In this week's life affirming instalment Amanda - on hearing the horrendous news that marriage is at its lowest level for 150 years – gets all John Major on our arses in her defence of “Family Values”. The Labour party is (obviously) to blame and there's no way they're getting away with it on Mandy's watch.
The government's policies on civil partnerships, the need for fathers for IVF babies and the abolition of the married couple's tax break all “Reinforce the wretched principle that any kind of family is as valid as the traditional unit between a man and a woman, despite over-riding evidence that the absence of fathers has devastating effects on children.”
Weird that isn't it. If children need fathers so badly, surely two fathers would be better than one. Yet, any mention of gay couples being allowed to adopt, no matter how long they may have been committed to each other, is anathema to The Mail and its footsoldiers. Why? Because it wouldn't be a “real” family.
“It's even worse” she cries, giving off the distinct impression this entire article was written in her own blood, “you even get more benefits if you're a single or separated parent”. And that's the kind of mindset we're dealing with in a nutshell. Mandy doesn't want state benefits going to the people that actually need them most, she wants them to go tot he people considered most “normal”. And for normal read: The people who most closely resemble The Daily Mail's twisted, neo-Christian idea of a “perfect” white, “English”, middle-class, heterosexual, nuclear family.
The fall in the amount of married couples is neatly blamed for “Teenage pregnancies, binge drinking, escalating violence and disintegrating communities.” Conveniently leaving out poverty, poor schools, overworked and overstretched parents and the “Me-me-me” social ethics that came about in Mrs. Thatcher's selfish 1980s.
But for anyone who still worries that this downturn in marriage rates may yet lead to the total destruction of the society we all know and tolerate, allow me to put it in perspective for you. Last time marriage rates were this low was 1862, and if you adhere to The Mail's standards of what makes a good year, this was a bloody brilliant one.
On January 1st those valiant redcoats of the British Army annexed Lagos island in Nigeria, no doubt helping to feed, clothe and educate the natives while also teaching them the merit of our superior Western culture. This process was going on all over the world too, from Bombay to Sydney to Mombasa to Singapore. Back in Blighty homosexual practices were still illegal and carried the threat of a hefty prison sentence, you could happily discriminate against any minority that took your fancy and the rich held all the power in society because hardly any of those wretched working class oiks could vote.
Surely that's the “Golden Age” they're always talking about.
Also this week...
...Every single columnist made at least a passing allusion to the fact Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has a nice bum...
...Housewives favourite Richard Kay tries to defend Winston Churchill's remark that “"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." He fails...
...Melanie Phillips poo-poos talking to Al-Qaeda claiming they must be “Vanquished”. I thought we'd tried that and failed miserably?...
....Oh, go on then.
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