So, in essence, the vast oeuvre of IDS on social exclusion amounts to:
Married people stay together, so co-habitees need to get married and then all the problems of poverty will be solved. To achieve this we'll give lots of married people who aren't poor lots of money so they will vote for us anyway even if it doesn't do much for the poor.
Brilliant.
But I thought, as I swiftly turned off David Cameron on the telly before retching:
"Hang on - they're mixing up cause and effect".
People aren't poor because they are unmarried. They are poor because they are poor and happen to be unmarried (probably because they haven't got enough money to get married).
Some people might call the Tories "Social Exclusion" report conclusion "bovine scatology" or "b*ll****" but I wouldn't stoop to that sort of language. I would call it: "round spherical objects".
Polly Toynbee put it very well in today's Guardian:
But this torrent of facts mainly reciting the blindingly obvious has a gigantic logical nonsense at its heart. Its arguments are circular, confusing causes and effects, citing symptoms as if they were reasons.
...a great leap into logical fallacy concludes that lack of a marriage certificate is the prime cause of all the rest.
I must say it is a relief that the Tories are still the good old fashioned Tories at heart, as this report shows beyond all doubt.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It is like their daft conslusion that couples who have lived together long enough to realise they love each other and want to be committed to each other for the rest of their lives and, therefore, get married stand only a one in twelve chance of breaking up compared to couples who are just co-habiting and have not made that commitment yet, who stand a 50% chance of breaking up.
ReplyDeleteIt is all so blindingly obvious I am surprised the Tories didn't also highlight that bears DO shit in the woods an the Pope is a Catholic !
Nice one Nicholas. Yes there is a definite Ursidea family member defecation in forested areas quality about all this!
ReplyDeleteBut then again, that is IDS all over. He has never really set the world alight wherever he has gone. He is the sort of army officer who would have been put in charge of cleaning the latrines and would have done an excellent job of that.