February 26, 2009
Teenage preganancies in the UK have risen for the first time in five years. Britain has the worst record in Europe although it is not as bad as the USA where Bush’s capitulation to the Christian lobby has placed emphasis on abstention from sex before marriage while removing support from anybody helping with contraception or abortion.
Here, the government is asking whether there needs to be an improvement in sex education in schools or classes for girls to show the burdens of motherhood.
I am not sure whether the idiots who suggest this stuff believe any of it or not, but either way it doesn’t matter. They are still going to throw away vast amounts of taxpayers money doing it and building their empires while the misery caused by immature, inadequates becoming parents will continue.
One thing that these children and their families do understand is the benefit and welfare system. Some of them have been living on it for generations and they share their experiences with all their mates. Kids who do not get on at school, have miserable experiences at home and do not see any prospect of doing well in the working world just don’t care about exams or putting effort into anything which is not pleasurable in their eyes.
When a young girl gets pregnant, the state rewards her with loads of attention, a support network, financial benefits and the prospect of a home for her and her baby. Even if she does not get pregnant deliberately to escape her own disfunctional parents or to create another living thing that loves her, she might be happy if it happens for completely rational economic reasons.
These kids are perfectly well aware of the facts of sex and no amount of education is going to make any difference. Still less will there be any point in telling them to save themselves for marriage.
It is really fairly simple. Stop rewarding children for producing more children. The welfare system needs to be dismantled, but a very good start would be to say that there will be no child benefit, no housing provision, in fact no benefits of any kind whatever for parents below the age of eighteen.
That will not stop under eighteens from having sex and it will certainly not stop all of them from becoming pregnant, but it will definitely make them much more interested in using contraception and for many girls, for whom motherhood would be a very bad thing, they will choose a termination rather than going on to face the full reality of what they have done.
I know this will be repugnant to many people. So be it. Let us discuss the issue and consider the consequences of our respective opinions.
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Economics, Politics | Tagged: abortion, babies, baby, benefit, child, children, Christian, contraception, girl, parent, parents, pregnancy, pregnant, sex, teenager, termination, underage, welfare | 
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Posted by malpoet
February 26, 2009
I have just been listening to ‘In Our Time’ on Radio 4. In it Melvyn Bragg invited a couple of ‘experts’ to discuss ‘The Waste Land by T S Eliot. It spurred me to make a few comments of my own which I have held for years, but never expressed.
After more than eighty years of this poem’s existence and endless academic analysis, what their observations amounted to was that they didn’t know what the poem was about. Having said this they still ended by muttering how important it was and that it laid the basis of the important Modernist movement. Doesn’t this just illustrate how willing we are to accord spurious value to unintelligible rubbish and look on in awe at high culture which we cannot understand, but we are sure is really important and wonderful if ever we could just manage to penetrate it.
When Eliot was nearing completion of the poem he told prospective publishers, and anybody else who would listen, that it was a very great work which would shake the literary world. Eliot was a genuine lover of words and language and he had the ability to produce lines that flow beautifully and remain well in the memory. He exploited this skill to produce work that was very readable in parts although containing nothing of any worth at all in terms of meaning. At the same time he did include some of his misogyny and racism in the meaningless drivel of casual observations and mental ramblings.
Eliot himself was contradictory about the poem. On at least one occasion he said that it was of no real worth and that it contained only thirty good lines. That was a moment of honesty and clarity.
Eliot was a depressed man in a miserable marriage. He had very extreme political views which included despising Jews and seeing people like himself as the victim of strange conspiracies. He was reinforced in these unpleasant views of the world by his association with Ezra Pound, a sickening fascist who adored Mussolini and was also an anti-semite; probably more virulent than Eliot. Pound was a close confidant of Eliot and he contributed substantially in its completion and editing.
Eliot and Pound both considered themselves to be extremely well read and intelligent people who occupied a more refined strata of humanity than all those around them. They regarded a large proportion of humanity as unpleasant oiks who were not fit for culture and refinement.
The Waste Land and its unintelligible notes are actually a good reflection of the attitudes and perceptions of these two men. They were both extremely pretentious. They saw themselves as very well read members of an elite group above the mass. The Waste Land, like other works by both men, repeatedly uses literary references and other languages to no purpose other than to tell the reader that the author is very learned. The writings which Eliot describes as notes are actually nothing more than lines wanted by his publisher to pad the poem out to the length wanted for publication and further confusions intended to send the reader off on a wild goose chase of reading as they try to delve into the obscure ‘meaning’ of the poem.
What should we think of the Waste Land now? Enjoy the sound of those parts of it which are pleasant to the ear. Make no attempt at all to analyse or dissect it. Let its inadequate and unattractive author be seen for person he was and stop feeding his own delusions of being a class above the rest of us if not part of a mythical master race.
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Poetry | Tagged: anti-emitism, anti-semite, comment, criticism, eliot, fascist, master race, misogynist, misogyny, poem, poet, Poetry, Pound, pretentious, racism, racist, review, waste land | 
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Posted by malpoet
February 18, 2009
Her in reception, he service,
main dealer life
brings solid living.
Long held dream redeemed.
Honeysuckle cottage,
rose bed rich.
Goodbye dismal council flat,
parent pride
drives moving van.
Loving effort, mighty loan
freshly fitted
lovely home.
Credit died and dealer crashed,
tear stain faces
bailiff’s knock.
Dismal, dreary council flat.
Parents, disappointment hid,
bring furnishing.
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Poetry | Tagged: apartment, council flat, credit crunch, flat, house, mortgage, poem, poet, Poetry | 
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Posted by malpoet
February 18, 2009
Tear stained,
mould grained
grey, green walls.
Too small for one,
but foetid cage
for three.
Cloud high flat
a piss stink lift
from ground.
Back soon
Fifty yards of
fresh clean air,
fags or maybe bread.
Past the shabby,
shuttered shop
the city centre calls.
Not long
Cash for one pint,
a walk and think..
Hitched rides then
shivered, shelter sleeps.
Growling guts
from bin grabbed
food. Stinking,
sweat soaked skin,
no walls.
Just a break
Green fields,
gold beach
and soul,
sought sea.
Beauty more than
can be said,
Beachy Head.
Leave a Comment » | Poetry | Tagged: beachy head, loneliness, misery, missing person, poem, poet, Poetry, redundant, suicide | Permalink
Posted by malpoet
February 6, 2009
Silhouettes glide slowly under ice.
Golden slithers in a silver haze.
Life signs in frozen wasteland hint
of pleasure yet to come.
Now is a beauty all its own.
Featureless, pure and white.
Crisp blanket over every part.
Hiding weed and plant alike.
Crystal spikes from gutter gleam,
twinkling rainbows through the scene.
Pale yolk of winter sun,
glitters in the daggered rain.
Frail arachnid filigree,
links ice bowed bush to naked tree.
Feline footprints deeply trace,
live shivers through this frozen place.
2 Comments | Poetry | Tagged: arachnid, bush, cold, feline, ice, poem, poet, Poetry, rain, season, snow, trees, winter | Permalink
Posted by malpoet
The Waste Land – T S Eliot
February 26, 2009I have just been listening to ‘In Our Time’ on Radio 4. In it Melvyn Bragg invited a couple of ‘experts’ to discuss ‘The Waste Land by T S Eliot. It spurred me to make a few comments of my own which I have held for years, but never expressed.
After more than eighty years of this poem’s existence and endless academic analysis, what their observations amounted to was that they didn’t know what the poem was about. Having said this they still ended by muttering how important it was and that it laid the basis of the important Modernist movement. Doesn’t this just illustrate how willing we are to accord spurious value to unintelligible rubbish and look on in awe at high culture which we cannot understand, but we are sure is really important and wonderful if ever we could just manage to penetrate it.
When Eliot was nearing completion of the poem he told prospective publishers, and anybody else who would listen, that it was a very great work which would shake the literary world. Eliot was a genuine lover of words and language and he had the ability to produce lines that flow beautifully and remain well in the memory. He exploited this skill to produce work that was very readable in parts although containing nothing of any worth at all in terms of meaning. At the same time he did include some of his misogyny and racism in the meaningless drivel of casual observations and mental ramblings.
Eliot himself was contradictory about the poem. On at least one occasion he said that it was of no real worth and that it contained only thirty good lines. That was a moment of honesty and clarity.
Eliot was a depressed man in a miserable marriage. He had very extreme political views which included despising Jews and seeing people like himself as the victim of strange conspiracies. He was reinforced in these unpleasant views of the world by his association with Ezra Pound, a sickening fascist who adored Mussolini and was also an anti-semite; probably more virulent than Eliot. Pound was a close confidant of Eliot and he contributed substantially in its completion and editing.
Eliot and Pound both considered themselves to be extremely well read and intelligent people who occupied a more refined strata of humanity than all those around them. They regarded a large proportion of humanity as unpleasant oiks who were not fit for culture and refinement.
The Waste Land and its unintelligible notes are actually a good reflection of the attitudes and perceptions of these two men. They were both extremely pretentious. They saw themselves as very well read members of an elite group above the mass. The Waste Land, like other works by both men, repeatedly uses literary references and other languages to no purpose other than to tell the reader that the author is very learned. The writings which Eliot describes as notes are actually nothing more than lines wanted by his publisher to pad the poem out to the length wanted for publication and further confusions intended to send the reader off on a wild goose chase of reading as they try to delve into the obscure ‘meaning’ of the poem.
What should we think of the Waste Land now? Enjoy the sound of those parts of it which are pleasant to the ear. Make no attempt at all to analyse or dissect it. Let its inadequate and unattractive author be seen for person he was and stop feeding his own delusions of being a class above the rest of us if not part of a mythical master race.