Mad Times article about tackling the falling birth-rate

[touchingcloth]

I know brevity is key in a CV but you should probably include relevant work history and condensed educational qualifications if they fit.

Have own testes, will fuck again

[Fambo Number Mive]

On Twitter they claim this is from the same article:



Will those without children be shamed on National Parenthood Day? Or expected to stand on their doorstep clapping people with children for an hour?

Expect to see a rise in monarchists having children in order to qualify for a telegram from the Queen. I presume you would have to notify the queen like you do when you turn 100, unless she's emailed births data from the NHS on a regular basis, which is unlikely.

Apparently Times subscribers were able to engage in a Q and A with the article's authors. I can imagine many Times subscribers would support these ideas, aside for the proposed tax for the childless. I think any suggestion of raising taxes unless it is for increased defence spending, to give more money to the monarchy or due to the costs of Brexit is a turn off for the right.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I sometimes wonder how many women of my grandparents' generation (1910s - 1930s) would have got married and had children if they had had the educational and employment opportunities that my generation (millenials) have today. I wonder how many boomers were conceived and born to mothers who didn't really want children but that's what you were supposed to do, and you stayed with your husband even though he just got crankier and more ungrateful as the years went by. Who says the "replacement level" birthrate is how it's supposed to be? Maybe there'd only be four billion of us if patriarchal systems had never existed.

[bgmnts]

I sometimes wonder how many women of my grandparents' generation (1910s - 1930s) would have got married and had children if they had had the educational and employment opportunities that my generation (millenials) have today. I wonder how many boomers were conceived and born to mothers who didn't really want children but that's what you were supposed to do, and you stayed with your husband even though he just got crankier and more ungrateful as the years went by. Who says the "replacement level" birthrate is how it's supposed to be? Maybe there'd only be four billion of us if patriarchal systems had never existed.

Can go even further forward to the 50s and 60s. I think of my nan getting preggers at about 19 pre maritally, instantly getting married to my bamps a few months later and then being stuck in a co dependent alcoholic relationship replete with being shamed by my bamps and uncle and casual domestic abuse. They split up allegedly for a littlw while and she got a lot better and the happiest I remember her was her working very part time just to have something to do.

Fucking christ knows how better her life would have been if she wasn't born into a shitty backwards society.

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

What do you expect for an article in a publication called "Mad Times"

[Sebastian Cobb]

On Twitter they claim this is from the same article:

Dunno if you missed it but the archive.ph link at the bottom of the OP is a mirror to the article with the paywall removed 👍

[Glebe]

Second, we should adopt a "grow our own" policy

Is this about giving birth to real actual children or Cabbage Patch Dolls?

[JamesTC]

If this tax comes in I'm going to get so much semen up my arse. They can't tax me if I'm trying to make a baby, can they?

[elliszeroed]

Before I clicked the link, I thought this was an archived article from the 1920s.

I thought we didn't want more kids because they were a drain on the NHS, benefits. I am confuzzled.

And what jobs are they going to do? You only need so many people to polish robots.

Wait, is this a racist thing in diguise?

[Buttered Ghost]

On Twitter they claim this is from the same article:

Absolutely fucking demented.

[Johnny Yesno]

Boris Johnson is a true philanthropist, when you think about it.

[flotemysost]

As my starting point for the national debate we urgently need, here are a few ideas to boost the birth rate, all achievable at very little cost to the nation's stretched cervixes:

ftfy

[Sebastian Cobb]

Spunk is about the only thing tories don't try and give to the highest bidder.

[Blue Jam]

How's that poll looking? Poll widget doesn't werk on the hooky non-paywalled link.

[touchingcloth]

Are New Order taking their name a bit literally and getting involved in eugenics now, then?

[Blue Jam]

I see a few people on Twitter asking how a telegram from the Queen is supposed to feed the third child. Well, it might if we could get James Middleton to print all the telegrams on marshmallows, have they considered that?

[Captain Z]

And what jobs are they going to do? You only need so many people to polish robots.

Bloody Polish robots coming over here, taking our automated jobs.

[shoulders]

The issue regarding population isn't overall numbers. There are far too many humans and even with world population peaking in 30 years that is still far too many people consuming too much finite resources.

The issue for The Times seems to be who will look after the elderly boomers and their children as falling birth rates creates nations dominated by the elderly (not only economically like now but in all dimensions of life).

[Kankurette]

I'd also have to find someone to impregnate me, which is not going to happen, unless these people are suggesting government-sanctioned rape?

[bgmnts]

The issue regarding population isn't overall numbers. There are far too many humans and even with world population peaking in 30 years that is still far too many people consuming too much finite resources.

The issue for The Times seems to be who will look after the elderly boomers and their children as falling birth rates creates nations dominated by the elderly (not only economically like now but in all dimensions of life).

One third of all human food gets wasted every year. So presumably there is more than enough to consume.

[shoulders]

One third of all human food gets wasted every year. So presumably there is more than enough to consume.

What does consumption mean to you? I'm talking about resources that are finite, eg. plastics, rare earth metals, non-recyclables.

This is also on a planet where people live drastically unequally. We could all try living Western lifestyles and see what happens.

[bgmnts]

What does consumption mean to you? I'm talking about resources that are finite, eg. plastics, rare earth metals, non-recyclables.

This is also on a planet where people live drastically unequally. We could all try living Western lifestyles and see what happens.

No we cannot all live like we do in the west. There needs to be a massive massive push towards sustainability, conservation and recycling and all that, on a global scale. There are much less finite resources out there obviously (sun, wind, wood). There are lots of alternatives to plastic and rare metals and the like i'm sure.

Any, population is fine.

[shoulders]

No it isn't, because those changes you desire aren't going to happen. Competition between corporations and nations that produce waste and unused duplicates in efforts to attract consumers money will exist for our lifetimes with no fundamental alterations to the dynamic.

Global population is drastically too large to be realistically ably supported by the Earth's resources as we speak, and still predicted to rise further and those people in developing countries will not agree to suppress their desires for material comforts, likewise ordinary Westerners who already live obscenely unequal lives to elites in their own country will not agree to climb down from the small luxuries they enjoy.

It's all heading to the same place, the world will experience a huge shock of some sort that reduces the human population by billions anyway. Medicine, infrastructure failure, crop failure, etc. All in the service of consumerism. And the profit motive won't die with those people.

[bgmnts]

Sorry, I mean population is actually fine in a just world obviously. We could easily live 7 and a half billion of us in peace and full and hydrated and safe if we wanted to. We just don't want to.

[Johnny Yesno]

According to George Monbiot, the livestock population is a far more pressing problem than the human population. Obviously, the latter drives the former somewhat but it doesn't have to.

[dissolute ocelot]

We need to get older men to work in the care sector, rather than going to Thailand and having sex with foreign children.

Maybe if you made it easy to import young, fertile women from the former Soviet republics. More efficient to bring in a breeding sow that'll have 6 children to a virile Times journalist, than a single immigrant who'll probably soon be pregnant and unable to clean my bathroom.

I have no idea which of the above statements is stupider. But I know which will get me a job at The Times.

[Icehaven]

Introduce a "negative child benefit" tax for those who do not have offspring. This may seem unfair on those who can't or won't have children, but it recognises that we all rely on there being a next generation and that everyone should contribute to the cost of creating that generation.

I'm sorry, I didn't realise my taxes don't already go towards paying for schools, medical care, child benefit and other services that children need despite me not having kids myself. And on average childless people already pay more tax because we're more likely to work full time without a significant break for our whole working lives than parents.

Apart from anything else, is it a great idea to encourage people who otherwise wouldn't have had kids to do so through a combination of guilt, financial incentive and societal pressure? That doesn't add up to loved, wanted children does it? Even if they're trying to aim for the ambivalent, if you're not sure you want kids you probably shouldn't have them.

[JamesTC]

Why can't these boffins come up with a way to make a baby by filling my arse with cum?

[Dr Rock]

Sorry, I mean population is actually fine in a just world obviously. We could easily live 7 and a half billion of us in peace and full and hydrated and safe if we wanted to. We just don't want to.

Totally.

[Luornu]

I very much wanted to have children and couldn't. Arsehole ex didn't want kids, I hoped against hope he would change his mind, he never did. Unfortunately when you are a socially awkward autistic person and you think this is your one and only chance at a relationship, well just up and getting a new boyfriend like normal people do wasn't an option. I thought at least I have companionship and then he dumped me just as I was getting to perimenopause age in part because I wasn't young and pretty anymore, (he could forgive me being a Doollally Spacker Girl if my tits were perky, the moar you know)

 He wasn't entirely honest about it he was like in three years time you can have a baby and then three years later it was in three years time you can...and I was like wait a minute you said that three years ago?

And now I am still sad about it, still grieving about it. Whenever I meet women my age they are brightly "do you have kids?!!" and then I'm like 'no' and then they are 'oh' because all they want to do is talk about their fucking kids incessantly with their fucking fellow mums and well they then proceed to do nothing but talk about their fucking kids anyway...and I am like '.........I sometimes arrange my tea towels in piles according to what colour they are, and then I watch music videos and documentaries about train crashes on youtube all day' they are not interested of course.

So yeah the new right wing nutjob powers that be are going to penalize me for something I very dearly wanted and am still sad about not being able to have? Yeah twist the knife why dont you? Cunts.

I'm not bitter, she said unconvincingly.