Why You’re Being Invited to Fewer Weddings

Another invisible elephant below.  Feminist-inspired divorce laws make marriage a mild form of insanity for men. Around half of all marriages break up and that tends to bring with it financial hardship for both parties -- with men  losing so much of their income to alimony and child support that another permanent relationship is simply unaffordable for them.

And the second elephant is how unpleasant feminist women are.  There are a lot of them and again a man would have to be slightly insane to have anything to do with them.  They want the world while offering in exchange only their own embittered and critical selves. Men looking to them for feminine softness will not find it.

And women generally are often very unrealistic about their prospects.  I was sitting in a cafe once when I overheard a conversation between two of the waitresses.  One said, "I'm waiting for my millionaire".  The woman concerned was short, fat, loud and had acne and peroxide blonde hair.  She would be lucky to get ANYBODY, let alone a millionaire,  And it is again feminists who are largely responsible for that sort of unrealism.  Feminism IS unrealism, with its denial of physical attractiveness and its gospel that all women can have it all


Fewer people are getting married, and they’re inviting fewer guests.

You’re not the only one spending fewer summer weekends watching other people get married—but don’t worry, the weddings you’re still invited to might feel a little more special these days.

Fewer Americans are getting married, and the ones who still are have scaled back their weddings. Their nuptials are becoming smaller, though not necessarily cheaper, affairs.

Many couples are waiting longer and longer to schedule their weddings. In 2015, the median first-time American bride was almost 28 years old and the median groom almost 30, according to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau. (Ten years earlier, the typical bride was 25.5, the typical groom 27.)

The U.S. marriage rate—the number of new marriages per 1,000 people—has been falling for decades. It fell especially fast during the recession, in 2008 and 2009, but there’s little evidence that people started getting married again even as the economy recovered. And research firm IbisWorld predicts the marriage rate will keep falling over the next five years.

From a global perspective, that wouldn’t be a surprise. The U.S. marriage rate would need to fall by about a third to reach the marriage rates in other developed countries. The most recent data show a U.S. marriage rate of 6.9, compared with an average rate of 4.6 for countries in the European Union.

In Europe, and increasingly in the U.S., many couples are postponing marriage indefinitely, as it becomes more socially acceptable for couples to live together and have children together outside the bonds of marriage.

The end result isn’t automatically fewer total weddings; even as the marriage rate falls, the population rises. But the number of U.S. weddings did fall last year, by 0.5 percent, to 2.162 million, according to estimates by the Wedding Report, a market-research firm specializing in the wedding industry.

About 310,000 businesses in the U.S. provide services at weddings, according to IbisWorld, and many of them—from florists to bakers to photographers—are feeling the economic pain. Coming out of the recession, the wedding industry’s revenue grew strongly—by more than 4 percent a year from 2012 to 2014, according to IbisWorld. But growth slowed in 2015, and revenue actually dipped slightly last year. Over the next five years, IbisWorld expects an annual growth rate of just 0.3 percent.

Fewer weddings are just one reason wedding-service businesses are struggling, said IbisWorld analyst Anya Cohen. Another is that, with so many new businesses flooding into the market and advertising cheaply online, it’s easier for engaged couples to bargain-hunt. “There’s absolutely been an increase in competition,” she said. Plus, websites such as Pinterest equip couples to go the cheaper, do-it-yourself route for invitations, centerpieces, and other wedding fixtures.

The average wedding cost $26,720 in 2016, according to the Wedding Report, up just 0.3 percent from the previous year—but that average is skewed by a few particularly lavish weddings. The median cost of a wedding was $14,399.

Another way weddings have changed since the recession: They’ve shrunk. Last year’s average wedding had 141 guests, according to an annual survey of couples by the Knot, the wedding website. That’s down from 149 guests in 2009. As a result, many couples end up spending more on each guest; the Knot estimates average spending per guest is up 26 percent since 2009.

One bright spot for the wedding industry is the pent-up demand for same-sex marriages. Since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide two years ago, the Williams Institute estimates about 157,000 same-sex couples have gotten married. About 1.1 million Americans are married to someone of the same sex, the institute said last month, out of an estimated 10.7 million LGBT adults in the U.S.

It’s unclear whether the decline of the American wedding is a permanent trend. American millennials lag previous generations on many metrics of adulthood, from living on their own to buying homes to having kids. Maybe most of them will eventually get around to weddings of their own—but then, it’s possible that many never will, and that they’ll bring the U.S. marriage rate closer to Europe’s.

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Trump seeks to ban transgender people from serving in U.S. military 'in any capacity'

Unit cohesion is the holy grail in military readiness and that is at its best amid large similarities between the unit members. So for maximum military readiness and effectiveness Trump's policy is right.  There probably are some keen existing military members who are transgender -- former lesbians, one imagines --  so it would be merciful to group them together in their own unit rather than discharge them
 
President Donald Trump said he will reverse former President Obama's policy that allowed transgender troops to serve openly in the military.

President Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. military will not accept transgender troops into its ranks or allow them to serve in any capacity, reversing a policy that began under the Obama administration – and triggering intense criticism from lawmakers and civil libertarians.

In a series of morning tweets, Trump said that, after consulting "with my generals and military experts," the U.S. government "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."

The U.S. military, he said, "must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

Trump's decision was made Tuesday, and he informed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis later in the day, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Wednesday. The policy allowing transgender troops to serve was "expensive and disruptive" and affected military readiness, she said.

Democrats disagreed. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, called Trump's announcement "an unwarranted and disgraceful attack on men and women who have been bravely serving their country."

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UK: Your bureaucrats will protect you -- NOT

Helpless residents at risk from offender;  Senior manager was also sex criminal;  Regulator kept ‘disturbing’ case secret;  The victim’s mother has despaired of seeking answers

The suspected rape of a helpless autistic man by a high-risk sex offender was kept secret by the official body responsible for his safety, The Times can reveal.

The incident was among a cluster of sex alerts at residential homes owned by a private company that specialised in the care of young adults with learning disabilities.

All were kept hidden from the public by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which regulates England’s 16,000 care homes and claims to be committed to openness and transparency. The case raises serious doubts about its stated mission to protect people from harm and to “hold providers to account”.

The Times has seen confidential police documents and agency reports linked to the suspected rape and other incidents at three homes

SOURCE






'They'll become terrorists': Millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith says high immigration will create an angry underclass of unemployed - and likens population growth to cancer

Millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith predicts Australia will suffer from a spate of terrorist attacks if it continues taking in 200,000 migrants a year.

The 73-year-old businessman and philanthropist told media commentator Mark Latham that high population growth and robots taking jobs could see 40 per cent of the nation living in poverty in coming decades.

'Those really poor people, especially the ones who can't get jobs, they'll be the ones that become terrorists because you have two or three generations without any satisfying work to do and you get angry,' he told the Mark Latham's Outsiders program.

Mark Latham was Labor leader when John Howard as prime minister increased immigration

Mr Smith, the businessman behind Dick Smith Foods and OzEmite, said Australia's population would quadruple from 24 million now to 100 million people by 2100 at the current annual population growth pace of 1.7 per cent.

This would see 40 million 'really poor people' who could potentially resort to violence.

'When you get such incredible difference between the rich and the poor, the pitchforks come out. We'll end up with people being killed,' he said.

In a separate interview with Daily Mail Australia, Mr Smith likened Australia's high annual net immigration rate to cancer which could upend democracy.

'Only cancer cells grow forever and they mostly end up killing their host,' he said.  'We will destroy Australia as we know it today.'

He accused the Liberal Party of being in the pocket of big business and Labor of bowing to the ethnic lobby groups.

Australia's annual net immigration rate stood at 82,500 in 1996 but crept above 100,000 a year in 2003 when John Howard was prime minister. It reached 190,000 a year in 2013 when Julia Gillard was national leader. 

Mr Smith called for the major parties in government to return to Australia's annual net migration rate to 70,000, the average level of the 20th century.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is calling for a much more drastic zero annual net immigration pace for Australia.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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