Sponsored by
Bernard Dineen: Sad case of pass the partner as families fail
A JUDGE who was invited to take part in a TV programme about family breakdown invited the researcher to spend a day with him in court, to watch run-of-the-mill High Court cases.
She was stunned into silence, and remained speechless when he told her that there were 20 or so other judges engaged in similar cases within the Royal Courts of Justice. Across inner London, well over 100 family courts were dealing with family breakdown that day. Multiply that across the rest of the country, he said, and you get some feel for the scale of the epidemic.
The judge says it is a national pastime, an endless game of "musical relationships" or "pass the partner," in which a significant portion of the population is engaged. And children are the losers in this game. You can blame government, social services and the courts; but the central fact is that marriage is the best environment for children. Fifty per cent more children from broken families develop problems in their lives than children from two-parent families. Three times as many three-year-olds living with single or step-parents have behavioural problems, compared with those living with married parents.
Then there is the children's safety. It has been called the "Cinderella Effect," which suggests that children are at far greater risk from stepfathers and non-blood "relatives" than from natural parents. Do we really need to look for proof? Baby P, endlessly tortured by her mother's new boyfriend, a sadist who had just moved in with the feckless mother. "Mum's new boyfriend" is a constant feature in these cases, like Victoria Climbie's great-aunt and her boyfriend.
The idea that co-habitation is much the same as marriage is widespread but it is nonsense all the same. After five years of marriage, eight per cent of marriages have broken up. After five years of co-habitation, more than half the couples have separated.
You might have hoped that governments, who know the facts, would be doing everything they can to encourage marriage. Instead, as Frank Field the Labour MP says, they do everything to penalise it. But they are very generous at handing out taxpayers' money to encourage fecklessness. Karen Matthews, mother of Shannon, had seven children by five different fathers. Fiona MacKeown, mother of Scarlett, who was killed in India, had nine children by four fathers.
I hope these children turn out well, but the odds are against it. Children whose parents marry and stay married are more likely to have stable marriages themselves, and to wait until marriage before becoming parents. Daughters raised outside marriage are fifty per cent more likely to divorce. For sons, parental divorce doubles the odds that they will have a child outside marriage. But who needs facts when the benefit system says otherwise?
HERE's a tip if you are having difficulty getting an appointment with your GP or hospital. Try telling them you are a gipsy.
Something called NHS Primary Care Commissioning, which advises local health trusts, has issued instructions on treating gipsies and travellers. Here is a sample: "Gipsies and travellers should wherever possible be fast-tracked into primary care services. Practices should adopt a policy of not turning away any gipsy/traveller who attends without an agreed appointment, even if all appointments for that day are full."
They should also be given longer consultations than other patients. Five or 10 minutes is the average, but travellers must be given 20 minutes, and allowed to bring relatives into the consultation room. Staff will be given "mandatory cultural awareness" training so that they can "fully understand what it is like to be a traveller or gipsy".
A "travellers spokesman" has welcomed the initiative – speaking from an illegal camp in Essex. The number of these sites has soared since Labour introduced the Human Rights Act. What do you think the homeowners whose lives have been blighted by the sites will think of the NHS edict? They had better think twice before they complain, or they will be accused of racism.
I'VE heard of the infallibility of the Pope but the Infallibility of the Architect is a new one.
Prince Charles has intervened to stop the erection of 17 tower blocks
on the River Thames at Chelsea. Since the site of the former Chelsea Barracks and the nearby Royal Hospital are involved, you might think that the Prince, with his military connections, has not only the right but a duty to say something.
However, the architect, Lord Rogers, is outraged because the Prince wrote to his friend, the Prime Minister of Qatar, who is putting up the 1bn for the project. Lord Rogers is not above a spot of lobbying himself so he shouldn't complain. But he is so appalled that he says there are "constitutional aspects" of the royal intervention. Constitutional? These architects certainly give themselves airs.
Local people are with the Prince, but they are just the little people whose views also don't count with the architects. When you look at those cities where they have managed to inflict their ideas on us, it was high time someone spoke out.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Three-inch blanket of snow heading our way today
- Alan Shearer in list of favourites for Leeds and England jobs: Latest odds
- Barnsley’s Keith Hill invokes Fawlty Towers over link with Leeds job
- McCormack feels United search can be narrowed down
- Redfearn throws down gauntlet as queue builds at Elland Road
- Rival chips in with £500,000 to restore the original Harry Ramsden’s
- Visit from Princess as Serbian culture celebrated
- SportsTalk: Leeds United’s manager search, Super League and Calcutta Cup
- Libraries aren’t like supermarkets, they are magical places where dreams begin
- Strategic review will lead to job losses at Yorkshire Bank
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: West
