

UNICEF says Britain is the worst country for children in the Western world - ksvs
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_otbie-british_children.html

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sdpurtill
Where's a link to the report from UNICEF? This is the stupidest thing I have
read on the internet for a long time (like, 28 minutes and counting)

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ars
Interesting, but: "Since mealtimes are usually when families get to converse"
is not true. You can complain about lack of eating together, but don't make up
reasons why it's bad.

But the rest of it was quite insightful.

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bobdobbs
What a great way to start a sentance "The British, never fond of... seriously,
how can a country not be fond of children, wtf.

This article offers nothing constructive whatsoever and the title is
misleading.

<http://juh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/2/333> "This article discusses
the founding of the Manhattan Institute as part of a wider mobilization of
conservative ideology and activism in 1970s New York. Important to the success
of this mobilization was the concerted effort to reframe the "urban crisis" as
a problem of values and culture and to construct a narrative of moral
decline—and ultimately of conservative redemption—based in liberal New York."

\- So thats where their coming from then.

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zandorg
My Mother is a health visitor, and she says there's too much NHS red tape in
an otherwise good concept. Health visitors are unique to Britain, she tells
me, and they look after developing babies and give parents advice.

As for the welfare state, it paid my way through University by a legal quirk,
helped me develop software without worrying about bills, and will hopefully
pay me through a Master's degree.

[Edit] - It wasn't a legal quirk, I was fully entitled due to illness, it was
just unusual.

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extension
_Since mealtimes are usually when families get to converse, the children do
not learn the art of conversation_

Children learn the art of conversation from television and practice it with
their friends at school. From their families, they learn the art of neurotic
bickering.

If being a kid in Britain means being a chav, as I have been lead to believe,
that is sufficient to explain why it is the worst childhood in the western
world.

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hugh
These sorts of studies aimed at ranking countries from worst to best are
almost always pretty useless, based as they are on a points scale made up of
some poorly-chosen metrics of goodness assigned arbitrary weightings. They're
even more useless when just used to compare the twenty or so rich "western"
countries of the world, all of which are fairly similar in terms of their
absolute quality of life.

I like the way the author here acknowledges that he wouldn't usually believe
this sort of study, and that he doesn't know enough about the other 20
countries to really judge, but since the study agrees with his prejudices he's
inclined to believe it. I applaud his honesty here.

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ajross
Useless? Huh? How else are we going to reinforce our strongly held cultural
perceptions about those awful foreigners?

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neilk
I'm not sure if this is Hacker News, but the linked author isn't talking about
the study's findings at all. He just uses it as a springboard to rant about a
few mothers so bad they got sensational tabloid headlines. Then he works in a
few predictable jabs at the welfare state for producing parasitical monsters.

This may be the study that the author is discussing, although it was released
in 2007.

<http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf>

Hopefully, anyone on this board isn't afraid of real data. The picture seems
kind of mixed and even the authors find it difficult to pin down the exact
sources of well-being.

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sh1mmer
I couldn't agree more. I'd be interested in seeing an indepth examination of
why Britain is failing so badly, particularly with their relative GDP.

This story isn't that. It's a diatribe about anecdotes combed from the media.

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wyclif
Perhaps it is a diatribe. But Dalrymple's point is that the numbers don't lie
in this case. Birthrates in the UK--as they are in all of the West-- are on a
steep decline. We are witnessing the Graying of Europe.

~~~
qwph
_We are witnessing the Graying of Europe._

You mean - people are moving around?

EDIT: I just foung the phrase "Graying of Europe" to be a bit Enoch Powell,
perhaps it's just me. Apologies...

