The point about babies is that they are the answer to the pension problem.
A few years ago I found myself sitting next to the Swiss ambassador for lunch: I wondered how he reported back on Tony Blair’s “Britain”. His reply astonished me: in five generations, or 75 years, he reports that Britain will be majority coloured with different bone structures. Yes, that’s what he said. How come, I asked incredulously: just wait till the Chinese come here, he said, as the next invading non-Anglo-Saxon stock. I see: sexy Chinese girls will be all the rage and all over us? “They’re already planning it!”
Well, the issue of the aging demographics of Europe, immigration, and employment are already upon us. The situation in Germany is particularly bad, which won’t bother too many of my generation – “Don’t mention the war!” The country is aging rapidly and the birth rate is way below a sustainable level, at 1.1 children per couple, and falling.
The point about babies is that they are the answer to the pension problem, provided they can get work. Forget Bernie Madoff, the biggest Ponzi schemes the world has ever witnessed have been run for decades by western democratic governments, as they take pension contributions today, not to put into a fund, but to pay their current expenditures, including welfare for immigrants, and babies, but with two notable exceptions: Switzerland and Norway, who both have fully funded pension and healthcare systems. And neither of them is in the €uro-zone – please note.
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Just as the Coalition strikes a blow at Middle England’s baby production line, it’s worth examining their proposals to save £1.0 billion. Families on pre-tax £45k with one parent at home will get £1.0k for the first child, £700 for the second and further children, while two working parents on a combined £80k will collect in full, while a family with three children on £33k after tax will lose £2.5k, equivalent to 6p on Income Tax.
Now, if that sounds barmy, blame the Coalition or The Daily Telegraph who quoted the above figures, but don’t blame your erstwhile messenger, who is meant to bring you the Bigger Picture, like all these governments are fraudulently bust! The Coalition has bungled it, and for a mere £1.0 billion saving, as they are meant to be looking for £99.0 billion of savings, according to this year’s Red Book (page 2).
The country with the highest birth rate in Europe is France. Yes, their women are beautiful – their men less so and I have no idea how that biology works out in the bedroom – so how have the Frogs won the EU reproduction stakes? Simples, meerkats, they pay women to have babies!
French women have 2.1 babies compared with a pan-EU average of 1.5, below which white UK finds itself. What are the perks for this Gallic outperformance? Cash as monthly allowances: €123 for two children; €282 for three children and an additional €158 for every child after that! Yes, France is a hugely Pro-life country – Medicines Sans Frontieres and all that, along with the best healthcare service in the world.
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The French, however, do even better than that, in a way no other nation could even contemplate: mothers get post-natal care that their husbands can only dream about. “Weeks after giving birth”, gushes The International Herald Tribune incredulously, “French women are offered a state-paid, extended course of vaginal gymnastics, complete with personal trainer, electric stimulation devices and computer games that reward particularly nimble squeezing” so that they “can make love again soon”. French welfare, you see, is like a can of Heineken, it reaches into those parts that other welfare systems cannot even get to.
Whereas in the Coalition’s UK, if you take a higher education course in control of muscles your mother didn’t even know about, you’ll end up in £24,000 of student debt! And probably none the wiser either: you have to be French and female to get the hang of this Gallic version of higher education, or is it higher stimulation? Who cares? It works. Down Vince Cable, don’t even think about it, you’re not even in that sort of Coalition: you’re British and we don’t do post-natal clitoral recovery. And even if we did understand it, we couldn’t afford it!
