At the risk of...

..being controversial, I have to question the way that business (and society) has been manoeuvred to adopt various practises that fly in the face of nature in order to pacify vociferous pressure groups and politicians who famously have almost no experience of running a business outside the media/political bubble that keeps them safely away from any trace of common sense.

The politically correct controllers of the various nanny states (rarely elected) have a wide range of impositions that all cost businesses money to implement, but one of the most perverse examples of the law of unintended consequences surrounds parenthood.

Of course employers are less likely to want to employ women of child bearing age in the wake of the flood of legislation and political social engineering that means guaranteed disruption and cost. So the answer is apparently to hand the same disruptive "rights" to fathers. Then these naive nanny-folk wonder why "proper" jobs (outside the shelter of public employment) are scarce in an economy awash with zero hour contracts, "minimum wage" half jobs, and endless internships.

Let's not forget that countless jobs in these nanny societies have been exported to lands where none of these complications and constraints apply. Also let's not dare get anywhere near the inconvenient conclusions of studies of the behaviour of latch key kids, and the overreactions of the guilt tripped absent parents.

What was so wrong with enabling (and expecting) one parent to remain mostly at home, minding the kids? What's more, it's not as if this planet needs any more inhabitants. The one guaranteed factor affecting all the downside issues facing the environment is overpopulation - especially in the over-consuming societies. When asked to suggest the one thing that would best reduce their environmental footprint for posting on a "thought wall" at an exhibition, the wag who wrote "eat the person standing next to you"was easily the most accurate.

The justification most often heard these days for "population enhancement" is that we need more kids to pay for the growing legions of the elderly! Maybe that's why the Daily Mail has an insatiable fascination for medical "advances" that assist the process as artificially as possible, and keep fertility going until after retirement?

Have we all lost the plot?