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.

Gabygirl, I think you will always get the odd Porsche or two, whichever system you subscribe to. No one wants babies and children to go hungry but the flipside is that they become meal tickets rather than seen as responsibilities that are not entered into lightly ie 'mouths to feed' v. 'bringer of more benefits'.

Not only do benefits become an incentive to certain sections of the population to have more, rather than fewer, children, this lifestyle becomes perpetrated through the generations in the children that are brought into the world for this purpose.

I do appreciate that only a (small?) part of people on benefits see things in this way but their numbers are growing and can only grow for the reasons I have described.

Yes, a tough one. It would also break my heart to see a young person, with all to live for, choose benefits over education and hard work.

Exactly blueshoes, that is almost as bad as a baby going without IMO.

Blueshoes, if a welfare system means that babies are seen as a meal ticket and that unwanted babies are brought into the world, how come the Scandinavian countries with their highly developed welfare system have not got the same problems with teenage pregnancies as the UK?

KatieDD, yes, a thought: is it better for a baby to be born into a world to be neglected and undernourished emotionally and intellectually or not to be born at all?

Food for thought. But I stray from the OP!

cory, I would be interested to know the answer. Off to grill my Swedish aupair when I get home as to how their system works. I am sure there is an underbelly to their society as well. I remain open and enquiring.

You can be born into the world anything at all, goodness knows at this time of the year we're all reminded of that, what you do from the age of 16 really is what counts and shapes your future.

Off the topic totally, but dh is working on a mansion house atm, belonging to a bass player from a famous 80's group. He's a digger driver so he's been digging trenches to lay electric cables through for their electric gates. Apparently the house is HUGE and everything in it is antique, they eat off 17th century plates, they sit on oak furniture that belonged to some regency family in the 17th century, their worktops are pure marble etc etc. But the guy who owns it actually lives in America with his wife, they have 3 grown-up kids. They use this house as a holiday home.

My dh is going to lose his job in Feb/March and then we'll be struggling to pay the rent on our tiny house. Sometimes we are reminded in the most callous of ways, about how unfair life can be.

blueshoes on Mon 15-Dec-08 13:41:10
"cory, I woul be interested to know the answer. Off to grill my Swedish aupair when I get home as to how their system works. I am sure there is an underbelly to their society as well. I remain open and enquiring. "

You can grill me

There is an underbelly, but less so than in the UK and traditionally this does not include teenage pregnancies.

The reason seems to be that most Swedish teenagers expect to have fun! Tying yourself down with a baby is hampering if you have any hope at all of a happy carefree adolescence. They also expect to find work eventually. I think it is very rare to find whole areas where people haven't worked for generations.

There is less feeling of hopelessness, of 'oh people like us are never going to get anywhere anyway'. Society is far less divided, there is much less of a gap between the very rich and the poor, because salaries tend not to be very high for anyone. Most people attend the same schools (there have been recent openings of private secondaries, but these are not necessarily high status or thought to provide a better education)- so there is very little of the feeling that some people have a better chance than me.

afaik there has been a very slight rise in teenage pregnancies in later years, but this is accounted for by the influx of immigrants from a culture where earlier marriages are the norm.

children don;t pay council tax or rarely income tax etc - they still get government money in the form of school funding, travel etc.

Taxes and benefits aren't meant to be a net zero gain. You are meant to give what is legally required and receive what you need

YABVU - You choose to send your child to a school out of the area, you need to accept that you will need to fund her transport there and back. Not rocket science

cory, are you Swedish? Sorry I did not think to ask you.

What you describe sounds right, in my very limited understanding of the Swedish system. My teenage aupair describes a family background that would be considered working class in UK standards but her values are very close to middle-class, which I thought a good thing. She describes going to a state school which pretty much everyone in her area would attend. She is educated to a high standard (3 languages) in what would be a comprehensive in UK terms.

Definitely a lot of focus on her and her friends on having fun as adolescents. But a slightly disturbing lack of ambition on the part of a few of her friends in that they do not know what they want to do with their lives - but can't read much into that. She never mentions early pregnancy! It is not on their radar at all.

"I think it is very rare to find whole areas where people haven't worked for generations." Reading mn, I know that benefits are not generous. So why in UK would generations of people choose benefits as a lifestyle, but not in Sweden? Family enviroment seems key to instilling some form of hope and ambition for the future. But what does Sweden have (with its benefits system) which manages to avoid generational reliance on benefits?

Oh, don't you think 50billion dollars in one scheme alone is pretty large? I think 'fabulous' is possibly the least hyperbolic adjective I could have come up with, actually.

"cory, are you Swedish?"
I am. Now living in the UK, but in close contact with friends and family.

"She describes going to a state school which pretty much everyone in her area would attend. She is educated to a high standard (3 languages) in what would be a comprehensive in UK terms."

My own background and in my day that would have been the background of pretty well everyone.

"Definitely a lot of focus on her and her friends on having fun as adolescents. But a slightly disturbing lack of ambition on the part of a few of her friends in that they do not know what they want to do with their lives - but can't read much into that."

Less pressure on them, I imagine. Less of a sense of 'it is extremely important to get to a good university and do well in life'. All the old universities are pretty much the same, in terms of quality, and there is only so much you can aspire to- the differences between middle and working class are comparatively slight. And people generally seem to care less about getting to the top. So many of the good things in life, and what most people really care about, are free there: everybody has access to the sea and the countryside.

"She never mentions early pregnancy! It is not on their radar at all."

It isn't. Only teenager I ever knew to get pregnant was the daughter of the local Bapist pastor, who went on an exchange year to the States and came back pregnant. Highly unusual and put down to a combination of innocence due to upbringing and the different atmosphere of an American High School.

"So why in UK would generations of people choose benefits as a lifestyle, but not in Sweden? Family enviroment seems key to instilling some form of hope and ambition for the future. But what does Sweden have (with its benefits system) which manages to avoid generational reliance on benefits?"

I think because in Sweden they tend to think that the government will provide- in terms of jobs that you can actually live on. And there is not the same feeling that middle class people have to be better at understanding things or better at childrearing or that middle class standards are better than working class standards in any way: it simply wouldn't occur to a Swede to think that way. I think the low esteem in which the lower class is held in this country can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

devout, the phrase 'too good to be true' would also ring true for Joe Bloggs who took out mortgages and loans they had no means of repaying. 50 billion is to save Joe Bloggs and other ordinary taxpayers (individuals and businesses) who will get caught short should the UK and global banking system collapse because of a catastrophic loss of confidence. Hindsight is 20-20, eh?

cory: "I think because in Sweden they tend to think that the government will provide- in terms of jobs that you can actually live on. And there is not the same feeling that middle class people have to be better at understanding things or better at childrearing or that middle class standards are better than working class standards in any way: it simply wouldn't occur to a Swede to think that way. I think the low esteem in which the lower class is held in this country can become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

There is a lot of sense in people seeing that they can get jobs that they could realistically support a family on, rather than minimum wage jobs that people supplement with cash on the side or tinkering with the unfathomable tax credits system. After typing my post, I began to get an inkling that it is the historical class system in the UK which was somehow at the bottom of this. Coming from a country where the class system does not exist, I would agree with your statement that the lack of ambition, so incomprehensible in my mindset, is a function of lack of pride and self-esteem to better yourself, in a small but significant section of the underclass.

It seems to me amazing that advisers at job centres (I have read it on mn) would advise people not to take up jobs if the jobs would bring in the same as the amount they were getting in benefits. Surely, working is the norm (bringing with it ambition, a chance at promotion, a discipline, role modelling), rather than being on benefits. To see it in purely monetary terms is a sad indictment of how entrenched benefits as a lifestyle is in certain deprived areas.

Blueshoes, er, have you heard the news /read the papers over the last couple of days at all?

(b fraud

Km fraud

bollocky links

Here:

(b fraud

Kb fraud

fraud

fraud

Fair enough, devout, I see what you are referring to now. Fraud is not unique to people in the City and similar sorts of shady dealings have been around for as long as the FSA, SEC and other financial regulatory bodies have been around and much earlier. 50 billion is no small beer and no doubt got to that scale because of the individuals' greater access to funds and ability to manipulate financial systems.

Not quite sure where the thread has gone but in general most people who work very hard and smart end up doing better than most people who don't and most of us don't have disabled childrne so it's a bit of a red herring to go off on a tack about those as we're talking about most people in general. there will always be exception but on the whole those who go to private schools tend to do better which is why 50%+ of parents would pay if they had the money.

As for whether people can pull themselves out of poverty and make something (my daughter's just finished reading Ugly a book I leant her about a lady who was very poor and became a barrister/judge -she pulled herself out of nothing). Obviously we all know that's it's more likely someone like I am who went to a fee paying school will do better than say my mother who was from a very poor home but pulled herslf out of poverty but people do slip back into proverty as well as up the social scale in this country. It's a very interesting issue to study.

What I would like is more women feeling empowered rather than beaten down, thinking how can I go out and today earn £X. Can I take an extra job, work 5am to 7am, set up a business. Thank goodness this labour Government has its new work for benefits plans though because if you're going to have to do pretty low grade work to get £80 a week yo might just decide to set up a business as a cleaner and earn £100 a week rather than stay on benefits. Whether they will follow through with it however remains to be seen and obviously they are making some exceptions and phasing it in.

As for whether bankers have been clever they may have been much cleverer than people give them credit for. If you make money by commission and buying assets at low value surely nothing suits some of them better than very up and down markets. There are huge profits to be made at the moment. Instability can be an opportunity as well as a threat.

not trawled all the way through 9 pages but in answer to op , you are ^choosing" to send your child there although I'm sure there are perfectly reasonable alternatives education worse closer, both state and private. A theatre school is hardly the be all and end all, many successful dancers, singers, actors have done ok without. Our LEA won't even pay one off costs for Educational Psychologist assessments for children at private school who may have learning issues.

"thinking how can I go out and today earn £X. Can I take an extra job, work 5am to 7am"

Yes - I know people who do this. Cleaning jobs before their children start school. Night shifts, weekend working. Most of them are seriously depressed and many have poor health. Their children are in crappy nurseries (lots of those round our way) or farmed out to relatives who themselves aren't always in a position to care for them properly.

And they're still poor because even though they work a lot the hourly rate is so poor they don't have a very big pay packet at the end of the week.

some of us need sleep you know!
Studies have shown that social mobility in this country is at a standstill and has been for some time. I think I'd prefer the Swedish system but I imagine the very rich in this country would start whinging and complaining about social equality.

Xenia you say "What I would like is more women feeling empowered rather than beaten down, thinking how can I go out and today earn £X". Whereas what I would like is more women feeling empowered to have rewarding and useful lives. That could mean volunteering, it could mean working hard at a career that does not pay well but is rewarding in other ways. Why does it have to evolve around money and a certain type of status?

Maybe I am biased because of my choice of career before DS - I was a museum curator, which requires a huge commitment in terms of qualifications and volunteer experience before you even begin - but many people would not find the kind of financially rewarding work you advocate stimulating. I used to work for a bank and could have earned a lot more had I stayed there, but TBH it bored me and I chose to put my energies into a career that will never pay well, but which satisfies a part of me. Can you see what I am saying?

You make a choice and live with consequensed but not then think it unfait others have more.