Live webchat with David Cameron - this Thursday 19th, 1.45 pm

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello all - David Cameron is coming on to Mumsnet to answer your questions this Thursday at 1.45-2.45. Please post advance questions here if you can't make it on Thursday. (And please read our Webchat guidelines above before posting ie only one question each). Many thanks.

So many questions, really.

Seconding everyone who asked about provision for Children's/Family Centres. Can you promise to continue funding and supporting them if you come to power? They are already proving to be vital resources in deprived areas, and are often used as centres for breastfeeding and new parent support too.

Dear Mr Cameron,

I would like to know a bit more about your party's plans for supporting families with young children.
Tha current government is considering to abolish childcare vouchers, which would incidentally increase the amount of child and working tax credit tax-payers are entitled to.
Is it true that the Tories would scrap child and working tax credit, which would hit working families with young children again?

Thanks a for your answer,
a (part-time) working mother

Dear Mr. Cameron,

My question is about breastfeeding. I had a good experience with breastfeeding and was able to breastfeed my twins successfully. This was in part due to luck, coupled with an absolute determination that I would succeed but mainly I think down to the helpful advice and support that I was given by the nurses and midwives at my hospital, which is on the path to UNICEF UK Baby-Friendly accredition. However, the majority of my friends who?ve had babies recently didn?t get that support, and consequently ended up formula feeding, mainly against their wishes and many months on many still harbour feelings of failure and guilt. I was really pleased to see that the Conservative MP Maria Miller expressed an interest in this issue. So my question is: How would the Conservative party help ensure women get proper breastfeeding support like that provided by my hospital which is using the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative standards?

Many thanks!

Hi Mr Cameron
According to Wikipedia, your personal wealth is around £30 million. What IS your personal wealth and George Osbourne's ? Thank you

Mr Cameron,
Following the Badman report and the wholesale adoption of it by the government without any or adequate consultation, and despite strong opposition and research disputing the validity of Mr Badman's report and warning against the removing the parent's duty to educate children and placing it on the state, what does your party intend to do to safeguard the right of children to home education, and in particular to autonomous education?

Should I be permitted a further question, my second question is, would you agree that children should have a right to flexible education at schools as they are entitled to school placements anyway [and their parents still have to make tax payments even though the children are home schooled], and that the choice should not be 'either in school or out of school'; and how do you intend to ensure that children can access their schools.

Thank you.

Do you agree a wage of £64,766 is a reasonable income for an MP.

Have you ever experienced life with a combined family income of £40,000.

Of course, after tax and national insurance roughly £30,000 will find its way into our bank account.

With the average house price £224,064 and a repayment mortgage of £600 per month we can take another £7200 off.

So we have £22800 left.

We can take another £1200 off for gas and electricity leaving £21600.

Average food bills for the year leave you with £13800.

We can take another £2000 off for travel costs which will leave £11800.

Lets take off insurance and essential maintenance costs which will easily leave £10000.

We haven't included a holiday.

Now lets take off some child care.

So now we're left with about £100 extra per week to pay for clothes, shoes, equipment anything extra.

(And I haven't considered Christmas)

Do you really think that £40,000 joint income is the limit which should be set.

Do the Conservative Party consider a family earning £40,000 combined income to be wealthy?

How will you be supporting the modern family set up which includes single parents and step families as well as the traditional family which you are so in favour of?

'But what about that figure of £30million? It emerged some two years ago - from Philip Beresford himself. Here is what he said: 'I put the combined family wealth of David and Samantha Cameron at £30million plus. But the key phrase is "family wealth".'
As he explained yesterday: 'That calculation has been coming back to haunt me ever since I made it. It does not refer to David and Samantha Cameron alone. It refers to the considerable wealth of their wider families.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1191155/Claims-David-Cameron-30m-fortune-sit-uneasily-taxpayers-So- truth-money.html#ixzz0XJKWMcQM

A question for David Cameron...
It has just been announced that all under 5s will be offered the vaccine. My question is, would you let your children have the swine flu vaccine? I have a three year old and am very worried about whether the vaccine has been sufficiently tested. However, we keep reading that under 5s can end up in hospital when they have swine flu.

Hello David

WRT your plan to allow schools to opt-out of local authority control:

Will groups of individual parents be able to form breakaway schools - or will all stakeholders need to make a unanimous or majority decision to opt out?

If the former, what will happen to the children left behind in a failing and now underfunded school?

are you going to encourage private companies to run schools for profit, via a management fee?

In order to pay such a management fee, the governing body will have to authorize cuts elsewhere. Where do you think these cuts should fall?

I second every word that bloodyright said!

My question is what the Conservatives would do to help rural communities?We have been very badly hit by the crises in farming,lack of affordable homes,lack of access to facilities,loss of post offices,shops,pubs,schools ect.
Thankyou-have to go back to work now.Will check in later.

What will you do to assist adults with learning disabilities into employment and further education? When they reach 19, they and their parents struggle to find college places and employment, as well as day to day advice and help.

Presently, by and large, when young people leave SEN schools at 19 it is almost as if they have had the best years of their lives.

What will you do to give them opportunities in life?

Hi Mr Cameron,

what do you think of the shocking hand ball incident last night, knocking the Irish out of the World Cup next year.

Is Thierry Henri a cheat?

Please answer Riven's question Mr Cameron

Another question that Mr Brown didn't answer:

I'm really concerned about the influence that the media has over events in our country. I think they are partly to blame for the way in which we went into recession, as all that was being reported was doom and gloom - and the forecast for more doom and gloom. Even when there were good news stories they managed to find negative ways of reporting on them.

I don't want a controlled press - I think the press should have freedom - but how do we deal with this undue influence?

What will you do, if you win the next election, about this?

Dear Mr Cameron

We know Sarah Brown treads on small pieces of Bionicles and Bakugan left on the floor in number 10, but what small toys left on the carpet in your house drive you mad?

I like to get a domestic picture of the people I vote for

Thanks

Dave,

Would you clear up the issues around you, George Osbourne and many of your cabinet, being toffs - Etonians, Bullingdon Club and enormous personal wealth etc.

It is easy to say that you are 'in touch' with real people but in all seriousness and in all realities, empathy is not a psychological process that comes naturally to human beings, despite protestations to the contrary. Indeed research suggests that people are more able and willing to empathise with those most similar to themselves - especially similarities in culture and living conditions. Research highlights that the empathiser's own emotional background may affect or distort what emotions they perceive in others (e.g. Goleman 1996).

It is therefore a very problematic claim that the Conservatives in their current state are able to empathise and service (?) all segments of society when they themselves are not represented by all segments of society.....................and indeed they are represented in the main by privileged and rich individuals, and thus, according to research on the psychological condition of empathy, they are actually UNABLE to empathise with poor and unprivileged members of society.

What would you say to this, Dave?

will you really abolish all quangos if yuo get in? What about good quangos?