Polygamous marriages are illegal in Britain, no doubt regrettably for some.
For one thing, having, to take an arbitrary number, four wives may diminish the urge to break the adultery commandment. Surely observing the Decalogue is important, isn’t it?
Then four wives can wait on a man hand and foot without each expending too much effort, and hence peevishly whingeing all the time about wasting her best years by becoming a skivvy and household drudge.
The emotional benefits of having four women sacramentally committed to the man they love shouldn’t be dismissed either – the more love the better; there isn’t enough of it in this cold-hearted world.
Of course every silver lining has a cloud. In this instance, one has to consider the hardship of fighting off four mothers-in-law – handling even one often proves an insurmountable task by itself, without being outnumbered.
Also, when a man has four wives, they tend to lead a cossetted life, usually under lock and key or at least close guard. This means they won’t be able to get a job, unless of course they can work out of home, by, for example, running a telephone sex service.
Therefore it may fall upon the man to support them all, which not many of us can afford, especially if the wives insist on keeping up with the latest fashions.
But not to worry: this is where the new universal credit system comes in. Our bright legislators have devised a stratagem to make polygamy pay in the crudest financial sense.
Polygamous marriages may be illegal, but there’s a Catch 22 there or, more appropriately, Catch 4, which is the number of wives a man is allowed to abuse under Sharia law.
Such marriages are recognised in Britain if they took place in a country where they are legal, meaning, without beating around the bush, a Muslim country.
When such a gaggle of a family blesses these shores with its arrival, the man and his main wife can get an average allowance of about £499 a month, plus £170 or so for each additional wife.
However, the new code won’t recognise polygamous marriages at all, which on the surface of it has to be seen as a step in the right direction. But the deep truth pursued by our legislators often lies beneath the surface.
Delving deeper, one realises that now the three extra wives will be able to claim single-person benefits, amounting to £317.83 each. Hence a proud husband of four wives will be over £600 a month better off.
This is yet another example of how expertly our governing spivs can wield money, the principal weapon of mass destruction at their disposal. For any system of taxes and benefits can be adjusted to produce any desired social effect.
Since incontrovertible evidence before our eyes shows that the effect our spivs desire to produce is to rip the traditional social fabric to tatters, the new legislation will serve this end nicely.
This upsets even such a lifelong champion of multi-culti diversity as me. For somewhere in the back of my mind resides a fading memory of Britain being a civilised, which is to say Western, country ruled by law – not by the subversive impulses of moral and intellectual pygmies like Dave, Tony, Jeremy et al.
In such a country it’s incumbent on the government to discourage behaviour traditionally deemed objectionable, promote behaviour considered acceptable and punish behaviour classed as criminal.
English Common Law and the government guided by it are the best tools mankind has so far developed to achieve such ends. Yet the new legislation and the attendant legal lassitude deliver a reverberating slap in the face of our tradition.
Diktats of the same multi-culti diversity that, between you and me, I’m not really a lifelong champion of, prevent our government from explaining the facts of life to our Muslim friends living here – and making sure the explanation sinks home.
These facts ought to be plain to any averagely bright child, and would have been a couple of generations ago:
Everybody is free to espouse any religion or none, provided he doesn’t thereby violate the law of the land. In this green and pleasant land, the law has Judaeo-Christian antecedents. Hence it makes polygamy a crime.
Crimes must be prevented or, failing that, punished in any country ruled by law, it’s as simple as that. It’s not enough to issue wishy-washy declarations about not recognising polygamous marriages, especially while surreptitiously making such unions pay. Polygamous men must be brought to account.
Crimes must be investigated, and it wouldn’t be unduly hard to establish that a man’s co-habiting niece, cousin and family friend are in fact the extra wives his law allows and ours bans. He should then be either imprisoned or deported to a place whose laws he prefers.
All it takes is the will and admittedly a bit of an effort, considering that there exist, conservatively estimated, 20,000 such ‘families’ in Britain. Yet this is a small price to pay for protecting what’s left of our civilisation – unless of course we don’t wish to protect it.