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Having a free ride — 13 Comments

  1. All the little dwarves were spawned in Germany. I was flabbergasted to learn that for each new baby born we would get ‘Bringing Up’ money-at the time 200 DM a month for 18 months and later 2 years. This was paid to all ,no matter their employment status. Even in the 80s the German government saw the writing on the population decline wall (or rather the ‘taxpayer decline’) and so I assume this state largess, which was on top of the somewhat paltry ‘Child Benefit’, was to encourage more birthing. Anecdotally it seemed not to have worked.I know of no one whose decision to procreate was in anyway swayed by the fact of 200DM a month.

    I should put that 200DM into context, just saying that would equal 100 euros isn’t really helpful. At the time 200DM bought me 4 cartons of smokes, was a quarter of our rent, and was more than we spent on shopping a week for us all-babies included.

    So yon Paddy Packs won’t make a blind bit of difference. Have your politicians no got anything better to waste your money on? Surely there is another ANTI Smoking staffel needing funding to SAVE all those sweet babies from the danger of generation-hand smoke (that’s when the baby’s Gran once daringly ‘nipped’ on a cigarette outside the church when she should have been attending the ‘Christian Daughters’ inside).

    • A quarter of a month’s rent isn’t too bad, until you realise just how much it will cost to raise a child for eighteen years?

      Of course there is the Children’s Allowance here [or Mickey Money as it generally called].  That is an allowance paid for every child in the state.  What really pisses me off is that it is paid for every child regardless of parental income so even if you are on ten grand a week you can still claim it.  How much could they save by means testing it?

    • It’s now 194 € for the first two kids™, 200 for the third, 225 for every further child™. And still completely independent of parents’ income.

  2. Government believes it needs more tax-payers only because it wants more tax-payers’ money to give away carelessly, like sponsoring the breeding of yet more tax-payers – it’s a vicious circle, the only purpose of which is to increase the size and self-importance of government, not to improve its own quality or the lives of its citizens.

    A smart government would realise that, with rapidly increasing automation in all fields, the last thing any country needs decades from now is a mass of the unemployed and unemployable, apart from just a few morons to oil the robots.

    Maybe we should all desist from breeding, sterilise all immigrants and, within 50 years, we could then have attained an appropriately manageable population scale, which could be supported by minimal government nationally and locally, less than one percent of the present bunch of over-indulged tossers.

    • I think what worries them is that we are at the bottom of the league when it comes to population growth.  We all know that life is controlled by these leagues and what our neighbours are up to.  One has to be able to show a happy face in Brussels!

      Put a contraceptive in the water supply and then make would be parents jump through the hoops to get the antidote!

      • But population growth should not be an objective – I know Coca Cola wants more population simply to expand its market and the Catholic Church wants more poor people to swallow its poisonous product too, but government should not be colluding on that slippery slope.   The time for increased population has passed – with 7 billion already on the planet, it passed a few billion ago.

        Good luck with dissolving the Pill in the water-supply in your homeland – I can see the bishops going along with that plan.

      • Not a good idea Pop’s. Female contraceptives rely on estrogen and that results in guys growing boobs.

        Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with guys who have gynecomastia, however that’s because it’s rare and therfore vaguely interesting. However man boobs on a national scale becomes extremely repugnant; imagine the difficulties for film makers trying to do a period piece on ancient Rome and gladiators and stuff.

        One advantage is it’ll kill the wet nurse business (wife can’t feed the tyke, then hubby takes over), other is it’ll boost the bra business!

        Nope, scrub the water bit. Too close to tobacco control technique.

  3. Don’t Attenborough and various royals/elites, even wankers like Bill Gates want drastic population reduction and stabilisation?

    • But Bill (Wanker) Gates is spending shed-loads of money trying to eliminate malaria, one of nature’s smarter ways of keeping population under control, so that’s not exactly helping with any alleged reduction strategy.

      But malaria’s safe – the best Bill Gates will ever produce is a vaccine that fails when you most need it, can only be used by pressing ctrl-alt-del at the same time and that gobbles up all your resources updating itself for no benefit, rather than doing anything useful.   The vaccine made by Apple won’t work any better, it’ll just look prettier and cost even more.

    • That pretty well sums the guy up. Gates has fathered three children, two female, one male. So it’s just a case of I’m all right Jack, haul up the ladder.

      And we shouldn’t hear a peep from William (our King in waiting), he’s knocked up Kate three times so far. May even wish to emulate his grandfather, old Phil managed four of them. Two of whom are border line dysfunctional, except when it comes accepting bribes.

      • Some may question your numbers in the case of Phil The Greek – three out of the four seem clearly to be of his loins, but there’s a big question mark over Air Miles Andy.

        However, to balance that marginal reduction and given his earlier ‘history’ of widespread horizontal jogging, it seems more than likely that there’s a greater number of extra-curricular Phil-clones elsewhere helping to fill the planet.

        Once the Mormons have completed their covert DNA database, all may be revealed eventually.

  4. You should keep an eye on the Scottish Nannying Party GD, they brought these “welcome to the world” kits out last year, to much disparaging comment.

    Come May 1st there is minimum unit pricing, (or MUPpets as I call them), well you Oirish eejits exported the smoking ban to us and now you can look forward to your Parlia-mint repaying the compliment. Just a heads up like…

     

     

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