It’s not all about incubators

Before I star this post I would like to make it clear that I know I am generalising and I know that not everyone is the same. I write from my experience rather than to castigate an entire sex.

This week the mother of my children has won her ultimate goal to make me no more than a financial institution, to be fair she probably achieved this some time ago but has now finally made it public.

As you know I have two beautiful children but, when their mother started sleeping with other people, I am separated from their mother. Whilst I am by no means a shining example or a great man I did nothing wrong, I lost my home and my family because my wife couldn’t keep her legs shut it is as simple as that.

The mortgage expires on the ex marital home early next year and so arrangements have to be made (my youngest is 18) to address the debt owed to the bank. This is not only perfectly normal it is in accordance with agreements made (via the courts) over ten years ago. Apparently suffering a mortgage, which prevented me from buying my own domestic property and moving on, for my ex-wife, her new child, lovers and my children makes me a horrible person and a failure as a father.

Apparently if I was a good Father I would somehow find the funds to purchase the love of my children. It is like one of those ‘sponsor a child’ adverts:

“For only £55K you can house a woman you despise, her partner, a child you don’t know and your children. In return we will ensure you receive bi-monthly updates addressed to Daddy”

My own situation is my own lookout for being stupid enough to sleep with such a horrible excuse for a human being, but I think it opens a wider point. As a woman think of what Dad meant to you and if, as in my ex’s case, you were denied that opportunity talk to your girlfriends about how they felt. Women talk about everything so even if you don’t have your own fond memories listen to others talking about how safe the world was when they were sat on Daddies knee. When you are consoling your girlfriends about how much they miss their father or, indeed, when you are seeking their sympathy because you feel the same stop and think.

When you consign a man to being nothing other than the idiot who funds your lifestyle then you, and nobody else, are denying your own children that opportunity. So you don’t like the guy who Fathered your children, you have changed your mind, found a better partner or it was just a blag to get a free house who cares but he is the Father of your children.

Whatever he is and however twisted you are the Father of your children is their safe knee, the man they turn to when the world is dark and seems against them. He is the man who tells daughters they are gorgeous when the boyfriend says they are too fat, the man who tells sons to dress up and get out there when girlfriends ditch them. There are two parental roles and you have stolen your children’s right to have both.

Do you think that the Father of your children could never be the man that your Father was? You are right (how does that feel?) he will never be the man your Father was because he is not your Father. To YOU he may be a bank, the man YOU cheated on, the man who didn’t make YOU feel special but, and here is the rub, if you were a half decent mother YOU would realise that it is not all about YOU!

Every child deserves a Father, a safe place, a man who can save them from the world and a man that they will always love. When you deny a child their Father, by whatever means you use, you lose any right to call yourself a mother you are just an incubator.

 

Note: You will notice that I have capitalised Father and not mother, this is intentional. When I am writing about somebody who deserves a title I will capitalise. 

Welfare, tax and snack runs

On the train this morning I realised, yet again, that the welfare state has failed. A system that was designed to prevent starvation and malnutrition has evolved into a system that provides a better standard of living than the market dictates. The system breeds a laziness that says there is no need to work at education because the fall back really isn’t so bad. In a world where even the qualified struggle to get work it actually looks like a daft choice.

This morning’s delight was a middle aged couple whose biggest conflict seemed to be who was the butch one in the relationship. They were off visiting and spent the journey debating the other trips that they would perform during the festive period. Let me assure you that I didn’t presume that these were a welfare couple because of their obesity, facial tattoos or shell suits. Oh no I was informed by the loud conversations regarding who was lending who what money until their benefits came in. Honestly, declaring yourselves a couple is so last year there’s just no profit in it!

With the eloquence of a 3 year old monkey they proceeded to list the items that were needed for a trip down south. They would need to charge I-Pods, phones and, because it was a long journey, tablet computer. They would need to pack lunch because the first train had no buffet on it. In fairness they looked like they packed snacks whenever they had to leave the sofa. Once they had reached London they could stop at McDonald’s because it would be ‘nearly lunchtime’ hey never let it stop you ladies, it’s always lunchtime somewhere in the world!

In order to achieve the three trips that they have planned for this month there needed to be a level of financial planning. To paraphrase an advertisement ‘this is not just financial planning, this is welfare financial planning’. Rent had been paid last month, that is not actual rent but the top up that the state allows you to pay from your welfare to have a better property than you need. That left rent due third week of December but “we can knock that” because “they never chase until January and then we can pay £5 extra a month”.

On top of the three social trips they had to plan a shopping trip to Westfield, thank god for welfare they didn’t have the time to work! Of course in between these visits they had to see the diet consultant. That will be a nurse, paid by the state, who advises really stupid people that the more that goes in your mouth the bigger you get. Like job centre meetings these appointments are just ‘hardships’ that they have to suffer to maintain the welfare cheques.

I don’t doubt that if you took the time to learn their language and speak to these people they would tell a different story. Like so many of the population they would talk of ‘entitlement’ and ‘quality of life’ and that is where it goes wrong. It is this misguided belief that everyone is entitled to a good standard of living that encourages people to keep breeding, condemning future generations. You are not entitled to a play station, beer or satellite television. You have no right to travel, follow fashion or smoke. I, and many like me, made a contract with the government that we would fund welfare as part of our tax. It’s kinda like an insurance policy that we pay when we can and call on should we need to. In short we are paying for your I-Pod, your trips out, the gifts under your tree and the house you put the bloody tree in!

For the tax payers amongst us I would like to leave you with a thought. During the festive period when the pubs, hopefully, are busy count up how many people in your ‘welfare round’. This is not the physical round of people that you purchase a drink for but those that drink on welfare, the ‘hidden round’. If the two groups mix then take the opportunity, on your shout, to miss the welfare drink out. When you are asked why you missed them simply answer “I brought the last one”

Next time I will explain and you had better have a pen

I have to report on a pleasant, if irritating, security guard at Westfield. Having purchased some shampoo from Boots the Chemist and paid at the self-service machine I ignored the receipt that it dispensed into a pile of similarly ignored paper. Upon leaving the store I triggered an alarm, apparently shampoo has a high enough value to justify security tagging, and was recalled by said guard. Since I could not produce a receipt I simply told him that I had purchased at ‘that till over there’, he asked me to reclaim my receipt and I refused. To be fair the guy reclaimed my receipt and was happy that I had purchased the product so was wished politely on my way.

Now an urgent appointment with a train mean that I was not able to debate the situation fully on this occasion, but I shall have my day. I was particularly irked by the comment ‘that is why you should always keep your receipt’. No it is not, there simply is no reason why I should retain the receipt that is simply my choice. When I purchase a product from an automated till that does not disarm the security sticker it is your problem and not mine. I acknowledge that retaining the two pages of cr*p that you call a receipt would make your job simpler but, not to put too fine a point on it, that is not my job. I enter your employer’s store under his invitation to treat, I select the product that I wish to purchase and at the time of visiting the till we agree to contract. For the avoidance of all doubt the contract that we enter into is simply the exchange of funds for goods, any other terms are introduced in statute or from legal precedent. There is no term in this agreement that states that I will maintain evidence of my purchase and I am under no obligation to do so.

When you delay my exit from your store you in fact commit the tort of false imprisonment. If I choose to leave your store and you prevent that happening you have assaulted me, if you accuse me of theft then you have slandered me and I have rights of action under all of these headings. I accept that store theft is an issue and indeed that it is a crime. I refuse however to accept that presumption of guilt, in complete disregard to the foundation of democratic legal process is justified in protecting a store’s profit margin. I shall revisit this situation in due course, and with more time available and god help them then. The sound of an alarm when leaving a store does provide reasonable grounds to intercept and enquire as to purchase but this is not the case where there is clearly an option to purchase without disabling the tag. If all of your tills are manned then it is reasonable to assume that any active tag has not been handled by staff and is therefore likely to not have been purchased. If you have unmanned tills then this presumption is wrong, there is no way that purchased goods can have tags disabled and to presume, therefore, that alarms are an indication of theft is unreasonable.

For anyone else that finds themselves in this situation I would suggest making it clear that you have used a self-service till and politely asking the reason why they wish to detain you. Security staff are trained not to use the word theft but they have no other right to detain you, only civil arrest under reasonable suspicion of theft. There is no contract between you and a store that says if the alarm goes off they have a right to search you, detain you or disrupt your day in any way. Unless you have a long history, know to the store, of theft or some obvious visual clue then the presumption is one of innocence for them to disprove. I will be giving them a business card and saying “in the interests of expediency I am providing you my details, I expect you to contact me to apologise or to detail your case for prosecution’.

I detest the laziness of these operations and the fact that they are challenging the very principles under which our legal system operates, a policeman cannot detain you without reasonable grounds, I assure you neither can a £9 ph security guard.