As a Christian, I believe that marriage is ordered to children, but those children require a stable home with a mother and father committed to each other. Unfortunately, with the emphasis on children's rights that doesn't consider such foundational psychological needs, the end result is a system that is reduced to providing money and food, without concern for the broader environment.
Behind the creation of the modern welfare state lay a noble ideal. The post-war generation of politicians and civil servants were motivated by the desire to protect the vulnerable, the sick and those in genuine poverty.
Tragically, over recent decades, the system has become corrupted. It might have once been a safety net for those in real difficulties but, today, parts of the benefits structure have become a lucrative racket for claimants who lack any sense of social responsibility.
Through its generosity, which now costs taxpayers more than £200 billion a year, Britain’s social security system incentivises idleness and fecklessness.
And one of the most worrying aspects of this — and which is something that has been a taboo subject for far too long, because of sensitivities about the issue of race — is the way the system is exploited by some migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The woman pointing out the deficiencies in the system has a special dispensation, since she is from Pakistan. "Baroness Shreela Flather, Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead, was the first Asian woman member of the House of Lords." And she's quite angry about the abuse of that noble system.
For example, a Pakistani man contracts a marriage in his native country, and then brings his wife to England to start a family. Because they have been married only under Islamic law, she isn’t legally registered by British authorities as his wife. Even so, they are able to claim child benefit for any children they have.
But the state handouts do not end there, for under Islamic Sharia law, polygamy is permissible. So a man can return to Pakistan, take another bride and then, in a repetition of the process, bring her to England where they also have children together — obtaining yet more money from the state.
Because such Islamic multiple-marriages are not recognised in Britain, the women are regarded by the welfare system as single mothers — and are therefore entitled to the full range of lone-parent payments.
Talk about gaming the system. This (she points out) goes for white recipients as well, and is well-documented in the US. The single mother in need receives more hand outs than the married mother in need, and society has firmly withdrawn all taboos from single motherhood -- so why would these women do it any differently? As long as the West refuses to consider what form the family should take, it will remain in this death spiral, and the future will depend on a population that is either fatherless or from homes where fathers are shared and mothers are disposable.
Not only are the children’s polygamous fathers often absent, but their mothers often struggle to cope with ever larger broods, unable to give their full attention to their individual sons and daughters.
Furthermore, the culture of benefit dependency bred by this practice tends to trap children in poverty, for, through no fault of their own, these youngsters often grow up in jobless households without any masculine role models and are very likely to repeat this miserable pattern.
It is time to break this cycle — and stop providing incentives to dependency.
Critics have tried to shut down her line of reasoning as "racist" but one cannot dispute the implications. What is the difference between unrecognised polygamy and the rampant promiscuity among the young -- whereby one man fathers children with several women? The marriage contract only matters at the Social Service desk that allocates funds, and the financial impact discourages it.
Not a good prospect, and eventually unsustainable -- financially, morally, psychologically and demographically. And shooting "Cassandra" is a signal that there's no change in sight.
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