To be WILD at the news at 10 wording 'mothers who chose not to work'

[NotanOtter]

who are hardest hit by benefit cut

How bloody condescending...

Nip round here any day and 'choose not to WORK' looking after my kids

estya - i can honestly say that from a PERSONAL persepctive the money is not an issue - i kind of know i am not really worthy and i understand cuts have to be made

its about recognition
its saying 'i'll start with what's NOT important' ...

Cameron walks into bedroom - pops slippers under bed and lies down atop the duckdown with his ipad and specs.... propped up on the pillows - one eye nodding at newsnight he commences the cuts....

'1. Mothers'

Estya do you realaly think those days are gone?

Financial abuse is one of the more common forms of domestic abuse; it happens, and it happens frequently. Even when women work they are still more likely to have periods without any or just a low income through amternity leave, and are more likely to have spells off work for caring for elderly parents etc.

It should be long gone, like other forms of domestic abuse, but it is not.

I don;t think salaries should be paid but teh inference from Estya's post that it's about washing etc is such a shame and does show the narrow images that are out there.

WRVS, reading at school, homestart, study... things I personally have or am about to do in my day.

I am far from unusual: I am, indeed, the norm.

The days of women trying to make ends meet on a pittance allowed by an abusive H are far from gone.

Scottishmummy, as I said, my head is too sore from banging it on the desk over the question of monetary acknowledgment of SAHPs. Yes, I know that family friendly policies are not the same as 'pay' or a 'benefit' for SAHPs. Family friendly policies cannot work properly in the kind of cultural climate where the work of half the workforce is routinely devalued, and those employees are seen as expendable, no matter how experienced they are, while the contribution expected of the other half is based on outdated notions of men automatically being the breadwinner who should be more committed to the job. This is not fair to either women or men.

There is very little family friendliness in a society where there are so pitifully few jobs available for talented and well educated women who need school hours.

I think what has become very plain to me from this thread is the clear link in many posters' minds between someone's salary and the perceived value of their job -- so many references to 'proper jobs', 'valuable jobs like doctors, etc', and so many disheartening references to bottom wiping and cleaning and doing the washing up on the other hand. For those who don't care about external approbation, go ahead and 'choose not to work' as a SAHM for a while, because you'll get plenty of it.

And WRT Cameron and the cuts, it's not just that he considers women unimportant, he knows that women are too divided to fight him.

Byt many women earn more than their man to the list could start 1. Fathers but it didn't start there at all. We have had massive 10% tax increases for many and effective increases of even more if you take account of loss of allowanes.

1. Cabinet - their wages were cut
2. Statementthey will look at anyone in public sector earning more than Cameron

And now we have the 15% whose family income is over £44k.

In other words the rich are being hit very much first.

Next we will ineed have cuts to housing benefit with the new cap and the £25k benefits annual cap and then the one new benefit/credit. etc etc

It has been very careful top down cuts

i wont fight for sahp pay.id fight against it not for it. unless of course we become a 4 salary household.the proper job salary and the la la land salary

I don;t honestly think most people want (or expectt anyway) a SAHP income; mostly we just want people tos top makinga ssumptions about us.

figures nout today state that 1 / 5 people (mainly women) in their fifties is a carer; that suggests tha,t guess what, being economically inactive isn't a non-choice for the 'few' that people like to mention when explaining how we can't possibly have policies to cover us, but an awful lot of people.

Carers need an income as the choice is taken from them; parents need to either have access to affordable childcare or acceptance that it is not always a choice. Not random luck geographically, comments about how one should have a better job (ultimately, there are not a limitless supply) and perhaps a measure of awreness about reality for some people.

That if your partner works shifts you can't 'work around' them; that if your partner needs to work away a lot and if you haven't got space for a Nanny or parents on tap then your options are limited. Maybe if you have to move country every year your options may be curtailed.

Because for many famillies the logical plan is to follow the larger salary, doesn't matter a jot if Mum or Dad earns it.

Really, just a bit of empathy and realisation that in actuality, most people's lives are not average.

I don;t know about tax rates etc, not my field but whilst I support a spread burden of cuts to an extent the reality is that the poorest can take a far lower load before they simply go under. There was an article yesterday I think in the Guardian that Boris's predicted 17000 famillies facing their home is closer or even above 100k when the extra cuts to benefits the following year is taken into account. That's massive. We tried to explain to the boys- they said 'should we sell cakes like we did for Haiti?'. We said er no- then thought again; except this time it will be for Shelter perhaps. And it's notb going to be the feckless; those will in all likelihood try to getw ork at elast. The ones left behind will be the really vulnerable who are of course massively over represented on HB as a proportion of society anyway.

Ther's nobody not being affected and that's probably right; but there has to be a bsae principle of what people need in order to be decently supported and I fear in London that will vanish- unless anyone ahs a few 100 thou houses lying about they want to rent out for below market rent? no? thought not!

When many people who work cannot afford to live in London why should tax payers pay to fund the unemployed living in expensive areas which are beyond their reach however? Many of us including me have left family and home to move to where work is. Plenty of people have always had to do it. Suvh is life but if people are incentivised to be idle then they won't move an inch from their chair

If you want a vision of what life is like without a safety net look no further than the US -- is this really what Britain wants to turn into?

And really Xenia, how many people are living in subsidised housing in expensive areas?

And do you appreciate what would happen to the rental market if HB was cut out of the picture altogether?

There are plenty of low-paid jobs that NEED to be done in affluent areas so that the well off can live in the way they accustomed to. These jobs don't pay well enough to afford a long commute, so if all the working poor move out who'll do the jobs the rich don't want?

Have to say something back to a comment Bonsoir made eons ago (sorry!)

Sorry, but I don't see how where kibbutzniks raised their children is relevant! Very few kibbutzim are still going, but the reason for their downfall is simple - socialism (or communism) has never worked anywhere; people are simply far too materialistic at the end of the day. The only kibbutzim still going are the rich ones.

My DH is a kibbutznik who was raised away from his parents. He had as strong a bond with his late mother as any I've ever seen, and is one of the most strong, sensible, grounded, independent and generous people I've ever met.

In fact, every time I stress about not spending enough time with my children, I think about those those generations of kibbutzniks. They truly were raised by the village and it worked!

Sorry, had to get that in....

The low paid toilers would have to be paid more if they suddenly became scarce on the ground.

So rents would plummet when HB was removed and there would be no-one to clean the toilets unless they were paid enough to factor in travel costs -- when it comes to taxes, what goes around comes around.

Xenia

what you seem to be not grasping is that a very alrge number of employed people get HB

this work / not work divide does not compute becuase HB is not an unemployment benefit at all