FOR more years than I can remember, this government and its advisers have spent their days flaying blokes who abandon their kids and won't pay a penny towards them.

When they're not doing that, they're instructing businesses to give new fathers ever more time off work so they can bond with their babies. (Even though it's a well-known fact, reiterated this week, that most men are never keener to work long hours as when they've got a screeching infant and a sobbing wife at home) So, given all this, why the hell are is government now forcing through a bill to make it legal for certain groups to be able to bring children into the world without EVER having anything to do with the men responsible for their creation?

Tucked away in the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill there's a bit that says that GPs providing free IVF for gay women on the NHS won't have to consider any more a child's right to have a father and that lesbians will be able to style themselves as "mother and second parent".

How this will benefit the lives of any child born to them I'm not sure.

And, I bet, neither is Gordon Brown, a man who invokes the memory of his dear departed father whenever he thinks there might be a vote in it for him.

Like his predecessor Tony Blair, Gordon Brown's read all the research (much of it from left-wing think tanks like the Joseph Rowntree Organisation) so he knows only too well the statistical downside of having no father present in a child's life.

Children who don't have dads are more likely to fail at school, not go to college, earn less, be ill more often and die at a younger age than their counterparts.

This isn't a rant about gay adoptions or anything like that because I believe every case in that respect should be taken on its merits.

But what's this new law about? Just to remind any lesbians and, indeed, anyone who wants a kid for that matter who may be reading - it's not about you it's about the children. It's about what they want and what's good for them.

Kids are the most conventional beings on the planet. What they want is a mum and a dad, preferably married, who live happily ever after in a house.

They don't particularly want mum and mum's lady friend. Or dad and some bloke. Or mum and her 17th boyfriend hanging round the place.

More than anything, study after study has shown how desperately children, but especially boys, need the influence of a father.

Yes, some blokes beat and rape their wives and batter their kids and get drunk and blow their wages on the horses.

But many more fathers - even those estranged from their kids for whatever reason - are loving, concerned, and keen to play their financial and emotional part in their children's lives.

How dare the government pursue some men for being useless and not facing up to their responsibilities while deliberately plotting, in the name of political correctness, to deprive other children of any right to a man they can call Dad.