to expect my local cancel to pay for transport to a private school

[tootyflooty]

My dd has been offered a place at a theatre school, it is fee paying but not local and they do not have scholerships. I asked the council if they would provide the cost of a train pass, but were told no, because it is not our local state school.My argument is that by funding my dd education for the next 5 years (not easily affordable for us)I am saving the local education authority vast sums of money as they will not be paying for her place at the local state school, it seems unfair that we are penalised for our decision, She would get a free pass if our local school was over 3 miles away.Sorry to ramble but we have never had handouts from anyone and this seems grossly unfair.

I don't feel I have anything to apologise for Fleur, therefore am not, don't read any more into it than that please.

KatieDD - you questioned the concept of people not being able to save more than 3k because it would affect their benefits.

I've looked it up, and if you have savings past a certain point then the assumed interest from that is taken off the amount you are entitled to receive. So if you were unable to work for any reason (redundancy, illness, DCs illness or disability) then it is actually impossible to save up for a deposit on a house, as after that limit your daily income decreases until the point where you need to use the savings to buy food.

It is a stupid nonsense to say, 'oh my kid goes to St Poncey's Academy for Jazz Hands so I'm personally saving the state £8K a year'. It doesn't work like that AT ALL. The local state schools still has to pay for the fabric of the building, teachers' salaries, the reading scheme, the playground resurfacing, the heating bill et al regardless of whether your particular kid is there or not. The quoted individual 'cost' of a child in state education isn't really related to that kid turning up every day in the classroom, it is all the stuff I listed which has to be there anyway and doesn't go away because you don't think the 'oiks' are good enough for your budding Bonnie Langford. My kids' state primary has some spare places in certain years, this is a PROBLEM not a benefit, as the school has reduced funding, yet still has the same outgoings - so it means that the kids in the school have LESS not MORE. So please don't think you are doing anyone a favour, because you aren't.

i think you find that you do have something to apologise for Katie.

your comment to crazy was completely uncalled for.

and you not apologising is extremely rude.

Needmorecoffee, it's actually quite the opposite, fees are paid in full for those from poorer backgrounds.
Rightly or wrongly I joined the CAB thinking i could help people to access education and make a difference.
What I actually came across were people milking the system left right and centre and using their intelligence not to help themselves or to make their children's lives better but to re enforce dependancy.
If I come across bitter then it's because I met one single mum who was working as an escort because she felt doing that was preferable to claiming benefits and yet able bodied men were taking the piss out of me for having to be up and at work for 9 am.
I had to leave before I throttled somebody.

I think making negative assumptions with regards to someone's personal situation without any real information to go on and implying that they are lazy does deserve an apology actually. I can't even really be bothered to read your posts because although I agree with some of what your saying, the inability to admit when you are wrong just colours the rest of anything else you have to say.

Tinslian - final word, I must get off this computer.
I appreciate what you are saying, you are absolutely right.
But lets be honest why would you hold yourself back in life by thinking about what benefits you may/may not be entitled to ?
My DH has just been made redundant we have a lot in savings so are not worrying about the government bailing us out, we'll look after ourselves thank you very much benefits just doesn't come into it and as a result we can choose where we live, how long he can take finding another job, whether I take a job etc etc we have options simply because benefits aren't on my radar.

cory: "It's like a party where there's 10 blue chairs and only 1 yellow."

Cory, I am not sure if I agree with that entirely.

Currently these chairs are being filled by a combination of 'locals' and immigrants at all levels. If there are more highly skilled locals, then they could fill more of these highly paid chairs. A lot of high end companies are held back because they cannot hire the talent they need to grow their business from the local talent pool. Lots of City firms have to import their talent from all over the world. And jobs beget jobs if the business can grow and the country becomes a hub for the more highly skilled high paying jobs.

If there is no one to fill the lower paying jobs, that can be imported. But it is easier to import unskilled labour than it is skilled labour. Plus a vibrant economy will bring in the taxes to pay for the (essential) public sector jobs.

It is not necessarily a zero sum game.

Those would be the City firms full of people so talented they have brought the world's economy to its knees, would they?

Funny definition of talent if you ask me. I bet there are cleaners/bin men/nurses/social workers/teachers with a damn sight more insight than that. Another big financial scandal today that RBoS/HSBC/Santander/Nicola Horlick didn't see coming...

"why would you hold yourself back in life by thinking about what benefits you may/may not be entitled to"

If you needed those benefits to be able to eat. That's why.

Blueshoes: Right. But that is not actually a problem with lack of get up and go. It's a case of the local work force not being well educated/talented enough to compete with foreigners. Katie seemed to be implying that all you needed was the will to succeed. I always did suspect there might be more to it

Katie:
"But lets be honest why would you hold yourself back in life by thinking about what benefits you may/may not be entitled to ?"

If I had a seriously disabled child who I knew would be dependent on those benefits long after any savings had run out- yes, I probably would.

edam, can't argue with that except to add that it is more complex than that. We need binmen as well as City talent. If you were to cut out the City from London, I suspect you will end up with a lot fewer binmen.

Thankyou Fleur as well, I agree it colours anything else she might have to say - 'must get off this computer',

well off you feck then, there's a love.

Although I would love to know what exactly you did mean by 'says it all' if it doesn't warrant an apology.

Could I have misunderstood?

well, we'd certainly have less rubbish!

edam, don't forget you need 2 hands to clap in this current financial crisis. Apart from the free-lending securitising banks, you also have the man-in-the-street who was happy to take out 100%+ mortgages or personal loans or revolving credit cards they had no ability to repay. Perhaps a little ejumacation would not go amiss.

And cut out the binmen, and you'd end up with less City.

We all depend on each other. We all need each other. It's silly to pretend we don't. Or that because we are in a certain position in society we must be conferring a special benefit on it. It all depends.

Oh this thread is rather nice now Katie has gone...

It's not easy for any one individual to stand up against a whole financial and economic system that depends on consumer spending though. My credit card company KEEPS sending me credit card cheques - if I didn't know they were a very bad idea, I might well be tempted to use them. Especially as times have been tough and dh was off work on statutory sick pay most of this year.

I do believe that if there is a will, there is a way. I accept that it can be very extremely impossibly difficult in certain childhood scenarios. A child would have to look outside their immediate family to a kindly teacher or get their role models from things they read in books or bear great hardship to get the education they want.

Some are born strong-willed and others weak-willed. But we all have the capacity to choose the straight and narrow over the easy and facile. And the whisker of opportunity is always there in the schooling system to grasp and a benefits system as a safety net. That is a lot more than you get outside the UK shores.

It does seem as if the greatest genius of quote a lot of these 'city talents' seems to have been for fraud on fabulous scale. And they are going to take us poor sods down with them.
I think the phrase 'too good to be true' should have rung some bells for the likes of Nicola Horlick, surely? I thought that was what they got paid their zillions for.

devout, 'fraud on a fabulous scale'? I don't doubt that the financial services authority will bring a few individuals to book, but erm, I think you are moving into dailymail hyperbole here.

You are right that it is an ephemeral industry with large peaks and troughs. And they are paid a lot because their jobs could disappear tomorrow - as many will in this debacle. But not all and not in the numbers you are hoping because there is still a lot of very solid business around.

"It is not a given that a disruptive home environment must lead to a bleak adulthood"

No - it's not a given, but it does make a huge difference.

To a very great extent we're all a product of the intellectual and social environments we grow up in.

I've worked in some really rough schools where I've found it HUGELY frustrating having to deal with children who simply don't want to be educated, even though the classrooms, the books and the willing teachers are there ready for them. I've often thought that 'There are millions of children around the world who'd kill for the opportunities that you're throwing away'. I remember working with a supply teacher from South Africa who had taught in Soweto. She was shocked to the core that the working class English children she came into contact with at the school had so little interest in bettering themselves educationally.

But the fact is that those children can't help the way they think. They come from social backgrounds where there is no respect for or understanding of the value of learning for its own sake. There are too many people from these backgrounds who are like KatieDD - they value money above all else. They encourage their children to think of the quickest and easiest route to a reasonable standard of living - ie a roof over their head, a stable income and enough money for beer, fags and consumer durables. For most of these kids that means having children young, getting council/housing association accomodation, signing on and doing a bit of cash in hand work on the side. They don't value education for its own sake, as being something that gives you a richer emotional and intellectual life, and as something that helps equip you for parenting your own children.

But I don't blame children for thinking this way - their attitudes are a reflection of what they see and hear at home and most of them really don't know any better until it's too late.

gabygirl, I agree with all you just wrote. But I wonder, I wonder. Doesn't the benefits system, whilst acting as a valuable safety net for more wellmeaning households, end up colluding the lifestyle of these long term unemployed households?

In societies where there is no such safety net, people are a lot more motivated to 'find' their willpower and ambition to break out of poverty because starving is the only other alternative.

There is no easy answer.

Yes - I have pondered this one often. Agree with you that the welfare state demotivates the least well-paid and well-educated when it comes to work.

But I don't want to live in a country where babies and children go hungry while other people are driving around in Porches.