BBC Thursday: The Future State of Welfare

de1amo

here here--and take the tax credits away from working people!!

Mary_Hartnell

Originally Posted by Mary_Hartnell
You have got to be joking.
If they have half a brain, they HAVE A BABY, preferably with some scrounger with a UK passport, that makes it very difficult to send the mother "home" to the third world country.

There is no problem recruiting third world care workers, the problem comes when they decide to play "happy families" and the effect they have on our own "difficult to employ" citizens.

de1amo wrote: »

what percentage of nearly 70 million are 'we' talking?- it doesn't seem the norm in my local!-i was thinking of the legal immigrants over the very small number of illegals

There are many "legals" here but on limited time visas. In theory they have passed the "skills" test. If I were in their place, I probably would not want to return to a "favella" and "shack up" with one of its inmates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqO3qCgyFJ0

As to the numbers take your pick:

1. Birth rate pushes UK population to greatest increase in almost 50 ...
   
   
   www.guardian.co.uk/.../population-growth-uk-birth-rate-immigratio...
   27 Aug 2009 – I wonder how accurate the eastern european immigration figures are as I believed that the rise in the birth rate in the last few years has been ...
2. Birth Rates Among Immigrants in ... - Center for Immigration Studies
   
   
   www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1105.html
   As for legal status, we estimate that the birth rate of illegal alien women was 3.1 children on average in 2002, or about 50 percent higher than the two children ...
3. Migrants push birth rate to highest in decades - Telegraph
   
   
   www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Migrants-push-birth-rate-to-highest-in-decad...
   8 Jun 2007 – The birth rate has soared to a 26-year high because of a surge in immigration, experts said yesterday.
4. Demographics of France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   
   
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France
   Meanwhile, the national birth rate, after continuing to drop for a time, began to ... In recent years, immigrants have accounted for one quarter of the population ...
5. Total fertility rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   
   
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
   Not to be confused with birth rate. .... the U.S. However, the fertility ...
   
   
   Show more results from wikipedia.org
6. Illegal immigrants' high birth rate feeds debate about citizenship ...
   
   
   articles.orlandosentinel.com/.../os-illegal-immigration-children-2010...
   12 Aug 2010 – Brenda Narvaez sees herself as a typical American teenager who works at a mall, likes to spend time outdoors, watches soccer and loves ...
7. Population Growth – Migration or Birth rate? - Migration Watch UK
   
   
   www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/180
   Four illegal immigrants found working in two Cornish restaurants will be deported, ... 1 No remotely credible fall in the birth rate will prevent the UK population ...

zagfles

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

e: Can someone post some actual evidence that providing financial support for those with children on low incomes has had a significant effect on fertility rates? Because currently it's just being taken as a given and used to argue for something that could have pretty terrible consequences.

Well it's definitely a fact that the UK has the highest proportion of children living in workless households in the whole of the EU. Even though our unemployment rate is about average.

If you google you'll find masses of evidence for this, eg http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/four-million-homes-have-no-one-in-work-2073710.html

Mary_Hartnell

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

e: Can someone post some actual evidence that providing financial support for those with children on low incomes has had a significant effect on fertility rates? Because currently it's just being taken as a given and used to argue for something that could have pretty terrible consequences.

Give headage payments to farmers and you get a milk lake or a beef mountain..

Give headage payments to..............and you end up with??????

Your chance to get a Nobel Prize in economics:
"Are children an "inferior" good?", where subsidy cannot stimulate an increase in production.

You just might be able to demonstrate this for skilled upper middle class females - the sort that are losing their tax allowances.

Now demonstrate it for an unemployed burger flipper, with a mother living next door, who would agree to babysit the child on demand.

MacMickster

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

Can someone post some actual evidence that providing financial support for those with children on low incomes has had a significant effect on fertility rates? Because currently it's just being taken as a given and used to argue for something that could have pretty terrible consequences.

I'm really not sure about the terrible consequences.

One of the few actual socialist policies of the last government was to tackle child poverty. The level of benefits provided to families with children increased substantially, Sure Start was introduced etc. The idea behind this was to increase the chances of children brought up in low income families, tackling the causes of anti-social behaviour etc. The aim of this experiment was laudable, but if it was going to work then we should be seeing the results by now.

Unfortunately the experiment has not worked. Educational attainment by children born into low income families has not increased significantly. Anti social behaviour has not decreased.

Instead, perversely, as zagfles has pointed out, it seems to have had the effect in the UK of more children being born into low income families effectively leading to greater child poverty, and also created a misguided sense of entitlement amongst our youth.

If this experiment had achieved its goals then it would be worth continuing with, but as it stands it is too expensive for society to continue with if it does not yield positive results.

de1amo

we invited the eastern europeans in due to a shortage of 'youth' who would do the less 'desirable' work! the British youth were too comfy on benefits. İf they have settled and are having children they must have built a lifestyle to do so(ie paid into the welfare state). Britain is all about migration through the centuries and without new blood it will die!--the birthrate is about all that will save us!

İ live in Turkey and couldnt give a monkeys whether uk plc survives.
Turkey is envied by most of the 'European super powers' because it has lots of young well educated people. it is attractive to investors and companies because of this 'pool'. -its a tough place to live and the young have to study 'hard' to get a decent job/future.

A._Badger

de1amo wrote: »

we invited the eastern europeans in due to a shortage of 'youth' who would do the less 'desirable' work! .

A point of order, Mr Chairman. We did not do anything of the sort. We were obliged to let them in as a consequence of decisions taken by our masters in the EU.

Mary_Hartnell

A._Badger wrote: »

A point of order, Mr Chairman. We did not do anything of the sort. We were obliged to let them in as a consequence of decisions taken by our masters in the EU.

I thought we were the only nation (perhaps Ireland too?) that agreed to open borders from day one?

zagfles

MacMickster wrote: »

I'm really not sure about the terrible consequences.

One of the few actual socialist policies of the last government was to tackle child poverty. The level of benefits provided to families with children increased substantially, Sure Start was introduced etc. The idea behind this was to increase the chances of children brought up in low income families, tackling the causes of anti-social behaviour etc. The aim of this experiment was laudable, but if it was going to work then we should be seeing the results by now.

Unfortunately the experiment has not worked. Educational attainment by children born into low income families has not increased significantly. Anti social behaviour has not decreased.

Instead, perversely, as zagfles has pointed out, it seems to have had the effect in the UK of more children being born into low income families effectively leading to greater child poverty, and also created a misguided sense of entitlement amongst our youth.

If this experiment had achieved its goals then it would be worth continuing with, but as it stands it is too expensive for society to continue with if it does not yield positive results.

Yes. It demonstrates the failure of "throwing money" at a problem, when the problem wasn't really down to money in the first place. Poverty is more the effect of low academic attainment etc, rather than the cause.

This govt have so far been too cowardly to ditch or redefine the "child poverty" measures, they are so far continung along the same lines - they increased the child element of CTC by over 10% last April and increased the income related withdrawal rate, so still further reducing the gap between those who work and those who don't.

Ilya_Ilyich

zagfles wrote: »

Well it's definitely a fact that the UK has the highest proportion of children living in workless households in the whole of the EU. Even though our unemployment rate is about average.

If you google you'll find masses of evidence for this, eg http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/four-million-homes-have-no-one-in-work-2073710.html

That's an interesting piece of information, thank you. Had a wee google and this seems to suggest the level has remained roughly stable over the last decade. If we suspect financial support given to parents is one of the main drivers of this we'd expect to see other EU countries providing less support to parents; is there evidence of this too? Is there evidence to show that increasing support over time leads to more children in workless households (or conversely that decreasing support leads to fewer)?