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Ed Miliband - What's going on with this new baby?

Am I the only one around here who thinks it’s wrong that Ed Miliband and his partner have just given birth to a baby without being married? The news makes no mention of the fact that they are are unmarried nor that it might be morally wrong to give birth to children outside wedlock. I know of no Prime Ministers that fathered (or mothered) legitimate children without being married to their partner. Has this kind of behaviour now become acceptable?

I know it’s quite normal these days for the chavs to have children without giving a second thought to marrying the father of the child, but I would have thought that, even in this day and age, respectable members of the community would be trying to set a good example to the chavs and be married before embarking on having a family. Certainly most senior members of the three main political parties seem to subscribe to this view; I don’t recall Mr Cameron, Mr Blair, or Mr Brown, all of whom have recently had children, saying in any way shape or form that they thought it was a good idea to father children outside wedlock. Indeed, all three seem to be very happily married. What kind of message does Mr Miliband wish to convey to his new son? That it’s ok not to enter into a lifetime commitment with the boy’s mother – that it all might be a “here today gone tomorrow” arrangement?

I think it’s wrong and that we should campaign for Mr Miliband to take the logical, and, most would say, normal step of marrying his partner. Does the word "bastard" no longer carry any overtones? What do you think?

What does "Working Class" really mean?

From a blogger called "The answer's 42" comes the following blog. Very interesting - makes some very valid points...

"One of the Labour leadership hopefuls, Andy Burnham, talks of returning the party to its "traditional" roots and is proud of his "working-class" background. Not surprising then that he's got the worst record of all the contenders when it comes to LGBT issues. "Working-class" people never used to be particularly tolerant of homosexuality; their men were men and their women were women.

But I'm not sure that the "working-class" that Andy claims to speak for exists any more. There are lots of manual workers, men and women, who earn considerably more than the down-trodden workers of the past. The most poorly paid are in the service industries, mainly women, earning the minimum wage. On sink estates around the country there are socially-deprived, poorly educated people who have little in common with working-class men like the ones featured in the recent BBC TV Fatherhood series. Many of them read to their children at night after work and encouraged them to pass their 11+ and better themselves. Pre-contraception and modern domestic appliances, mothers were still chained to the sink.

A few years ago I did a funeral for a man who'd been a civil engineer, at the top of his company, who'd worked on projects all round the world. His family told me that when he was a child in the 1930s his family was so poor that he and his brother shared a pair of shoes and took it in turns to go to school in them. His family didn't want me to mention this at first. They were embarrassed about his early poverty. I pointed out that his story was inspirational. His family couldn't afford to keep him at school so he'd left early and gone to work. He got an apprenticeship and went to evenings classes to gain additional qualifications, got a job in civil engineering and worked his way up from the bottom. It wasn't unusual for children to share shoes when he was a child. It is unusual to hear about people who've made such progress now. When he grew up, his children were used to all the privileges their father had earned, and all went to university. They had working class roots, but had never known working class life.

Now, if welfare benefits are properly managed, no one needs to go without shoes. Many of the socially-deprived have all sorts of problems. Many don't aspire to improve themselves by educating themselves; they just resent all the people who have more than they do. Are they "working-class"?

Then there's the "middle-class" that the Labour Party's fought so hard to attract and keep over the last decade or so. They read the Guardian and the Independent, have several cars, own their own homes, send their kids to the "best" schools, drink wine most days of the week, have foreign holidays, and fret about things like "fulfilment".

The "upper-class" used to mean people with inherited wealth; aristocrats or those on the fringes of the aristocracy. Now there's a new layer of wealthiness; people paid silly money as top executives, celebrities who are famous for being famous, and other millionaires (a million doesn't go far these days).

My dad was a book-keeper. He aspired to be middle class but was never well paid and lived in rented accommodation most of his adult life. I remember the Christmas he came home with tears in his eyes after accidentally breaking a bottle of whisky by knocking it against a lamp post as he got out of a car, having been given a lift by a colleague (he didn't have a car). He'd bought it with a discount from work, and he watched it all drain away. On a tight budget, it wasn't something he could replace easily.

I was the first in my family to have a higher education, though I didn't get any encouragement from my parents. They wanted me to stay out of trouble and get married. I did neither. What with one thing and another, I've hardly had any money for most of my adult life, though I've worked in one of the so-called "professions". So what class do I belong to? Hard to say, so I don't. I don't have one.

Mr Burnham's working-class roots were pulled up ages ago. Class isn't so easily defined these days."

Religion?

Just saw this, and had to post it. Brilliant!!

Controversial - Speed Cameras

Controversial - Speed Cameras
Category: Life

Controversial - Speed Cameras

Well it had to come about - my controversial blog. I can't stand all this stuff where we're all lovey dovey all the time, and there's nothing wrong, and everything in the garden's rosy. I for one, have strong views about certain things, and those things include speed cameras. I hate them - why do they exist?
Up till 2003 I had a clean licence - 21 years of unfettered and pleasant driving. Round about that time speed cameras started to pop up everywhere, and i mean everywhere. So, all of a sudden I had 6 points (got caught twice in five months) - for the non-Brits amongst you, thats half-way towards losing your drivers licence, which is a big, big deal.

So, my question is why? Why so many cameras? Are they serving any useful purpose?
And my answer - no, I don't believe that they are.
Lets look at some hard facts - in 1964, the year before they introduced a speed limit on the motorways, there were 17 deaths per day on average on the UK roads. Motorway speed limits were introduced in 1965 because people were using them as race tracks and subsequently killing themselves in large numbers. Cars at the time were not designed to stand up to any sudden impacts, and would literally impale the popor luckless victim inside, as they were full of sharp pointed, non cushioned items.

As we all know, cars have improved immeasurably since those heady days - they contain seat-belts, air bags, cushioned driver areas, soft steering wheels, etc etc. Have we seen an increase in the motorway speed laws to take account of these vast improvements in car technology. No we have not.
And what about the current death rate? Well, for 2004 (the last year for which I can find figures) the death rate was 3280, or 9 per day. 9 per day!! So despite the fact that roads are now 4 times as densely populated as they were in the mid 60s we have reduced the death rate by almost half!!
Has this had anything to do with speed cameras? No - this figure of 9 per day has been roughly constant since 1999, so - more speed cameras - no change to loss of life.

Ok, so far so good, nothing particularly controversial in the preceding facts - anyone could dig them out after half an hour on google. The more controversial bit is - 9 deaths a day on UK roads is not a bad thing - in fact its a good thing!! How can that be, i hear you cry - well, 9 deaths a day is the lowest per capita figure in the whole of Europe - therefore our streets are already safer than the streets of France, Germany, Italy etc, etc.
But, more importantly than that is Darwins theory. Ever since Darwin propounded his theory (that of natural selection) we humans have done our level best to ignore it. How? We don't just let the fittest survive, as Darwin suggested, we let everyone survive, the fittest, the not so fit, and the pretty bloody unfit as far as I can see. How will this state of things help the human race? Well it won't, we are not keeping the best, for future generations, we're keeping everything!!!!

We have no natural predators left in the UK. All the wolves, brown bears, scorpions and alligators have been ruthlessly destroyed or driven away. Therefore unlike other primates, there is nothing here to keep down our numbers.
Enter the car - it is perfect for the role - it is indiscriminate - it is loved by the population as a whole, and it is a killing machine. However it can't kill, if it is never allowed to drive above 30mph anywhere, because the nanny state is watching it all the time.
So, my advice - cancel speed limits, make every road a free for all - lets see if we can bring a little bit of death back to the road - and at the same time - have some more enjoyable motoring without having to constantly watch out for those fucking speed cameras!!