To think every SAHM, low hour PT worker and carer should read this?

[Peachy]

Well i am not but it matters to you so you must

here

Changes to system WRT worker hours

have a thread in chat and don;t want a debate, or at least won't participate iun one as petrified as we will now certianly lose our home and not up to taking flak. But if it affects you, you need to know.

Theres still no money in the pot for anything. This debate has achieved precisely nothing.

There is less than no money we are staring down the barrell of a debt of £122,000,000,000 and if the economy doesn't start to pick up and the rest of the world don't perceive us to be stable we will be downgraded, that's when that debt suddenly becomes even more expensive and it takes us longer to get straight. There will never be as much "free" money floating around as there was under the previous government. It was unsustainable and it will never be repeated.

Schools have less money, hospitals have less money. Looking after your children will have to be funded by your family, not the exchequer.

You can argue the rights, the wrongs and the downright inadequacies of living in Britain today but it's going to get worse, the Euro is in crisis and sterling has been seen as a semi safe haven. When Europe is seen as safe and more money is printed we will be left behind. We are properly fucked.

But if you can think of a country that will do more for you when you are sick, infirm, disabled or old then I suggest you look to move there.

Fine but the govt has given examples of Canada and Sweden as using austerity to lower debt ignoring the fact that this was against backdrop of growth in other countries and therefore a market to export to. Not the case now and and the poorest have the greatest propensity to spend, cutting from the bottom makes little economic sense.

Alouisee - I see that the money has to come from somewhere - but to take it from the very weakest in Society is just wrong. I just don't see how this can be anything but a step backwards, back towards the sort of living conditions not seen in the UK for over 100 years. Even when there was no Welfare state - there were still families that had more dc than they could afford to support on their own. Do we really want poorer families to end up living 5/6 people all in one room, in unsanitary conditions, with no access to clean running water in the 21st Century? Because I for one can SEE that that is what will happen.

They are applying the new rules for Universal Credit to ALL Lone Parents - even those that had 2/3/4 dc BEFORE they fell on harder times. Currently, WTC will pay up to a maximum of 70% of £360 childcare p/wk for 3 or more dc. The New Universal Credit will only pay up to a maximum of 70% of £300 childcare for 2 or more dc.

So someone like me, who needs childcare for, say, 2 primary school aged dc AND a dc in Nursery, has to find childcare that costs less than £300 a week, and will only get UP TO 70% of that paid for. Nursery in my area costs £52 a DAY. So I can only AFFORD to work for 3 days a week - or my childcare will cost me more per day than I can EARN!

I'll be a bit clearer - £52 a day Nursery. Breakfast club at the primary school -- £7 per dc per day. After-school club at the primary school - £12 per child per day. So each days childcare is £90. But you also need to factor in that I have a 13yo DD with asd that cannot be left at home alone, and would need specialist SN childcare that is as rare as hens teeth.

My daily earnings on NMW would be £51.75 a day BEFORE tax, for 7.5 hrs (You are at work for 8 hrs, but your 1/2 hr break is unpaid). I would have to pay £27 out of that days earnings towards the childcare, £10 for bus travel to get the dc to childcare (we have to pay bus fares for dc over 5yo here, it's not free like London), I would have £14.75 left over that day to pay for DD's chilcare, leaving NO earnings left. However, by the fourth day I worked (as they want you to work FT), I would have to find £90 for childcare - when I would only be earning £51.75 before tax. .

So if I refused to take a FT job because I couldn't afford the childcare, let alone my rent/council tax/food/utilities - my Universal Credit will be sanctioned. But it won't affect me, will it??!!

You do understand, Alouiseg, that paying a disabled person less than enough to keep them safe and healthy is a very expensive way to kill them?

As ability to stay warm, clean, safe and fed degrades, medical conditions will be exacerbated and new ones will arise from malnutrition, infections, etc. People will slip from chronically to acutely ill, throwing pressure onto hospitals, which are not the cheapest place to house people.

Eventually, after a cycle of admission and discharge to inadequate care, they will either die or be admitted to council-run care homes, again a much more expensive option than keeping people in their own homes.

Cutting money from cheap social care is very very expensive.

Unfortunately though Hunty no one in government is going to subsidise you to work, it isn't their priority.

"The poorest have the greatest propensity to spend" how do you work that out?

Tianc I understand that perfectly, I'm not exactly calling for the destruction of society. Just explaining that there is less than no money available.

So, would you cut social care or not?

Because if yes, where will you get the money from to pay for the increased medical and residential care?

Then how do you propose I work FT, pay for childcare, pay for rent, pay my council tax, pay for my transport so that I can get to work, pay for my utilities bills, pay for my food? All of which amount to basic needs - Heat, light, clean water, food, a roof over my head?

How do you propose I stretch NMW of £6.09/hr to cover those BASIC NEEDS? Because I don't seem to have a magic wand in my back pocket, and my electricity bill still costs just as much, whether I earn £11.8K pa or £118K pa. So does my food shopping, my water bill, and everything else.

Please tell me where I sign up for this magic wand that gets £11.8K pa to cover all the costs of my BASIC NEEDS?

Demand is weak. Export demand is falling, domestic demand is low so our economic growth is buggered. The poorest have less room to save as a greater proportion of their income goes on basic needs that must be met so reducing the income of the poorest has the most detrimental impact on demand.

If the Eurozone picks up, our safe haven status may be weakened, true, but our export position might not be so precarious and the onus can fall back on to export led growth as the govt had intended. Huge emphasis on private sector investment but banks too wary to lend to SMEs, current austerity path not going to help wealth creation.

Median Income this Fiscal year is £28,331 pa before tax in the South East. NMW is £11,800 pa before tax. The poverty line is set at 60% of median income - which is £16,999. Therefore, anyone earning less than £16,999 is BELOW THE POVERTY LEVEL FOR THE UK.

Being below the poverty level means that you cannot cover your BASIC NEEDS. Which is why TC's are paid to those people - to meet their BASIC NEEDS.

OK, so the UK can no longer afford this - how do people working for the NMW pay for their BASIC NEEDS?

You take £2000 a year away from someone earning £11.8k pa - its the difference between them eating or ^starving. You take away £2000 from someone earning £118K pa - it's going to mean one less foreign holiday per year. Hardly a basic need.

IT'S. I missed an apostrophe. . I'll go and get flogged by the Pedants now.

Hunty - I have no idea how you're going to do it. You have four children so I rather hope that their father is contributing to costs? Perhaps it's time to see your MP with your list of demands and see what he can come up with. If its who I think it is (initials BR) then expect his "sympathy" and not much else but remember its his leader who formed this coalition.

Don't worry about the pedants at this time of night. :)

Did you miss my Q, alouiseg, or are you dodging it?

Sorry, you're alouisee these days.

Their fathers...hmm...DD's father contributes £12.50 p/wk. His work is seasonal AND NMW, he averages it out over the year to be 15% of his income. DS1's father pays me £1.36 a week - which will drop to zero in January when his next dc is born. DS2 & DS3's father pays me £55 a week, which is 20% of his income, for two dc.

So, right now, I get £63.86 a week maintenance. Which will drop to £62.50 a week in January. And that is still not enough for me not to be on my emergency electricity right now, and hoping my maintenance is in the bank tomorrow (CSA are meant to pay it to me on a Monday, but sometimes I don't get it for another 10 days - even when Ex-P can PROVE he paid on time. The CSA isn't fit for purpose, but that's a whole other thread).

Yes, my MP's initials are BR. I assume you are local to me then. If the story about the incompetent Neuro didn't let me know, this definately has. .

I hope that particular Neurologist ends up choking on his twatty bow tie...I had a very unpleasant experience with him a few years back.

I'm not dodging it Tianc, I'm not saying anything should be cut but that everything will be cut.

Though, to be fair to MP BR, He really DID try hard on a couple of issues for me, and he even got the CSA to pay out a HUGE amount for maladministration in my case - it was, apparently, the worst case of Maladministration in the CSA's History, and had lost me over £10K maintenance. 4 years ago, I got a Maladmin payment that BR fought for that covered half of the costs of the 'lost' maintenance.

BR does actually do some very good work...shame his Boss doesn't.

Bloody absent parents who can't afford the children they've got, the go on to have more. I stand by my original statement, sterilise them.

Hunty - see your mp.

I'll pm you tomorrow, I have a plan.

Sorry x post.

Some of you are all very sure of yoursleves, and having lived where I have, it does make me laugh. Have you really seen, when things get really bad, after your cuts, when there are no jobs and they don't just do what you want? Because I have, and it is not so much 'message deleted by Mumsnet'. It is bloody. People can get very very ugly. I can't say I'm better, I was protected, where I was, flown out. But I saw the blood, the rape, the death. What if I had not been who I was? I can't say I would not have done whatever it was I needed to do to get you out of my way to get what I needed for my children, or even because you slighted me somehow. Or who knows, maybe I'm under orders and if I don't obey orders then I don't eat or my wife is raped and murdered before me and my children sold as slaves or I've had something to chew or eat or drink and I'm not here to question and I really don't care.

You think people really care about you and yours if there's nothing in it for them when 'push comes to shove' as the Americans say?

You are very self-assured here. I can tell you this is a real luxury of fools who don't know what is what. You are in for a very big shock soon the way things are going! They will kidnap you wife and children and cut them to bits if you don't pay up or if you speak in a way they approve.

You go on widening this gap as you will, it will happen the way it has in the past , you are real fools who seem to learn nothing from history, but do not be surprised if you wind up on a wall, I certainly wouldn't. I would laugh.

But more than likely, I would be the one pulling the trigger. Because if you don't want a country anymore, you want an oligarchy, you want some to be less than you and bow to you and pay to serve you, then I'm still here 230 years after my relations put your head on the block the first time.

You just call me Jacques.

fatfleurHowever what I don't understand is why you continued to have children knowing that your first 2 were disabled and you couldn't support them? Correct me if I am making assumptions.
Not the case. Not your business. No intention of justifying my lifestlye choices to you or anybody else.

DD you dont do 500 hours work per week, so each person under care does not need 1 careworker 18 hours per day.

Are you trying to be daft?
If the dcs and dh were in hospital/homes, they would each be assigned a careworker. Ergo, the figure given is accurate.

Then that would be overstaffing. 18 hour per day to care for 4 people cannot equate to 4 careworkers.

When my mum was caring for ny profoundly disabled father, that was at least 18 hours per day on one person. my parents paid their taxes, and did the caring themselves, how much did they put in? But then again, they were rich so they obviously lived a charmed life so should have been paying more tax!