Good value polygamy

Tabloid myth number 178
A recent tabloid stunt has stirred up the voters' indignation.

The claim is that Muslims are benefiting from a recent law change that allows them to claim for more than one wife married polygamously in contravention of our laws. Understandably, there have been angry letters because of the perceived advantage to Muslims denied to everyone else.

Of course, it’s all cobblers. It is simply not true to suggest that husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits - the current benefit rules date back to 1987.

There was a recent review of the rules regarding benefit payments to customers in a polygamous marriage, which concluded that the rules in place since 1987 provide the necessary safeguards to ensure there is no financial advantage for claimants in a valid polygamous marriage.

What the Tories have suggested – treating polygamous marriages the same as single spouse marriages - could actually result in more benefits money going to polygamous households, as additional spouses would then be treated as single women.

There are fewer than 1000 polygamous marriages in the UK and only a small percentage of these are claiming social security benefit.

The review decided that the current position is the best possible. Tory Work and Pensions spokesman Chris Grayling told the Daily Mail on 4th February that he was opposed to these rules saying  “to have a situation where the benefits system is treating people in different ways is totally unacceptable.”

The latest Tory confusion on this comes after Conservative MP David Davies also called for the rules to be changed, bizarrely citing homosexual polygamous partnerships as the reason.

All nonsense, of course.  But the lie remains, leaving a false impression. I have seen no denial from the tabloids that headlined the original shock horror garbage. Is there hope for truth?

Preserving Brutalism

Letter to Cadw.

I read with astonishment that C20, the Twentieth Century Society, is campaigning to save the present 1972 Bettws comprehensive school building.

I was local councillor and governor of the school when it opened – a day memorable for the discovery that the school hall was too small to allow all the pupils to attend. I have been a local councillor and MP for the Bettws catchment area almost continuously since then. In 1972 the architect of the school briefed councillors on her hopes for the school that was the result of a competition.

It was a bitter experience, later, to watch all the ambitions for the new design fail. There were innovative small areas designed to be intimate refuges for small groups of children to meet. They never worked. Nor did any of the other innovations. The school appears to have been built with the attractive area in the back and the utilitarian rooms at the front of the building.

The children nicknamed the design as ‘Colditz’. Both the Director of Education and, as far as I know, all the teachers at the school found its design impractical, ugly and inimical to the education process. Instead of the promised uplifting experience of a modern design, the building is dispiriting and saps the morale of staff and pupils. In spite of the best efforts of the school and councillors there has been a continuing deterioration in the building’s appearance and utility.

I recall the late Hugh Loudoun, director of Education Authority in 1972, vehemently vowing that the authority would never go out to competition for another school building. I know of no one, teacher, pupil, councillor or educationist, who regards the design of Bettws as anything but a calamity. It has been a serious blight on those who have had to work there.

The seventies were the epoch of brutalist architecture. The fashion soon passed. There are enough ugly multi-story car parks left to commemorate that period of aberrant architectural self-indulgence and austerity. Bettws and Newport should not be forced to maintain a building that has manifestly failed architecturally and educationally.

Illustrated is the new build design - now under threat from the brutalists.