Latest / Honey Badger Radio / Is child support enforcement as corrupt in the UK as in the US? | HBR Talk 419

Transcript

Is child support enforcement as corrupt in the UK as in the US? | HBR Talk 419 · Honey Badger Radio

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to HBR Talk 419. Is child support
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: as corrupt in the UK as it is in the US?
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And for those of you who have read the low bar,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the question isn't just that, but is it more? Yes.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I'm your host. I'm your host, Hannah Wallin. Unfortunately, we
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: do not have a nonsense annihilator tonight because she is driving...
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And you're not allowed to be on the phone while
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you drive. Or at least not in Ohio. I don't
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: know about every other state. But, yeah, we don't want
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: anybody getting arrested. Not yet, anyway. Just me. But we
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: do have the personification of perceptivity, Mike Stevenson.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Hello in some language I haven't thought of yet.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And we have Richard the Lionhearted. And we have the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: doge in charge, Brian Martinez, working in the background to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: make everything happen. And I'm told there's a new intro,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: so this is news to me. Everybody should tell Brian
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: if they like it, and if they want more of that,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: in the comments. But, before we get into our show tonight...
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And our show is not the same as last week.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I know the word suicide is in the title of
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the article, but, you know, there's... Oh, okay.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: So no one's listening.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It has absolutely... Hello, void! Yeah, has absolutely nothing to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: do with the previous topic that we've been covering and
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the avenues we explored. This is about child support. It
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: just so happens... that some fathers have been driven to suicide.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: The reasons we will look into as we start to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: read the article.
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: In the UK, when you're a dad in the child
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: support system, you're not allowed to talk about your experiences
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: by law.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Anything in the marriage courts or in the family courts, yeah,
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: everything is under an NDA. or whatever the hyper equivalent
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: of an NDA is. Yeah, I know. If you say anything,
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: straight to jail. Straight away. No trial, no nothing. Jail.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: See, I think that the courts should, I think the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: legislators should all have to be on camera all the time,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: except when they're in the bathroom, because nobody wants to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: see that. Nobody wants to see that. You know they're
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: not pooping because then they would lose their whole career
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: in government.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: You would think that.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Every trial should be televised. They have to remain full
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of shit or they can't work in government anymore. That's
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the rule.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Why wouldn't every trial be televised? It's not going to
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: jeopardize what's happening.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I guess it might, but Every trial should be open
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: to public examination, at least the elements of what did
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the courts do? What did the court personnel do? What
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: did the judge do? What did the prosecuting attorney do?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: These are things that should not be hidden. And the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: reason is because when they are corrupt, they infringe on
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the rights of the people. And if you have a
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: prosecutor that has a habit of infringing on the rights
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of the people, you need to know that because they
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: need to get out of there. That's why these things
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: need to be examinable by the public.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: It's not like it's going to stop the dyed-in-the-wool leftist
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: mass media lying about it, as we saw in the...
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: What's the guy in Waukesha?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I need that.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: There was the Johnny Depp thing. Carl Rittenhouse. That whole
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: thing was televised, but it didn't stop the Diet of
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: the World leftist legacy media lying about it every step
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: of the way, even though it was televised. But then
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: the general public could go into that footage and notice
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: that the fucking legacy media has been lying about it
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: all along, and they still are. They're not going to
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: stop lying. They never will. All they can do is lie.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: But if the trial is televised, then normal people can
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: just go into it and notice. Like, they're fucking lying
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: about it. Why the fuck are they lying about it
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: and getting away with it?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Well, see, they don't get away with it if you
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: know they're lying because in order to get away with
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: a lie, your lie has to be believed. And the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: act of believing your lie has to have the intended
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: effect that you meant for that lie to cause people
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to have. So if the legacy media lies about a
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: case like that and the intended effect is for people
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: to hold certain opinions. And instead, what they do is
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: they decide that the legacy media is no longer trustworthy
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: rather than holding the opinions the legacy media intended. Then
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: they didn't get away with lying. They didn't get necessarily
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: punished for it, but they didn't get the intended results.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, and I think losing their credibility
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: is kind of a punishment. You need credibility in order
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to remain relevant. as legacy media.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: You'll notice we're not calling it misinformation and disinformation in
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: that exact series of syllables, like what the legacy media
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: calls it when people are telling the truth. Like when
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: the legacy media lies, we can go ahead and call
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: it lies legally. Like we're not breaking the law when
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: we say that they're lying because they are lying. But
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: when we tell the truth... the legacy media isn't allowed
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: to call it lies because it's not lies. So they
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: have to call it misinformation and disinformation, that exact series
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: of syllables in that order, because they know it's not lies.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: They know it's the truth, but they are legally allowed
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: to call it misinformation and disinformation because that doesn't mean
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: the same thing as lies. It means information that is true,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: but that the legacy media doesn't want you to know.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's two ways that you can say something that's
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: not true. And neither one of them is disinformation or misinformation.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: One of them is when you know it's not true
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and you say it. And you know that you're telling
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: somebody something that's not true. And that is a lie.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: When you know that you are telling somebody that is
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: something that is not true, that is a lie. That
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: is the only thing that is a lie. The other one,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: people call it a lie all the time. They mistake
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: it for a lie. And some people who say it
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: are just dumb, but the rest are lying. And that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: is when you make a mistake, when you are wrong,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: when you give information that you believe to be correct,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: even if you've just taken an educated guess, as long
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: as you're not telling people that you didn't take an
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: educated guess when you did, because then it becomes a lie, right?
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: But If you believe something to be true and you
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: say that it is true and you're wrong, that's not
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a lie. But it's not disinformation because it's not intended
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to cause people to believe something that isn't true. They
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: had to make up the word disinformation. They had to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: make up the word misinformation, not because there's some widespread
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: issue of people being wrong all the time. but because
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: there is a widespread issue of their narratives not taking hold.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And this is one that we're going to look into.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The narratives about family court, about custody and child support.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: This has been one that, not the left necessarily, but
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the establishment, the we want your money taxed and spend
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: uh establishment has had control over for a long time
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: but before we explain further on this issue we do
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: have to do what we have to do so here
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: we go as always honey badger radio dishes out a
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: smorgasbord of these thought-provoking discussions and as experiences both recent
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: and long past have demonstrated the provoked thoughts are fighting
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: back they've made it clear that for people like us,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: relying on third-party payment platforms like Patreon to fund our
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: work is treading on thin ice, or building our house
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: in the path of a rapidly growing wildfire. In light
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of this, we strongly encourage our supporters to switch at
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: least their support for us to FeedTheBadger.com, the most stable
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: way to help us out. And if you want to
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: tip us directly instead of relying on any social media
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: platform's tip jar, the link for that is FeedTheBadger.com slash
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: just the tip and as always the same risk applies
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: to our social media platforms which is why you should
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: further provoke your thought police by tracking our thought provoking
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: discussions on honeybadgerbrigade.com where you can find your way to
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: all of our content as well as a link to feedthebadger.com
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: in the drop down menu at the top of the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: page I swear I do that better when I'm not
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: reading it.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I'm always tempted to interrupt what you're saying just for
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: the sake of being, of trolling everything.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: My brain does that anyway. Every time I stumble, it's
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: because my eyes have skipped a line and inserted a
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: word in the text where there isn't a word or
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: that word isn't. And I'm like, that's not what it says.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Because I have the damn thing memorized.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I'm just grateful that we never do like sponsorships or
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: like things that I'm not allowed to interrupt, but I
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: am allowed to interrupt us while, while we're doing our spiel,
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: like advertising ourselves. And, you know, the spiel that we
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: do at the top of the episode is, is always
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: essentially advertising ourselves. And I'm like, I'm still tempted to,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: to try and pick holes in that, but I'm not,
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: do it. You know, however funny it might be.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: When I was in my twenties, I worked in a
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: bakery and a big bear store in Wapakoneta that isn't
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: there anymore. The store is closed. The company, uh, filed
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: some kind of bankruptcy. And I think there's still a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: big bear in Columbus and it's the only one, but
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: it's a grocery store chain. And they made, uh, all
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of their own donuts. They had, in fact, that's what I,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: what I did. I made the donuts. Um, I was
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the person that got up early in the, when I
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: say early, I had to be there at two o'clock
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: in the morning. Uh, so I was, I was early
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: in the morning and then I would go home, you know,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: late in the morning after, uh, after all of the, uh,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: donuts were made and we had started selling them and everything.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: But one of the things I had to do, it
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was the first time we made the bread in the morning.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: They would put out these loaves of Italian bread that
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: had just come out of the oven. They put them
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in these paper bags that had wax on them that
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: didn't melt from the heat somehow. And I had to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: get on the store intercom and say, mmm, mmm, mmm,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: smell that aroma. Back at our Big Bear Bakery, we
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: got fresh baked Italian bread. And then I had a
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: whole nother spiel that I don't remember. But that was
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the hardest part of my job. My whole job before
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and after that was a cakewalk because I knew people
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: were listening and I had to sit there and say that.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't even that bad.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: This is largely why my own YouTube channel has never
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: taken off. It's partly because YouTube has buried it under
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: the shadow banning and the throttling. But also it's because
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: I can't bring myself to say, hit like and subscribe
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: and do the comments. Because I just can't do salesmanship.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: And I fully understand that. You're not going to get
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: very far unless you do the salesmanship. But I'm not
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: going to do it. I can't do it. I can't
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: bring myself to do it. It just feels dirty.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: So you can't say like, subscribe and hit that notification bell.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: No, I can only bring myself to say don't do that.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: You have to put it to music. But I'm not
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: going to do that today. There's only so much. There's
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: just only so much. But yeah, I used to do
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: that all the time. And then I used to get
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: on and announce when we put out our fresh cookies.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: It was so bad. And I hated that part. My
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: career in retail was probably the only work that I
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: did out of sheer determination. Like, I'm going to defeat
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: this environment. I don't care if I hate it. I'm
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: going to be the best retail employee where I am.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: And people are going to like me. God damn it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: This does not help people like you, by the way.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: I'm going to die poor because I have no sense
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: of salesmanship. And I'll be fine with that. And no
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: one will turn up to my funeral. And I'll be
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: fine with that because I have no sense of salesmanship.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: There we go.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: I will not advertise my funeral. No one will know
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: where it is. Well, I guess I'll be dead, so
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: I won't be able to be in.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Charge of that. There is a key to salesmanship and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: it is, it is not something there, there's a key
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: to good salesmanship. Let me put it that way. And
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: it's not something that, that everybody can do. Um, and,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and I'm sort of halfway there. So I had a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: manager when I worked at, um, I worked at a
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: gas station here in my neighborhood, actually, who, who used
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to tell people, that you could put bags of shit
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: on the counter and mark them 99 cents and that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I could sell them to people. And because I could
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: sell anything for 99 cents. Well, it was because we
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: always had these candy bars that we were asked to
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: suggest to the customers. Well, the store, the organization that
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: owns the store, they picked my favorite candy bars. So
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Of course I could sell them to customers. If I
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: think something is awesome, I can sell it to people
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: who like that same kind of thing. And almost everybody
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: likes chocolate. Almost everybody likes candy. So I could sell
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: candy because almost everybody already wants candy when they come
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: into the store. And there was a deal on that
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: candy that made it cheaper than other types of candy
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: that were the same value. And so I like, I
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: didn't have to do any work to sell that candy.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: But I could have sold bags of shit. All I
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: would have had to do is relabel them. This is
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the other half of salesmanship. And this is what, when
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: you get told you're going to take this shit sandwich
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and you're going to eat it because it's good for you,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: they don't call it a shit sandwich. They call it
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: something along the lines of, recycled and repurposed missed nutrition. Oh, wow,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that's very important. We can't be missing nutrition, right? You
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: can't miss nutrition. That's important. How did we miss that?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: We got to go back and get it, right? So
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: you have a renaming. You have a relabeling. Now, I
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: could have done that with bags of shit. I could
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: have said, This is compost starter, right? You can label
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: it compost starter, put a pretty flower on the bag
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and fancy font compost starter, you know, and then a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: little thing on the back on how to compost, which
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: anybody can do. All you have to do to compost
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: something is put some sticks under it and some dirt
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: in with it and it'll compost. You don't really have
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to do much of anything else. Just don't try that
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: with meat because you'll get animals you don't want. But
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: nobody chases down shit, so go ahead, do it with
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: cow poop. Just a little bag of cow poop on
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the counter. Labeled compost starter.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Ironically, I think it might be easier to sell shit
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: than it is to sell men's rights.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Well, this is the thing. The state is selling... highway robbery,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: but they didn't call it that. Right. And this is,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: this is how they do it. They, they take the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: money out of the father's income and they skim off
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the top. That's the highway robbery part. And then they,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: they send it to the mother, but they don't really
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: do any, you know, ensuring that it is actually spent
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: the way they say it's going to be spent. But
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: even though they're engaging in this highway robbery, Polite highway robbery.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: You get a notice in the mail and they take
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: you to court if you don't do what you're told.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And the police will politely escort you to jail if
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you don't do what you're told. But it's still highway robbery.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: You don't need your child to live somewhere else away
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: from you in order to support your child. It is
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: completely unnecessary for you to be separated from your child
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: in order to support your child. That is completely unnecessary.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: a side issue, right? And if your ex-wife or the
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: mother of your child wants to raise the child by herself, then,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: you know, she should raise the child by herself as
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: long as you're okay with that. But asking you to
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: pay for it is a bridge too far. But they
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: don't call it highway robbery, right? They don't call it
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a bridge too far. They don't even call it deadbeat
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: mom support, which would be pretty close. That's pretty close, except,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you know, that you do have the government skimming off
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the top of it. They call it child maintenance, child support,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: as though you are paying your child and your child
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: has any say or any anyone defending their interest in
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: how this money is spent it is a lie so
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: at the very beginning like all that we've talked about
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: here disinformation misinformation difference between lies and mistakes most people
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: like your next next door neighbor your brother your sister
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: your your niece and nephew everybody at your office that
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: says the phrase child maintenance or child support Most of
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: them don't know any better. They're making a mistake. They're
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: using a phrase because it's what they've been taught. That's
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: about as close to what misinformation could be because they
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: are collectively misinformed. But the people who spread the misinformation,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: that's their government. Go ahead, Richard.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I did get charmed when I was a kid.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Did it go into an account for you or did
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: your mother get it?
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: My mom got it, but she gave me, I think
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: she gave me £ 15 a week for lunch money out
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: of it.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. So that's all I got from it. Was the
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: child support £ 15 a week?
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: I don't know how much it was in total because
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: I got child maintenance and we were on child benefit
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: as well.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So she was receiving a stipend from the government?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: They might have taken your child maintenance, actually. This is
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: something that happens in the States. I don't know. We'll
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: find out in the article if it happens in the UK, possibly.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: But even if we don't find out in the article,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I know that it is kind of a standard thing.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And that idea originated in the UK with the Elizabethan
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Poor Laws, actually. Um, was that if you, if you, um,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: are receiving assistance from the government, like you're a, you're,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: you live in a workhouse back in, back in the day,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: back in the Elizabethan era, you live in a workhouse
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: because you are poor and you do the work that,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: that is, uh, assigned to you in the workhouse or
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: you get hired out or however that worked. I think
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you got hired out. It was like a temp agency,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: except not very nice.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Um, And the child, and that, and that stopped when
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: I tell the benefit and the maintenance stopped when I
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: was 18.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It does normally, unless you go to university. Um, but, uh,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: if they found your cousin or your sister or one
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of your kids or one of your parents, you know,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: any family member would do, it didn't really matter. They
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: would charge them for your upkeep at this workhouse. And
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: that was one of the Elizabethan poor laws. And another
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: one was basically the idea of child support. And what
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: they did was they punished women if they didn't name
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a father. Well, back then you couldn't get a DNA test.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: They didn't even know DNA existed. So if she named
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a father, it would be on him to prove that
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: with no means other than this child looks nothing like
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: me that uh no he was not the father so
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: essentially they would coerce women into just naming a guy
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: as the father of a child and so there may
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: be a lot of people who uh from that time
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: period not a whole lot because it wasn't as common
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to be an unwed mother at that point in time
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: um but there may be some people out there who
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: have the wrong father for one of their ancestors on
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a birth certificate because, or on some sort of public record,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: because the mother had been threatened with punishment if she
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: didn't tell who the father was in order to get
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: help from the state.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: And there was no Mary Beckham that day either.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: There was no Mary Beckham.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: And yeah, in a world obsessed with excusing women who
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: murder multiple children, and indeed Jane Doe's who rape multiple men,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: let's talk about the fathers driven to suicide breakdown and
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: penury by chaotic dysfunction in the child maintenance service. That's
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: me trying to push us into the main story.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Now that you know, now you understand the history behind
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about, The Elizabethan era was like, what,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: 200 years ago?
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: The first Elizabethan era. Let's just not talk of the
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: second Elizabethan era.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: No, no, this is the first. Elizabeth I. So this
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: has been a thing for a long time. And the
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: state has gotten very practiced at exploiting the public, I guess.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better term.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: And now for the article. Yep.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: So, parents are being financially crippled, losing homes, and even
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: driven to suicide after being hit with fictitious child maintenance charges,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a mail investigation has found. Tens of thousands have been overcharged,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: some by thousands of pounds a month, because of long-running
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: faults in the government agencies. The shocking situation which has
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: drawn comparisons with the post office scandal that I don't
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: know about has plunged... Oh, go ahead. What was the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: post office scandal?
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: It was a faulty IT system that ID'd people that
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: was brought in the post office but then they found
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: that there wasn't a fraud in the post office and
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: some people were sent to prison and they were wrongly
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: convicted and they've been trying to clear their names ever since.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: There's an ITV drama about it and a documentary about
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: it as well.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: They're all on YouTube.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And so everybody knows that they were wrongly convicted but
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the government hasn't caught up yet with that.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: No.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: The government hasn't like done anything about it. And there
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: have been deaths, suicides, and stuff like that around the
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: cases as well before.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: They were even cleared. And they haven't been compensated either.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: It seems like a pattern with the UK government. Things
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: moving at the speed of government here are slow, but
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: it sounds like things moving at the speed of government
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: there are make the US look like a racing snail.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: It's like, how can somebody that incompetent be so evil? Yep.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Well, to be fair, the more incompetent someone is at
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: their job, if there are people that depend on them
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in their job, like if there's any kind of caregiving
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: responsibility for somebody, You're taking, tending to somebody's money. You're
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: making rules that somebody has to follow. The more incompetent
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: people in that kind of position are at their job,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the more evil they have to be in order to
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: continue to stay in their position. Because they would lose
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the job if they were not. They would either admit
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: that they're incompetent at that job and go do something else,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: or they would just get fired because Because they wouldn't
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: cover their tracks. And, you know, until you get to
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the level of incompetence where they don't know how to
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: cover their tracks. And then they just get fired really quickly. So,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: many have spent years battling to get massively... Oh, there
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: we go. I forgot the end of this. No, I didn't.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: massively inflated payment charges overturned and continue to be hounded
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: by the CMS, even after the adjacent or adjudicators or
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: courts rule in their favor in what they describe as
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: an ongoing nightmare. So it sounds like the child support
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: agency there is like the IRS here. You can, you
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: can get your taxes. You can pay your taxes. You
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: can prove you paid your taxes. You can get a
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: judge to say, this person proved she paid her taxes.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Leave her alone. And the IRS will still hound you
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: to pay your taxes again. And it seems like the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Child Support Enforcement Agency does also do that. And it
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: seems like so does the one in the UK.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: They're only writing about this now because it's starting to
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: affect women.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Now, see, in the u.s it affects women occasionally not
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: because the father has gotten custody but because the state
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: has kidnapped their children and sent them to live with
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: somebody else and they have to pay child support to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the foster parents it's uh if child support or if
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the child protection agency takes your children from your home
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and they put your children in a foster home, in
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: foster care, part of the punishment is that you have
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: to pay support into the system so that the government
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: can pay that family to take care of your children.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And then from what my neighbors have gone through, some
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: of my neighbors have gone through They make you take
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a bunch of classes and they charge you a fee
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: for those classes. But you're still supposed to be able
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: to handle all of your bills on top of paying
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: this child support and paying for these expensive classes without
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: working any extra hours because you don't have time because
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you're taking these classes. It's kind of a neat trick.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: And then if you can't pay your bills and you
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: start falling behind and your credit starts dropping, they use
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: it against you in court. At least according to one
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: of my neighbors. Their credit record got brought up. And
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: when they explained to the judge, my income has remained
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: exactly the same as it was. It hasn't gone up any.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: But you raised my expenses by a third of my income.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: And my expenses, my other expenses haven't gone down at all.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: That didn't go over well. And then they ended up
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: in actually in trouble. One of the parents was found
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: in contempt for that. So like this, this in the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: U S this is the way that they handle child support,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that they handle families and family court. This is why
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I say these things need to be public. You can't,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you can't do stuff like this in the dark without
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: having judges take shortcuts to handle problems that aren't convenient
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: for the mandates that they're supposed to follow. It's not
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: convenient for the parents to notice that you gave them
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: impossible tasks and then told them deal with it. It's
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: not convenient for the parent that's being ordered to pay
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: child support to become homeless and then say, it's because
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: you took all of my earnings and gave them to
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: this woman to go out and get her hair and
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: nails done and my child is still starving because none
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of that support is going to him or her. So,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not surprised to read this part. Now the mail
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: has spoken to scores of parents locked in a desperate
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: fight for justice with the agency to find out what
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: is going wrong and why. So we have first we
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: have this this individual, Jonathan O'Neill, who is paying 690
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: pounds a month. He should have been paying 340 a month.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: That's more than double. When Jonathan O'Neill received a letter
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: saying he owed an extra £ 4, 200 in child maintenance arrears,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: he assumed it was a simple mistake that would quickly
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: be resolved. After all, he had his payslips, which clearly
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: showed he was paying the correct amount to his ex-partner
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: to help support their young daughter. But even though he
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: called the government's child maintenance service and provided evidence it
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: had inflated his earnings by up to £ 10, 000, it still
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: started collecting an extra £ 350 a month, meaning he was
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: paying more than double the amount he actually owed. Despite
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: being told the calculations should be looked at, Mr. O'Neill
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: was forced to spend years pleading with the agency to
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: reverse the error as he sank further into debt and depression.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: His sister, Joanna Smith, says he wasn't coping with it well.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: The more overtime he did at work to earn the money,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the more CMS took from him as it takes a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: percentage of his wage. He told me it was crippling him. Finally,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: on November 18, 2021, after four years of fighting the
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: inaccurate bill and in a desperate mental state, he posted
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: on Facebook that the CMS was about to take yet
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: another life. The CMS is about to take yet another
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: life now. Maybe things will be heard if enough men
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: take their own lives as a result of the most
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: corrupt government sector ever. You are disgusting in every way.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Hours later, aged 41, he was rushed from his home
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: to the hospital, where he died in the early hours
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of the following morning. It was a horrific tragedy, which
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: his still grieving sister described as trauma like you would
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: not believe. But sadly, the ordeal endured by Mr. O'Neill,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: an engineer from Hutterfield, West Yorkshire, is not a one-off.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: So they miscalculated. They used imputed income by accident. They
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: claimed he was making more money than he was actually making,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: and they inflated the amount that they said he owed
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: and then did nothing to remedy the situation. This is
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: a common issue in the United States as well.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: How dare you suggest that a man died? This was
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: clearly a woman dying and a narcissistic man. just claimed
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: that he was dying at the expense of a woman
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: who actually died. I think that's how it works.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Right? Something like that.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Men are not victims of anything, not even death. So
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: if a man dies, a woman is actually the victim
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: of that. I'll have you know.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Yep, I get told that all the time. You know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: she lost her husband. Oh, no, wait. They were divorced.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: So she didn't lose her husband. She lost his income, though.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: He couldn't pay any.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: More child support. That's what she said about. Yeah.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Allegedly. Allegedly. In Minecraft. But this is the thing. You know,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Years ago, that's just weird for it to have been
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: years ago. It was like seven or eight. No, it's
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: longer than that. It's like 10 years ago, at least
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: 10 years ago. There was a man, Thomas Ball, in
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the United States who, he was divorced from his wife
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: and she had full custody, I think. And the child
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: support order on him Was. Atrocious. And at the same time.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: She was keeping him from seeing his kid. Alienating him
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: from his kid. If I remember right. He was going
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: to court. To. To try to remedy. All of these things.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: And.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: The court found against him.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: And.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: He set himself on fire. In front of the court.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: He was so distraught. from everything that was happening to him,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: that he did not just commit suicide. He did so
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in a way that could not be ignored in order
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: to draw attention to the corrupt nature of the family
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: court system. And do you know what the establishment media did?
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: They said absolutely nothing. Not a word. There was very
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: little reporting on his case, on anything that happened. The
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: few that did report on it blamed him as the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: perpetrator of psychological abuse against everyone who witnessed his death.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: This man had one way to express the amount of
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: of pain and suffering he was experiencing, what the government
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: was doing to him at the behest of his ex-wife.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And everyone else is the victim of that, according to
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: establishment media and feminists.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: When men kill themselves, they just kill themselves. They don't
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: kill their own children. And they kill themselves in the
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: most dramatic way possible. to try and raise awareness as
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: to what the fuck is happening to them and to
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: the men who lose custody. You can probably guess what
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: I'm about to say. When women kill themselves in the
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: event of them losing custody which is very very rare
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: they kill their own children expressly like they make sure
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: their children are dead and then they take like a
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: butter knife to their wrists. And they go, oh no,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: I'm killing myself. Look, oh no, look how hard I am.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to kill myself having just killed my children
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: in order to prevent my dastardly husband from ever having
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: custody to these children. Do you see the difference? It's
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: much like the disparity in male suicides and female suicides.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: When men kill themselves, they actually do it. And they
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: do it for a reason. And the mass media goes,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I see nothing. When women kill their children and then
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: miraculously fail to kill themselves, the mass media goes, Oh no,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: look at what victims' women are.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: Did Casey Anthony do the same as well?
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: There's been a bunch of cases over the last few
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: months of so-called Lindsay Clancy copycat killers. And we're sat here.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: They're not copycats, guys. You do not understand this situation.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: This is going on all the time. It has been
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: going on all the time for fucking decades.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: A hell of a lot of news stories of women
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: killing their children. And people like me notice these stories
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: because it horrifies us, right? I see that kind of story.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: And my first thought is what the child must have
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: suffered and how terrified that child must have been. My
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: next thought is, you know, how can a mother be
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: that horrible? Could I ever be that kind of horrible
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: kind of person? I wouldn't fail. to, to, to kill myself.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: If something like that, I wouldn't use a butter knife.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: If I woke from some sort of weird, uh, uh,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: psychotic break and discovered that I had become the worst
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: nightmare to somebody that I love deliberately and, and, uh, in,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: in the worst possible way, I like, that would be it.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I'd be done. I couldn't live with that. And, and
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: It would definitely not be a butter knife. Just like
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: if you could really become a werewolf or a zombie,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the minute that I was sure I was infected, that'd
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: be it. That wouldn't be a butter knife either. Because
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: my worst nightmare is to hurt someone that I care
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: about or that I don't intend to hurt. I didn't,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever actually wanted to hurt anybody
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: and I've only intended to hurt somebody a couple of
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: times in my life. And that was in self-defense. So
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I just, I can't, I can't get that, but it
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: is so frequent that there are times when I feel
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: bombarded by these stories. Every day, there's a new story
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: from somewhere. of a mother having killed her children. Every day,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the Western world, because this isn't like, oh,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: some mother in China, some mother in... No, this is
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: just English-speaking countries, countries that have some degree of democracy
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that are not communist-run, that are maybe part of the
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: European Union or part of the United States, Canada. Some
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: story comes into my feed. This woman killed her children.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's like the stuff that we've seen, the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: strangling that Lindsay Clancy did and the drowning that Susan
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Smith did and the stabbings. I've run across stories of parents,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: mothers beheading their children. I've run across stories of mothers
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: putting their children in the oven and turning it on.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Not just the recent one. I've run across stories of
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: mothers salt poisoning their children to death. That's an incredibly torturous,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: painful death. You shit yourself to death if you have
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: salt poisoning. So it is, while it's not common, it
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: is not rare either. They're not copycats.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: This is why I will never have any children of
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: my own. Because I know for a fact I would
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: hate them. Because, yeah, I am going to say it.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: I fucking hate children. I find them tedious. And if
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: I had to live for several years trying to raise them,
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: I would be like, I fucking hate you and I'm
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: going to kill you. I'm being comedic as I say this. But,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: you know, The counter argument is, well, it would be
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: different if they were your own children. Because, you know.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Never tell somebody that, though, because if somebody has that
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: kind of attitude, you don't know that that's going to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: change if they have their own kids.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, people say to me it would be different
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: if it was your own children because they would be
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: yours and they would remind you of yourself. And then
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: I have to remind you that I kind of hate myself.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: And the factors would combine. Yeah. Given how much I
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: hate myself and given how much I hate my children,
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: if there was such an entity in this world that
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: was a child that was me, my hatred for it
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: would multiply. It would be my hatred of myself multiplied
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: with my hatred of children. And so I.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: Something would happen. And, you know, again, I'm exaggerating this
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: for comedic effect, but this is why I will never
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: have children, because I would hate them because they're children,
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: and I would hate them even more because they remind
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: me of myself. They would be an eternal reminder of
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: how much I hate myself. And not that I would
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: kill them. I probably wouldn't. I would just sit there
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: being reminded every day for God knows how many years
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: of how much I hate children now and how much
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I hate myself. And I probably wouldn't kill them, but
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be able to raise them properly because I
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: would just fucking hate them.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: And....
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: And, you know, like I said, I wouldn't be able
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: to raise them properly. I would just sit here forever
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: resenting them for being something that reminds me of myself.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: And yes, you can sit here going, well, Mike, what
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: kind of fucked up person are you? And yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: I'm a kind of fucked up person. I hate myself
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: and I hate everything that reminds me of myself. And
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: that's why... I'm never going to have children. That's, that's
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: why certain people should never have children. Yeah. We're being
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: presented with all of these stories of women who have
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: just fucking killed their children. And I have to wonder
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: if that's why they killed them.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Because they maybe never should have had them in the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: first place.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And that's, you know, that's, it's, It's not a
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: viable excuse for killing your children, but it is a
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: viable excuse for not having children in the first place.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: And that's why I never intend to have children in
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: the first place, because I can't trust myself with a
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: tiny little human.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: A developing mind.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: That only reminds me of myself. And I'm like, I can't.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: there are some people who should never have children and
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: I think I'm one of them I know a lot
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: of you will say but Mike we love you you'll
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: be a great father thank you I appreciate your confidence
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: in me but I know me and I'm pretty sure
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: that if I had children I would fucking hate them
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: because I fucking hate myself and that's fine if you
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: fucking hate yourself then you shouldn't have children Right.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Well, and you should at least know ahead of time
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: whether or not you should have children. You should not
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: wait until after conception to decide something like that, right?
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: But a lot of women do, and then they decide
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: for the guy as well. So this is another reason
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: why this stupid agent exists.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: You just explained my entire childhood. I think my mom
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: hated me.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: Always hated me. Because she didn't want to have me.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: It does happen sometimes.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: A lot of us feel like that sometimes. It's not
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: necessarily the case.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if she did, she was a fool. You're pretty awesome.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: It explains to shout him.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Well, every parent does that. I mean, well, most.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Parents do that. It's good to have one parent who's
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: a bad cop and one parent who's a good cop.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: And it also depends on the kid. My brother sometimes
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: got shouted at. I got shouted at a lot But
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I was the kid that tried to touch a power line.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: My brother didn't do that kind of shit. So it
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: just kind of depends. Like if you're the curious kid
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: that has to touch everything and or, you know, you
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: play the same song over and over again on auto repeat.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: As soon as auto repeat gets invented on your CD player,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: your mom gets very upset.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So I got yelled at a lot, too.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: She heard the department so many times, she could memorize it.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: That's funny. My mom hated the background music to Pac-Man.
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: No, my mom hated the background sound effects to Pac-Man.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: She hated the background music to Mario Brothers, which was
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: much later. But It's a thing. Parents will yell. My parents.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: The thing I heard the most was. Why the heck
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: did you do that? So you know. What were you thinking?
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Is another one. But that was. That's how you put
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: yourself through the school of self-inflicted hard knocks. And you
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: learn quite a bit there. It's just you know. It's
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: mostly stuff you should have figured out in the first place.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: But.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Back to the article. It goes on to say that Mr.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: O'Neill is one of thousands of middle class parents, mainly fathers,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: but some of them mothers, locked in battle with the
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: CMS as a result of its miscalculations and enforcement action. Now,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: you want me to think about it. Let me just
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: digress from here for a minute. All right. Let's say.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I run a business providing lawn mowing services to people
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. And just for the sake of argument,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: let it be a business where the government decides that
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: your lawn is overgrown and I get to go mow
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: your lawn and I get to charge you and the
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: government's gonna enforce that bill. If I come along and say, well,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I had to mow your lawn twice this week when
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I only had to mow it once. That would be
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: fraud and I would go to jail. But when a
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: government agency does it, well, you actually owe twice as
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: much as you owe. We're going to take that money
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: without giving you an opportunity to argue in court. You
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: have to fight to get it back. Nobody gets in trouble.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: They don't get written up. They don't get laid off.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: They don't get suspended from their job with or without pay.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: They don't go to the, what's it called, when you
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: aren't allowed to work but you're not technically suspended. Something
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: to do with tenure with teachers. They have to go
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: to the punishment room where they're not allowed to teach
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: but the school can't fire them because they have tenure.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: They don't even know something like that. They continue, they
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: get to continue to go in and sit at their
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: stupid little desks and their stupid little cubicle hell and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: overcharge more people without being punished and without even being
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: accused of any kind of crime. So harrowing has the
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: experience been for them That it has prompted comparisons with
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. Again, they're mentioning this scandal,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: which does sound pretty bad now that Richard explained it.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: A deeply disturbing Daily Mail investigation has found that at
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: least one other father killed himself after being overcharged for
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: years by the agency. Some parents have had mental breakdowns.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: or had to abandon homes they can no longer afford
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: and move away from their children to live in cheaper areas.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Others have had to give up successful careers as a
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: result of the stress and have ended up surviving on
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: handouts from food banks. Many have been dragged into fighting
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Kafkaesque battles for justice that last years. Worst of all,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the upheaval and huge financial and emotional strain has often
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: harmed the very children the system was set up to protect,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: not least by separating them from their parent on occasions,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: as we shall see. Well, and of course, when the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: fathers have died, that separates the child from their father forever.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: The CMS, a branch of the Department for Work and Pensions,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: so it's like job and family services every place does
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: this it's uh something something to do with employment and
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: uh family something pensions is retirement um in the u.s
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: that would be social security so.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: Um in the uk the pensions are lumped in with
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: every other benefit in the uk whether it be job seekers,
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: universal credit, or PIP, the Social Security or pensions is
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: classed as a benefit, but not many people see.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: It that way.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that. In the US, it's got
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: a separate designation, Social Security, and every worker is supposed
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: to be paying into it. If you end up You're
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: supposed to be able to draw from it, but you
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: have to work 40 quarters before you can actually. So
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I think 10 years before you can actually get that.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: So if you become disabled right away at your first job,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you're kind of screwed. You have to sue your employer
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: because Social Security is not going to do jack shit
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: for you. But you can get it as a child
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: and keep it for your whole life.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what we've got in the UK as well.
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: So people as young as seven, if they have a disability,
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: they can claim disability. As long as you are disabled,
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: you can claim.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: It for a child. And it's very difficult.
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: To get because you have to get your doctor's notes
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: and you've got to get your file as well from
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: your GP because you've got to write down everything that's
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: wrong with you in order to get disability benefits for girls.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: And then they have to go before, well, when you
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: apply in the US, like 95% of people's first application
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: gets denied and about 75% of second applications get denied.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: And then you have to go have a hearing in
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: a court.
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, mine got denied three times because my GP had
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: to write a letter to the DWP about my PIP
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: and I got PIP'd on the third try.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: But if we do another episode... The benefit system in
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: the UK is a good episode to do.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like it. It seems like it's as
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: screwed up as the one in the US. Maybe worse.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: And the dumb thing about the social security system in
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: the US is the funding going in is never enough
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: to keep it solvent. And so it's always an emergency.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: There always has to be some sort of, we need
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: to raise how much we're taxing people for this. Or
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: we need to do this, we need to do that,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: we need to change the system somewhere or another because
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: it's going to run out of money in 10 years.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: They recently cut $ 12.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: 5 billion from the disability benefit program. And there's an MP,
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: she's on a crusade to get rid of everything.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: There are people on a crusade to get rid of
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: everything here too.
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: Mostly disability benefits because she doesn't think people who are
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: on disability deserve it. So she's going around every news program.
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: I will send you her Twitter link when the program's over.
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: She's spreading, I don't want to use the leftist language,
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: but she's spreading hate towards disabled people in England because
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: she's saying we get a lot of money, but we don't.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: And see, this is something that I've recognized here too.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of room to talk about, you know, it
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: needs to be strict, it needs to be carefully monitored,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: and it needs to be free from any kind of exploitability.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, if we're going to have
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: a system like that, It needs to not be impossible
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: for people who actually need it to have it. And
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: there's room for a conversation about trying to privatize all
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: this and take it out of the government's hands. If
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: we know that we're going to allow for private companies
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: to do it better instead of regulating them into a
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: situation where they... do a shit job because they can't
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: they can't make money without doing a shit job.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: Also fraud in the UK on benefits is 0.01% so
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: like fraud is very low yeah it's just the papers
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: that they highlight the fraud more to think it's like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: on a massive scale when it's not so.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: That happens here too and the conservatives do it um
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: The real problem, the real struggle economically in the U.S.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: in terms of who is draining the government is we
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: pay for women's stupid choices. We pay women to make
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: stupid choices. There is no better way to say that.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: We pay women to separate their children from their fathers
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: or to have children out of wedlock and raise them
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: without a father in the home. And because we do that,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: we spend a ton of money on benefits that we
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: would not need to spend a ton of money on
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: if we didn't make it easy for people to make
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: those stupid choices. We pay women to take non-productive college majors.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: We spend a shit ton of money trying to get
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: women to do jobs that they're not interested in doing.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: And we spend a shit ton of money trying to
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: get women to go into areas of study that they're
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: not interested in studying. We probably could directly pay women
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: to do those jobs instead of the employer paying the woman.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: And we still wouldn't increase the number of women doing
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: those jobs or going into those areas of study. And millions,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: perhaps billions of dollars are going down the drain for
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: shit like that. That is one of the most expensive
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: elements of our federal government. Paying women to make stupid
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: choices and spending money trying to persuade women to make
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: choices that women are never going to make. But going on.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Go ahead, Richard.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: And also the attacks on disabled people have gone up
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: by a lot. because my friends keep getting attacked because
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: they're disabled as well because the public think they want benefits.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: These are physical attacks on people in public, right?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: We get attacked a lot because people assume they're responding
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: from the government and stuff like that. Attacks have gone
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: up because of the recent.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: Push for.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: For the recent cuts on benefits and the talk on
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: benefits on chat shows and radio shows, it's been persistent
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: for the past four or five months now because it's
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: like every day people get bombarded with it.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: So basically, pitting people against each other like that leads
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: to violence.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because it happened during the first financial crash back
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: in 2008.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Then it happened again in 2013. Yeah.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: And it's happening now.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: Because they won't call this one a recession yet.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: And it'll happen over and over again as long as
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: that works in politics. And going on, some of the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: people that are probably the most frustrated with this are
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: the ones that are being otherwise ripped off by the government.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: Pretty much.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: So more than 800... More than 800 I was going
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: to say, let's go ahead and go back to the article.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: More than 800,000 UK parents currently have their payments to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: a former manager or a former partner managed by the agency,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: amounting to a total of 1.6 billion a year. Now,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: this I'm assuming is like in the US, some states,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Ohio is one of them, do not allow dad to
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: pay mom directly. You cannot pay child support to your partner.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: You pay your child support to the Child Support Enforcement
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Agency through wage garnishment. They take your money out of
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: your check before you ever see it.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: It's not child support, it's wife support.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: Because my mom's friend, he tried to pay the ex-wife directly,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: like £ 800 a month, and they said no, so they
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: took it directly out of his account.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Yep, they'll tell you it doesn't count. She doesn't have
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: to give that money back, but it counts as a gift.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: You still have to pay the support because it doesn't count.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: And that's what they did to my husband too. They
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: went back a whole year's worth of payments and uncounted
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: them and then said, well, you're in arrears. You need
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: to pay this off or we're going to put you
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: in jail. So that was fun. But the service is
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: meant to ensure children are properly provided for when relationships
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: and the youngsters spend more time living with one partner,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: which I think is most of the time. Most parents
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: are asked to hand over between 12% and 19% of
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: their income, depending on how many children they have. The
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: sum is calculated primarily using HMRC records. And must be
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: paid until their child turns 20 or finishes their A-levels,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: which I think is high school.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: A-levels is like sixth form.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: It's what?
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: 16, 17, 18. Yeah, okay.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. I just realized we have some super chats.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to show them. The first one is, It
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: has absolutely nothing to do with the show. The heck?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: This is the first I don't understand. Why are we
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: looking at Rupert?
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: YouTube has a new GIF feature in the comments. So
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: you can post GIFs now.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Why are we looking at Rupert?
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: Why not?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: I suppose Rupert is handsome. and stuff, I guess.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: I choose the bear.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, he looks a little embarrassed. Meredith G. gave
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: us $ 5 and said, HBR Talk 419, the one-sided child
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: support system is uneven because it doesn't hold a woman
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: accountable for her children the same way it holds men accountable.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: But an observation... is that women will often say that
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: men go for 50-50 custody so they can get out
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: of child support. A wise lawyer will say that their
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: client wants 50-50 because they don't want to be the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: weekend parent or the fun parent, but actually engage in
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the hard parts of parenting. I think a lot of
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: dads want 50-50 because they know that if they want
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: their children to be be successful adults who can make
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: themselves happy and have a family or a career or both,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: whatever they want to do, they know that the best
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: chance is if they learn from their father how to
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: be accountable, how to be diligent, how to study, how
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: to work, and so on, because they're not going to
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: learn all of that just from their mother. I think
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: most dads want 50-50 shared parenting because they love their children,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: And they want to spend more time with them. And
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: they miss them when they're gone. And they worry about
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: them when they can't be right there to make sure
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: their kids are okay.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: In my experience, being the good parent, as I said,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: is like being the good cop. And that's like patronizing
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: the children. And this is one of the many reasons
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: why I know I could never be a good parent
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: because I can't, I hate being patronized.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: And as such, I hate being patronizing and it's very
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: difficult to raise children without being patronizing. Cause you have
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: to do that, that voice, that patronizing voice, that, that
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: babying voice. Like I can't, I can't even do it. Yeah.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: You have to talk to children. Like they're idiots. Because
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: they kind of are. are.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't do that voice with my kids. I really didn't.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: My parenting style was very matter of fact, except when
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: my son was an infant, I suppose. I did a
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: little bit of that voice with him. but not very
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: much because it didn't feel natural. I don't know how
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: to explain it. It's just this. I'm talking to a person.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: If I talk to a person like that, then I'm
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: belittling this person. And, you know, he's already small enough. So,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you know, this is something you can't talk to your
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: kids like that.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: This is something I've encountered with my nephews. The eldest
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: is six at this point. The twins are, and I
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: you kind of have to be patronising with kids at
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: least that's what we're told but whenever I interact with
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: my nephews I don't have that babying voice like again
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: I can't do it I can't do it either but
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: so whenever I interact with them I talk to them
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: like they're adults. Obviously, I don't swear or say anything,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: you know. Inappropriate. Inappropriate. But they seem to like me.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: That's because you don't talk to them like that.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: I'm the only person in their lives who doesn't patronize
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: them and talk to them like they're idiots. And I
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: think children, even of the youngest age, sort of can
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: tell when they're being patronized and they're, they're, they're sort
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: of drawn towards people who don't do that. And I'm
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: the only person in their lives who doesn't talk to
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: them like they're fucking idiots. Like when I interact with
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: my nephews, I'm like, yeah, how are you doing? Oh,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: you're doing, you're doing that thing. Are you? Yeah. What
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: are you going to do next? Okay, cool.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: I'll slide that with my nieces as well.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah and and yeah i i it's it's the same
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: way with pets but to a less degree well i.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Will tell you this right the what you're describing the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: patronizing thing is as a feminine behavior and i my
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: dad never talked to me like that when i was
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: growing up my husband never ever even as when my
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: son was an infant never talked to to him in
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: the you know gucci goo voice none of that none
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: of it um And I hated that kind of like
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: sing song kindergarten teacher, you know, I hated that when
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, it, it, people who talk to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: me like that, I would automatically not respect them when
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: I was a kid. And then when I got sick,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: like there's a thing that adults do when a child
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: is in really serious danger and they don't want the
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: kid to know that, that they're in danger. That alerts you,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: if you have any intelligence at all, that alerts you
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: immediately that you are in very serious danger. They have
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: this high-pitched, saccharine sweet, everything's going to be okay, Glinda
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: the Good Witch voice that they start talking in. And
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: it makes it sound like something really exciting is about
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: to happen. But actually, no, you're dying right now. You
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: are dying and they are terrified. And you know... Because
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: they fucking sound like Glinda the Good Witch. And that's
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the only time that those kind of grown-ups sound like
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Glinda the Good Witch. And that's what they did when
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: I had encephalitis. I hated it. Oh, my God. And
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: it's worse when you have a headache. And encephalitis causes
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: a terrible headache. But men, and this is why children
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: need their fathers. Men don't do that. They will be
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: very matter-of-fact. They might not stab you in the heart
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: with what's going on in your life, but they don't
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: sugarcoat it so much that it scares the fuck out
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: of you because you know something is wrong because that's
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: not how they usually talk. And they don't sugarcoat it
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: enough that you don't know what you need to do.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: And both of those types of sugarcoating that women do
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: are really dangerous I wasn't scared until I heard that
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: stupid Glinda the Good Witch voice. I'm like, what's going on?
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Am I going to die now? And I might have.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't, fortunately for me. But it was, you know,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: the other, there were 11 cases with what I had
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: that year in my county. And it was one elderly
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: person who died and the other child who got it
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: also died. I was the only child who got it
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: that lived. And if I had gotten panicky because of
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: that Glinda the Good Witch voice and not followed instructions,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: things might have been different. But I didn't get panicky
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: and I did follow instructions because through numerous asthma attacks
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: when I was growing up and I couldn't breathe, my
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: father coached me through being stoic about being in a
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: terrifying situation like that and thinking about what needs done
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: and following instructions when medical personnel are trying to save
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: your life. And he never sugarcoated it. One day when
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: I was throwing a tantrum about my not being able
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: to breathe, he looked me right in the face and said,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: do you want to die? And I'm looking at him going, no.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: And he goes, then shut up and breathe. And I did.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I shut up and I let the doctor do what
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: the doctor needed to do. I took the medicine that
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: I needed to take and I got better. It takes
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: a father to do that most of the time. Mothers
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: are almost never that stern. Mothers are almost never that
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: matter of fact. Mothers are almost never that stoic. And unfortunately,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: we are paying women to make stupid choices and separate
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: men from their children and create and fund and maintain
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: and bolster this stupid system that robs them blind and
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: kills them.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: Makes you wonder if you could perform an experiment. children
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: that are only raised by women and children that are
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: only raised by men. What would happen? We couldn't perform
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: this experiment.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Well, actually, we have some research on children that are
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: only raised by women. I will find it. I know
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: I have it in my bookmark somewhere. And when we
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: finish this article, we'll read it. There's very few experiments.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: Of children who are only raised by men. Because that
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: would be misogyny.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not as much information out there anyway.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: Somebody was raised by women not very well.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: Well, among other things, children who are raised by their
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: mothers have a whole set of outcomes that are adverse.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: And they're more likely to become unwed parents If they're
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: raised without their father in the home, they're more likely
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: to get into trouble with the law. They're more likely
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: to end up dependent on government aid. I will find
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: the because there's we have some from the Father Involvement
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: Research Alliance. We have some research that does give you
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: very solid idea of just how important a father is
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: in a child's life. I believe we may have looked
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: at it on the show years ago, but we can
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: look at it again with a fresh pair of eyes.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: I think it's important enough that we should. So, but
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: in any case, um, let's see. Uh, An online calculator
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: on the CMS websites allows parents to see how much
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: they should be paying based on their income and any
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: other relevant factors. But under the draconian system, if parents
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: refuse to pay what they claim are inflated demands, the
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: CMS has the power to seize cash from their bank
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: accounts automatically or deduct salary directly from their pay packets
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: even while they are appealing against the decisions. It can
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: also freeze bank accounts, which has resulted in some parents
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: being barred from withdrawing savings, leaving them unable to cover
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: unexpected emergency expenses for their families. By 2022, 10 years
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: on from the launch of the CMS, there were 24,466
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: cases in which parents had been overcharged a total of £ 4. 3
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: million by the agency, according to a review of its
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: finances by the National Audit Office obtained by the mail
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: following a Freedom of Information request. For its part, DWP
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: said it had attempted to contact all over payers and
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: that by February 2024, it had returned $ 2. 7 million. So
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: let's see, that's $ 2. 7 million out of $ 4. 3 million, so
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: a little more than half. So there's at least that.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: The mail has spoken to 85 parents locked in a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: desperate fight for justice with the agency to find out
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: what is going wrong and why. So we have Simon Ward.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: I want you to notice something. This man, before you
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: even look at his face, because I'm scrolling up here,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: the first thing we see is these medals. This is
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: clearly not some guy who never had a job, a slob,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: a guy that doesn't care about his family or anyone else.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: This is somebody who is dependable, professional. Those are military medals, right?
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: Those look like military medals.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: So, Simon Ward was paying £ 424 a month. He should
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: have been paying £ 36. pounds 40 cent uh 40 whatever
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: the change is called what is the change called guys
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: pence pence okay so 36 pounds 40 pence a month
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: so he was paying more than 10 times what he
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be paying they they multiplied his his
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: payment times 10 his his debt times 10 They include
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: former Royal Engineers Warrant Officer. So what is the Royal Engineers?
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: Mike.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: What?
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: What is the Royal Engineers?
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: I don't fucking know.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. I'm wondering if it's a military thing or something else.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: It's probably like the military version of an engineer.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: So you just work in the engineer room. I guess.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: We'll find out here. The Royal Engineers, the Corps of
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: Royal Engineers, commonly known as the Royal Engineers or SAPERS,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: is the military engineering arm of the British Army. So
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: it's like the Army Corps of Engineers. And now I know.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: And what is a warrant? Officer. Because that's another one.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: English is a different language than what Americans speak. We
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: speak American. We don't speak English. A warrant officer is
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: the highest ranking non-commissioned rank. Okay. Deriving from authority from
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: a royal warrant rather than a commission.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: Hence the medals. Yep.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: All right. So now we know.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: It is the British, uh, the army Corps of engineers, um,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: actually came to my hometown when I was a kid.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: I will not tell that story right now. Cause it'll
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: go on fucking forever. But the, let me just tell
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: you that the people of the community chose not to
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: listen to them. And it took about 20 years before
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: it happened, but they suffered because of it. They should
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: have listened. Um, So former Royal Engineers Warrant Officer Simon Ward,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: who after being medically discharged from the Army in May 2024,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: which normally if you've got medals, that happens because you
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: were injured in service, was living on his 15,800 pound
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: a year military pension. Despite him informing the CMS of
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: his new reduced income, it still calculated the maintenance payments
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: he owed for his three children using his former £ 52, 000
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: army salary. That's a lot. And that's like the top
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: salary in the UK that you could earn.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: That's a lot of difference there between £ 15, 800 versus £ 52, 000.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: It meant that instead of paying £ 36.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: 40 a month, he was....
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: Charged 419 pounds, which was taken directly from his pension.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Mr. Ward, 45, from Longtown in Herefordshire. Herefordshire?
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Hartfordshire.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: Hartford? It's spelled H-E-R-E?
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: Hartfordshire.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: Hartfordshire.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: I don't even know how I can do that. Hartfordshire.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: There you go. That's like worse than Worcestershire sauce. said
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: he knew the figures didn't match up, but it was
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: almost impossible to get hold of someone at the CMS
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: who could explain his payments. I was stressed and panicked.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: I didn't know how I was going to put a
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: roof over my head, he recalled. With the help of
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: his MP, he managed to get it reduced to the
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: correct amount in May last year. And he probably had
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: to work very hard just to get that help. A
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: lot of people probably can't get that help at all.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: Probably the only reason he could was because of his service.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: So with the English MPs, they have what we call surgeries,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: where you can see them every so often. And you
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 4: get to go there and you can ask for help
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 4: directly when they have the surgeries. Or you could wait
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 4: and let the MP say that you need help.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: And they call it surgery?
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: It happens a lot.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: I would think of surgery as being cut open and
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: having something removed.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: You can Google it.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I will, but that's an interesting name for it. See,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: like I said, in the U.S., we do not speak English.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: We speak American.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: So he got it reduced to the correct amount in
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: May last year, but five days later, the CMS increased
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: his payments first to 92 pounds, then 218 pounds, and
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: finally to 312 pounds per week, apparently because they were
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: still calculating them based on his previous income. When he
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: called the CMS to complain after endlessly being put on hold,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: he was finally told, you should be supporting your children.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: So in other words.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: Being injured, having some sort of disability, being medically discharged,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: no longer being able to earn that money does not
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: change your responsibility if you're a man. And this is
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: the same thing that happens to men in the US.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: A man can get injured on the job, retire disabled,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: collect disability, have his income drop by that amount, like
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: to a quarter of what it had been before. And
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: the Child Support Enforcement Agency will suggest that since he
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: has made that much money in the past, he is
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: responsible for always making that much money as long as
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: his kids are young, regardless of his condition. And there
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: have been, in forums where I've talked to men who
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: have been in this situation, there have been men who
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: have posted about, like, they take the maximum they can
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: take from the Social Security check or the... disability payment
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: that they're getting from the employer if you had disability
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: insurance and uh then they threatened if you don't pay
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: the rest out of pocket we'll put you in jail
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: like basically well we can't take more than that out
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: of your check but if you don't catch up we'll
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: put you in jail further there was one guy several
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: years ago on reddit that posted about his father's situation
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: His father was living with him. He had become an adult.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: He had moved his father in with him, his disabled
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: father in with him, so that his father could receive
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: care from him. He was taking care of his father.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: And they were still taking child support out of his
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: father's disability income and keeping it. because his mother had
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: been on welfare when he was a kid. So he
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: was now essentially supporting his father financially because his father
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: didn't have any income. And he went to the child
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: support enforcement agency and said, this is the situation I'm in.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I'm the child. And I am now essentially paying my
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: own child support to you because I'm supporting the man
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: that you're taking that money from they wouldn't fix it
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: so these agencies they don't care about the people that
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: they are providing service to They don't care about the
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: people that they are taking money from. They care that
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: the people within the agency have the bureaucratic mind virus,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: which I went over ages ago. I should probably revisit
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: that as well. Your problem is not allowed to be
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: different from what their training manuals tell them is supposed
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: to be the norm. If it is, they will bend, fold, spindle,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: and mutilate you. to make you fit the hole that
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to fit into so that they can solve
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: your problem. And that's what they do. You have to
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: comply with the standard practice and the standard problem. You
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: are not allowed to have something that's not a standard problem.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: You must have the standard problems. And if you don't,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: we'll punish you for it. I thought, what's going on here?
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: They are meant to be the professionals, he said. He
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: has been forced to use food banks and rely on
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: relatives to support him. I want to stay here near
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: my children, but I might need to leave to move
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: back in with my family members. I am getting financially
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: and emotionally crippled, he added. I am a proud veteran.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: I want to pay for my children, but it needs
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: to be balanced and fair. His case raises a major
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: issue many parents blame for the problem, the high turnover
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: rate of CMS staff, for which means cases get moved
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: around between officials, which means cases get moved around between officials.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: So essentially, you know, you got Jane working on your
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: case until you complain and Jane goes on vacation or
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: she gets suspended or she takes, you know, leave. Or
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: she quits. Or she gets fired. And now you have
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: Pam working on your case. And Pam starts over from
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: the beginning. Jane doesn't give her any information. None of
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: your past paperwork. None of your history. You start back
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: at square one.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: Immediately. That's what happened to me with social workers over
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: the years. Yep.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: And they don't know anything about you when the new
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: one walks in. Nobody... It's not like when you take
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: your medical files to your new doctor, and they'll go
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: over your medical files. Oh, I see here that when
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: you were 17, you had a surgery. Yes, yes, I
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: had a surgery when I was 17. And then you
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: go on, you discuss a little bit about it. Nope,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: you just start over from square one. All of your history,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: all of the groundwork that's been laid, all of the
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: progress you've made, everything that you've done, it's all gone. Disappeared.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: Flushed down the toilet. Now you have a newbie. Start
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: over again. Every single time. Every couple of months.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: Well, every three weeks. That's how hard the turnover is.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: It's insane. It's absolutely insane. Between January 2025 and March
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: of this year alone, 12% of CMS staff, 500 out
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: of its 4,200 workers, quit Freedom of Information Request shows.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: The CMS said its staff turnover was at an unexpected
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: level for a service of its size. Another problem, which
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: again draws parallels with the post-Office Horizon scandal, is is
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: suspected glitches with the agency's computer system, which is designed
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: to automatically calculate and issue payment demands. Well, that's a problem.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: Friend computer is never wrong, right? But you have to
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: have an indigo level clearance to find out.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 4: It was a faulty computer system that they brought over
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 4: from Japan. That's why the Post Office Horizon scandal happened.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: It was like a faulty program.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: Whoops. Yeah, I've got my fair share of problems with that.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: The software that I have to use to clock in
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: and document my work and my observations at my job...
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: Has all kinds of stupid glitches. It just sometimes just
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: erases everything I did. For no reason. After I save.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: Very strange. And like I don't know. If a government
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: employee designed it. Or what.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: It was probably like an outside agency.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think a lot of times. The government
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: does that. It cuts corners. And instead of having somebody
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: who actually knows how to do this. Create. program for them.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: They have some employee learn enough about some sort of
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: programming language to create what they want and do the
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: job instead. And it always comes out glitchy. Minutes from
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: a CMS director's meeting in 2018 show them discussing IT
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: issues and noting that their portal has a reputation of
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: not working. Reputation. The agency has since stopped recording minutes
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: at these meetings. That's always the solution. I missed that before.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: So in the Red Pill movie, there was a story.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: I can't remember which of the guys was the dad. Gosh,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: dang it. One of the dads. That's terrible. I can't
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: remember which of the guys was the dad. I haven't
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: watched that movie in a couple of years, a few years,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: probably since 2019. I think it's free on YouTube. Yeah,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: it's probably free on YouTube. I have to go back
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: and rewatch that now because I should remember which dad
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: told this story. His ex-wife was spoiling their kid with
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: junk food instead of giving him nutritious food. And then
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: he was trying to encourage the kid to eat healthy
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: because the kid had put on what a lot of
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: moms will refer to as baby fat. You lose your
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: baby fat by the time you're five at the latest.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: You do not have baby fat when you're 12. It
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: is not baby fat at that point. It is mom
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: doesn't feed me right fat or I'm not active enough fat.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: And little kids from between five and 12, You know,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: they should be getting a child-sized portion of calories that
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: is packed with nutrition. And they should be getting playtime
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: that involves moving around and using their muscles so they
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: get stronger. And so they build stronger bones. So this
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: dad was, you know, giving his kid encouragement, giving him
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: dietary advice, and weighing him. to, to chart his progress
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: and he would make progress while he was with dad
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: and then go home to mom and lose it, lose
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: all the progress. So dad talked to the judge about
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: this in, in one of the, uh, custody hearings that this,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: this child is having actual health problems. He is overweight.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: He is in need of, um, better parenting with regard
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: to diet and exercise, he is willing to participate in
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: trying to lose weight because he wants to feel better
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: and look better. And the judge's conclusion after seeing the
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: father's careful documentation of the progress gains and progress losses
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: when he was with dad or when he was with
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: mom was to tell the father, you are not allowed
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: to weigh the child anymore. Not that this is healthy
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: or anything to the mother's side of the story. Just
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: you're not allowed to gather information on your child's health.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: The health concern that you are concerned about. That's basically this.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: We don't record minutes at these meetings anymore. Mary Picasse said,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: who created the survey method that came up with the
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: one in five statistic for how many women are raped
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: by the time they graduate college. Her survey method included
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: a set of questions to determine what the respondents thought
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: of their experiences. So there was the set of questions
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: where they asked the respondents things like, did you ever
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: have sex when you didn't want to because a man
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: gave you alcohol? Which is pretty open-ended and a little
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: bit vague. Did you ever have sex when you didn't
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: want to could mean when you hadn't planned to, or
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: it could mean against your will. But if a woman
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: just took it, well, you hadn't originally planned to, but
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: then a man gave you alcohol and you really liked him,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: so you decided to have sex after all. And they
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: might answer yes to that question, but they wouldn't think
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: they were raped because it was consensual. Versus a man
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: gets you drunk by giving you alcohol that's stronger than
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: he told you it was and you don't know any different,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: which is very hard to do. A lot of gals
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: will say that it happened to them, but from somebody
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: who was never a heavy drinker, if you're not a
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: heavy drinker and you're the kind of person that strong
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: alcohol would actually put into that situation, you can taste
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: the difference because it burns. It's not something where somebody
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: can give you a drink and say, this doesn't have
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: hardly any alcohol in it at all, and you won't know.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: because it burns. It burns all your mucous membranes, including
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: all the way down your throat and into your gut.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: But she asked if they thought they'd been raped. 73%
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: of her respondents disagreed with her assessment of their experiences.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: So only one in four of the women said, that
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: Mary P. Koss said had been raped had actually considered
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: themselves to be rape victims. So she stopped asking about
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: their own assessment of their experiences. You see how that works?
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: We don't get that statistic. We don't find out that
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: we were wrong if we don't keep records, if we
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: don't ask questions, if we don't check ourselves. So the
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: agency has since stopped checking itself at these meetings, so
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: it is impossible to discover if the concerns have persisted.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: But individual cases seen by the male strongly suggest they do.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: Parents described receiving multiple letters in a week from the CMS,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: all demanding different amounts. It's like they've turned into Ron Popeil.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: Now how much would you pay? One father even received
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: six letters in a single day, all saying he owed
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: different sums. A mother described how the agency seemingly plucked
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: figures out of the air. So we will start next
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: week with, I think that's Belzuan Zika. This is Belzuan Zika.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't try to pronounce that. Yeah. It's difficult.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: He is wearing a reflective safety vest. I will bet
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: you he works in construction or something similar to that.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't read this far into the article. I got
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: down to this bit about the different amounts. And I thought, yep,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely, we're going to look at this. So there's
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: like half the article still to go. And it is 8.42,
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: and so I'm going to stop at this point.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: We did well.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it says here cleaning business. So not construction, but
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: close enough. Like, he does a dirty job. Yep, we
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: got about halfway through, it looks like. So we'll read
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: about Belzuan Zeka next week. And we'll talk a little
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: bit more about this. But in the meantime, I want
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you to think about something because this is clear across
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: the ocean from us, you know, in the U.S. Same
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: problems in the system, except in the U.K. it's being
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: blamed on a computer. Whereas in the U.S. these problems
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: have existed for as long as the system has existed.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: And it's not computers doing it. It's the caseworkers themselves.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: They don't care. And so they don't. They do the
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: same thing. Now, they might not be churning out lots
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: of letters with different amounts, but they do things like, well,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: you owe $ 6, 000. And then if you pay $ 6, 000, they
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: send you another letter saying, you still owe $ 500 of
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: the $ 6, 500 that we billed you for last month. And
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: even if you can prove, no, you only billed me
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: for $ 6, 000. Oh, well, that was an error. You still
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: owe the $ 500. And now you're late? So there's going
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: to have to be a hearing. And that's been going
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: on in the Child Support Enforcement Agency in the U.S.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: for a long time. I have my doubts about it
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: being a computer in the U.K. It's possible. But if
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: it was and they wanted to fix it, they would
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: have fixed it. And they have not done so. So
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: there you go. Anybody got anything to add to that?
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: They don't care about us.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: True.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: Very true.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: There's some kind of Michael Jackson song I'm alluding to
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: And I don't think I can do that without being
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 3: unapologetically hateful in some way. But yeah, they don't care
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 3: about us. You see what I'm saying?
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, Allison.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: No, I understand. You can't agree with everything that somebody
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: says and that somebody thinks. I understand where some of
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: the history isn't the way that people have said and
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: so on. I'll end up making the show an hour
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: long if I start discussing this but I will defend
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: Michael Jackson in this way um yeah I know he
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: may have not been 100% right about everything but the
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: man had his heart in the right place.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 4: Some say he might have had autism.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: He might have he might have um Well, for that matter,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: he might have, as tall and skinny as he was,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: he might have had the same connective tissue disorder that
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: runs in my family. There's all kinds of things that
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: can go wrong with the body and stuff, but it's
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: hard to tell. You know, like, this is a guy
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: who did not have a normal childhood. So, yeah, we
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: have no idea how much of who he was as
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: an adult came from that. In any case... What I
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: will say is you're right. The agency doesn't care. They
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: do not care. They are bureaucrats. They don't give a
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: flying fuck as long as they meet their quota in paperwork.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: And if they have to take a few shortcuts and
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: lie a little bit, they'll do it. Thanks, everybody, for listening.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks to my two co-hosts for going through this dismal
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: material with us. I'm... horribly sorry for everybody that, that
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: is mentioned in this article and everyone in the UK
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: that's going through similar things. If you, uh, are a
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: man in the UK or, uh, you know, a mom
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: that's going through it. I know that there's a few,
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: I know it's mostly men. Um, you know, leave a comment,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: talk about it. If you, if you can, you know,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: without getting arrested, Let us know. Or other... If you're in...
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: Where's the misogyny law again? Nottingham, right? It's Nottingham. If
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: you're in Nottingham, don't mention women.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: Don't pronounce the ham. Don't pronounce the ham in Nottingham.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: It's like you're trying to clear your throat, right? Yeah,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: there you go. Eventually, I will learn to speak English.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: I will make my mother proud. But yeah, definitely, you know,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: if you are in that kind of situation and you
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: can talk about it, you know, leave a comment. Let
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: other people know about it. The more that this is
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: crowed about, the more that this gets shoved down people's throats,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: the harder it is for them to not fix the problem.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: And last but not least, thank you, Brian, for all
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: the work you do in the background to make this possible.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: happen good night all good night