Posted on 04/05/2008 4:17:32 PM PDT by blam
Breakdown in families 'as destructive as effects of global warming'
By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:46am BST 05/04/2008
Britain is suffering from an epidemic of family breakdowns affecting all levels of society from the Royal family downwards, one of the country's most senior judges will say today.
Mr Justice Coleridge, who presided over the preliminary divorce hearings of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, will accuse Gordon Brown of prioritising the abolition of plastic bags over support for families, and say the Government is "fiddling while Rome burns".
"Family breakdown is at all levels of society - from the Royal family downwards," he will say.
"Without being in any way over-dramatic or alarmist, my prediction would be that the effects of family breakdown on the life of the nation, and ordinary people, in this country will, within the next 20 years, be as marked and as destructive as the effects of global warming.
"We are experiencing a period of family meltdown whose effects will be as catastrophic as the meltdown of the ice caps."
Judges are witnessing a "never-ending carnival" of human misery, and almost all of society's social ills can be traced back to the collapse in family stability, he says.
Many single mothers do a good job, but thousands of children are being raised by women who have several children by several fathers, none of whom stick around.
The judge, who has 37 years of experience of family law and is Family Division Liaison judge in the south-west legal circuit, stretching from Hampshire to Cornwall, will speak in Brighton at the annual conference of Resolution, which represents 5,000 family lawyers.
His intervention - one of the most strongly worded of its kind by a serving judge in recent years - comes as new figures show marriage levels are at their lowest since 1862, and the number of children living with a single parent has doubled in 20 years.
Lawyers say family courts are overstretched to the point of collapse.
Mr Justice Coleridge, 58, who is married with a daughter and two sons, is expected to say that the family justice system - comprising social workers, local authorities, mental health specialists and legal experts - is all that stands between the present dire situation and "social anarchy".
It is understood he will call for laws relating to unmarried couples to be modernised, giving cohabitees legal rights on separation, enforceable pre-nuptial agreements, and for reform of divorce law to remove the "fault" element and blame from the process.
He also wants the Government to invest millions in properly researched projects which boost family stability.
“It is understood he will call for laws relating to unmarried couples to be modernised, giving cohabitees legal rights on separation, enforceable pre-nuptial agreements, and for reform of divorce law to remove the “fault” element and blame from the process.”
And this helps in what way?
So there is no problem at all with the breakdown of the family?
It's the morality aspect of it, and public policy veering towards the lack of morality, that is at it's core.
I would argue is is far more serious since the break down of the family unit is quite real where as global warming is a crock of crap.
Meanwhile, they are content with an unmarried birth rate that exceeds 70%. Go figure.
Forget about the dubious impact of 'Global Warming'. The offspring from these dysfunctional relationships will make ordinary life far more unbearable, costly and pointless than any of the imagined impacts from the highly speculative and largely uncontrollable 'Global Warming' ever will.
As aways, JMO.
The destruction from broken families is all around us.
Where’s all the “destruction” from global warming???
If it weren’t for global warming over the last ten thousand years or so much of the planet wouldn’t be habitable. In addition food production would be a small fraction of what it is today and millions of us would not be here.
I'm not so sure if it is the laws that enable this sort of behavior. I remember reading about the history of no-fault divorces. They were created because so many people got tired of being married to one another that they would perjure themselves in court, falsely claiming abuse or infidelity, as grounds for ending a marriage. The desire for so many people to divorce came before no-fault divorce came into existence.
While enabling such behavior certainly won't help matters, I think something else is the root cause of this problem.
No, Sarah. Far, far more damaging.
Actually in my experience you can’t the product of broken families to work at all.
They typically end up as narcissistic hot heads.
The British nany state is absolutely destroying the traditional family system. There’s simply no reason for marriage there anymore outside of religious compulsion because the state steps in to accomodate every person in every stage of their life. On top of that there are strong financial disincentives against marriage. It’s a mess, and the best cure would be a reduction or at minimum a restructuring of social welfare spending which is almost blasphemous to all major British political parties.
Heck, take a good look at Congress, Mayor's of Cities, Gov’s, Hollywoord. It is now uncommon for couples to remain married! And it is becoming ALMOST uncommon for children NOT to be born out of wedlock. It is widely accepted. Every child is indeed a blessing, but it is morally wrong for societies to so openly celebrate that. Young women, with the exception of most Christian homes, and some other religions, never hear that if you are committed for life, only then should you have children. Nor do they hear, if you are committed enough to have a child together, you are committed enough to marry and stay that way.
The whole homosexual agenda is another area of morality a lot of society would have us, and teach our children to, embrace.
You beat me to it.
We are now in 2008 - Over the past 20 years, the computer models that have driven global warming fears predicted how things would be in 2008. How close were they to being accurate? I suspect that in 1990 the predictions were that by 2008 things would be far different than they turned out to be. Anyone have any info here? Thanks
btt
You come a long way baby
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