I have read with great interest all the comments on this thread and have to say I have been really impressed with just how many really clever blighters we have contributing to this message board however I come back to the above statement and on the basis of everything people have written I have come to the conclusion that this poster is wrong. We have not seen evolution or adaption but are witnessing regression and Fran got closest to it when she recognised that social welfare systems mean that with humans natural selection is no longer taking place.
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau! That was truly great television. Nature documentary at it's absolute best.
We are not witnessing regression. Maybe the areas you are interested in are regressing but other areas certainly aren't.
Most black people have paler palms and soles of feet. We all have skin which contains melanin producing cells, which is the reason people tan. Protection against skin cancer and need for exposure to sunlight for the production of vitamin D has got balanced over thousands of year to produce skin variety according to climate of your place of origin. Incidentally black Britons will go a bit darker if they stay in Africa as their melanin levels still have some room to increase.
I think that our social nature is the reason we have such a wide variety of abilities in the human race...let's face it, when was the last time anyone saw a thick lion. The size of the human brain means that our offspring are born at the foetus stage (women could never give birth to an older baby) and take years to attain independence as apposed to months in most animals. This means that we need an extended family to help raise the young and protect the mothers...fathers, grandparents, siblings etc. Therefore, humans are empathic and caring by nature, especially towards their own. This means that we tend to support those less able if they are part of our family, whereas in any other species the disabled would just die. This is all part of being human.
It's controversial, but I kind of agree with what the government are doing by capping welfare and leaving it for the needy and not the lazy. I'm not saying that people should be paid below the amount which is needed to live on, but some people will deliberately have kids, even though they can't afford them, just to get benefits and so they didn't have to work, even though looking after kids can be hard work in itself. It then leads to a child being brought up in a household without a proper role model to look up to and if their parents aren't ambitious in terms of wanting to be successful in life, then what chance are he children going to have? So the children are then likely to follow the same path as their parents, etc., and due to having little money may then try to escape their poor lifestyle and turn to drugs. How far is the state allowed to interfere with the lives of its citizens?
No one on benefits should get more than the full time minimum wage. That is what some workers have to live on. If you want extra children, pay for them by working harder like everyone else. Having children is a blessing...it's not a profession.
Fran, most workers on the minimum wage receive benefits. Most benefits (with the exception of pensions) are paid to those who are working.
Totally agree with these sentiments though with the exception of those with disabilities who need special care or equipment etc. all 3 of my sons are blighters oops blessings. Life is a blessing especially in this sunshine with an U21 match at the Etihad to go to
Why not have the single persons tax allowance determine the minimum wage and the threshold for benefits?
Benefits do not just support the poorly paid but enable employers to suppress wages such that they gain as much if not more from the benefits system than poor underpaid person receiving them. Tax credits subsidise employers as much as they subsidise the poorly paid. This subsidising of poor people's wages in part contributed to the agricultural riots in 1830. Additional poor relief was paid to workers under the Speenhamland agreement so the farmers just paid their workers less. In the end the poor rioted and there was evidence that the key agitators were those people who were having to pay through their tithes for the poor relief. The farmers rather liked the system, ie keep wages low and let poor relief make up the difference. The local middle classes would then have to put the money up for the poor relief. Happy smiling employers - hungry poor workers - very angry middle classes. That is what we have today except the poor aren't rioting when they should be and the wealthy middle class are too frightened to agitate because of the dire financial consequences.
I listened to Playback on Radio 4 yesterday where they played a sequence recorded at a taxidermy class in which the trainer said to a student who was struggling: "Don't get downhearted just lower your standards". I thought that was classic.
By having children you do society a favour. You're creating people who will one day contribute to society by working, and your chances of creating better-skilled and more successful offspring improve the more you are earning. Therefore I think it is definitely in our government's best interests to subsidise that.
Don't have a problem with that...only have a problem with those who can work but don't. Supporting those in work is fine, though as someone said that can result in suppressed wages. Working for a living is good for you as a person...though some may not think so
Those who "can work but don't" make up the tiniest minority of benefit claimants. Less than 10% of jobseeker's allowance claimants do so for longer than a year, and jobseeker's allowance makes up only 3% of all welfare spending, so this problem is really not anything like the issue that most people think it is. It's simply not the case that there is a substantial number of people who would prefer not to work.
Why are certain newspapers intent on portraying the opposite though. Someone spell it out for me please?
Because outrage sells papers, rich (or comparatively rich) people like to have someone else to blame, and poor minorities are easy targets (see also immigrants, muslims, etc).
The Daily Mail? Their Editor (Paul Dacre) is a very angry person who seems to hate modern Britain. He's not alone in that, which explains their large readership, an angry and insecure middle class who can easily be worked into a lather about asylum seekers, the feckless unemployed, gypsies, the EU, loony left councils; the list goes on. It's known as "dog whistle politics", and was employed most notably by the Tories under Michael Howard. Remember their "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" campaign? Appeal to peoples fear and shameful prejudice, but always dress the hate up to look like decent and honest concern. It didn't work for Michael Howard btw. Seems to be working quite well for Nigel Farage, but David Cameron is a fool if he follows UKIP into those murky waters. it's kind of in the DNA of the right though, just as big government and profligacy seems to be in the DNA of the left.
