Bizarre photograph in The Metro

What were they trying to hide on the left hand side?

Rogering 'em

There's a nice bit of shroud waving on the BBC by the super-quango Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG), who having been threatened with closure two months ago are now trying to justify their continuing miserable existence.

I could try and make a few serious points here, asking whether it isn't maybe the welfare system that encourages so many young, single women to have babies in the first place rather than the lack of contraceptives and so on, but by force of habit, the first thing I did was to look at the TPIAG's list of members (see second link above) to see whether the UK's most hilariously and inappropriately named quangocrat is still listed.

Yup, he is.

Meddling quango throws in the towel - Shock.

From The BBC:

A multi-million pound project to reduce pregnancies among youngsters deemed at risk has been abandoned after research showed it was not cutting conceptions. The £5.9m Young People's Development Programme (YPDP) offered support and advice to disadvantaged teenagers in 27 parts of England between 2004 and 2007. But teenagers who took part were actually more likely to fall pregnant than those in comparable groups.

Well, duh, of course it wasn't going to work. There's no point having a welfare system that subsidises young/single motherhood to the tune of billions and then trying to stem the tide by wasting a few million quid in the other direction.

But just feel the panic here, from the inevitable fakecharity spokesman:

Simon Blake, national director of sexual health services provider Brook, said it would be wrong "to dismiss all youth development programmes as ineffective as a result of these findings - achieving positive success in reducing teenage pregnancy amongst disadvantaged young people is an important and ongoing responsibility. We must take the learning from this programme to inform future, rigorously evaluated work in the UK."

Reader's letter of the day (2)

From The Metro:

Here's an easy solution to the increase in the rate of under-age pregnancies. Pass a law ensuring that those having babies are not entitled to red carpet treatment, so not get access to the benefits gravy train and do not get preference on social housing waiting lists.

Just watch the rates tumble. The savings to the state across social, housing, work and NHS budgets would be immmense.

John, West Midlands.

Jenna Parry's 15 minutes of fame

Kids! Stop it! Enough already!


Write songs and form a band! Join a political party! Start a 'blog! Write a letter to your local newspaper! Ring Samaritans! Have a bottle of White Lightning! Do something positive and/or non-life threatening!

"Drive to curb teen pregnancy rate"

I can't believe they're grinding out this crap again *yawn* it's the welfare system that's driving teenage pregnancies.

What's interesting about this article is the number of quangos it mentions, and that's politely ignoring The Department of Health and Primary Care Trusts, at least we know that they are government departments and/or quangos, to wit:

1) The Association for Young People's Health is a straight forward quango, "supported by the Department of Health, England" according to their website. I love that "... ,England", it reminds me of Wayne's World where they are sent to "London, England". Update: according to Thursday's Metro, they will run a £27 million campaign, "half the money [will] be spent on innovative new ways of offering contraceptives and advice on sexual health matter", the other half to go on inflated salaries for middle managers, presumably.

2) Brooks only got half their money from the government, a relatively modest £364,000 per Notes 2 and 3 to the 2006 accounts. They've filed their 2007 accounts at Companies House, but not with the Charities Commission. They have a page of links to "Useful Organisations", yeah, useful if you're  Nulab insider with no skills or talents who needs a cushy job, more like.

3) The Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group is a straight forward quango, they even have a .gov.uk website. One of their 'members' is called Roger Ingham. I fell about laughing at that point and couldn't read any further ...

4) The Family Planning Association gets nearly all its income from Department of Health and various government grants, about £3 million in 2007, see note 22 of the 2007 accounts. It spent £7.5 million on relocating its head office, see Note 24.

"Schools where 1 in 50 girls falls pregnant"

A fine set of statistics on relative pregnancy rates of girls aged under 16 in today's Metro. In short, the number of pregnancies per 1,000 girls is nearly eighteen times as high in boroughs with low incomes/high unemployment/large black and ethnic minority communities as it is in the most genteel borough of all.

Which further supports my thesis that teenage girls look at the economics when deciding whether to become pregnant or not: a girl with poor job prospects stands to gain enormously by having* a baby or two; whereas a middle class lass looking forward to doing A-levels and a reasonable career obviously stands to lose out enormously by doing so.

* amended

"Pregnancy targets to be missed"

Targets are pointless and are there to be missed.

Let's just look at the numbers. Total births to under-18s in E&W according to this are about 23,000 a year. There are about 680,000 females aged 16 or 17. That means about one-in-thirty 16 or 17 year old girls have a baby every year, which seems pretty horrific to me.

What's the government doing to discourage teenagers from having babies? Well, setting up targets and spending £100 millions a year on quangos and advertising no doubt.

And, more pertinently, what's the government doing to encourage them?

Er ... offering them £175 a week guaranteed net income (plus other bits and pieces) plus priority in allocation of council housing? OK, under-18s get slightly less than that, but they only have to wait a year or two for the full amount to kick in.

And once you in the lone parent trap, the welfare system is designed to keep you there.

Which is why, if we are to have a welfare state at all (different debate), the least-worst system has to be a universal Citizen's Income system. If an unemployed 16 or 17 year old knows that they are entitled to a modest CI of (following the CIT's suggestion) £34 per week, whether they have kids or not; whether they stay on at school, are unemployed or in low paid/part time work; and if there were no means-testing so that they keep 67p for every £1 that they earn (CI claimants wouldn't get a tax-free personal allowance as a quid pro quo), then getting a job or staying on at school will become a much more attractive alternatives to lone parenthood.

In the Netherlands there are no extra benefits for teenage mothers, no first dibs on council housing, and the child benefit for the baby and the mother are paid to the mother's parents. Little wonder that their teenage pregnancy rate is only one-sixth of ours.

I rest my case.