Editorial: Deficit of Understanding

If you can sit on a jury in a court case and feel the need to ask the judge for a definition of 'beyond a reasonable doubt', you're a fool and deserve to be removed from the case. Likewise, if you see all the evidence pointing to bankers gambling and the rich not paying taxes as largely responsible for the financial crisis and still cite non-factual evidence that it is due to taxpayers sustaining those not in work, you are no better than that jury.

Mr. Justice Sweeney dismissed an entire jury from a high profile case involving a now ex-polititian and his ex wife when it became apparent that she had accepted some speeding points for which her husband was responsible. The details of the case aside, the jury in question was dismissed after asking some questions that revealed a terrifying lack of knowledge about the legal system. The jury in question asked if it would be acceptable to discuss evidence for which there was no factual basis and had not been presented thus far in the case. Further to this, they proceeded to ask the judge for a definition of the phrase 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.

What has been evident more recently is a lack of understanding of the welfare system, in particular, benefits in the public eye.

By the way, in case you're wondering if I'm about to equate public perceptions of welfare and benefit fraud with the dismissed jury, yes, I am.

Is a jury asking to discuss non-factual evidence really so much worse than some of the misinterpretations and misrepresentations of the statistics about benefits?

I say this because a series of depressing statistics appeared in a recent T.U.C. report detailing a number of public assumptions about the benefit system and fraud, backed up by the statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions. It appeared that on average, people thought that fraud claimed about 27% of the welfare budget. The actual figure is less than 1%: 0.7% to be precise.

Add to this the following misconceptions:

• On average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is 3 per cent.
• On average people think that almost half the people (48 per cent) who claim Jobseeker's Allowance go on to claim it for more than a year, while the true figure is just under 30 per cent (27.8 per cent).
• On average people think that an unemployed couple with two school-age children would get £147 in Jobseeker's Allowance - more than 30 per cent higher than the £111.45 they would actually receive - a £35 over-calculation.
• Only 21 per cent of people think that this family with two school-age children would be better off if one of the unemployed parents got a 30 hour a week minimum wage job, even though they would actually end up £138 a week better off. Even those who thought they would be better off only thought on average they would gain by £59.

Now, where on earth have these misconceptions come from? Is the problem that nobody is reporting these figures? Or is it that fabricated figures are being put forward in the mainstream media?

This, frankly, is anyone's guess at this stage.

0.7% of budget on fraudulent claims (which works out as about £1.2bn) is, of course, a fairly large figure that needs to be dealt with. However, compare that to the DWP's own statistics stating they have been losing £2.3bn each year- not misspent- LOST through admin error. How does this even happen? Did someone turn their handbag upside down shouting "Oh shit, I left an enormous pile of money in here somewhere, but I just can't seem to remember where!"?

So, yes, public, you are just like that jury because the figures that are put forward showing just how awry the public perception has got is beyond a reasonable doubt and I doubt you need that phrase defining to see that.

Mr. Justice Sweeney claimed there was a 'deficit of understanding' in the jury of that trial. The problem is, when it comes to matters such as this, there is a deficit of understanding across the entire country. And if it is so easy to dismiss a jury for simply not having the proper grasp of facts and information, how long is it until public opinion is dismissed because the facts surrounding basic matters such as welfare, taxes and the disappearing respectability of the working and middle classes because there isn't a grasp on the basic facts here either?

Gay Marriage and Parenting- The Last Hurdle?

The news now frequently explores the potential impact of gay marriage and families on society, a debate which in some ways has been running ever since the establishment of civil partnerships as it was inevitable that the legal and religious implications of a matrimonial union would clash and, by extension, the rights to have create a family.

Before I go any further, I feel it would be helpful for me to express that in "creating" a family, I do not mean the conception or birth of children, but the actual decision to have a child, whatever the circumstances of how it is born. Although I do acknowledge and value the importance that child should clearly know its heritage, I am currently in the same manner as a couple considering adoption "create" a family, or a conventional straight couple opt to consciously have a child, rather than an unplanned birth. To spin the alternative, that it is unnatural to bring a child into an environment without undergoing the actual birthing process and refute it is creating a family I feel is hypocritical, as would not one be able to make the same distinction when opting to bring a domesticated pet into a house for the first time? And do not pet owners, by and large, dote on their pets to the same degree as parents would?

I felt compelled writing something on the matter today as a friend showed me an article in the Pink Press whereby a participant in a debate, Lynette Burrows, commented in a debate that as follows:

" I want all of you need to consider the position of your mother in your life. Would you be without her, even if she’s a slut?... Even if she doesn’t fulfil any of the criteria of what somebody or other believes is a good mother, she is your mother, she gave you birth, she gave you life, and you owe it to her to vote against this rotten motion." (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/30/lynette-burrows-children-should-be-with-straight-sluts-and-drug-addicts-rather-than-sodomites/)

I happen to watch The Jeremy Kyle Show frequently. Yesterday displayed the shocking and disgusting behaviour of one teen parent who, upon developing doubts his 3 month old son was his, took presents that he had given the child and walked in and out of the childs life until parentage was verified. The child was, rather fortunately for his sake, proven not to be related to the absentee father. Anyone watching the programme regularly, however, will know that there are regularly occuring negligent parents of both sexes taken to task on the show. The point however is that,  in contrast to the comments above, broken heterosexual families are much more common and that the absence of a stable environment is in NO WAY an appropriate substitute or preferred outcome for any child. To draw a religious metaphor, just because the antiChrist would be spawn of Satan doesn't mean he would make a good Dad!

Lynnette Burrows has also gone on record to suggest that a gay parent with a child is prone to becoming a paedophile and, effectively, a present given by that parent is a precursor to rape.

I feel this is more sinister than her stance and preferences on parentage. In a desperate attempt from all such quarters for the anti-gay marriage, there is a wild-eyed hysteria to revitalise a McCarthyite irrational fear and panic about the potential threat of two men promising to each other before witnesses, be it in a Church or holy site or any form of public place, that this is the taboo that sends the whole of civilisation careening into oblivion. Forget drugs, corruption, slavery, poverty, famine, disease, terrorism and mass child labour, Gay Parentage is the foremost threat to undermining the world. I fail to see how encouraging love, however it is expressed, can equate to being anywhere near as destructive as any of these social ills to society as a whole, and to a childs life in particular. Would a child be better homeless than motherless or fatherless?

More importantly, the rallying cry against paedo/gays is no less than the dying breath of the radicals on this matter to re-establish the homophobic status quo and to drive homosexuality back into an underground movement; if they can successfully oppose and defeat gay marriage and parenthood, then they will rally to challenge civil partnerships to be declared and rendered null and void between same sexes. To play the Advocate, there is no escaping the fact that any individual may choose  to become a paedophile and seek to gain access to a child- this has recently been proven with the recent Jimmy Savile scandal- but the distinction here is not the acid test that the same sex will result in child abuse, as Savile abused boys but mainly girls. By this reasoning, therefore, paedophilia cannot be introduced into the equation of gay parentage as a given as it is in no way a universal factor that a gay parent would seek to abuse a child. Personally, I'm not sure I would want to have the responsibility of bringing up a child, but I often think I would want to be a father. And with those thoughts, my first instinct is to protect the child and give him or her an upbringing equivalent to my own and plan days out and share both the triumphs and trials life has to offer and guide them to be a moral considerate person.

I would therefore conclude that I hope this current widespread debate does lead to gay families proving themselves to be more capable parents than is expected and that with it, all such irrational conservative notions of pundits advocating who should love whom will be finally and thoroughly quashed into obscurity.