See? Europe has it’s share of prudish victimology and cultural scapegoating, too. To wit: “The Government is blaming Benny Hill, the comedian famous for his sketches involving scantily-clad girls, for its failure to cut teenage pregnancies,” The Telegraph reports.
People’s ‘giggly’ attitude to sex — the ‘Benny Hill culture’ — was sending out mixed messages to young people, Cathy Hamlyn, head of the Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Unit, said.
‘On the one hand they are bombarded by messages through films and the media which give the impression that everyone is having sex and they should,’ she said. ‘On the other, parents have great difficulty talking about it.’
Her comments came as MPs and peers demanded an urgent review of government policies for reducing schoolgirl births.
Uh huh. To recap: Her feet being held to the fire for the failure of suspect government policies over which she held sway to curb instances of teenage pregnancy, Ms. Hamlyn, desperate for an explanation, found a convenient scapegoat: the sexual “culture.” She may as well have shrieked, “I blame those damned erect penises” and have been done with it.
At least there’s some truth to that position.
Or she could have blamed Murphy Brown.
I think we should stick to blaming “Murphy Brown” for the popularity of Banana Republic khakis and safari vests and just leave it at that…
I think some place in Florida outlawed publicly visible erections. Maybe Ms. Hamlyn could ring up the Sunshine State and ask if that helped.
The real reason that thousands of teenagers get pregnant (and keep their babies) in the UK is directly attributable to the welfare state. Mainly created by various Labour (yes, it’s spelled that way in the UK) governments, the welfare state provides, not only monentary assistance but also highly subsidized housing to any teenager with a baby. There are many intances of girls deliberatly getting pregnant just so they can leave home and move into government housing.
Benny Hill? Jesus, I’d bet that not even one British teenager in a hundred would even know who Benny Hill was.
The huge problem with welfare programs as they are generally constituted is that they make poverty a wholly owned government subsidiary. Them good luck on eliminating poverty.
How vital is the mohair industry to national security? Somewhere between “not at all” and “huh? mo-what?” In fact, if every mohair farmer (rancher, whatever, hell I don’t know) disappeared and Big Mohair ceased to exist we’d still be spending tax dollars on it. Probably to reconstitute it as a cultural resource.
When Jesus said the poor would always be with us, he was probably talking about government programs on their behalf.
Steve:
Huh? Maybe my mind has turned to mohair, please explain the analogy.
Someone once said that welfare programs encourage the very behaviours that they were designed to eliminate.
I was commenting on your post about the deleterious effects of welfare… and making the point that once a government program gets going, we’re stuck with it forever.
Like, the federal mohair subsidies. Which made sense back when mohair was a strategic resource (sorry, I made that up – it was never strategic, it was just convenient to ensure adequate mohair supplies for military uniforms), but now they’re nothing but a tax subsidized slush fund for a ridiculously archaic and miniscule industry.
So regardless of the bad effects of government programs, we can only try to modify them (or as politicians love to say “reform” them). We’ll never get rid of them. If every poor person in the US was suddenly rocketed to a level comfortably above the poverty line, we’d still have the entire social services bureaucracy in place and you couldn’t shift it with dynamite.
Do you really believe the the state shall wither away when it’s no longer needed (rhetorical question – I doubt that you do)? What I’m talking about, in reference to your comment on a likely cause of single motherhood, is damage control.
Yes, I believe our government efforts to alleviate poverty have made it worse. We pay people to remain poor and ignorant.
That posting above, with no identification, is by me if it isn’t apparent from the context. Don’t know why my personal information blew up. I blame the Democrats. No, wait, it was the State Department.
My mohair analogy spinning out of control brings to mind an old New Yorker cartoon of a man and woman at the breakfast table. The man is looking agitated and the woman is saying:
“Oh, I understand the economy perfectly well. It’s your analogies that are giving me trouble.”
Thanks Steve, sorry I didn’t get the mohair reference because I have never heard of mohair subsidies (I’m English, but I live in Canada) so I presume it refers to a US situation. And you’re right, I don’t believe that “the state shall wither away when it’s no longer needed.” Indeed we are of the same belief that “we pay people to remain poor and ignorant.”
Oops, now it’s my turn to apologize. Hadn’t realized we were speaking across a cultural gap.
So you’re some sort of foreigner, huh? Well, I think it’s terrific that you’ve obviously made such efforts to learn our language!
Mohair is a fur from goats. It used to be made into a lightweight wool. I think today it’s used mostly in blends, when used at all.
Years ago a Canadian friend mentioned that their best uniforms were made of moleskin. For a horrible moment I tried to imagine what they would be like, and how desperate you must be to consider it “the best.” It occurred to me that it couldn’t be what I thought, and sure enough, moleskin turned out to be a kind of wool.
That was a relief. I thought I’d have to toss out everything I thought I knew about Canadians.
Gee, thanks for the compliment on my language skills. In fact you are correct, I am “some kind of foreigner” and I actually speak three languages:
English, yiddish and rubbish (sorry, I know it’s an old one).
However, I am insulted, insulted I say, that you would think that I don’t know WHAT mohair is, I do. It was your reference to mohair subsidies that I didn’t understand. All is clear now. How the hell did we get from teenage pregnancies to moleskin?
Ummm… you started it.
Did too.
Yea, okay, so I did. Now I’m ending it Must get back to reading your hilarious comments over at Uncle Charles’ house.
Finis, mon ami. And I lied about my language abilities.