75ZT Community

This morning I was chairing the fines enforcement court.

There was the usual assortment of people, mostly with their heads planted firmly in the sand, but one case seemed even more sad than usual.

The individual is a 25 year old woman. A single parent (very much by her own choice) of eight children.

Her debts to the Court amount to roughly £3600, accrued over the last six years and she hasn't paid a bean.

She has previously been in Court for non-payment, so much so that she already had a suspended prison sentence when she attended this morning.

It isn't good to be sending anybody to prison, much less a mother of young children and we genuinely do all we can to avoid that disposal.

In the hope of arriving at, and maintaining, a reasonable regular payment scheme, we delved very deeply into her finances. I don't intend to go into that detail here. Suffice to say that her annual income outstrips my own.

We asked her to explain some of the less obvious outgoings she presented and it soon became clear that she was intransigent.

At one point she truculently asked us how was she supposed to find money for fines payment. She said "For gods sake, I cant make ends meet on the pittance I get now, without you lot adding to the grief. For example, I've got to find the thick end of £1000 pounds before November for the kiddies fireworks."

I suggested that she might like to consider taking them to one of the many well organized, and free displays around the city each year.

"Why should my kiddies be shamed by being made to mix with the sad bastards who can't be arsed to spend a few quid for their own fireworks?"

Now, my own personal view here is that priorities are somewhat cockeyed.

She is a long way from being unique in this, horrifyingly. It annoys me that these people are bleating that they are living in poverty. Not wanting to sound like the Monty Python four Yorkshire men but young people have no idea how we used to live in the 40s and 50s. I won't elaborate, it makes me so cross.

So she has 8 children at 25, plenty of time to 'knock out' quite a few more and the more she has the more the taxpayer gives her.

What values is she imprinting on her children? Is it bash the kids out and money will come your way? Sorry Paul, but would imprisonment benefit her and the taxpayer - a lull in more kiddies, and the children placed in to homes with good principles so that they become good citizens and not breeding machines.