In a liberal society the building blocks are individuals not "families"

Here is George Osborne's response to the budget. Watch it. Family, family, family. Now obviously Steve Hilton is continuing the ape Blair strategy but a more important point emerges. What is your typical family of which Gideon speaks? Is it the two parent with two kids? Is it the single mum with one kid and two parents, or is it a couple who have no intention of having kids? Families take a multiplicity of forms, are flexible and responsive, that is why they have endured as a mode of existence for the human species for millenia. Why can't they allow us to decide what sort we want and give us the statistics per person? That way they are comprehensible. Use something like this budget calculator. Then we can all follow what's happened. This glib, we love the aspirant family crap is both false and misleading.





By the way, I'm not attacking families, the nature of families, the need for families, or anything else concerning families. I am simply attacking the irksome way in which the term is used in the political discourse. It blights thought and stifles understanding and debate.


Update: Benedict Brogan has some interesting information that the Tories think they have a "family credibility problem" and that people move away from the Tories once they have kids. Strange that. In the pre-having-kids demographic at the last election they were in third.