Monday 12 May 2008

he had a neck rash
right in front of me. it dragged
me fascinated.

‘Let’s have a Heated Debate!’ as Mrs Merton used to say. We occasionally have these at work, and they tend to expose the strange underbelly of opinions and beliefs which are held by those one would not normally expect be holding them.
My boss, for instance, who I have always known to be a bit of a capitalist, albeit a naive and sadly ill-informed one, holds the view that no one should be entitled to State Benefits of any sort and that Social Housing should be abolished, refugees should be put into prisons (or rather, a ‘prison-style unit’) and that foreign women who are pregnant should be forcefully deported.
I steered clear of this discussion. Had the lady in question ever had to apply for Jobseekers’ Allowance or Housing Benefit, I would have more respect for her point of view, but if you have never been in that position it is very easy to take the moral high ground and not allow anyone else to have a slice. We told her that despite the fact she’s black, she’d make a very good BNP candidate for her local area.
The topic in question moved on to children, and this is where I became controversial, supported, worryingly, by my boss.
‘Couples should not be allowed more than two children! Anything else is just selfish!’ I said.
Some people took umbrage at this, citing their ‘right’ to have as many children as they like.
The thing is, does anyone have a ‘right’ to unlimited children?
I am thinking of the world as a whole.
Imagine there is an island where ten people are marooned. Let’s say they are five couples. The island allows no access to the mainland or the possibility of import of resources. It is discovered that the island can support, at most, twenty people.
Once each couple has produced two children, we have a population crisis. Do the couples then have the right to produce more. The idea of rights becomes absurd in these circumstances, and yet, if we consider our planet as an island, this is exactly the situation we are in.