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Tall-Poppy

Listed below are comments made by Tall-Poppy between Monday, 23rd June 2008 and Friday, 4th September 2009.

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Are 'broken families' responsible for 'Broken Britain'? 12:41pm on 04 Sep 2009 This story was a big shock for me - and a surprise. My parents divorced when I was 4, and I lived with a lot of guilt after that, hating and blaming myself although they tried to be very civilised about it. They shared all parenting duties and even now, after my brother and I have long since grown up and left home, they are still very good friends and see each other nearly every day.
So what do I read in this story?
"disruptive children may place such stress on parental relationships that they separate"
Well I thought I had finally forgiven myself after all these years, but I guess that sentence still shocked me. Everyone has been telling me all these years that it wasn't my fault, and maybe that's true, but it looks like we have here the unpalatable truth. Children are a big strain on a marriage. My parents were happily married for 5 years before my brother was born but didn't last long after that.
On the other hand I think it has something to do with money. In my primary school years, I was at a state school, and no one was well off - and of all the people in my class, only 2 had parents that were still together. The rest of us had stepfamilies or single parents. Then I won a scholarship to a very expensive independent school (I was hugely driven by guilt as a child and had to be best at everything). Everyone had a lot of money. And I was one of only 2 girls in the class whose parents had split up.
Maybe it's something to do with the fact that children cost a lot of money, but people should definitely think twice before having them - I know I do, because of my experiences. Also, the guilt is terrible - I think my brother also blamed himself; he struggles with alcoholism and hasn't worked for years.
Equivalence in death 09:44am on 10 Feb 2009 Here's my question: what do we know about the long-term risks of frequent or regular use of ecstasy? Presumably, if you ride horses all your life and avoid having serious accidents then you wouldn't suffer any ill-effects, but as far as I'm aware the jury is still out on whether there could be long-term detrimental effects on the brain if you keep using a drug like ecstasy. What does the report say about this?
Displaying data 3:23pm on 16 Dec 2008 Speaking of the difficulty of displaying data - your business page currently features a sub-header that reads: "New innovations make the clean-up easier".

"New innovations"? Now how does that slip through the editorial net?
Hard heads v soft hearts 09:52am on 04 Dec 2008 I read those abuse statistics yesterday and was quite shocked. But then I remembered a bus journey through South London not long ago in which I saw a 'young family' fighting and squabbling amongst themselves and with other passengers: "Don't you touch my kid!" aggressively spoken by the father, who looked about 16, to a man who was trying to get past the pushchair...

It was impossible to say who were the adults in this family. From the way they spoke to (and swore at) their children in public, I didn't want to know what it must be like in their home.

Children bringing up children is a recipe for disaster. If you can't wait until your 20s to have sex (and I realise not everyone can) then using 2 forms of contraception should be the norm. Condoms can be the boys' responsibility and the pill (or the longer-lasting contraceptive injection, for those who struggle to remember) can be the girls'. This works very well for me and my husband.

But with the government's child poverty targets - which I think are worthy enough in themselves, but create perverse incentives to have a child in households which really have no other way of escaping relative poverty, as defined by the government (and if you were in this situation, wouldn't you?) - this situation is unlikely to improve.

If we are going to engage in social engineering, as we apparently are, all aspects, including the kind of perverse incentives mentioned above, need to be considered. We need to have a very close look at who is having children in our society and also why. For the sake of the children.
Do we all need a nudge? 2:45pm on 23 Jun 2008 Personally, I wouldn't advise trying any nudging in London... I once attempted this on a Tube that was filling up - tried to nudge a fellow passenger to move the bag he had placed on the seat beside him so that I and others could sit down. Spent the rest of the Tube journey regretting it as he and his foul-mouthed mates made rude and aggressive comments about me...

Maybe best left to the police then, or others with back-up who can face up to the bullies!

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