A recent study reports that only 4 per cent of women aged 18 to 44 see having a baby as their top priority.

Seven out of ten want to have children at some stage, but apparently want to feel financially secure and have lots of “experiences” before eventually getting around to it.

These ladies delay trying to conceive until they are past their biological prime.

A Sydney professor, Dr William Ledger, said, “It’s significant and surprising that having a baby is not a top life priority for Australian women in the fertile age group”

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Surprising?

Is it surprising that in a community where 90-plus percent vote for political parties that support contraception, sterilisation, in vitro fertilisation, abortion, childcare subsidies etc. . . .

. . . that women and girls having been brought up in such an atmosphere put babies more or less last in their priorities?

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Significant?

What does it signify?

That they consider having molto mod cons around the home trumps being part of the human family?

That they consider bearing and caring for a new developing human being – being a co-creator in partnership with God — is boring compared with going to an office, factory or other workplace?

Andrew Wilkie MP isn’t happy about PM Gillard reneging re introducing mandatory pre-commitment on high-intensity poker machines, as she promised.

The Gillard’s  now proposes a “trial” of pre-commitment in Canberra to assess its value to problem gamblers.

She even ascends to the high moral ground — denouncing Wilkie as a guilty blocker of the ALP’s “reform”.

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Why Canberra anyway?

Isn’t Canberra full of overpaid/underworked white collar types?

Those least able afford to problem-gamble are the working poor and pensioners found far from Canberra – e.g. in state capital non-leafy suburbs.

The Canberra trial will be dressed up so as to somehow seem to justify watering-down Wilkie’s proposals.

Making gambling look good . . .

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The Labor party runs 400-odd poker machines in its Canberra Clubs, netting $600,000 a year . . . .

The Church? Nobody home there either. The Catholic community famously relies on gambling to fund numerous activities.

All gambling is problem gambling – especially if you WIN.

A winner takes something valuable from somebody else, giving nothing in return.

That is treating the other person as a thing.

As an idiot.

If you treat people like that, YOU have a problem.

There is more fuss made about Saint Valentine’s Day every year

More often just called Valentine’s Day — saints not being in fashion at the moment . . . .

Not with those who exploit the day as a money-making opportunity — selling flowers, selling chocolate, selling meals and booze in restaurants.

Stand by for media outpourings of all that is cheap, sensational and trivial.

Like what percentage of pet owners would rather spend Valentine’s evening with an animal than with a human “partner”

And what foods are “aphrodisiacs” and why.

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Tradition says there was a real Saint Valentine,

A Catholic priest, clubbed almost to death, then beheaded, by Emperor Claudius, apparently on February 14, in about the year 270AD.

Claudius had ordered all Romans to worship the Roman pagan gods or be executed . . . .

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So Saint Valentine’s Day isn’t necessarily just about money and romance.

A day, perhaps, to ask oneself whether one would be willing to die for one’s beliefs.

Is your loyalty to God sufficient that you will remain resolute in the face of persecution?

2012 will “trigger the start of a year-long debate on the Australian economy”, says Julia Gillard.

She says Labor is the party most interested in helping “working families”.

The Opposition will reply that, in fact, the Coalition likes working families best.

Both will promise to more services and handouts, while collecting less taxes than the others.

Ho hum.

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Both parties assume that in a good society, mothers go out to work.

“Working families” means conscripted mothers.

Babies and toddlers spending most of their lives not knowing where their mother is.

Possibly not knowing who their mother is.

“Bringing the budget back into surplus” is less important than bringing mothers back to their offspring.

Most young mothers want to stay home with Junior. Multiple polls have proved it.

We need a party whose policy is to give men, especially fathers, preference in jobs — and that the wage of a man working full-time will always be sufficient to feed a family.

If the Catholic bishops consistently taught this — and had proper research done to demonstrate that it is not a pipe-dream . . . .

That would revolutionise the spiritual welfare our younger generation.