Independent Leyton Orient Forum

faldO wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2024 8:56 pm Labour suspends 7 of its MPs for wanting to reduce child poverty.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c978m6z3egno

Friend or faux wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2024 10:04 pm Quite right. Why should we subsidise feckless families who have loads of kids. Contraception is easy & free. Plenty of families have large amount of kids and can't really handle one kid.

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2024 11:02 pm

Friend or faux wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2024 10:04 pm Quite right. Why should we subsidise feckless families who have loads of kids. Contraception is easy & free. Plenty of families have large amount of kids and can't really handle one kid.

Always fun how people bemoan the falling birthrate and wonder why people aren't having kids - or are having them later - while simultaneously treating those who do choose to become parents like absolute scum. Idiot.

Dunners wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 7:10 am It was a nonsense performative motion from the SNP before the autumn budget. Thankfully, only 7 Labour MP were either stupid enough to fall for it or cynical enough to use it as an opportunity for attention-grabbing theatrics. Obviously, this won't stop them bleating about the predictable consequences of their actions.

Anyone seriously interested in reducing child poverty understands that the scrapping of the cap will need to happen in conjunction with a reset in tax policies. And this can only happen through the autumn budget. That'll be the time to celebrate or protest, depending on what it contains.

Max B Gold wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 9:56 am

Dunners wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 7:10 am It was a nonsense performative motion from the SNP before the autumn budget. Thankfully, only 7 Labour MP were either stupid enough to fall for it or cynical enough to use it as an opportunity for attention-grabbing theatrics. Obviously, this won't stop them bleating about the predictable consequences of their actions.

Anyone seriously interested in reducing child poverty understands that the scrapping of the cap will need to happen in conjunction with a reset in tax policies. And this can only happen through the autumn budget. That'll be the time to celebrate or protest, depending on what it contains.

Yes any measures need to be attached to a budget and not a legislative programme. You and I know that but that's not what everyone else sees. So to that extent the performative aspect was success.

All Labour had to do was go along with the performance and accept the amendment and their stock rises in the eyes of the core voters, many of them didn't vote for them at the election.

By announcing a clear commitment to fight child poverty they would at least be back on the Blairite/Brownite path. The fact that they didn't is a real concern for a party founded to fight for social justice.

Please don't tell me there is no money to remove the cap because there seems to be plenty for perpetual wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukrainia and Israel and for nuclear weapons we're never going to use.

Dunners wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 12:35 pm It's a perception thing. It is all too easy for a Government to point to an image of some scrounging immigrant mother with 14 kids all wearing the latest trainers and with smartphones as a cause for stagnating wages and rising wealth inequality. But it's a total distraction.

The 2CL has zero immediate impact on public finances - none of us enjoy increased riches through its introduction.

There are studies that show it probably will have a longer-term negative impact on public finances however, as other areas of society pick up the slack for an increased proportion of the population growing up through poverty.

As a society we desperately need more children. Our average fertility rate is currently estimated at 1.4 per woman, and on trend to hit almost 1.0 by the end of this decade. At that rate, every generational cohort will half in size, which will have a massive impact on how a society can function (if at all).

If we don't have more children, then we must either rely even more on mass immigration (which voters also seem to not like) or adopt a totally different socio-economic system on which to structure our society (and the last bloke who offered us even a sniff of a difference got rejected by the electorate. Twice).

It doesn't punish the feckless parent. It punishes the children.

Removing the 2LC will not make you or I poorer. But, so long as it is combined with a proper plan for reducing child poverty, it could mean we end up with a healthier, better educated and more stable younger generation below us, who we will rely on to wipe our backsides and pay taxes into whatever remains of the nation state when we're old and decrepit.