Magic Statistics

Alan Johnson, appointed UK Education Secretary only two months ago, has attacked marriage and the two-parent family in a major speech to the National Family and Parenting Institute.

Twice-married Mr Johnson told an audience of parents the magazine image of 1950s mothers in "frilly pinnies" and fathers kitted out in shirt and tie for Sunday lunch was a damaging stereotype.

The era simply concealed discrimination against lone parents and children born outside marriage. He insisted modern families were wealthier, better educated and more liberated than their counterparts 50 years ago.

I think two-parent families have been around since well before the 1950s.  Moreover, Mr Johnson apparently failed to explain how wealth, education, and liberation contribute to healthier families, better parenting, and well-adjusted children.

He added: "We also have to recognise that the modern family is not always a married family. Marriage can provide stability, but it's not for everyone.

"Our focus should not be on whether people marry or not, it should be on the welfare of the child, and the quality of the upbringing." The Government has already been attacked for undermining marriage by characterising it as a lifestyle option and stripping away tax incentives to marry.

Mr Johnson's implication notwithstanding, research has shown that marriage per se is strongly associated with improved nurturing of children.  Also, marriage is indeed far more stable than cohabiting relationships, and that in itself is of immense benefit to children.

One critic has it right.

Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern, said: "The Government should be doing what it can to support marriage and stable family relationships, not disparaging them.

"All the evidence shows that the welfare of children is best served when they are cared for by a mother and father who are committed to each other for life as well as being committed to their children."

As Melanie Phillips sees it, Mr Johnson's speech indicates that Tony Blair has lost the Labour Party's internal family-policy argument to the anti-family faction.

What an astounding display of ignorance, prejudice and muddled thinking - and from an Education Secretary who has a duty to safeguard children's interests, what gross irresponsibility.

Ridiculing marriage as a Fifties caricature is a cheap and dishonest substitute for argument. The fact is that far from being outdated or confined to that period, marriage remains the bedrock institution which holds a society together.

For all its frailties, marriage is still the best way of ensuring that a child's parents stay together for the duration of its upbringing. Other relationships break down much faster, and their encouragement has led directly to our horrifying epidemic of mass fatherlessness.

The result has been such a catastrophic failure in parenting, particularly among the poor, that the Government is now assuming the role of surrogate state parent, with an oppressively detailed and prescriptive strategy for telling parents how to bring up their children.

In response to disintegration of family life in Britain, aided and abetted by government policies, Lynn Edwards, outgoing chairwoman of the Professional Association of Teachers, advocates compulsory parenting classes for all students aged 14 to 16.  One youthful politican thinks that a great idea.

Che Ramsden, 17, from the UK Youth Parliament, said: "This is a great idea. At the moment, unless pupils take a GCSE in child development they get no information about being a parent."

Without instruction in schools, pupils would "get no information about being a parent"?  I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

In any case, the best remedy to that sad situation is to re-orient public policy toward supporting and encouraging two-parent families, not introduce another government program supplanting them.  Mr Johnson's sneer, and new school courses in parenting, only promote replacement of stable families with the state's overbearing bureaucratic ministrations.  That's been a major contributor to making UK family life into the mess it is.

Previous related posts:

• UK’s Labour government seen as threat to families
• Universal daycare program hurts children and families
• British parents wants schools to take over child-rearing tasks

Power blackouts in the US Northeast and California lead Mises Institute president Lew Rockwell to notice that the electricity companies are behaving in ways that competitive firms can only dream of getting away with.  They blame the weather for their failure to provide the product they are charged with providing in quantities sufficient to meet consumer demand.  Increasingly, they blame their customers for using their product in the way it is intended to be used—to power their refrigerators, light bulbs, air conditioners, etc.

[N]o one is sure why, precisely, it [Queens, New York, blackout] happened, other than to say that the system became overloaded. What will happen as a result? Hearings, reports, meetings, yammering, resolutions, reforms, and, in time, another blackout followed by hearings, reports, meetings, etc., all of which will be filed in that huge warehouse where all the other reports on past blackouts reside.

What do the consumers do about it? They follow the news and keep paying the bills, to the same company that let them down. They can't switch. They can't influence the production process. They are powerless in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, California residents are putting up with blackouts, threats of more blackouts, denunciations from politicians, and even death: 56 people so far. All because of a heat wave, and all because the structure of the industry is not designed for extremes.

In most industries, increased demand is a business opportunity.  In electricity generation and provision, however, it’s seen as a danger.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Simply this: Electricity provision is a public utility—a company that has been granted a legal monopoly at prices subject to government regulation and approval.

What industry leaders received from this pact with the devil was a certain level of cartel-like protection, the same type that the English crown granted tea or the US government grants first-class postal mail. It is a government privilege that subjects them to regulation and immunizes companies from business failure. It's great for a handful of producers, but not so great for everyone else.

Because consumers have nowhere else to go, the power companies can do and say things that would drive them out of business if they had any competitors.  Power consumers are denounced for using “too much” electricity, i.e, for not wanting to swelter in their homes and offices.

Mr Rockwell suggests that the solution is to end public-utility monopolies and allow competition in power delivery.  That may be an idea whose time has come.

Here in Yukon, our power monopoly is Yukon Electrical Company (YEC), a firm so customer-friendly and up-to-date that it won’t accept credit cards for bill payments.  Power blackouts are part of the normal cycle life in YEC's jurisdiction, although the company hasn’t yet cottoned on to the trick of blaming the customers.  YEC usually points the finger at some hapless, now-dead bird or rodent that mysteriously wandered into a power station.

When I dropped off the monthly electricity bill payment yesterday morning, I noticed a banner draped across the front of YEC’s main office on First Avenue, downtown Whitehorse.  Check the photo below.  The banner reads, “Official supplier of the Whitehorse 2007 Canada Winter Games”.  As if the Canada Winter Games could possibly get electricity from some other company!

The games will be held from 23 February through 10 March 2007.  There had better not be any power outages!

via Greenie Watch.

Previous related post: Not much blogging from Yukon yesterday.

A tragic accident on the Dempster Highway, northern Yukon, last week left five men dead.  All were Muslim: four from Toronto, one from Whitehorse.

Toronto's Muslim community is in mourning after four members died in a van crash north of the Arctic Circle in the Yukon while on a personal faith mission.

Naoman Sidat, 56, of Toronto, Mohammed Pathan, 65, of North York, and Mohammed Saeed, 33, of Toronto and Azmat Sheikh, 38, of Markham, as well as a religious leader from Whitehorse, Khalid Malik, died on Monday evening. The van they were in skidded out of control on the Dempster Highway and it rolled down a steep embankment, according to RCMP.

The group had travelled to the North to provide religious support for a tiny Muslim community consisting of a dozen or so families.
. . .
The men saw their trip to the North as part of their religious obligation to the Muslim community – to connect with other Muslims in remote communities.

The headline is based on information reported by CBC Whitehorse but not posted at CBC North’s online site.  From CBC Whitehorse radio, 12:00 noon news, 27 July (transcript not available online):

The only survivor of a Dempster Highway car crash says the men who died were trying to bring peace and harmony to small northern communities.  The five dead men are now considered martyrs under Muslim religious law.

The suggestion that small northern communities need a visit from Toronto Muslims to bring peace and harmony is completely baffling to me.

According to Statistics Canada’s 2001 Census, there were about 60 Muslims in Yukon, accounting for 0.2% of the total population.  Northwest Territories had about 180 Muslims, or 0.5% of the total population.

The Dempster Highway runs between Dawson, Yukon, and Inuvik, Northwest Territories, providing the only road access to Inuvik.  From Inuvik, it is possible to drive on to Aklavik or Tuktoyaktuk, but only in winter when ice roads are in place.  The drive between Dawson and Inuvik takes approximately ten hours over an unpaved but well-kept road surface.

The accident occurred when the men were on their way back from the north end of the Dempster Highway toward Dawson.  Since it was a one-vehicle accident, it is most likely that the driver dozed off at speed.

Khalid Malik, the Whitehorse man killed in the accident, was the subject of a CBC Whitehorse interview that I blogged here.

No blog posts here yesterday because I was busy all afternoon organising tax receipts and related bafflegab documentation for Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Canadian counterpart of the US Infernal Revenue Service.  They're checking up on me again.  (CRA found nothing wrong with my tax return following an audit three years ago.)  I'm sure CRA's decision to audit me has no connection with a recent item criticising—not to say, ridiculing—the agency.

Last Tuesday, 25 July, I blogged a decision of Mr Justice Ronald Bell of the Tax Court of Canada in which he berated the Canada Revenue Agency.  A PEI couple, Roger and Anita Johnston, had called CRA's toll-free phone number for tax information but received contradictory advice from different people.  It took five years to give these honest, hard-working Canadians a straight answer, so long that CRA assessed interest on overdue taxes.  Understandably, they went to court.

Judge Bell was furious with CRA’s conduct and said the Minister of National Revenue should order the couple's interest charge reversed forthwith.

Two days after that item was posted, a letter arrived from CRA informing me of their decision to audit.  (The letter was dated 21 July, so apparently it’s coincidental.)

UPDATE (3 Oct.): CRA confirms that both my and the StatWife's tax returns are fine.  They took long enough to reach that conclusion, so I assume they went over every last item with a fine-tooth comb.

The collect for today, the 7th Sunday after Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things; Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 6:19-23
The Gospel: St Mark 8:1-9