Warning - this could spark you off on an early morning rant - well it has me anyway.
Eamonn Butler writing in The Spectator is suggesting that the state pension and the National Health Service should be cut - to make family ties stronger.
It's for our own good, he argues, if we are forced to look after extended families and carry the financial burden because it will strengthen the family and so strengthen society. I can see Eamonn building his own granny complex onto his Englishman's castle as he pontificates. (He is from the free market think tank Adam Smith Institute which has the ear of politicians).
He writes: "The state pension system and the National Health Service make families less dependent on one another, and so weaken the bonds between them. In my youth, few people spent years in old age because they didn't live that long, but it was perfectly normal and routine for families to look after their elderly relatives, finding space for them in their own homes."Who will shoulder the burden of the extra responsibility, eeking out a minimum wage to prepare an extra couple of meals each night, having the heating turned up on full, sleeping on the sofa in an overcrowded house. I think we know.
For I can't just see those hedge fund operators leaving work on time and sacrificing a million dollar deal to change Granny's bed clothes. They wouldn't. They would employ a woman to do it for them instead.
