I'm hoping there's already a thread on the SAHM writing about CB cuts in Saturday's Grauniad (money section), but in case there isn't...

[kveta]

please someone come and talk about it here! this one

DH and I were both spluttering all the way through this, and found our hearts didn't bleed too much.

Did anyone else read it and weep?

The Guardian is a middle-class paper aimed at middle-class readership: a lot of its readers will recognise this woman's money problems and be sympathetic to them. To be honest, if I were married to a surgeon and had only two children, I would hope that we would be able to afford a few of the small luxuries that she mentions. She does say that she is relatively well off but not profligate and she admits she will find it difficult to take a hit of #1,700 pa. Ultimately she is not rich and CB makes a difference to her family's standard of living.

ooh, motherinferior - who was it by then?

and can I just say I lurve the family section even if it's not always totally readable. :o

also, there was a much better piece here on removal of CB from SAHMs.

you know what gets me a lot

is why can't the papers see past the SAHM thing. How about single mothers? Or mothers who never got a penny out of their ex partners who buggered off and now need that child benefit to make their books balance?

Surely this sort of thing hits them even harder as they don't have the luxury of even thinking about adding more income by a partner taking on more work iyswim

lol kveta, please do that.

Look at the byline : it's by Sarah Hall. Says so at the top.

but isn't sarah hall also the woman in the article ?

Ah, in that case either I am talking utter rubbish (this happens quite a lot ) OR - and this is the story I personally am going to stick to, in a desperate attempt to save face - she was at the Guardian (because there was a hack at the Guardian called Sarah Hall) and is now not at the Guardian but easy to get hold of to tell her sob story.

A few facts to put right here

1st it was in money not family

2nd she is not a sahm she is working as she refered to their joint income being higher than someone just over the HRT but they will still get CB right at the end.

3rd - It was a pointless peiece and irritating and the ususal load of misleading blether, giving one impression, with the salient facts tucked away in the last para ie. the fact they are not losing CB and her single parent friend with income just over the threshold is which is unfair etc.(when anyone with any sense would stop reading after first couple of paras!) - lazy misleading writing.

There have actually been a few quite interesting articles in the guardian this last week on the CB issue. This one in Money (though it did read like a Guardian Family piece, very much so) was the worst. But they have got some other, better pieces tucked away in their comments pages.

I love the Family Guardian section, but every few weeks it makes me scream and throw it across the room. mostly for this sort of Boden-bilge.

bigmouth - the paragraph at the end was by a different person who wanted to remain anonymous, and I did say it's in the money section in the thread title :) but I do love the family section regardless!

sorry I have fucked up there with my recollection of the printed article!

I was sure she waas still working doh! what a spanner and a lazy reader

forgive my intrusion [gets coat]

I like the first line though: "It isn't often that George Osborne feels me with despair". Does he normally feel you with elation then?
[childish emoticon]

I get f'd off with articles in the family section every other week and with this article I thought I was reading the family section for a while all v confuzzling... still buy the paper though so who is the mug?

This kind of SHIT is why I don't read the Guardian any more (despite being slap bang in their demographic).

I just despair.

Perhaps George Osborne fills her with
hope (unlikely)
simmering sexual tension (he's a niche interest)
happy thoughts about his family's £4bn wallpaper empire? I find this most likely

It isn't often that even George Osborne feels me with despair

LOL at the first line. Good typo. How does he normally feel you then?

Will read the rest of the article now.

Yes, "Boden bilge" sums it up pretty well.

It's unbelievable. Why do the Guardian keep printing this kind of crap?

She used to work for them full-time so I guess a nice bit of freelance income will help re-instate those jazz dance sessions...

Hmm, I am in two minds.

On the one side, we are in a similar situation in that we have less money coming in than we had a year or two ago and we have had to cut back on non-essentials to make up the shortfall (as I cannot work). It is a pain when you are used to a certain amount of money coming in and that drops as you get used to the higher amount and plan your outgoings around it.

Still, I would never moan about it in the national press or complain about not having a cleaner as a SAHM.

And there are sure to be better examples of why the change in CB is unfair than this one.

camerondiazepam, I got annoyed at the "feels me with despair" bit, too (tho' wonder if the Grauniad subs put that in there? ).

The opening with such heavily emotive language - "depair"? - didn't seem borne out by the rest of the article. She's not despairing; she's writing about some really practical things she and her family have done, and she should be pleased. She sounded quite pleased at the end, anyway, viz: "I want my children to be brought up knowing the value of things. Luckily, they are young enough to be entertained for nothing: racing round the park; hunting for conkers; looking for big sticks."

Why does everything have to be about "despair" to be important? Her famiyl have made important changes, yes, and some of those are uncomfortable changes. Yet let's save "despair" for situations without hope!

This article is frankly hilarious ...

She's
"Abandoning the repayment part of our mortgage"
but paying for
"ballet lessons for my daughter"

Love the priorities of the English middle class. Don't worry about paying for the house but darling daughter must have her ballet lessons

Zero sympathy. She's a financially illiterate twit.

I know, and that's hardship!!
It's they way she sets some of these things up as symptoms of poverty, however relative.
I just htink fuck off darling, people have been growing veg for millennia, and you've just discovered that it saves money?!

Loving the down grading to sainsbury's!

Lalalonglegs-

I would think that The Guardian would be a left-leaning paper for all, not just just the middle classes?

LOL at Bodenbilge.

What I love about the writer and indeed folk like this in RL is how she spins it so all her economies are for the best in the end, and will be a valuable lesson to her children, when you can feel that deep down she is gutted.

I too got confused by the typo in the first line. At first I thought George Osbourne was feeling her up or something, and I think that's highly inappropriate, but then I found out that he was feeling her with despair, which got me even more confused. WHy George? Why?

I him with despair, as in, I think he's barking (have been ranting about him putting the UKLA under the Department for Trade and Industry all morning - it's supposed to be a REGULATOR FFS, and it's not so hot on that right now, imagine if it's not under a regulatory body?!) but anyway.