Boris’ Insulting Views on the Children of Single Mothers

Yesterday Mike put up a piece revealing our comedy Prime Minister’s views on the children of single mothers, taken from Mirror Online. As you would expect, they were characteristically ignorant and boorish. Johnson had written in a magazine column that they were ‘ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate’. Men were ‘feeble’ if they were reluctant or unable to take control of their children. It was also ‘outrageous’ for married couples to have to fund the desire of single women to procreate without fathers, and he felt that a way had to be found to ‘restore women’s desire to be married’.

Mike goes on to demolish these awful generalisations, and begins by pointing out that many children raised by single mothers are actually valuable members of society. Also, may single-parent families are the product of the break-up of two-parent families. As for men being feeble if they’re unable to control their wives or female partners, some of the best women he knows are uncontrollable, and woe to the man who tries. He also characterises Boris’ remarks about ‘women’s desire to be married’ as that of a ‘sexist control freak’, and points out that he says nothing about men’s desire to be married.

Mike states that

Allowing such a sexist, misogynist ignoramus to the highest office in the land will reflect appallingly badly on the UK among other nations – and who knows how much harm he could do domestically?

and asks if the people who think he has something to offer are prejudiced in their own ways against good government.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/12/04/boris-johnson-thinks-children-of-single-mothers-are-ignorant-and-illegitimate-charming/

In fact Johnson’s views are fairly standard Social Conservatism. This values marriage and the traditional sexual morality of restraint and rejection of homosexuality. Now I’m concerned about the decline of marriage and the traditional family in Britain, and I don’t feel that it is healthy, either psychologically or for society, for children to be brought up by a single-parent. But many single mothers, it has to be said, do an excellent job of raising their children. During and after the War there was a generation of children raised by single mothers, which had nothing to do with family break-up or illegitimacy. They were caused through the fathers’ death during the War. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the absence of a father may make no difference to the psychological welfare of the children of such families if there is another male figure around, who can perform that role, such as an uncle. As for women’s desire to be married, that was the product of the very restrictive norms past society placed around women, which located them very definitely in the home raising children. It’s the traditional women’s role which has been comprehensively attacked and rejected by feminism. As for his attacks on single women’s desire to procreate, not only is he here objecting to ordinary married couples having to support single women, but there’s also an implied objection to the state having to provide fertility treatment for them. He hasn’t articulated it, but it could also be seen as a coded attack on conventional, heterosexual couples having to fund through their taxes fertility treatment for single, lesbian women.

Of course these view aren’t confined to Boris by any means. The Conservatives always have had a deep hatred of single mothers. Way back in the 1990s they were included among the various groups Peter Lilley despised, and who he claimed he had in his little book as he pranced across the stage at a Tory conference in a parody of the Mikado. And then there was Thatcher’s mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, and his infamous comment about how single mothers were a threat to ‘our stock’. Which is a eugenicist statement that could have come from the Nazis. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t adopted the Nazis’ watchword for creating a good marriage – ‘choose a partner, not a playmate’.

As for the attitude towards men, there are two, mutually contradictory reasons for Johnson’s silence on male willingness to marry. The first is that he probably subscribes to the traditional view that it’s women, who are most concerned about securing a long term relationship, while men are more interested in keeping everything casual. It’s the received view you can see every day in agony columns with titles like ‘Why Men Are Afraid of Commitment’ and so forth. The other, opposing view, which is far more common on the anti-feminist right, is that men are more concerned with marriage and preserving the traditional family. It’s women that are a threat to this, because of their promiscuity. They’re only interested in settling down after they’ve had their fun, are entering their middle years and need a provider. As you can see, it’s a misogynist view that is deeply distrustful of women’s sexual freedom.

Boris also clearly shows his own reactionary view of family structure with his comments about ‘feeble’ men being unable to keep their women in line. He obviously doesn’t believe that marriage or the bond between two partners shouldn’t be one of equals, but rather the women should be clearly subordinate to the male head of the house. It’s another view that’s been justifiably attacked and largely discredited by feminism.

There’s undoubtedly much more that could be said of Johnson’s comments. They clearly those of someone, who has a highly reactionary view of the family, and they’re dangerous. I’d like to see the traditional family preserved, but families break up for a reason, and not all of them are as trivial as some of the more notorious instances. Spousal abuse – most often by the male partner against the female, but sometimes the other way round – is very often a factor. The Tories have cut down on funding for women’s refuges, which has left some women in abusive relationships in real danger, as they no longer have safe spaces they can flee to.

And although he hasn’t mentioned it, the right are also worried about the declining birthrate throughout the developed world. In Britain and many other countries, it’s actually below replacement levels, so that without immigration the population would actually be shrinking. But I can remember reading an article about this over a decade ago in the New Scientist. Some demographers concerned with this problem have pointed out that the most fertile nations are those like Scandinavia, where men take more part in domestic chores. They’re lower in nations like Italy and even China, where they tend to be left to women. From which you could argue that if you want to create more stable, fertile families, then men should be encouraged to help more around the house.

I’d like to see a revival of the two-parent family, but Johnson’s views don’t offer this. Instead, they’re just a reactionary yearning after an idealised family unit that ignores the real problems besetting family life, problems that have caused families to break down for perfectly good reasons. Johnson and the Tories would like to restore that family by severely restricting women’s freedoms to leave.

And finally, Johnson himself is a massive hypocrite. For all he’s written about two-parent families, he himself has been married many times and has fathered a number of children outside the marriage bond. He isn’t married, but lives with his current girlfriend in No. 10, which should make some of his supporters with very traditional attitudes to marriage take pause.

He is here, as in so many other areas, a bigoted hypocrite, whose views may actually be dangerous, and prevent the creation of happy, secure families. He should not be in No. 10. Get him out!

 

Gove Thinks Poor People Eat Junk Food to Get ‘Solace’ in their ‘Difficult Lives’

Mike today has put up a piece commenting on articl3e in Mirror Online attacking Michael Gove for yet another utterance showing how completely out of touch he is. The Minister for the Environment, in charge of Britain’s food, has declared that the reason poor people eat unhealthy junk food, is not because healthy food is too expensive. No, it’s because eating unhealthy food makes them feel better. Gove said

“If you have got a difficult life and you have less money, then one of the things that can be a source of comfort, solace and pleasure will be buying and eating and consuming food that is not always going to be best for you in the long term.”

The Mirror article goes to state that critics have been lining up to point out to him the reality of the situation. And Mike comments, after pointing out that this is the man Some Tories want to take over from Tweezer after she’s forced out of Downing Street,

Michael Gove’s comments are typical of the privileged, entitled, out-of-touch toffs who currently hold the UK in a vicelike death-grip.

His words deny a simple fact of life for poorer people – that healthier food is more expensive and they simply cannot afford it, because Tory ‘reforms’ of benefits and wages have put it out of their price range.

He goes further, and says that if Gove really does believe this, then he must be a sad, squalid, blinkered little creep, and ends his article with the statement

This is certainly not the kind of man who could be hailed as a future leader of this – or any – country.

Hopelessly out-of-touch: Michael Gove claims poor people eat junk food to find “solace” in their “difficult lives”

Mike’s exactly right about this, and the way it reflects the received wisdom in the Tory party. And this goes back decades. Way back in the 1990s I used to listen to Joe Queenan’s Postcard from Gotham on Radio 4. This was a programme talking about current events in America, hosted by the American comedian, Joe Queenan, and his guests. On one edition they were discussing the obesity epidemic then beginning to hit America. One of the other voices on the programme was a journo from the Torygraph, who said pretty much exactly what Gove has said: that poor people eat fatty, junk food, like chips, burgers and pizza, to make themselves feel better. This was about 20+ years ago, so it shows how long that attitude has been around in Tory circles.

There’s an element of truth there, in that people do ‘comfort’ eat when they’re low or under stress. But as Mike points out, it isn’t really an explanation for the poor having a bad diet. Low ages and the greater expensive of healthier food is. And there are other factors as well. A few years ago, Jamie Oliver rocked up in Manchester or one of the other northern towns to teach the local people how to cook healthy food. He criticised one mum, who had joined the scheme, for not including many vegetables. This upset her, because she had no choice: there wasn’t a greengrocer near her, and she had only been able to buy from the shops she could reach, which didn’t stock much in the way of greens. And I’m sure this woman isn’t alone. We have seen the decline of local shops since the growth of the big supermarkets. When I was at school the local shops on our estate included a greengrocers and butchers. Now there are very few independent butchers around, and the greengrocers, at least in my neck of Bristol, seem to be similarly disappearing. There was one over on the rank of shops on the neighbouring estate, but they closed last year. If you want vegetables, you have to go to the local supermarket. And this might be difficult for some people.

Another reason why those on low incomes may be more inclined to eat junk food is because they’re quick and convenient. Not only have wages been held down, but working hours, for many people, are very long. Not everyone may have the time to cook a proper meal. And so for the temptation is buy a takeaway instead.

And there are also probably other reasons why Gove doesn’t want to go too far in trying to understand for himself why the poor, or some of them, eat unhealthily. And those reasons may be to do with corporate political funding and the power of the fast food companies. The Tories get much of their money from donations from big business. It’s why they ignore the wishes of their grass roots, to the point where many constituency Tory parties have either closed or are moribund, and concentrate instead on doing what their donors want. And you can tell just how powerful the fast food industry is by some of the adverts that appear on television and on hoardings. If you look at the adverts on TV, amongst the various car and perfume adverts are those for pizzas, KFC and McDonald’s. This advertising costs, though I don’t doubt that if someone suggested it should be banned, as happened with alcohol, the fast food industry would immediately respond with specially commissioned research claiming that they have no effect on how people eat at all. Way back in the 1990s Private Eye revealed in one of its issues just how many Tory MPs were connected to the drinks industry. There were calls to regulate alcohol advertising then. This has succeeded, but it’s only recently that some parts of Britain, like Scotland, have put the price of booze up in order to discourage binge drinking. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if a large number of Tory MPs were either on the boards, or getting donations from companies like McDonald’s.

But Gove isn’t about to criticise them, despite the fact that one of McDonald’s salads was actually found to have more fat in it than their burgers. The Tories believe in unregulated capitalism, consumer choice, as repeated ad nauseam by Maggie Thatcher, and that whatever happens to you in the name of free enterprise is your own fault. And so they aren’t going to admit that the reason the poor may not eat as well as they could is because of low wages and long working hours. Indeed, I’m amazed that Gove even admitted that they have ‘difficult’ lives, considering how the poor have been demonised as feckless, ignorant, lazy chavs by both the Tories and New Labour, and particularly by the Daily Heil. They also aren’t going to criticise the supermarkets, which have killed off many community small businesses, because of the way Sainsbury’s and the rest have contributed very handsomely to party coffers. And the last thing they want to do is stop all those valuable donations coming in from the fast food merchants themselves.

So instead of placing the blame on poor working conditions and practices, and changes in retail capitalism, Gove did what the Tories always do: blame the poor. Just as they’ve blamed them for eating badly for decades.

This shows not just how unfit Gove is to succeed May, but how the entire Tory party – and corporate New Labour, when it comes to it – are for government. They don’t have any solutions to the real causes of poverty and obesity, only cod psychology. Get them out. Now.

Vox Political: Senior MPs To Get Third Pay Rise of up to £15,000

This is just insulting. Mike also today posted this result from the Mirror Online. It seems that 80 senior MPs are in line to receive another pay hike of 1.3%, which in practical terms means they’ll get a pay rise of between £3,700 to £15,000. See

Senior MPs in line for a THIRD pay rise of up to £15,000 a year

This is higher than the average pay rise, and at a time of massive pay restraint and growing debt, it’s an insult. Ordinary working people are in effect taking cuts in their salaries due to inflation, and as we’ve seen, increasing numbers of finding it very hard to make ends meet. The resentment felt ten years ago over the MPs’ expenses scandal was immense, and this will raise bitter memories for many members of the public. It’s also come at a time when MPs have banned the details of their own arrests from being disclosed.

This strongly presents the image that MPs are isolated, corrupt and extremely self-indulgent. I’ve blogged today about recent polls showing that Congress only has an approval rating of 15%. I wonder how high our parliament would rate if the same poll was conducted over here. I would imagine it would be much the same.

Vox Political: Tories End Special Payments Fund to Provide Free School Meals

More evidence of the Tory campaign to starve this nation and its children. This is a piece Mike posted today from the Mirror, reporting that David Cameron has quietly removed a fund of £32 million to provide the 3,000 smallest schools in the UK with free school meals: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/11/tories-quietly-end-free-school-meals-fund-worth-32-million/. And this was after Cameron noisily declared that his government would provide free school meals to all children. Well, they’ve clearly decided against this. And according to Mike, it was a Lib Dem policy anyway.

This comes after reports that teachers in some schools are actually paying for children to have school meals out of their own pockets, because of benefit cuts. Mike’s put up these stories on his blog. Go and read them. I was told by a South African friend that Nelson Mandela, when he got into power, launched the ‘Mandela Feeding Programme’. This was so that the starving children of unemployed or low paid people in the Townships would get at least one meal at school. He told me it was only trivial – something like a peanut butter sandwich. But at least the kids were fed. Britain is immensely richer than South Africa. We’re supposed to be one of the world’s strongest economies. But Cameron has decided that we can’t afford to look after our poor.

Disgraceful. Utterly disgraceful.

Vox Political: Tories Led Campaign to Block EU Attempts to Protect Steel Industry

This is further proof of how much contempt the Tories actually have for heavy industry in this country, and the men and women, who work in it. Yesterday Mike ran this story from the Mirror Online, that reported that the Tories, far from seeking to protect the British steel industry, actually assisted the importation of cheap steel from China that’s destroying it: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/10/tories-block-bid-to-help-uk-steel-industry-are-they-traitors-or-simply-enemies-of-the-people/

The article reports that while the Americans slapped a 66% tariff on Chinese imports, the EU only raised theirs by 9%. This was due mostly to Britain.

Unbelievable. But not surprising.

For all their mouthing about being the party of ‘industry’, the Tories – and Blairite New Labour, come to that – represent only a small part of it: the financial sector. They have no understanding of or interest in the needs of the manufacturing sector. One of the Thatcher’s ministers, the only man in her cabinet to come from manufacturing industry, said he couldn’t get the Leaderene to understand how a strong pound actually hurt Britain by making British goods expensive for the rest of the world. Not that Thatcher and her successor, Major, had any sympathy for heavy industry anyway. She destroyed the coal industry, and Major administered the coup de grace because heavy industry means strong unions. And it was the NUM that defeated Ted Heath. The 1984 Miner’s Strike was phase 2 of the conflict, in which the Tories decided they were going to be the winner. And so they were, at the cost of the British coal industry.

The British financial sector is geared to overseas investment. This has been pointed out repeated by everyone from Kinnock, before he converted to the Thatcherite free market, and ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone. And its true. New Labour practically caved into the City when Broon and Mo Mowlan made their ‘prawn cocktail’ offensive to win City backing for New Labour. One of the apparatchiks they installed at the Bank of England, Deanne Julius, was previously a staple of the American banking system. She stated that Britain should get out of manufacturing and concentrate instead on service industries.

So it was almost a foregone conclusion that the Tories would definitely not try to protect was remains of British heavy industry from the Chinese. And particularly as Cameron has spent the past few years shuttling back and forth from the Chung Kuo trying to get the Chinese to invest in Britain. Like building roads, new nuclear power stations and so forth. And obviously, for all this to happen, British industry must suffer in the process.

And again, what really galls is the crass hypocrisy. They claim to be the patriotic party, stoutly defending Britain’s interests against Johnny Foreigner. Remember Thatcher’s 1987 election broadcast, which featured footage of Spitfires zooming about the skies, while an excited voice enthused ‘Man was born free’ and ended with ‘It’s great… to be great again’. Alan Coren took this apart the next weekend on the News Quiz, when he drily described it as showing the Royal Conservative Airforce, and reminded everyone that the first thing the servicemen did when they came back from the War was overwhelmingly vote Labour.

And the EU naturally looms large in the Tory demonology as a monstrous foreign power determined to destroy Britain. Well, in this case, the opposite is true. The EU would have helped Britain. The people, who killed our industry this time, are the patriotic flag wavers of the Tory party. The old saying’s right: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.’