PM blasted for pointing finger at dads
A KINCRAIG father who has spent four years and more than £40,000 fighting through the courts to be reunited with his daughter has told the Prime Minister: "You are so wrong about split families".
Mr Tony Brown, of the Ossian Inn, has been angered by David Cameron's "stigmatization" of absentee fathers – without acknowledging the role mothers played in some domestic disputes.
"I just had to write to Downing Street after his one-eyed contribution," said Mr Brown.
The Prime Minister wrote in a national newspaper that absent fathers had to be seen in the same light as drink drivers and feel the "full force of shame" for their actions.
In his Father’s Day piece on Sunday, he said it was not acceptable for single mothers to be left to bring children up on their own.
The father-of-three maintained that traditional family life was the "cornerstone of our society" and that even when parents separated fathers had a duty to support "financially and emotionally" their children, spending time with them at weekends, attending nativity plays and taking an interest in their education.
Where men were unwilling to face up to their family obligations, he said that it was up to the rest of society to make clear that such behaviour was unacceptable.
"It’s high time runaway dads were stigmatised, and the full force of shame was heaped upon them," he stated. "They should be looked at like drink drivers, people who are beyond the pale.
"They need the message rammed home to them, from every part of our culture, that what they’re doing is wrong – that leaving single mothers, who do a heroic job against all odds, to fend for themselves simply isn’t acceptable."
But local businessman and father-of-two Mr Brown swiftly joined those accusing the Prime Minister of a lack of understanding.
Mr Brown has a 21 year old son, who lives in the strath and they have a great relationship, and he also has an eight year old daughter who lives with her mother in the Glasgow area.
He said it had taken him years to win his parental rights regarding his daughter but he now spends time with her both down south and in the strath.
He commented: "There are so many reasons why fathers are not always with their children – and so often those reasons revolve around the mothers.
"Why was there no mention of the mothers in this vote-catching Father’s Day card to middle-aged, right-wing readers?
"It made my blood boil, seeing how one-sided he was being.
"There are absentee mothers just as there are absentee fathers – and there are mothers who insist on having absentee fathers.
"In my view, mothers who push good fathers away, and say ‘no’ to any contact, for their own reasons, are just as bad as fathers who abandon their kids.
"Let’s stigmatize the mothers who say ‘no’ to contact, just as Mr Cameron intends to do to the minority of fathers who walk away from their children.
"I want to know why there was no mention of the mothers’ part in all this from the architect of Britain’s new Big Society? How is he going to create his Big Society with such small thinking?
"His tunnel vision does not bode well for the future, and somebody needed to tell him. That’s why I wrote the letter. And it’s why I am now going to sit down and write a book detailing what my daughter and I have had to put up with.
"Someone has to tell the whole story here, as it’s clearly not going to be the Prime Minister."
