cuts - Wednesday's Spending Review

[mrsbaldwin]

Brace yourself ladies - these cuts are big, there will be tens of thousands of public sector redundancies and it's said (by the Fawcett Society amongst others) that they will disproportionately affect women.

Some workers will get some sort of payoff, and some will be pleased to go. Some will find new jobs.

But I reckon the overall effect (licks finger and holds it in the wind) will be to drive down women's wages, meaning that once you are made redundant from your public sector post you may find more work but it will be at a lower rate and the extra competition for jobs across the board will drive wages down across the board. This may be true for men as well but I think it will affect women - mums - more.

If you are watching the press coverage on Weds, what do you think the effects of the cuts and the job losses for women (and mums) will be?

Let's just hope the book is well received, more commissioned and you can employ 2 nurses on a rota and turn the heating on!

There's a free playscheme for the NT kids here Riv- they told us to send ds1 last term, we did, he was sent out to play alone (!!!!) and then blacked some kid's eye, before hiding ds2's shoe (never revealed where iot was)....
we comcluded it wasn't safe and that was before the river incident in Snowdonia!

There's a playscheme at ds3's SNU which we will use, volunteer run. I am eternally grateful for that.

What makes me laugh aboy a lot of this is the idea that success = money. DS1 iscompltely motivated by money. Psych aree with us that he will either be a millionaire or in priosn. Could be either, frankly. The only other I ever knew that was totally motivated by only money is in priosn for sex trafficking. I imagine the fact people ppost on a pernt's forum means theya re indeed motivated by many otehr factors and Ic an well see the high earnings = dc security element, but it is my experience that being only motivated by cash = an empathy free, borderline psychotic personality: much like the one I live with daily.

that people who earn higher incomes are intelligent and the most talented people in the country who pay lots of tax we can ill afford to lose.

Nope, riv! Neither did the sex trafficker I emtioned earlier but oh, you should have seen the house his wife was living in on her HB! Converted abrn, becuase he was using his illicit earnings to supplement it all. tax free. And when he got to court they gave him a short sentence becuase he was fo good character (We shall forget the rape proceedings he had to drop as the wife refused to testify as the victim was 'just a prostitute'; or the fact that SSD visit daily as Mum couldnt be bothered to feed the kids).

We pay taxes though. And struggle. I am seeing some emerging irony there.

And coaltion I agree in many ways. but i;d just like the chance to be one of those high income earners and not shouted at becuase the hurdles we have take longer to deal with.

Aye, that's right, 'cos poor people are only poor 'cos they is thick [hhmm]

Hello Riven -
I was going to moan about the likely impending withdrawal of EMA for sixth formers with parents on a low income. EMA was great, such a help, but I suppose the Conservatives think it was a soft target what with being a newish benefit and with recipients being less likely to put up a battle than, say, rich parents faced with the withdrawal of their child benefit.

OK Riven, I'm really sorry for your and your husband's tough situation.

Only thing I can think of which MIGHT be a possibility to draw in a little more loot and hence make your lives a little bit easier - would be, could you rent out a room in your house to a lodger under the rent a room scheme? It might be worth thinking about. I don't recall how much the max. allowable rent would be, to comply with the terms of (tax exempt) rent a room - but I think you can take just over £4,000 a year. Again, - I'm so sorry for your struggle, you both must be exhausted a lot of the time. Best wishes.

This is going to be hard on everyone and I do sympathize with extreme cases which as a country we should help. However I do not have any regarding people who have made a living from recieving benefits. 50 years ago there was no family benfit or tax credits and people got on with it they also had bigger families to support. Also there are some not all people that think they are too good to take on certain jobs because they have a higher education sometimes we all have to take on certain jobs that weren't, perhaps our first choice.

there's so much selfishness and 'oh it won't affect me' on mumsnet today. It really makes me sad; there's a real lack of empathy and solidarity generally, here and in society at large, and its this very attitude which would make the replacement of public services with philanthropy very inadequate at best.

It's also the very problem which prompted the construction of the welfare state in 1948 in the first place. "If man has learned anything from history... yada yada..."

Kiwichick74 ..good idea lets go back to those days of extreme poverty shall we

Public service's do not bring in money private does and at the momont we need the private sector to be able to then help with the public service's. I know we should not live in a world that is ony concerned with money but the truth is we do. I am not happy with all of the decisions that have been made, we have been affected but if I sit around crying into my coffee and blaming everyone for the woes of the world I would not get anything done. Some of these cuts will not be happening for three years alot can happen between now and then.

Kiwi I have an application in for a call centre atm: I have not retricted myself, but relaity is that whereas my CV was ideal for the researcher role (social services, postgrad in autism, past employment in family support) and presumably stuck out to get an interview, the call centre job willlm fit the CV of very man, including presumably those from the three local universities and every one of the 300 from the civil service office they announced last week is closing.

Now, it seems wrong but my guess is that where I live, in this climate, specialist jobs will be all I mange to get an interview for. Becuase I have aspecilaist CV.

i will have to work for longer, and the childbenefit and uni cuts will affect us. as long as the budget deficit comes down and we solve the problem i can live with this.

i'm not entirely happy with better off pensioners still receiving free bus passes and cold weather payments; the foreign aid budget could have been frozen; and the EU budget should be frozen/reduced.

Kiwi you are wrong that public sector does not bring in mooney.

Look what happens to lcaol services when an airbase closes

Who keeps employees healthy and able to keep working in their private role job?

Who maintains the roads used by pretty much every company?

It's a balance, every step of the way.

yes some of it could be proivatised but even that process costs initially.

Locally a civil service office closed with 300 jobs last week; it won't only be the employees affected. Consider th people who offer their childcare or any other domestic support services, their landlords or mortgage providers, the people who provide office lunches, the office landlord, the stationery suppliers, window cleaners, anyone in the region wanting a first rt without a massive journey..

The impact is shared between public and private, absolutely.

baildonwen Thu 21-Oct-10 08:46:40
shiny people on higher incomes tend to have higher standards of living and quality of life, this is shown by stat such as higher life expectancy etc. I still don't see what is wrong with that.

No, of course, if everyone could have the same standard of health and longevity. Brilliant! But don't you see - there is only so much wealth to go round. The fact some git gets twenty times what some other poor git gets means there is less for everyone else.

The private sector is the wealth creator in an economy but the public sector helps to provide the conditions for the private sector to generate economic growth. Unfortunately the public sector has gone beyond this role and is full of so called "managers" who are well paid and yet do nothing.

Possibly right pox

shame then about the council looking at privatising child protection services (with an associated admitted riose in the criteria for removal)

Or the TA's our school has lost, and the end of the reading recoverys cheme

Or the police officers, nurses etc that will be lost.

We ehar so much about this overflow of managers but IME managers get to amke the decisions on who gets to stay in work, and its usually them.

I think you will find, Kiwichick, that family allowance (which was the old name for child benefit) has been around for the last 70 years.

Before benefits we had the work house, but there was an overlap period.

I suppose you could say all those poor people in Dickens novels were 'just getting on with it', but I'd rather have the welfare state, even if if means supporting the odd feckless parent along the way.

frrr - there was a study recently that showed it was smoking that affected people's lifespan the most and that it was lower classes that smoked most. my MIL is prime example.

And pre tax credits people like me had to return to work at 9 weeks after (an eclamptic, incredibly dangerous, not fully recovered from) delivery just to pay the bills.

What fab times