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This website takes a different approach to democracy: instead of voting on parties and personalities, you can vote on specific policies. Called ‘direct’ or ‘pure’ democracy, it empowers the population to voice its opinion on specific policy issues, allowing "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" to be expressed.
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Chamber of Debate |
Debatable Subjects |
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Should child benefit be given only to those able to produce a marriage certificate to discourage single parenthood and the cause of rising crime and educational under-achievement? |
Should we be prepared to formally acknowledge the link between single parenthood, family breakdown, no-fault divorce, rising crime, the deterioration in the quality of the next generation, educational under-achievement and increasing behavioural problems in children and adults?
Should we be prepared to legislate to discourage single parenthood?
If the EU or the European Court of Human Rights stops us from doing so, should we be prepared to tell them where to go and stick it?
“The number of never married Americans soared from 21 million in 1970 to 52 million in 2005. Cohabitation has become a substitute for marriage. Even if their son or daughter does marry the cohabiting partner, their chances of divorce are 75%. Grim odds. Of cohabiting couples, 41% have children living with them. If the couple breaks up or the ensuing marriage fails, the unmarried parent may move back into his or her parents’ home - bringing grandchildren to help raise and financially support.” [“Living Together - Myths, Risks and Answers” - Mike and Harriet McManus, 2008 http://www.marriagesavers.org/sitems/Press/index.htm].
In an earlier book from the UK by Patricia Morgan, “Marriage Lite” [2000 http://www.civitas.org.uk/books/openAccess.php] she writes:
"Overall, the median duration of a childless cohabitation is 19 months, before it leads to a birth, a marriage or terminates. By three years, three-quarters of women in the British Household Panel Study either had a birth, got married or dissolved the union. The median duration of all cohabitations involving never-married women is just under two years, and less than four per cent of cohabiting unions last ten years or more. This matches cross-sectional data from the General Household Survey, which showed that, by the time they were interviewed, over a half of female cohabitants under 60 had lived with their partner for less than two years, and only 16 per cent for more than five years.”
She quotes: “Research findings published by John Haskey [formerly head of the Family Demography Unit within the Population and Demography Division of the Office for National Statistics, now Visiting Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford] in 1992 reported that UK couples marrying in 1970-74 were 30 per cent more likely to divorce after five years if they had cohabited; those marrying in 1975-79 were 40 per cent more likely, and those marrying in 1980-84 were 50 per cent more likely. Allowing for extra time living together, previously cohabiting couples still seemed 20 per cent more likely to divorce after 15 years of marriage.”
If the risk of couple break-up has increased because of cohabitation and that risk has not been factored into the terms of the mortgages, it is likely that losses are occurring and we are experiencing the consequences of them.
There is a fuller explanation at http://www.bloggernews.net/117003 Join the Debate |
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