charged with illegal possession of a firearm. Three of his children were taken by Family and Child Services to be questioned and his pregnant wife, Stephanie, was hauled down to the police station after their four-year-old daughter drew a picture of her dad holding a gun.
Police searched their house and neighbours said cops were going through the house all afternoon.
Eventually, police let Sansone go, saying all they found was a transparent plastic toy that shoots little plastic balls. The toy gun costs $16 at Canadian Tire.
Scott said it wasn’t just the picture, but the resulting conversation with the junior kindergarten teacher that caused the state workers to go into red alert – but she won’t say what was said.
“If there is a drawing where there is some information relayed through that drawing that children may have access to what is described as a gun, and that access may be unsupervised and these children may be concerned because the gun was pointed at them and they didn’t feel safe, that would concern anyone,” said Scott, speaking theoretically.
The social workers still have an “open investigation” on the family, despite police dropping all charges and launching a review of their own conduct.
The walls of the modest Sansone home are covered with family photos, certificates of achievement and framed scripture. The soft spoken young couple now have a lawyer and wanted to share with QMI Agency they are humbled and encouraged by all of the messages and posts supporting them.
Sansone said earlier that he had felt humiliated and isolated sitting in a cell, not knowing where his children were, or why he was being charged with anything, but getting messages from Tahsis B.C. to Truro, N.S., is balm for the soul.
The education system is dominated by liberalism. There is strong desire for completely control of thoughts and actions in order to prevent anyone from being different from others. They think that absolute uniformity will prevent conflict and make everyone feel “happy”. I wonder how happy that little girl was, though? And I wonder how happy her father was while he sat in a jail cell reflecting on how his tax dollars were being used by secular leftists to persecute him? I hope he did not vote for the Ontario Liberal Party or the NDP – they are ones who support this kind of thing.
A common occurence
This sort of thing happens all the time in socialist welfare states like Canada. The Supreme Court just ruled that educational bureaucrats should have more authority than parents to educate children. In Alberta, the government wants to make it illegal for parents to tell children that homosexuality is morally wrong.
Here is a story from Canada that shows why we need to be careful about enacting compassionate, non-judgmental, liberal social policies.
Excerpt:
A Gatineau father lost an appeal Monday after a lower court ruled last June that he had issued a too severe punishment against his 12-year-old daughter.
The case involves a divorced man who says that in 2008 he caught the girl, over whom he had custody, surfing websites he had forbidden and posting “inappropriate pictures of herself” online. The girl’s father told her as a consequence that she would not be allowed to go on her class’ graduation trip to Quebec City, even though her mother had already given permission for her to do so.
The girl then contacted a legal-aid lawyer who was involved in the parents’ custody battle, who convinced the court to order that the girl be allowed to go on the trip with her class. The father appealed the decision on principle, although his daughter went on the trip in the meantime.
The appeals court reportedly warned in its ruling that the case should not be seen as an open invitation for children to take legal action against their parents when grounded.
The girl now lives with her mother.
The more you reduce the male role and male authority in the family, the fewer men will want to take on the responsibilities of being a Dad. We need to be careful not to replace husbands and fathers with big government social programs and intrusive, anti-male courts. Men like to make decisions. We don’t want the nanny state telling us what to do – and paid for by the taxes we pay.
You may think that this would be overturned on appeal, but the father LOST his appeal, too.
Women need to stop voting for bigger government
So, what the daughter, wife, prosecuting attorney and judge (all feminists?) are all telling this Dad that he can donate sperm, pay bills, and pay taxes for social programs, but that he cannot PARENT his own children.
I have two questions:
Does anyone care what men want, or should we just be ordered around like little boys?
Do we really think that state coercion is going to make men be more involved with their marriages and children?
I think that marriage should allow men to express themselves as fathers, just as much as women can express themselves as mothers. Parenting should be an equally shared responsibility, and the father should have as much parental authority as the mother. Equality. It’s very important to understand that women in general, and single women in particular, tend to vote for bigger government, with the goal of making everyone feel good, shutting down free speech that offends people, and providing social programs and welfare to protect those who act recklessly and irresponsibly. But I think that’s time that women realize that bigger government means less power for individuals and families.
If women want to get married and have a family and let a man be a father and husband, then they need to stop voting for more social programs and higher taxes. Voting for more government is killing the traditional family. Instead, women need to take responsibility for evaluating men and choosing men who can perform the traditional roles expected of men in marriage. Do not outsource the roles of men to government, it just results in fewer and fewer men who are willing and financially able to get married.
It’s important to know what men want and need from marriage, and then to promote laws and policies that equip them to marry and provide incentives to them to get married and stay married. Marriages are best when men are respected as leaders, earners and decisions makers – that’s how men are. If women don’t want men to be empowered to lead and provide, then women don’t want real marriage – and they’re not going to get marriage. Marriage is dying right before our eyes already – because of of our own votes.
WINTERY KNIGHT 