Mr B ... for your pleasure
So what are we to do with the Atkins/Williams family? You know. The one that’s had more media exposure than that bloody Crazy Frog advert in the past few days.
That we have to call them the Atkins/Williams family should give you a clue. The matriarch, single mother Julie Atkins (38), is a product our family-free society. She has three daughters, some of whom appear to be called Williams, presumably in honour of a long-departed "father".
And now we really get into it. Eldest daughter Natasha got pregnant at 16 and gave birth to a daughter called Amani. (The fact that she can’t even spell "Armani" is a matter for the education authorities in Derby, where the family lives.)
The father of Amani does not appear to be on the scene. Described as a 38-year-old Asian gambler who still lives with his mum and dad, he must be fervently hoping that his parents aren’t in the habit of watching television or reading newspapers. One toss of the dice too far, eh pal?
We now turn to daughter number two, a 15-year-old called Jade, who gave birth to a daughter called Lita last December. (Why the child is named after a Bristol City striker is neither here nor there. The father is a local teenager who appears to have conveniently forgotten the one-night stand that resulted in his offspring.)
If this wasn't enough, may I introduce Atkins/Williams daughter number three? Step forward Jemma, pregnant at 12 and mother of 14-month-old T-Jay. A boy, I think. (Bear with me on these names. At least the kid isn't called Matalan or Lidl. Yet.)
Now it doesn't take a genius to work out that young Jemma must have been having sex at the age of 11. What is surprising is that her mother apparently knew of the situation and possibly even condoned it, allowing her child to cavort with her "boyfriend" in the next-door bedroom. The mind truly boggles.
When I was 11, I was still collecting stamps and had only just started smoking. The thought of playing Doctors and Nurses with members of the opposite sex would have been quite outrageous. Apart from the odd dalliance with Helen Swinbank in her Wendy House, of course.
The Atkins/Williams family came to national attention after complaining locally about the awful conditions they have to live in. Their three-bedroomed council house (and didn't you just know that was coming) is apparently too small for this multiplying brood and they would like somewhere bigger, if you don't mind.
For the record, this State-funded baby factory brings in around £31,000 a year in benefits, paid for by you and me. They pay no rent or council tax. They have a big telly and a DVD player. And a freezer full of Findus Crispy Pancakes. And free lottery tickets every Saturday.
So who do we blame for this situation? Who do we take to task for the fact that an 11-year-old girl is having sex with the connivance of her own mother? Well not the feckless Ms Atkins for a start. She blames the schools and the government. According to her, none of her children received sufficient sex education at school and therefore fell foul of what they thought was innocent horseplay.
What rubbish. Innocent horseplay at the age of 11 is playing conkers and tag in the playground. Not re-enacting porn films with a boy just out of long trousers while your mother sleeps in the next bedroom. As a parent I feel sick to even think about it. Frankly, I'd call the police. The woman is an accomplice to a clear-cut case of statutory rape.
And anyway, the fact that her eldest daughter, Natasha, managed to sleep her way through two miscarriages and an abortion before producing a child gives lie to that assertion. Hadn't the stupid girl worked out by then what was causing the morning sickness and the craving for coal?
But however horrific these local difficulties might be, we have to accept that for many children, shelling out illegitimate kids like a Birds Eye combine harvester is simply a career move. They have no ambition, no plans for the life ahead. A quick bunk-up with a passing hoodie and Hey Presto! They're someone, they're a mother.
And with that status come the rewards. Benefits sufficient enough to provide a steady supply of cheap white cider, packets of Lambert & Butlers and some Elizabeth Duke bling. Food for the cuckoos in the nest, even if it does only amount to microwave pizzas and oven chips. And perhaps even their own council flats, where they can entertain further passing scrotes.
Then come the ASBOs, the additional multi-coloured kids, the elasticated waistbands, the tattoos and, eventually, the disability benefits from obesity and chronic smoking. With a bit of luck, the ever-swelling brood will by then be asthmatic, reaping further rewards. And special needs, of course. Which means a free car. It's like Bingo, only in real life.
And you have to say, as a career plan it beats working your balls off for 50 years only to find out that your pension has been swallowed up by the demands of the welfare state. And Gordon Brown.
In other countries such teenage fecundity would be encouraged. After all, we need more citizens coming into the workforce to help look after the swelling ranks of the old. There is only one problem with that theory. In all likelihood, the offspring of the likes of Natasha, Jade and Jemma will merely continue the cycle of state-funded leeching. They won't contribute to society. They'll just continue to take, setting up baby factories and feral hoodie gangs of their own.
There is only one way to tackle this problem. Before any woman under the age of 25 is allowed to have a child, she must first obtain a Baby Licence. She will only be able to do this by first proving that she has the basic intelligence, the financial means, and the secure family structure that will allow her to bring up the child properly.
Any tracksuit-wearing trollop who "falls pregnant" whilst not in possession of a licence will face a compulsory termination. End of story. (And don't pull that face at me, Ms Middle Class Lefty. It suited you to have your potential sprog aborted when promotion beckoned. All we're doing is making the decision for those incapable of reasoning for themselves.)
And do you know the saddest aspect of this story? I've had to abandon this column's Scrote of the Year Contest. Once Julie Atkins appeared on the scene, there was only one winner.
I am hesitant to jump upon the bandwagon of BBC complaints, but could I possibly have my old television weather graphics back?
As you may have noticed, the venerated Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation has dumped the old magnetic weather symbols and now inflicts upon us a nauseating, virtual-reality, roller-coaster ride around Britain instead.
Listen, you lentil-eating, leather-elbowed Lefties. This is a sea-faring nation. We exported goods all around the world, we built railways across continents, we discovered the Spice Routes and we turned half of the globe pink. We beat the French at Trafalgar, we were nearly starved to death by Hitler's U-Boats and we needed the weather window in order to invade Normandy.
We couldn't have done all this without meteorological information: the troughs, the anticyclones, the prevailing south-westerlies, and the Siberian winds in winter. I want my Atlantic weather system chart back and I want my isobars back, pronto.
Can you be cruel to a Dalek? Given that they're the Earth's biggest enemies, one wouldn't have thought so. Yet the British Board of Film Classification has decreed that the forthcoming DVD of the new Doctor Who series has to be given the classification "12", meaning that it can't be seen by new mothers from Derby.
A spokesman for the board (no, really) says: "However cross one might be with a Dalek, being cruel to it is not the way to deal with the issue." I hesitate to ask which planet this spokesman might be from.
And we should also note for the record that this series of Doctor Who is beautifully made, wonderfully shot, brilliantly original, superbly educational and, at times, very frightening indeed. That it should appear on the same television screen that brings me Celebrity Love Island is just another of life's mysteries.
Natasha, Jade and Jemma might be interested to learn that an investigation into the environmental-friendliness of nappies has deduced that disposables are no more harmful than the old terry towel rags that people of a certain age used to be clad in.
This is a major blow to those members of the Turkey Army whose job is to convince new mothers that an evil smelling bucket in the corner of the kitchen is a better option than a bumper packet of Huggies.
Is it too much to expect that these advocates of nonsense, all of whom will be on £25,000 and free muesli, might now be sacked? Just a thought.
Comments
"Food for the cuckoos in the nest, even if it does only amount to microwave pizzas and oven chips" Microwave pizzas and oven chips are expensive when compared to real food. Of course if you can't cook then you have no choice.
I remember seeing local authority leaflets aimed at those on low incomes in a take away; advising them what to do if they couldn't make ends meet. My advice was stop buying take aways and learn to cook.
I shouldn't abandon scrote of the year just yet, there could be worse to come.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 27, 2005 10:24 AM
Mr Free Market, sorry if this embarrases you or fuels your ego, but I must say that this was a brilliant piece of writing. Well done.
As for, "Who is to blame?", the various scrotes and low lives mentioned in your piece are surely to be congratulated. Faced with the opportunities on offer in our sick society they have maximised their gains and minimised their costs. A laudible achievement.
Blame must be placed where it largely belongs, with our spineless liberal ruling elite, as personified at the moment by Blair, his predecessors since WW11, and his successors for the foreseeable future (labour and tory).
Posted by: John East | May 27, 2005 4:19 PM
Am I allowed to criticise my own comment above?
Maybe Blair, the other liberal elite, Howard etc. could justifiably claim that if they promise the scrotes of this world what the scrotes want, then the liberal elite gets elected. On the other hand, if they were to promise a society of self reliance, accountability and personal responsibility they would stand no chance of being elected.
It therefore appears that the only government possible in a mature democracy is the one we currently have.
Posted by: John East | May 27, 2005 4:42 PM
I'm with you every step of the way, I'll even hold the gin and coat-hanger...
Posted by: The Alchemist | May 27, 2005 5:38 PM
Inasmuch as evolution creates solution to common problems, it would appear your welfare scum seem to be the same as our welfare scum in Australia. This story could have (and is) played out in the commission slums that socialists created in the 70's and early 80's in Australia in Melbourne (Sunshine/Altona), Sydney (Macquarie Fields/Redfern) and Brisbane (Inala).
Disgusting vermin that in the Middle Ages would have been struck down with Black Death. Where's a rat when you want one?
Posted by: CB | May 28, 2005 11:17 AM
>>>A quick bunk-up with a passing hoodie and Hey Presto! They're someone, they're a mother.
How elegantly you put it!
A classic rant. Brilliant writing.
Posted by: gunroom | May 28, 2005 5:51 PM
It is brilliant writing - but unless Mr FM actually IS Barry Beelzebub - are you ? I think we should give credit where it's due - to Mr B, who Mr FM is quoting.
And Mr FM, if you ARE Barry, then Richard Littlejohn's just left the Sun and they were paying him 350K. Give up the day job as Barry Beelzebub is the man to fill the space.
Posted by: Laban | May 29, 2005 5:46 PM
The best antidote to welfare scrounging is full employment. The fact is that a certain level of unemployment serves to keep wages down, via the mechanisms of supply-and-demand. Welfare is actually a form of blood money tolerated by the modern capitalist state in order to keep wages down and profits up. Try giving tax credits to companies that hire more people, in order to offset their expenditures in wages--using tax dollars to help people work rather than help them not work is a step in the right direction. Or is that socialism too? Certainly more helpful than demonizing those who are only doing what their circumstances and raising have trained them to do.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 30, 2005 8:08 PM
Funny one of the comments should mention Littlejohn. As much as the mother of these girls in Derby might warrant criticism, the general tone of the writing would be disturbingly at home in the pages of the socially retarded Daily Mail.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 30, 2005 10:56 PM
The most anti-social and retarded thing to do would be to fine people in proportion to how financially succesful they are and then use the money raised to reward the irresponsible.
But of course socialism IS the height of anti-social behaviour.
Posted by: Rob Read | May 31, 2005 12:28 AM
I should introduce you to Liberal Larry who writes a stellar satire blog about Bush since Bush is to blame for everything.
I have no argument whatsoever with anything you have said, as I have that same family living next door to me here in the south. Both kids on drugs, 23 yo young man, his sister and they both have children, but he lacks a wife/mother and she lacks a husband/father.
The parents? Well, let me just say that their version of tough love was to let their eldest spend some time in rehab, and now he is back, violating parole. The daughter is smoking again, now that she has 'given birth.' OY!
The sheriffs have told me that since our state is a firearms friendly state (we can carry weapons whilst we go about our bidness here in the late Colony of Georgia)to 'be prepared with that crew next door, and to keep an eye on your kids.'
No problem, officer.
Posted by: Cricket | June 1, 2005 5:37 AM
I'm a Leftie when it comes to economics and foreign policy, but even I think that we should start clamping down on the "tracksuit-wearing trollops" as you so eloquently call them ;-)
Posted by: Tami | June 4, 2005 2:44 PM