Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A non-sterilised observation

The funniest story in the papers today for me has to be the one in the Daily Mail about how a Tory councillor from Medway, Kent wrote on his blog that,
"I think there is an increasingly strong case for compulsory sterilisation of all those who have had a second (or third, or whatever) child while living off state handouts."
As is the way with politics, the arms of the local Labour and Lib Dems went up and screams of eugenics and Nazis were heard. Godwin's Law is alive and well around the Chatham Girls, with one Labour councillor saying "It's the sort of thing Nazis did in Germany." Yay!

The reason it's funny though is because yesterday a very non-right wing close friend of mine said almost exactly the same thing when I mentioned how I witnessed a mother and father take their three toddlers into the Smoking Room at a European airport. However, because she's not a politician no one would really care I guess.

It is surely worth noting though, that such authoritarian social engineering has no place on the ideological right wing of politics, and is, actually the soul preserve of the Left. So perhaps this councillor should resign and join the Labour Party instead? After all, it's the Labour Government that is putting through a quasi-eugenics bill in Parliament right now isn't it?

18 comments:

JuliaM said...

"....one Labour councillor saying "It's the sort of thing Nazis did in Germany."..."

*cough*

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2003-04-09-haavie-en.html

Why go back so far...? In Polly's Scandinavian paradise, they were doing it up until the 70s!

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it should be pointed out to Labour that the Fabian Society was all for this sort of thing.

Andy said...

He looks a wrong'un himself.

Anonymous said...

Until that unpleasant foriegn chap with the funny moustache gave this sort of thing a bad name, it was all the rage in polite metropolitan circles.

Perhaps if we were to refrain from subsidising such lifestyles, we could achieve the same ends without remit to such extreme lengths

Anonymous said...

Cracking quote. Obviously the far-right are alive and well in some parts of the country!

Anonymous said...

It's not such a bad idea to sterilize everyone with a revertible method until they are ready to be parents and keen enough to have a marriage, a job and a home to support their offspring.

Having kids should be a privilege that people work towards, not a right!

jailhouselawyer said...

Funny you should say that. Others have observed the similarity too...

Nazi Law

Anonymous said...

the problem isn't that they keep squeezing out more sprogs, it's that they're on benefits.
so just abolish benefits

Anonymous said...

Hows about we abort 200,000 babies a year to make room for 200,000 immigrants..oh hang on...yeah we do that already.
While we're on that subject maybe the NUT should call for NHS employees to banned from schools as they kill more human beings than the armed forces.

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir

As a proud 'left' I do not recognise this authoritarianism you speak of. It may be a Labour government in power, but I don't think you can squeeze a credit card between them and the party you support. Both government and opposition are about centre right managerial politics, despite NuLab's protestations to the contrary.

Alex said...

Interesting. It leads to an obvious distinction between an right wing authoritarian and a right wing libertarian. An authoritarian would go for the serilisation option, whereas a libertarian would go for a per capita reduction of state benefits to disincentivise the mother's behaviour.

Anonymous said...

Bernard Shaw (a well-known leftie) was an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics. I'm not sure that the current Bill going through Parliament is 'quasi-eugenic' though.

dizzy said...

Judith, I was being flippant. However I through "quasi" in for a reason noting that there are resembling parts of the Bill that could be interpreted as having eugenic-like qualities. I notice Tim Ireland has written on his blog about this post and conveniently left the word quasi out. Not that I'm suggesting for one minute he did it deliberately to muddy the water of his point of course. He probably just didn't understand what it meant.

James Higham said...

Welfare families - the new aristocracy.

Anonymous said...

There is a book by Joe Haldiman called the "Forever War" in it the soldiers are sterilized when they get drafted and a sample kept for later use.Its a very good book.

John M Ward said...

Ah, yes, the Daily Mail (and others).

The article went up erroneously before being completed, and that (like the rest of went up) was a quote I had taken from elsewhere -- actually last September -- and was trying to find the original source when I was interrupted (pushy 'cold caller' at the door!).

I had to dash out after he'd held me up, so I never finished the job.

Actually, I have since found the link (in Google Blogs) though the page itself has been taken down -- just as I did with mine for that matter, once I realised what had happened.

Anyway, the point was to show that this kind of extreme thinking was already @out there@, and we need as a nation to 'brainstorm' a better solution before the economic crunch forces Gordon B into one his typical dithers followed by panic draconian measures.

As always, where possible I prefer 'carrots' to 'sticks'.

Of course, the hatchet men of the media weren't interested in that, as they had their own agenda...

Anyway, for good, pragmatic reasons, I have now resigned, and (as I have blogged HERE) it is a weight off my mind.

silas said...

I'm all for the compulsory temporary sterilisation of everyone under the age of 21. Less mouths to feed, less opportunity to avoid finding work. More perspective on whether you actually need children.

I'm also for the removal of benefits from everyone under the age of 60. So that seems to make me both a libertarian and an authoritarian.

Strangely, I also thought of myself as being left wing. But as the BNP now seem to have more traditionally left wing policies than Labour, I'm not going to describe myself in such simplistic terms anymore.

Anonymous said...

Sterilise them. Sex education in schools manifestly isn't working.