Mark Gilbert’s Blog

I was having a chat with Steve and James tonight, and the point came up that someone we all know is now pregnant with a third child. This girl has no job, and lives in a council house. She doesn’t know who the father of two of the three children is.

It just would seem to me that one “accidental” pregnancy can be genuinely classed as accidental, but the other two are simply either, stupidity, she didn’t think she would get pregnant again, or malice, she felt she could take advantage of the system by having another child and receiving more in benefits. As far as I’m concerned neither of them is acceptable, if she was stupid then she needs to be taught a lesson, you should learn from the first mistake, once is a mistake, twice and thrice is just carelessness.

The mistake can be forgiven, government benefits should be given for those mistakes to help the individuals support their children. So what happens for twice and thrice, when people wither don’t learn from their mistakes or just try to use the system? As it currently stands these people are given more benefits. If they were stupid a second time they are not taught a lesson for their carelessness. If they try to abuse the system they are allowed. These types of people have to be stopped.

There are two methods for this. The first method is since they didn’t learn from the first mistake, teach them the hard way, they were supported first time around, this time simply don’t give them any extra benefits. Demonstrate to them that they cannot be so stupid in the future, the lesson would work and they would not have any more children until they could afford to support them themselves.
The second method for this is this. If they were trying to abuse the system by having another child which they thought they would get more benefits for then again they have to be sent a message that this is not acceptable. The state can no longer support people who will not take responsibility for their own actions. Again this is the only way these people will learn. If they are deprived of their privileges then they would quickly either regret their actions or suffer.

If things are not done then there are a lot of people who will grow up believing that they can simply rely on the state for all their needs. This cannot happen. The state is funded by tax money collected from people who work, if people feel they can rely on the state for every little need they have then the whole system will come down. People who do not work and live on benefits need to understand that they should live within their means. If they cannot support children then they should not be able to look to the state to provide that support. I don’t try to buy a house on a Caribbean island because I cannot afford it, and no one is going to support me if I do. People need to understand that the same is true of children, if they cannot support them then they should not have them.

Anyway that’s just my opinion, feel free to comment and disagree, I always enjoy the discussion.

Cheers

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 02:02 and is filed under Personal, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.