Human Pit Bulls

Baby fight club.

What a sickening spectacle on Channel Four tonight.

I was asked to watch it for a future comment programme follow-up. Named Baby Fight Club, it graphically showed manic parents training their 5 to 10 year old children to be human pit bulls.

It is the growing spectator sport of Thai Kick boxing. Kicks and punches to the head are sometimes banned. But the bouts filmed showed children being repeatedly punched and sometimes kicked in the head. To the adult brain, blows to the head inflict irreversible brain damage. With the maturing brain the damage can be severe.

A five-year boy and girl twins were visibly pressured into fighting. The girl was upset. She wanted to spend her time with dolls and pretty clothes. Even her tears on entering the ring did not persuade her father to stop the spectacle.

All the parents had ambitions to achieve fame and wealth through their children. One bout showed two ten year olds fighting in a cage before an audience who paid £35 each to gawp at dangerous violence being inflicted to young bodies. Why?

The regulations of the sport seem to be haphazard and vague. Some clubs do not ban blows to the head. Some allow kicks to the head. The parents’ lust for success seems to have blinded them to the perils.

This is child abuse. Why has no one stopped it?

Secret Pension Bonanza

It took three attempts, but at last I have the astonishing answer I wanted from a parliamentary question.

Constantly I have raised the subject of the growing  £billions of pounds that are accumulating as a surplus in the National Insurance Fund. The money is collected with a disproportionately high share coming from low earners.

With the help of my brilliant researcher Tony Lynes, a question was drafted that could not be dodged. What I wanted to know is if the surplus was paid to pensioners what effect would it have on the level of basic pensions payments.

The reply is breathtaking. It reads: -

“If the equivalent of the national insurance fund's annual excess of receipts over payments projected by the Acting Government Actuary for the years 2009-10 to 2012-13 were paid in its entirety to recipients of basic state pension, this would lead to an estimated percentage increase in the basic state pension of around 24 per cent in 2009-10 and around 6 per cent in the years 2010-11 to 2012-13

Any increase in basic state pension expenditure has a cumulative impact on Government spending going forward."

This means that, if each year's surplus was used to increase the basic pension (now £90.70 for a single pensioner), the pension would rise, at 2008 prices, to £112.45 in 2009-10, £119.20 in 2010-11, £126.35 in 2011-12, and £133.95 in 2012-13. 

If the present policy of increasing the pension only in line with prices continues, it will still be worth £90.70 in today's prices.  Spending the whole of the annual surplus on the basic pension, therefore, would give a single pensioner an extra £43 a week by 2012-13 - an increase of nearly 50 per cent.

Well I’m gob smacked. The Government argued that the surplus is used to fund general Government spending. But that is not the purpose of the National Insurance Fund. Nor should it paid largely by the lower paid.

Is the Government listening?

Independence threatened

The stand-in Tory shadow Leader of the House had a whine at Business Questions yesterday about the work of the Newport Based Statistics authority. How long will it take for the penny to drop.

Paul Flynn (Newport, West) (Lab): When can we have an educational debate in the House to inform the Conservatives about one of  the most serious reforms to go through this House in the past 10 years is the establishment of the UK Statistics Authority, which in its compilation and publication of statistics will be free from interference from political parties or any political narrative. Is it not disappointing that less than a month after it was set up, the Conservative party is trying to interfere with the work of the authority. 

Helen Goodman: My hon. Friend is right in that the new independent Statistics Authority that we set up under legislation earlier this month will firmly guarantee the independence of statistics. He may also be aware that scrutiny of the authority will be carried out by the Public Administration Committee. I hope that it will be able to consider the authority’s work. As he knows, all Select Committee reports may be debated in Westminster Hall.

 

Comments

[valleylad]

As usual you hit the nail on the head with pensions, but frankly I link it back to "stealth socialism", I mean if the govt wasn't pinching from the NI pot, they'd have to raise taxes and that would never do :)

£90.70 a week is a pathetic amount. Yes I know about the MIG, but that is means tested, and I view that as an attack on those who've saved a little which may well be as much as they could have afforded.

The nice thing about the state pension/child benefit etc. is that they are fair, everyone pays, everyone benefits. They're part of our social glue.

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Valleylad. Agree entirely. Universal benfits are stigma-free with 99% take-up. The NI Fund is used as a csah cow which if funded largely by low earners.

The issue is as important as the 10p. One day everyone will notice. I have raised it many times and I will continue to do so.

[observer]

Anyone who hasn't already noticed(NI Fund) must be sleep-walking. The 1% NI contributions increase and simultaneous boast of no increase in income tax rates was the same duplicity as the abolition of the 10% rate.

Help me digest your argument:

- what data do you have to support your statement that the NI surplus comes disproportionately from the lower paid ?
- how do you square the pension situation with "Labour’s brilliant record of moving money to the worst off" (Prove me wrong, Gordon - April 23)