License to Breed

Let’s face it. Assuming you’ve got your responsible, upstanding, law-abiding citizen’s hat on, there ain’t a right lot you can do these days without the appropriate piece of paper.

For example, you can’t get behind the wheel of a car. In many places, you can’t even park it. You can’t go on a day trip to Calais. You can’t switch on the telly. In fact, you can’t even  dangle a bunch of maggots in the park lake in a vain attempt to snare some unsuspecting tench.

In the 21st century, we accept that the pressures of life in an ever more crowded and developed society inevitably mean restraining our urges and gaining suitable qualifications before we indulge our inclinations.

One by one, the liberties previous generations took for granted are being whittled away, or at least subject to the discretion of the powers that be.

That’s fine by me. Has to be really. We may not always like coughing up the few quid required, but we see the logic and do the deed.

With one very glaring exception. Which just happens to be the single most important event in our lives.

And no, I’m not talking about buying a house. Nor even going on a Caribbean cruise.

I mean reproducing ourselves. Having children. Raising a family.

Outside of communist China, it’s a liberty we humans take for granted. A divine right bestowed by The Almighty. Indeed, we’ve followed Our Lord’s famous biblical instruction to the letter. We have gone forth and multiplied. So much so that our population has ballooned to the extent that we now threaten the habitat of every other creature on the planet. At least, the ones that can neither fetch our slippers nor live off our leftovers.

Yet in this age of ever retreating freedoms and ever expanding environmental awareness, should this be the case?
I – in tandem with one or two of our other more far-sighted commentators (no false modesty here) – are starting to think, maybe not.
What’s more, I would go so far as to venture our own fair land as the ideal place to pioneer a new approach.

Darwin was wrong!
Survival of the fittest? When it comes to 21st century Britain, Darwin could not be wider off the mark. Those most suited to life in a sophisticated post-industrial economy breed least, if at all. While the Homer Simpsons of our society tend to multiply like bacteria on a dirty dishcloth. And, to be fair, Homer and Marge represent a pretty sanitised version of the reality.

How many blokes utterly unsuited to having a family go round siring kids left right and centre and don’t give a monkey’s? How many women think that men are just a device for spreading fertiliser? How many chavvy teenage girls think that a baby is just a fast track to a council flat?

And it’s not just a class thing. What about the professional women who think that having a child is an item on one of those Channel 4 filler programs – ‘Ten Things You Must Do Before They’re Forty’? They then go and farm it out to some childminder to plonk in front of the TellyTubbies. Listen, the child/career decision is an ‘either/or’. Not an ‘and’. Two full time jobs is one too many.

Of course, there are those who think they may give this marriage lark a shot, and if it turns out not quite a bed of roses, well, at least I’ve got his house, his car and his pension. He can keep the tropical fish tank. ‘Families need fathers’ is more than a slogan, as the Tories seem to have belatedly discovered.

In truth, letting nature take its course is not working at all. We’re so far removed from the natural life that laws like Darwin’s no longer apply.

And, as I’ve hinted, we in Britain seem to be suffering more than anyone. This country is fast becoming the armpit of Europe. Don’t believe it? Email me. I’ve got enough statistics to sink an aircraft carrier. All the tables you want to come bottom of, like teenage pregnancy and binge drinking, we’re top of. And all the ones you’d like to be top of, like curing cancer, we’re bottom. It may be the price we’re paying for being the first industrial – and post-industrial - nation. Who knows.

We could carry on as we are. We could let it get even worse. Or, for the sake of our country’s future, we could take some fairly drastic action.

Cut off crime. At the roots
Before civil liberties freaks have apoplexy – and let’s face it, they will anyway when they get a whiff of this stuff – let me say that I fully appreciate what a big deal it all is. As a (now single) parent myself, I’m well aware that having children can be the major joy in life. Yet it’s also the biggest responsibility. And maybe a privilege that should be earned rather than a right that’s taken for granted.

In any population, human or animal, the individuals who reproduce themselves and pass on their genes – and their attitudes - are the greatest influence on the future generation. Having said that, look around. Do you reckon that our laissez faire approach is doing our future any favours?

Open any redtop – or your local freesheet - any day, any week. What do you see? I’ll tell you. Crime, crime and more crime.

Never mind the all-too-frequent horrendous incidents such as the Gary Newlove case. It will be packed cover to cover with every kind of petty and not-so-petty nastiness you could imagine. Old grannies mugged for the price of a bag of chips. Young girls groped walking home through the park. Somebody’s pet puppy chucked on a bonfire. Some poor swan bereaved of their partner by half a house brick. Dubious young men shot in the head as they wait at the traffic lights. Flashers. Paedo’s. Conmen. All human life is there. Pond life, that is. It’s a litany so familiar we accept it. Yet we shouldn’t.

Let’s face it, there are some pretty vile scum about. Hundreds of thousands of them, in fact. And in spite of some recent – and one suspects much-massaged crime figures - I’m not convinced it will get better any time soon.

Yet for every member of the ‘bring back the birch’ brigade, there’s another voice protesting about an unfortunate upbringing, a broken home, not had any chances in life etc etc. Boo hoo.

Of course, this is not a black and white issue (can we still say that?) In truth, there is merit in both arguments. Many of these yobs deserve to get on very personal terms with the business end of a baseball bat. At the same time, some are indeed the product of a very unpromising background.

The old nature v. nurture debate is far from settled. Yet having said that, whatever factors have made these people as they are, they are as they are! That is, uncivilised, feral, and generally not fit to breathe God’s air.

They are the finished article, and they’re not going to change, unless it’s to get even worse. There’s no therapy I’ve heard of that will turn them round. While the received wisdom is that a long stretch in the nick just turns enthusiastic amateurs into accomplished pro’s.

What to do?
Wring your hands and wish you were still allowed to wring their necks?
Say how sad it all is and hope some new therapy will kiss it all better?

By the time young thugs are making your life a misery and getting their dirty deeds in the papers, it’s often too late. They’re already being fast-tracked onto a life of ASBO’s.

Somewhere along the line we’ll have to dream up some better ways to deal with these feral youths (who the media, incredibly, like to refer to as ‘children’!). In the meantime, we don’t have to let them reproduce themselves and literally sow the seeds for an even more grisly future.

And I for one think the loss of freedom may be worth it.

Tick the right boxes
This somewhat drastic approach to crime prevention is just one facet of the licence to breed concept. It deserves better than just to be seen as a negative, reactive measure.

If introduced, such a licence should be seen as something to be prized, to aim at, to achieve. A badge of honour, which, of course, it is.

We must create a whole range of criteria to be satisfied. And make sure that would be parents – and I mean parents – can tick all the right boxes. It could cut off the ever-increasing supply of pond life at a stroke.

These ‘criteria’ could be the result of extensive public consultation – ie. a measure that works from the bottom up rather than imposed by any government in Westminster. It would be democratic. We would get the population we want.

And the beauty is that it’s not in the least affected by the nurture/nature thing. If genetics are the cause of criminality, then people who may well have bad DNA will not be passing it on. On the other hand, if it’s environmental, then they’re not going to be allowed to create any bad parental environments for the simple reason that they’re not going to be allowed to be parents! In other words, they’re not going to be able to repeat all the mistakes that made them what they are. Neat solution or what?

Of course, the cry will go up about the perceived dubious morality of such a measure.
‘This is Brave New World revisited’. ‘This guy’s a Crypto fascist’. ‘He’s advocating some kind of 3rd Reich type social engineering’. Or ‘he’s simply off his trolley’.

Bring them on! To these people, I simply say – open your eyes, and open that newspaper again. Things are that bad. Believe it.

This is an idea whose time will come. And maybe sooner than you think.

It’s a numbers game
So much for the quality of the future population. What about that other ‘Q-ty’ word? Quantity? Even if we were all a nation of plaster saints, there’d still be far too many of us for comfort.

The opportunity to control the population is another massive benefit of licensed breeding. Figures have been bandied about suggesting that the population of the UK is set to soar by tens of millions over the coming century. It’s trumpeted by the government as a good thing. We’ll need them to pay for our pensions, they say. Or the NHS. Yeah, right. This is to simply mask one absurdity with another. Soon we’ll be the most densely populated country in the whole of Europe. We simply have too many people for such a small island.

For me, population growth spells disaster with a capital ‘D’. Have you sat down and thought what all these extra bodies will do to your quality of life?
It will turn our motorways into elongated car parks. You’ll be greeted with queues of hikers waiting to get onto Striding Edge. You’ll have to apply in advance to shop in Chester. You’ll need a permit to visit Prestatyn.

Let’s face it. There just aren’t enough nice places to go now, let alone with 10 million more people to keep you company.

Where will it all stop? When we’re all assigned our own square metre to squat on? Bliss! Quality of life is one of those mysterious commodities that just seem to go on without you realising it. Until it’s too late.

And all this is before we get into the really meaty stuff. According to James Lovelock, until recently the government’s chief advisor, overpopulation is the most important contributor to our impending environmental catastrophe. Stands to reason, really.
If one person = X pollution, then surely 2 people = 2X pollution.

Sooner or later, we’re going to have to get a grip on our population. Before it gets one on us. Round the throat.

It won’t be easy. We’ll be dragged there kicking and screaming. It may well take a disaster to get us to act – sadly, it usually does. But a Licence to Breed is coming. To a country near you.

First published in magazine issue - February 08