"It may be better news for women... to look after their own children and fit jobs into the child's day"

[SleepWhenImDead]

So says Jill Kirby, director of the Conservative think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies in this BBC article.

Seriously, what planet is this lady on? She makes out like it's a NEW idea for women to either not to work or to work hours to limit the amount of childcare that's needed. Well done Jill, we'd never thought of that before you suggested it!

I'm going to be hard hit from these cuts to public sector, I'm currently on maternity leave but due to be made redundant anyway. The public sector is the place I'd need to get a job, and get child-friendly hours. DOes this Jill think we get to CHOOSE these things, like a job is something you do for fun to avoid looking after your own children?! Think I might as well give up even hoping for a job and soon we'll lose our child benefit as well. I'm attacked on all directions!

Good god am completely Am so shocked that can think of nothing constructive to add. I dont even know where to start.

I simply don't understand why you don't all have a second earner like my dh, who generates revenue without effort*. Surely everyone should marry someone who used to earn a good wage and has a rental income, but now is chronically ill and wheelchair bound? Are you just plain stupid?

(I'm joking - OBVIOUSLY).

And we did pay for childcare before ds was school age, as dh is simply not able to look after him all day every day. The trick here would have been to have attracted someone somehow unable to get a job outside the home but well enough to be a full time SAHP. Maybe a convict? Ageing porn star? Will have to think on.

In fairness to Nigella, Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall makes similar comments about seeing the kitchen as the heart of the home.

The idea that women work for childcare is just illogical. You might work for a number of years at zero profit, in order to maintain a career, but that is hardly the same thing. It's akin to a business taking a loss leader.

• actually renting out his flat takes some effort, but I do all that.

It's worth noting that before Jill Kirby worked for the CPS, she was Chair of a conservative pressure group called...."Full Time Mothers". Oliver James is one of their patrons (hmm).

An ambulance driver might not directly generate revenue, but it's a tough and difficult job with a real social benefit. And if the ambulancewoman is patching people up, getting them to hospital and saving lives, she's indirectly generating revenue by ensuring people are well and alive enough to get back to work and pay tax!

tribpot - WHY didn't I think of that?! Maybe you should take that idea to the think tank?

Though, will you be allowed a rental income for much longer, or will we have to donate such funds to the Big Society. Y'know, for the schools we all have to set up and suchlike.

Oliver James uses quack psychology to try guilt working mums out.whist making nice wee earner from sales.James, Biddulph et al all peddle badly written quasi-science as if factual

Indeed some do, Tribpot, but in my case I appear to have been doing working to pay for childcare and transport to work costs inadvertently for at least 10 out of the 20 years I have been working, because each time I get it sorted, the goal posts move in some way.

I cannot begin to express how bitter I feel about this.

However thanks to MN I know I am not alone.

It also affects my grammar, the stress of it all.

BTW everyone, think tank people are not paid to think for all of us. They are paid to think for their friends. Academics are paid to think for all, and do it more systematically with more homework behind it.

surely also the non-generating revenue workers are directly affecting it as if they're working they're going to have more spending power (albeit very little in most jobs) to spend on things which incur vat and/or keep those that are directly generating revenue in business?

As the old saying goes - they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The audio recording linked earlier up, doesn't work for me. Has it been removed?

I am so glad there is a thread about this bonkers woman. I heard her on the Today Programme on Monday, nearly spat my toast out. I was completely astonished that the BBC was interviewing her like she was a serious person. I suppose they have to make a bit of an effort to let the Tory right come on now and again or the Govt will hack more off their budget next year.

As for the chick lit woman I keep seeing her everywhere. Hope she gets writers block.

Just had a good idea to cut the deficit - get rid of the think tanks. I mean, they don't actually generate any revenue.

Surely she'd be more use to society at home...

I will never read another Louise Bagshawe again (not that I ever did, honest - I read clever things by Proust - who, incedentally, never worked either)

Gah, incidentally.

"in my case I appear to have been doing working to pay for childcare and transport to work costs inadvertently for at least 10 out of the 20 years I have been working, because each time I get it sorted, the goal posts move in some way.

I cannot begin to express how bitter I feel about this."

BoffinMum - if you feel that bitter, why did you have four DC?

I heard that woman too and have been quietly steaming up every time I've remembered it since. The country is obviously going down the toilet, but I can't tell you how much it's cheered me up to find that there are lots of you saying exactly what I've been thinking.

Erm, why don't we form a mumsnet party and stand for government? (I know it might need some kind of cyber-constituency but maybe that would save money, or be part of the big society, or something. I mean, we could just abolish parliament, which is a bit of a waste of public money and as we all know horribly underpaid, and let the girls do all that soft public service stuff while all those big strong men in suits manage hedge funds, which is obviously much more important).

I'd get irate about this but it's the Tories. It's exactly what I expected if they got in. Did people think they'd support anyone who wasn't 'one of their own'? Really???

And attacking the poor, the weak, the vulnerable? Not typical Tory policies at all...oh wait, no, they are.

This woman is typical of the kind of pillock you'll have spouting nonsense about a variety of issues whilst real people, like many of the mums on this site, tear their hair out figuring out how to feed the kids and keep the roof over their heads.

People like Riven will have their lives made even more difficult because they're not part of a substantial demographic. Picking at the edges and undermining the vulnerable is surely much easier than tackling real problems like crime, inadequate housing and schooling, bankers bonuses and corrupt politicians.

The Big Society my arse. We're all in this together, unless you're rich of course, in which case you can surf across the bodies of the poorer working and non-working classes. Don't worry if a few million of them get squashed underfoot. That'll just help the economy in the long run.

God I hate the Tories. Thatcher was evil but this bugger with his labour legacy of debt will have us all wearing cloth caps and cowtowing to the hoipolloi.

And women, you'd better learn your places now, cos there'll be no such thing as equality by the time dodgy Dave has had his way with this country.

Rant over....

What about men??
Don't men have children??
Desmond Morris says that a child needs a mother...but that it doesn't neccessarily have to be a woman!
Where are the men?
Why the fuck do we always have to bear the brunt (and the blame) for every fucking thing.

At least Thatcher wasn't dressing up the evil as much as this government. I agree it's par for the course, but what a course!

My job is a non-job. I work with teenagers with serious life-long communication difficulties e.g. autism, those requiring communication devices etc. A good number of our recent cohort got GCSEs A-C, but hey, the work we did to get them from nonverbal to attaining in exams didn't generate any revenue..

Except, y'know, they might one day get jobs now.. as opposed to being placed in residential care homes or hidden away in their family homes as used to happen to kids like these. But wouldn't it be so much better if they didn't need to be valued as part of society at all? If they could be kept behind locked doors taken care of by family with no state intervention required?

And what about those of us whose work creates jobs? As an early stage investor, I help create new companies and jobs - or do only those jobs given to men count?

Gahhhh. [hangry]

northernrock

Of course men don't have children
They have important jobs
And they are very clever and good at inventing things and doing sums and stuff
But they need looking after at home as all the being clever wears them out the poor loves.

Children are entirely a product of female unnecessaryness, and therefore are entirely the responsibility of females. Women are lovely and nurturing and therefore good at looking after the men and the babies, and really they haven't evolved much past that, bless them.

When times are good they can do fluffy woolly little jobs that are invented for them to do as a hobby, but when times are bad they simply must step aside and give the jobs to the people who need and deserve them, the men.

It's all very obvious when you think about it.

The working mother, employing childcare, cleaners, convenience shopping and supporting the shoe and handbag market rather than sitting at home growing her own vegetables and being self sufficient is a concrete demonstration of the multiplier effect that employment has on the economy and is fundamental to our capitalist society.

off to buy a book on economics to send to Ms Kirby

Oh ISNT.
I suppose when you put it like that it is completely obvious. I won't worry my pretty little head about it anymore.
Pass the Gin.

Boffin, sympathies of course. Significantly more loss than leader :(

As to paramedics not being revenue-generating, I don't get this at all. As well as people being alive as a result of their action, a trust gets to bill a PCT for the care episode. In one sense this only moves money around inside the NHS but so does virtually every other care episode. The government do not, to my knowledge, wish to revise this commercial model (in England) and thus accept its validity?

What I would really like is National Parents Week. Where for one week, the press were forced to substitute the word 'mother' (and 'father') with parent. Just to see how the text would read as a result. Who would publish a title "Working Fathers Told Redundancy Good For Them"? No-one. Who would publish "Working Parents Told Redundancy Good For Them"? Some, but only if they were allowed to imply in the text it was mothers!

I don't get the obsession with revenue-generating. Surely it is obvious that not all jobs can be revenue generating. Being Prime Minister doesn't make money for the country, does it? Neither does being chief dick Director of a think tank.