To be irritated by this £100k a year whiner

[Viviennemary]

On Question Time tonight they were talking about subsidised childcare and the new benefits for younger children. Then a woman came on with a boo hoo sad face and said she wouldn't be getting it. So I think Fiona Bruce said because your income is £100k a year plus Then she said that it wasnt fair as there was only one wage. And their household only had one earner.

Well tough. Folk on just over £12k a year are paying tax and this cheeky woman thinks her child care should be subsidised. It made me mad.

Liz Truss has one in PPE, how did that work out?

You need nearly as many adults as you do children.

Why? Four year olds go into classes of 30 when they start school. Why do their needs change so dramatically virtually overnight?

@BestBadger There is now an apartheid fence at my local park, keeping the poor kids out of an outdoor 'feature' that requires paid admission.
The simple cafe has also been replaced with an interior activity that costs. Nannies and au pairs only now.

Interesting Tim Harford article on UBI: https://timharford.com/2016/05/could-an-income-for-all-provide-the-ultimate-safety-net/

😂😂😂👍🏻

Well I wasn’t the one suggesting ‘advanced economics courses’.

The thing is that the economy is fucked largely because of the level of subsidy from tax meaning that people can’t earn enough to overcome it. Thus rents etc are too high. Adding more subsidy from tax into the equation will just lead to people screaming from all angles that they can’t cope on UBI. That the country can’t afford anyway.

But yeah it’s clearly all the fault of Truss. Keep dreaming. All she did was show up it’s fucked, which is inconvenient for people to see.

It isn’t interesting it says nothing at all.

Would children get it too?

That seems like a great way to foster community. I wonder who thought that was a great idea?

So public sector workers live in a bubble independent of the private sector... Well often they do but that's a different thread.

You can't raise wages in the public sector without affecting the private sector. If anything the minimum wage should include pensions and other benefits.

One of the effects of your "simple economics" will be more public sector outsourcing.

I would generally err in the other direction, focus on enablers to beneficial work. This could include extending childcare/ schooling. On a more universal basis. Paid for by caping housing benefit and offering relocation. Ironically if you have a good job and you can't afford to live there you accept that you have to live somewhere else.

This benefits children from all backgrounds, and improves equality (more women stay in the workforce, fewer stunted careers, larger pension pots)

They don’t! Reception classes have about 4 adults working with the kids, often 6.

And children in Reception are 4 and 5, not 1-4.

That’s still not nearly as many adults as children.

It depends on the cost of living where she lives - in London £100k for a household won’t get you far.

I didn’t see the show , i guess it depends how whiny she’s being , obviously she’d know that’s way above the average UK salary 🤷‍♀️

I'm glad @BestBadger has proposed how this will be funded.

What's wrong with having things you have to pay for. There are regularly fun fairs in local parks.

one problem with UBI is that you either have to set it at a level where hardly anyone will bother working (especially not given the income tax levels you’d be setting on all earnings if you do work in order to pay for the UBI) or you are going to have to accept that a certain proportion of children are going to live in pretty terrible poverty because their family just gets whatever minimal level of UBI you’ve set.

The pilots wanted to test an unreasonably high level of £1600 per adult UBI (so equivalent to earning a salary of £22k now), which would be entirely unaffordable (and yet quite shit for single parents unless you start retaining a variety of top up benefits, which defeats the point of UBI and would make it even less affordable).

This does some of the sums: https://moneyweek.com/economy/uk-economy/uk-launches-universal-basic-income#:~:text=Meanwhile%20£1%2C600%20a%20month,to%20spend%20on%20everything%20else.

Actual UBI would need to be a pittance. And there would be no top ups.

The thing about local parks is that they cost a lot to maintain. So local
authorities and social enterprises have to find ways of making them generate money to pay for that. Which means chunks of them no longer are free public space.

In Scotland so different situation but:

Under 1 - 1:3 minimum ratio
2-3 - 1:5 minimum ratio
3+ 1:8. You can do 1:10 if it is a session of under 4 hours.

That's your bare minimum, staff who must be actively caring for children.

Typical nursery open 50 hours a week (8-6) so that's more than one employee just to cover those ratios. Factor in lunch/break cover and you're probably close to 1.5 FTE for every one person in ratio. Then you've got to think about sickness cover (incredibly high in childcare), holidays etc. Virtually impossible to get agency staff so then you're looking at maybe 1 extra staff member for every 5. Then you've got cleaners, managers, admin, kids who need 1💯

It starts to get to high staffing numbers very quickly.

Using the 2-3 ratio as a an easy middle ground:

• start with 40 kids
• assume 4 of them need 1:1 - 4 staff
• so 36 left at 1:5, that's another 8 so we're up to 12
• then times that by about 1.5 to get the number of actual employees to cover all opening hours, so that 12 just became 18ish.
• Now you need some sick and holiday cover. Holidays alone run at 12% plus sickness, let's call it 3 spares and we're probably being conservative. We're at 21
• You've got to prepare meals; add a cook/chef. 22
• Cleaner: 23
• Admin/receptionist: 24
• Manager, plus possibly a deputy manager depending on complexity: 25/26

Childcare ratios are in a different world to schools. Things like needing to stay in ratio even through breaks and staff absence mean you either rely on agency and pray they are available, or you carry extras.

Up here those ratios are considered an absolute minimum.

No, but a Reception class isn’t a nursery.

So we are gold-plating the Scandinavian childcare model that reckons on 1 adult to 12 children. If one adult to 12 kids doesnt work in the uk, why not?

Exactly. And only a few of those staff are on minimum wage.

Agency staff cost 200 quid a day as well, and you always have to reckon on having at least one of them. Someone is always off sick.

PP who owns a nursery says the children’s behaviour is simply too unmanageable.

My point entirely.

Of course, maintained nurseries don’t pay 200 quid a day because they don’t have to pay VAT. Somehow the same rules don’t apply to them.

Yes. You could do it, but it would be very dangerous.

Because different age groups need different levels of supervision and there has to be cut offs somewhere. I mean why not have 4 adults looking after 30 babies?