Coincidentally my late Dad was one of 11. Nine brothers and two sisters. He was born in 1926 before the welfare state existed. So bang goes that theory.



Limiting it to two is nonsensical.

How about my friends who adopted four kids from the same mother? Should they be denied child benefit for two of them? That would then become a disincentive to take all four thus keeping four siblings together. I can guess your response. That would be a special case. Or break the kids up.

How much do you think it costs to supervise a system that has special cases for this and that exception?

But as you say, you wouldn’t want that lifestyle anyway, and only 190 families in the entire country would. So if what you describe as overly generous welfare has encouraged only such a miniscule amount of people to have that lifestyle. Why are we worrying about everyone in the country suddenly doing it?

Pensions are to be spent by the pensioners, they have control over this and can spend it as they please. The kids don't have control of the money intended for them, rather there are many irresponsible parents who choose to spend the money on themselves and neglect their kids.

I'm not bothered about pensioners claiming say £5500 (+Housing) a year to LIVE on, when the woman we are using as an example gets that PLUS another 25 - 30k to spend on her kids, despite never paying a penny of NI or income tax.

Dave-O -With no welfare state, your father's parents evidently had to work for their money and decided they could afford 11 kids. These days there are few people who could afford to support such a large family without handouts, in this womans case 100% handouts.

Smokey - Add together the cost of child benefit/tax credits for all non-working families and it becomes a much larger issue. The fact is that many people have maybe 3,4 or 5 kids and never lift a finger to contribute, whilst enjoying a secure if not extravagant lifestyle, when there are people actually helping fund this who are struggling to keep a roof over their head.

If everyone pulled together in the right direction, we'd be laughing but there's too many people with their snouts in the public trough (politicians included) who are quite frankly taking the P out of the working man who funds them, if we all downed tools, popped out a load of sprogs and went to sign on there would be no way the greedy and lazy leeches (again politicians included) in our society could survive.

Ah. I see.


It is wrong to equate pensions as a benefit like other benefits. The state retirement pension was always supposed to be your return out of the pot, for the many years you had spent putting money into the pot, usually around 50.

Obviously this situation modified, when you had large numbers of people who for whatever reason, were not gainfully employed for large swathes of their lives, and so did not actually put anything into the pot. There are anecdotally now plenty of whole families generations of whom have, officially, never worked and all of whom exist as professional benefit claimants.

However, they are by no means you typical OAP of today, who come from a different generation and a different time, and who invariably did work hard and long, often for very low pay, and the pensions I am talking about I would certainly view as the state paying them its share of the bargain, that is, a retirement pension which they have EARNED, by defined rules and figures, and to which they are entitled. You can't change the rules after their working life has finished and they have retired, and suddenly claim they are some sort of scroungers.

Then you have the categories of people who paid lots of money into private or employer-based pension pots. As we know, many such people have been financially raped, with disastrous results for the anticipated decent private pensions for which they have paid, but the money has disappeared.

Then yu have the categories of other people who would have had a certain income from their pensions, but find that it has been decimated largely by reason of successive chancellor's repeated tax raids on pension funds.

Then you have the banking farrago and the disastrous knock-on effects for those pension funds which were in significant degree invested in various equities, the prices of which collapsed as all the banking bubbles burst.

Finally, making the new rules or floating the latest proposals, you have people like the scumbag Bichard who talks a good game about some old granny being a burden on the state, and should be made to care for other old people etc or have pension cuts, when all his life he was paid from the public purse, and since he was in his fifties he has been scoring maybe £150K a year as his "pension" from public money, and will continue to do so till he croaks.

Somebody ought to do the maths - cut every gold-plated civil service pension like Bichard's by 50%, and let's see what that produces. THOSE are the sort of benefits that should be in the thieves' sights, but of course there is no fookin chance of that happening at all. If we are so badly off that we really do have to further financially rape some old guy who toiled in a mill or on a bin wagon or a bus for 45 years, and was so poorly paid that he never could save up any reserve let alone a private cosy pension, let's make him the final target - not the bloody first.

Well said the Aardvark.

Well said the Aardvark.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21532191And welfare-to-work programme isn't working[/url.

How do you know if my Dad's parents could afford it? They managed of course but the idea it was a carefully considered decision based on finance is far from the truth. My dad who was the youngest was a twin so they didn't plan for twins I am sure. Things [iwere[/i different back then with kids starting work at 14 and expected to bring in money into the family home so I am sure that helped how they financed things as the older children went out to work but of course that option is not open to families these days.

That is not the point though. Your stance is without the welfare state we wouldn't have anyone with such large families. This is absolute b@ll@ocks.

Indeed, it's been shown more than once and in more than one place that access to opportunities, education etc are factors that bring birth rates down.

One could argue that the welfare state was actually a factor that helped to reduce family sizes. Certainly, if we include the NHS within that, then free contraception has made a massive difference – combined with education and many more opportunities for women.

Just to point out, recent work by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation could find no evidence of this great claim by Cameron.

[url=http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/research/social_futures/worklessness.cfmMore here.[/url

Isn't the whole point of technological advancement to make sure we don't have to work (as much) anyway? Where's my robot butler, goddammit?

I'm sure that was what we told back in the 1970s, at any rate.

The Rowntree Foundation are hardly unbiased Minty.

Hmmmmm, who to believe?

A tory spin-doctor turned prime minister or a charitable trust set up by a truly philanthropic Quaker.

I can see where someone would get confused

Yeah, with their ridiculous bias against poverty. Laughable that they even bother.

Have you ever worked directly with them. I have, agenda driven idealists.

I'd love to see any claims made by the JRF ranked alongside any from the incumbent government.

I already know whose would stand scrutiny best

We do seem to be in an era where politicians can stand up and claim to have knowledge of some outrageous FACT without ever having to show where the FACT came from or who has checked its provenance, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't then base their policies and law-making on that FACT that is unproven.

The sad thing is that many of the public are eager to lap up these FACTS as gospel truth without question and to turn against this weeks vilified sector of society (whoever's turn it is).

But hey, it worked for the Nazi Party in the 1930s.

In days gone by the rate of attrition for children was quite high - so that would also have to be considered. Regarding larger families if the welfare didn't exist as it does you would have significantly lower numbers of families with 6+ kids and I bet the numbers of young girls choosing single parenthood as a career would also fall significantly

You can't expect Cod'ed to be clever enough to understand that!! These lefty idealists are pure as driven snow.

[url=http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/hayley-meachin/welfare-reform-fishing-expeditions-government-media-_b_2732749.htmlThe Huffington Post[/url - just get the media to run with it

Most genealogists come across large families in their tree very quickly.
My own paternal grandfather was one of eleven children who made it to adulthood (a further one died in infancy).
His father's brothers all had large families with a low-ish infant mortality.
By the next generation, birthrates dropped to three or four kids per family.

Granted, the infant mortality rate was higher in cities but families of 6 or 7 kids achieving adulthood were still commonplace until incomes and standards rose.


Already countered by global studies.
The better the income and standard of living, the lower the reproductive rate.
What needs to change is the income and the standard of living ... upwards.


How significant is it?
I don't mean just anecdotaly, like Cameron's pronouncemnts, but how many really?

Here's a clue: the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has little to do with comparing the relative benefits of Fruit Gums over Fruit Pastilles.

Now back in your box, I whistle when I need you

And Cameron isn't?
At least the Foundation do the legwork.


And Cameron isn't an agenda-driven dogmatist?


And Cameron?
Where are his stats and findings?

Predictable responses from Standee and Sal ... i.e. if you don't like what you are hearing and it goes against the grain of your own dogma but you have no evidence to the contrary, shoot the messenger eh?
Come up with any real counter-argument and I'll be listening.