to find it incredibly irritating when in certain circles school fees are talked about as if they are a necessity, not a choice?

[emkana]

Like Emma Thomson currently on the Women programme on BBC 4, or very often in the "Style" section of the Sunday Times.

Benefits are no way to live, I recieved £115 a week for myself and a newborn baby, I had to pay rent of £20 out of that as the housing benefit didn't cover it. It's hard to pay the bills, buy nappies, buy food and clothes out of the £95 that was left. I lived off biscuits for three weeks when I had to pay to have something repaired in the house. I breast fed so at least I didn't have to buy milk. Parents live like this every day. Our elderly often have to choose between eating and keeping warm.

Would that be that nobody starves to death in the UK then? Would that be that every child in the UK has access to education of some sort? I think so.

Yes of course there is poverty, in some cases extreme poverty in the UK but that is relative to standards in the UK.

vulnerable pensioners and people with mental illness and vulnerable people who are too proud to ask for help, do sometimes starve to death

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-362823/Pensioner-letterbox-starved-death.html

archive.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/2005/6/22/9237.html

I don't know. But there are pensioners and children and hospital patients who do. And there are 400,000 people homeless, and, according to Oxfam, 7.5 million adults of working age living in poverty.

When you get past access to the basics, surely each family, though, will have a different view of necessity.

In mine we consider a car a necessity because we live in the sticks. I'd probably say we need one to get to school and work. And yet, we could if we had to, get up at six and walk.We could ignore the weather and the lack of footpath. Children do in the developing world, of course.But as things stand, today, in our household a car is a necessity.

It cannot be absolute. Even in the developing world where the basics are not taken care of, differing families prioritise different things as is their absolute perogative.

Dont be silly Litchick- that is a teenage response- apparently

No, no, but if you have a roof over your head and enough money to scrape together to eat biscuits for three weeks you should be grateful. Who cares if you can't really afford heating - wear a jumper and be grateful you have a jumper.

Agree, necessities are subjective.
For us, making sure that our children receive the best education that we can afford is necessity.
There were times when Jimmy's were a necessity for moi however those are in my glorious past.
I do not care for the 'foreign holidays' as have globe trotted for couple of decades and quite frankly, rather bored with it all. My children and my family are my priorities and I will do whatever it takes to make sure our necessities are met. Top of the list - education for my children.
As I said, very subjective matter.
I do not care one iota if others agree with it. This is my life and my choices and only I can decide what is a necessity for me.

As far as true poverty is concerned, UK has none. I spent a long time in SE Asia and Far East and did a lot of voluntary work with local orphanages, I have seen the real poverty. Sickening and terrifying poverty that is million miles away from anything in developed world.

I think if you want to accuse any group of parents of undermining the state school system it might be better to pick on the feckless broken families whose children disrupt classrooms and soak up teacher time.

Interesting. "Feckless broken families"

Would you include myself in that category, as a single parent?

This is like a Surrey dinner party:

" I mean, if they smoked a bit less they might be able to afford the fees at a lesser fee-paying school and occasionally holiday in Italy,"

I don't know, MadameD. Are you feckless?

I've just spent the morning helping a child in our primary school (which both my children attended, and of which my husband is a governor). I think I could probably spend a long time describing just how screwed up his parents (together as far as I know)have been and what the consequences have been for him, his teachers and the other children in his class.

He is bright and imaginative. It's not his fault but he is disrupting a lot of other children.

At the same time a friend of my daughter's (incidentally the child of a single mother) has just won a major academic scholarship for the senior part of their private school.

So you tell me which family is undermining the education system? The virtuous state-school user or the private school-user?

that was for Quattro, by the way....

Then I suggest you re-examine your throw away comment of feckless broken families. Clearly not all separated families are "feckless" nor all "feckless" families broken. Or is this some well-defined sociological term I have yet to come across?

It is neither helpful nor accurate, and using perjorative headline terms to describe people is both lazy and offensive.

Nope. I'm not retracting a single word. Feckless broken families are the cause of a lot of the problems in state schools that drive people into independent schools. I suspect you are interpreting 'broken' in a way that I am not, incidentally.

This is what I mean by broken: the boy from a family (married, incidentally) who sexually assaulted my daughter in year one of our (very good) state primary. They were both six. The father beats up the mother. The mother is actually nice but terrified of the father. The grandfather is in prison.

One brother is now in prison. This boy will be following shortly, I'd imagine. He already has an asbo.

And sorry as I am for them all I am very relieved that we have now moved our children at secondary school stage.

What does Sky cost (doesnt have it and dd1 at state school = go on foreign holidays occasionally )?

Just always wonder when people go on about they say they're poor but they have Sky

Sky I believe is about £50 a month, but being blunt it's the least of a low income families worries, we have plenty in our family and what they spend on take away's, junk food, ready meals, pop etc would take your breath away.
I'm not even mentioning fags because if I had 4 children under 5 i'd smoke too.

LOL. We are a "feckless broken family". The DSSs are both at state schools. We are very much hoping to move them to private schools soon as they are just too clever, well-behaved, hard-working and high-achieving for their current school. Oh, and DP is on the board of the parents' association and a class rep...

Doesn't sound very broken to me. Where are the ASBOs? The convictions? The hospitalisations.

That's what 'broken' is. Bust up. Damaged. It doesn't mean you've been married before or that you're single.

Unless you're a Daily Mail columnist.

Message withdrawn

Are there no fucked up kids in private schools then?

Sorry - he was at St Paul's , not Westminster.