Welfare cuts will encourage poor to breed, says Tory peer (one of David Cameron's new Lords)

[Turborama]

Source: London Evening Standard

Downing Street today disowned one of David Cameron's new peers after he claimed that Coalition welfare changes encourage “breeding” by the poor while putting the middle classes off having children.

Talking to the Evening Standard, multi-millionaire banker Howard Flight criticised Chancellor George Osborne's plan to strip child benefit from higher earners as an attack on wealthier families.

“We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive, but for those on benefit there is every incentive,” he said.

“Well that's not very sensible.”

Read more: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23901166-welfare-cuts-will-encourage-poor-to-breed-says-tory-peer.do

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Howard Flight echoes Keith Joseph's 1974 warning that 'our human stock is threatened'

Tory peer's warning about discouraging middle class 'breeding' echoes speech which killed off leadership hopes of father of Thatcherism

Source: The Guardian

Conservatives do not have a happy track record when they mix class and breeding.

Howard Flight's warning that removing child benefit from higher rate taxpayers will discourage the middle classes from breeding echoes a famous speech by Sir Keith Joseph in 1974.

The intellectual driving force behind Thatcherism killed off any ambitions he may have had to lead the Conservative party when he warned that "our human stock is threatened" because too many poor mothers have children.

Let's put the words of two Tories, uttered 36 years apart, side by side. This is what Flight told the London Evening Standard of George Osborne's plans to remove child benefit from higher rate taxpayers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2010/nov/25/conservatives-davidcameron

[jwirr]

1. Oh, oh eugenics is raising its ugly head.

[Drale]

2. What we need

is a program designed to encourage, right-wingers not to breed, so in a generation we can actually make some progress in the social area.

[indimuse]

7. ha! couldn't agree more..

;)

[LeftishBrit]

3. Flight is annoying to the other Tories, as he opens his mouth and says what they're all thinking

He aroused Michael Howard's wrath and got deselected as a result, because in 2005 he was recorded saying that a stated that the Conservatives when in office could make more spending cuts than they were promising in their campaign before the general election. Of course he was just describing his party's policies accurately, as events have proved, but they didn't like it!

I am sure there are plenty of other Tories who don't like the idea that the Lower Classes are Breeding Too Much. But most of them are careful not to say this in public.

[DuaneBidoux]

4. Any culture that doesn't help the poor ends up with the opposite.

The pattern for virtually all cultures of all times where large concentrations of wealth were above with widespread poverty below led to "breeding" among the poor is an established pattern in anthropology.

It becomes logical to try and have more and more kids with the idea of getting them into the workforce to support the parents as they get older.

[alp227]

5. And don't trust funds encourage larger families and spoiled brat children? n/t

[pattmarty]

6. Class war, fucking "bring it on".

[Jkid]

8. It makes a lot of sense why Howard Flight made that comment.

He fears that the lower class will resort to giving birth to more children, similar in what poor people in third-world counties do.

[lunatica]

9. Idiocracy looks more and more likely doesn't it?