Nick Clegg on Mumsnet this Thursday (16th Sept) evening between 8 and 9 pm

[JustineMumsnet]

We're delighted that the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, will be joining us for a webchat this Thursday evening 8 and 9pm.

Next week the Deputy PM will be joining other world leaders, celebrities and business leaders who are gathering in New York for the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit. He will be aiming for global action to reduce the shocking number of women who die during pregnancy and childbirth in the world's poorest countries.

Nick is happy to answer your questions on the UN summit as well as on his role as Deputy Prime Minster. Join us on Thursday evening or if you can't make it along then post your question (one each only please) here.

Thanks.

Hello Nick,

Does the government plan to continue funding for IVF treatments?

If so what assurances can it give that this public money will be spent within the NHS and not used to make fat cat private clinic owners even richer?

Dear Mr Clegg

Do the LibDems deserve the sense of betrayal they now claim, for having been too petrified ever to resolve the historic division between social liberals and economic liberals in their membership?

Does Nick Clegg think he should be honest to the public about what selling Royal Mail off to a private company really means for the public?

Does he honestly believe a private company would send a letter from Cornwall to remote Scotland for the price of a second class stamp?

Does he honestly believe a private firm would to continue to deliver to every household in the UK everyday? And collect from every postbox in the UK everyday?

Or does he envisge a system like that in America or Australia where mailboxes are introduced and the days of receving post to indivual addresses are gone

Nick

Do you consider it morally acceptable for the Government to take away Public Sector workers accrued rights in respect of redundancy and pension payments?

Thank you.

serin honestly, I am not being flippant but I think the answer to that would be no assurances at all, since the govt seems to believe the private sector is the answer to all our woes and the fat cats of which you speak are their old chums (MN, can we get a class war rant emoticon??)

what did Penelope say? was it rude?

I'm sure he's heard worse

Dear Nick Clegg,

I believe the reorganisation of the NHS is going to be extremely expensive and the costs significantly outweigh any benefits. Would the government be prepared to consider less radical measures that might achieve some of the same aims, for example, mandating the presence of GPs on the boards of PCTs?

Thank you.

PS when I say "I believe" it will be expensive I mean that I know it will.

Nick

Please see through just one of the promises that originally kicked off the welter of "I agree with Nick" placards - get Trident cancelled.

That'll save a bob or two for the welfare budget.

I think it was a reference to Nick's daft answer when some interviewer asked how many women he'd slept with. Think William Hague boasting about drinking 30 pints a day when he was on work experience on a beer wagon...

healthymums, sometimes expat charities spend lots of money focusing on creating beautiful clinics fully staffed in developing countries, which then stand empty because local women have a strong culture of homebirth, which is ignored. Energies and money would be better invested on making homebirth safer. A rise in C-section, for example, would be a disaster in the third world, and is another reason for the high US mortality rate (a third of US women give birth by C-section)

IN additinon, western-led clinics are a good base to peddle formula from, and once a baby is on formula its chance of dyin increases, in which case sometimes Plumpynut is given (the US and France are arguing over the patenting of Plumpynut right now, which is bascially a follow on formula for the third world. All this undermines breastfeeding, mothers, and babies' lives)

Sakura i planned a homebirth,the midwife couldnt be arrsed comming,she eventually turned up whe id already delivererd the baby.

moved like shit off a shovel then!!!!! although i was lucky,next time someone may not be.

Sakura plumpynuit is not just a follow on formula: plenty of small children who have been fed to a good age (as someone who is still feeding their 2.5 year old I do mean a good age!) have benefited from the product, it's a Very Good Thing.

I do agree thought that in order to make things work you have to work within the parameters of a country's culture (with exception for certain things- such as packing a cut umbilicus with mud).

Msyikes, You are right, I do not expect any assurances from him, I just need to see him squirm.

Will you be addressing the fact that in Australia, Aboriginal women are twice as likely as caucasian Australians to lose a child due to stillbrth?

Australia is not a poor country by any means but the disparity between the pre and post natal care recieved by the Indigenous women of the cuntry and that recieved by caucasian women is unsettling.

This is a country where Aboriginal people are still suffering from diseases which are all but wiped out in other developed contries...diseases which contribute to still births.

Oooh, kveta, ktory jezek mowis? (please don't make your answer too complicated, I'm just a beginner!)

Anemone - your question is closely related to my post as I said a similar-ish thing about birth outcomes in the USA. It's interesting to note that Australia is another Western country where birth care is heavily consultant-driven.

Nick, I must say that despite asking you questions on this thread I do have a jaded view of the effectiveness of politicians. Having met one of the Labour leaderships candidates earlier this year I very much got the impression that his remit was to do no more than to cover his arse by parroting the party line. I do hope that as Deputy PM you're able to exert more clout than that.

Just seen some questions about our payment of aid to African countries. To anyone who's interested, you could do worse than watch - a talk by Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan newspaper journalist who explains his increasingly popular viewpoint that aid should be abolished.

SpeedyGonzalez,
it is NOT a Good Thing when the US and France are arguing over the patenting of a product because of the sheer profit available from it.

WHat on earth is going on that children are weaned off breastmilk before the age of three in the third world?

It's in Plumpynut's interest to interfere with breastfeeding so that poor countries will have to rely on its product.

When I meant "follow-on-formula", I meant that extended breastfeeding is not being encouraged, to the detriment of the babies. Plumpynut cannot replace extended breastfeeding despite what the all the clever marketing tells you.

I agree with you SpeedyGonzalez, that aid should be abolished.
A lot of Aid is nothing more than dumping, which, yet again, benefits the rich countries (suprise suprise)

Food aid as dumping

Remember the much-publicized famine in Ethiopia during the 1980s? Many of us don?t realize that, during that famine, Ethiopia was exporting green beans to Europe.

?

But the deeper issue here has to do with the fact that food aid is not usually free. It is often loaned, albeit at a low interest rate. When the U.S. sent wheat to Indonesia during the 1999 crisis, it was a loan to be paid back over a twenty-five-year period. In this manner, food aid has helped the U.S. take over grain markets in India, Nigeria, Korea, and elsewhere

"Dumping food on to poorer nations (i.e. free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices) undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe"

"In the last 60 years or so, following the great human tragedy of the Bengal famine, food aid was conveniently used as a political weapon?

"? [S]ubsidies, tariffs and other trade policies eliminate the comparative advantage of other regions to maintain healthy economies in the developed world. ? The result of these First World subsidies [for export] are shattered Third World economies."

In other words, poverty in the third world is caused by rich north-western countries.

Hi Nick

Well done for braving Mumsnet.

In your opinion, will being part of the EU help the UK to beat the recession, or hinder it?

Also Nick can I maybe suggest you bring in a system that works out the benefit scroungers to the genuine benefit claims.

If a claimant says they have being searching for jobs, the job centre take that as gospel, you no longer have to write down your searches either so claimants can lie and will lie about it.

Since my last reply my husband has found work but he had to beg an agency to take him for full time work even suggest work trial for them. Luckily he has had his induction and should start Monday. He was the last one on the induction because it was full. Yes 5 turned up instead of 10. So claimants on JSA will say to JCP that they have applied but was unsuccessful then the job centre will just say ok thats fine and no more will be saaid but theyl get paid.

Now my question 5 is - sorry if too many questions but I thinks its relevant.

Can the job centre have a system where they look into people interviews and find out how they did and why they didn't get the job - then when the company say 'they were a no show'

The JCP should knock off money for them.

Maybe its me being dumb but why are people asking abouty American France and other countries Nick Clegg is the DPM for UK not USA? So why people asking?

Hi Nick - My question is this: why should remain a member of the party when I feel I have been betrayed by the coalition? None of the benefit cuts, not to mention the reorganization of the NHS should be done in my name.

BTW I was in a meeting last week when senior doctors expressed widespread panic at the privitisation by stealth of the NHS and the plans to get rid of PCTs etc - with a 49% quoted skills loss as a result - far more than the 15% widely accepted as an outcome of restructuring. Why does noone seemingly care about this?

/start tangent

speedy - nerozumim, nemluvim polski, jenom (trochu) cesky!! proc mluvite polski? (I don't have much in the way of language skillz :o)

/end tangent

Today's headline in The Times: "The Poor Must Accept the Cuts" Nick Clegg

How can he explain this remarkable about turn? How can anyone accept anything he says as being truthful?