Monday, February 27, 2006

Baby Baby Baby

There's a 'creative tension' between last weekend's 'baby shortage' headlines and this week's 'gender pay gap' stories. They don't seem to have grasped yet that you can have pay "equality" (i.e. equality of outcome) - if you don't bother with reproduction. You can have one 'equal' generation. Just one.

To sone extent, that's what we've seen. The birthrate has fallen (helped by 6m abortions). The very-poor (state-funded underclass) can have lots of babies, so can the wealthy. It's not just Ms Career - it's Mr and Mrs Average Income who aren't sprogging. The ordinary Brit. We see a squeeze on mid-20s motherhood caused by two relatively recent phenomenona - the overhang of student debt and the fact that you're competing for houses with dual-income families.

Were there no immigration the population would be falling - not a bad thing in this overcrowded island. You'd see a growing underclass - and a growing 'superclass' of the privately educated children of the rich. Not good for social cohesion - but that's EXACTLY what we're seeing with the Native Brits. The number of fee-paying school places has increased enormously since comprehensives went.

So far, so not good. Chuck immigration into the mix. No baby problem there. Indeed, after the 7/7 bombings, commentators worried about the low levels of 'workforce participation' by women from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. In one sense, it shows that said commentators haven't got a clue. They're right that it's an indication that the community aren't bought into 21st century Brit culture. They're wrong about women not working. These women ARE working, of course. They're raising kids.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you mean "since grammar schools went"?

staghounds said...

No, the FATHERS are raising the children, if by that you mean setting the full agenda for them at home.

The women just do the labour day to day.

Anonymous said...

Its part of the socialist obsession of splitting private and public life, work and home, etc. There is no such thing, when Richard Branson made 500million from the sale of Virgin music some people thought he should put his feet up and play golf, in his words, business is what he does for 'fun'. This is what socialists never seem to understand. People can enjoy their work!
When I was in hospital, some years ago when nurses were paid less than they are today, they 'loved' their job. It wasn't about the money.
My dad is a farmer / salesman, he loves his work.

It seems to me that Labour is more obsessed with money than the Tories.

This pay equality thing, is just another attempt to stop British breeding, no doubt most people behind it are genuine yet wrong but I think some people know exactly what they are doing. Afterall you quoted David Miliband a few weeks ago basically saying he wanted to reduce Englishness.

Anonymous said...

where do you get the figure of 6 million abortions? and since when, that sounds like an horrific figure.

Anonymous said...

competing for housing with dual income families and with student debt is bad, but I don't think thats the biggest problem. The biggest thing pushing up the housing market is the housing shortage brought on by net immigration of 200,000 per year or higher in the last few years.

imo, if the BNP got in power and totally cut immigration it would soon be followed by a crash in the housing market. I also think thats one reason why Labour have quietly allowed things to balloon out of control, it gives an artifical feeling of wealth.

Anonymous said...

I British women chose to kill their unborn babies, who are we to stop them?

There is a Darwinian aspect to it all. Dont you think?