Who'da thunk it

Sunday, 6th January 2008

Also while I was away, I read some absolutely astounding news about Britain that shocked me to the core. The Telegraph reported:

Figures released yesterday by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) revealed that underage pregnancies rose by four per cent to total 7,462 in 2005 - the latest year for which data is available. This leaves England and Wales with the highest birth rates for under-16s in western Europe…Professor David Paton, an economist at the Nottingham University Business School, said…’There has been a tendency for the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy to focus on creating schemes where teenagers can get the morning after pill or other forms of family planning at school or clinics.The danger with this sort of approach is that it can lead to an increase in risky sexual behaviour amongst some young people.There is now overwhelming evidence that such schemes are simply not effective in cutting teenage pregnancy rates.’

The Telegraph also reported an equally unbelievable revelation:

Gordon Brown's flagship tax credit policy is penalising working families while rewarding unemployed single parents, a leading Left-wing think tank claims…The report is scathing of Mr Brown's tax credits, saying they fail low-income families by punishing them financially if both parents work.

I’m glad I was sitting down when I read this.

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Ray

January 7th, 2008 7:52am

...But will the liberal-left purveyors of 'doling-out-condoms-like-smarties' and 'all-domestic-arrangements-are-equally-valid' ever learn from the mountain of evidence that now shows such policies to be expensive failures? Noooooo!

Harvey

January 7th, 2008 11:50pm

It's not thunk it's thought... and you always on about education too do keep up

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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.

For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here