Too Many Cuts...come join the #Frothers and have your say

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

This is the 3rd thread in a series.

It is for people who are horrified, frustrated and downright sad at the erosion of human rights with respect to how this country is being run, just now and in the recent past

it is apolitical in nature, but of course due to many recent initiatives by the recent govt, there will be rants against our current "leaders"

please join in

I shall post the link to the old threads, our "Too Many Cuts #Frothers" blog that is attracting a lot of widespread attention and a little bit of what we are about in a moment

Santa - I'm fucking shit scared too.

And yes, I REALISE that it sounds a lot, when written down like that - but you have to bear in mind that I live in the SE, so both my childcare costs AND my housing costs are so high that even with TWO adults working FT on NMW it would be impossible to cover it all without help with childcare - the maths just doesn't add up. And someone on 30K will also get help with their childcare too - they would end up with roughly the same figure, unless they had a mortgage.

@garlic - yes those figures would be about £50k, maybe a bit less.

Perhaps the real discussion should be why do we need so much money to live on when salaries aren't realistic, if you know what I mean.

I'm a supervisor for local government and DP is a store manager. We couldn't even dream of having more than one child as we couldn't afford nursery fees. One of us would have to give up work and even then we'd only get £800 a year from tax credits under the current rules.

So basically the problem is not the benefits system.

It is the housing and childcare costs.

How much is full time childcare in UK, in SE?

I wrote about this after Osborne's Autumn Statement here

Exactly MmeLindor.

Stupidly inflated house prices because we've all bought into this Tory ideal of owning a hose and garden rather than bolstering tenants' rights to produce stable inexpensive tenancies.

We currently live in Essex but will be moving back north next year, partly to be closer to family but partly so we can afford a decent property.

and the appallingly low wages that bear no relation to the cost of living. teh gap had to be made up by ctc's etc now they're just taking that out without having done ANYTHING to address the reality of that ever increasing gap.

In Essex, full time child care is roughly £180 -£200 a week. Want me to PM you some links for local nurseries with fees on?

oh well they do have a plan - drive everyone out of the SE so it can be their own little enclave sheltered from the realities of a failing, fucked up economy for the rest of us.

So what do I do when he is 12 and still needs a carer?

Gallic I'll take your small flat and jobs if you can take my boy's autism for your child, deal? it means one or other of you ebing ebaten once a day minimu, not having had a night's sleep in 12 years and both of you ending up on anti depressants through exhaustion. Inviting?

(Hunty Dh should be working 35 hours by then thankfully if the business survives. i will say he is more optimistic than I but we shall see).

I would blame childcare costs more - living in the midlands the housing cost isn't so bad, and having a teen I have no childcare costs either, so I manage ok on what I take home with little top up from tax credits, totalling (earnings, tax credits, the lot) between 18 and 21k ish depending on a good work year or a bad

If I had higher housing costs, children all needing childcare - maybe even one or two with SN needing suitably adapted childcare, the figures would be enormous.

here - central england/east midlands sort of borderline full time nursery is aprox. £175pw

I think there needs to be examples of people with two children and one child and examples for lone parents and couples.

We need to make this stuff real to the majority. There will be too many people going "I could never afford to have four children so you are automatically unreasonable". Now I understand people's circumstances change but many people do not understand that and you'll lose them as gallic says.

Incidentally, did you all see this article? www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/dec/11/free-childcare-millions-tax-mums?CMP=twt_gu Bloody brilliant.

I used to pay ?250 for both children, for 36 hours of childcare. Including lunches.

If a 3 bed house costs minimum £600 and childcare £600 - is that about right? - then no wonder people are having to rely on state assistance.

That is more than some people can earn, and they haven't even bought food or heated their house yet.

The article is about free childcare and the difference it would make in tax contributions.

i'm willing to share my details - i'm a disabled lone child with one child who has jsut started school if that's any use. my grand total is about £14k which includes dla - when they take the dla it will plummet obviously. i managed to get into low cost social housing when i lost my flat or it would be higher as private rents are more.

3 bed house would be more like 700minimum here and i'm not even in the south east. if you had two kids in childcare, 1200. that's near 2 grand to pay out after tax every month before you've even eaten or paid your council tax (and god forbid you were dumb enough to do a degree and still be paying your student loans).

Yes, Kate. We need more examples of "average" situations.

Will write up a ranty blog post about wages vs cost of living.

Gallic
Yes, that would be handy. £200 for each child.

Again. I paid ?250 for both children

I know Kate: people see us with our boys and assume things were always tough for us.

Not at all true: we earned plenty when we had the smaller two. We were anticipating an income of around £50k PA by now, which in Wales is pretty amazing.

Then the genetics shat on us.

It's just so seld defeating, all this: two weeks ago looked at an office set up for me (DH ahs signed up for one) and met business advisor: one week ago had to stop looking on GP medical orders.

oh and garlic - those families you say are living on 30k are able to minimise or erase childcare costs due to being a couple and can if dire straits emerge do shifts around each other.

i REALLY wish you hadn't made your post.

in fact i might even suggest you delete it.

Three bed here in S E Wales is £595 pa although that's with a discount as we do maintenance.

If we move SSD insist it must be to a 4 bed as ds1 and ds3 have to have separate rooms. ATM ds3 sleeps in a converted dining room.

I agree, the problem is complex. Costs have risen while incomes fall. Things are now at the level where you actually need to be well-off to live what we call a decent life. The rich-poor divide has already happened; only the welfare system has been bridging the gap.

If we, as a country, accept that:
[a] Businesses must be able to operate profitably, and
[b] Our people must be able to live reasonably:

Then we must conduct some form of wealth distribution (from profitable -> unable to live decently). That's what the welfare system is intended for.

The ConDems are now saying they don't want the redistribution, therefore [b] is no longer a requirement. They're trying to overcome moral resistance to this cruelty, by portraying the poor as greedy parasites, clutching at the business owner's profits.

This from the Benefits & Work newsletter:

The coalition have stooped to new levels of viciousness this month.

They now propose to end exemption from employment and support allowance (ESA) medicals for people enduring the debilitating misery of chemotherapy. They also want to claw back mortgage interest payments from the estates of dead claimants.

In addition, credit checking agency Experian are to be used as ?bounty hunters? to go through claimants confidential financial records for evidence of fraud.

And the DWP have also teamed up with national charity Crimestoppers in a campaign which shows people with faces contorted with rage and fury ? and even raising a fist ? as they think about claimants they believe are committing fraud.

This is a deliberate alienation campaign. I wonder how long before we see films of rats running out of sewers, juxtaposed with images of disabled claimants? (Reference to Nazi anti-jewish advertisements, for those too young ... The campaigns worked, as we know.)

Should have formatted that - the final paragraph's from me, not B&W.

Santa yes, or the people like me whose figures are comparitively tiny due to having older children and hence no childcare costs, and low housing cost compared to the SE

Well where I live (admittedly affluent London borough) a three bed flat (forget a house, you're looking at about £2100) is about £1400 per month = £16,800 and childcare for one child is £16,000.

So nearly £33,000 just for rent and childcare, never mind utilities, food, clothes or other essentials which is about £40000 gross income to be able to cover just those two outgoings.