WTF are Frothers? Not a quiche, but a protest group. Fighting for the "basic line of British decency" against fiscal brutality.

[garlicfrother]

What are Frothers?

The term "Frothers" came about one dank and dismal November day in 2011. A frustrated user of the parenting forum Mumsnet started a thread about her dismay at the cuts that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government was inflicting on the British public.

She stated that she was not "quite a frothing berserker but I am getting rather cross with our government messing with the good stuff".

The good stuff - policies, benefits, institutions that had taken years to achieve were being cut for no good reason, often leaving gaping holes in the fabric of British society.

The NHS, with which we Brits have a love-hate relationship, but like a favourite sibling, we wish to protect from harm.

Sure Start, a successful scheme that supported parents who were struggling and offered children from deprived backgrounds a better start in life.

Universal Child Benefit was cut for those families who had one earner bringing in more than £44k a year. If both parents each earn less than £44k, they keep their UCB payments. This obviously hit single parents and families with a single earner hardest.

Disability Living Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance - which enabled those with disabilities to live a decent life, without feeling that they were begging for assistance or were a burden to the taxpayer.

Student Fees, the introduction of which, contrary to Lib Dem pre-election promises, means that a whole generation of young people will have to think carefully before applying to higher education.

These and many other cuts are being made in the name of austerity. We are "all in this together", but some of us are deeper in this than others.

We all understand that there are sacrifices to be made but why should these sacrifices be borne by those who already have so little?

The general public seems oblivious of the dangers being faced, they are unaware of the injustices being wrought on the already disadvantaged.

The government is winning the war of the headlines. They have blasted the recipients of DLA and ESA as scrounger and cheats so often that the general public believe it. They misinterpret data to "prove" their points. Teachers are painted as being irresponsible and greedy, while the bankers rake in the money.

The poster on Mumsnet was not alone for long. Within a few days, a group of over 30 posters had formed. They asked themselves, "What can we do?".

The idea of a blog was born. Three days later the blog had over thirty authors signed up, a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

The Aims:

• to open the general publics' eyes to the injustices being created by the governement

• to inform those who are facing cuts about their rights

• to link with other activists and charities, in order to put pressure on the government

Are you a Frother?

Come and join us.

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Yay, sunshine! You're here

Have a rolleyes for feminist paranoia

Hello sunshine. Just saying that made me feel cheerful. .

But surely the issue is that 'fiscal brutality' must start somewhere? Can it be morally acceptable that a family can attain an income of 35k regardless of whether or not they are employed?

I trained as a nurse in the 70s. I was then seconded to do a couple of work related degrees whilst working for various health authorities. It took me 20+ years to attain an income of 35k and another 10 years to increase it to 50k. Throughout this time I have worked, studied and had very little free time/me time.

There seems to be an 'entitlement culture', for want of a better expression, re. the amount of children people have. I've noticed a plethora of posts on here from mothers with 2, 3, 4 or more children who are complaining about benefit cuts. Whatever happened to the ethic of initially planning for the worst case scenario and limiting your family accordingly?
I have one child. I would probably have liked more, but knew that in the event of a worst case scenario I'd only be able to provide for myself plus one child. The argument that people have several children and then the unforeseen happens doesn't wash with me - it's about taking responsibility for oneself.

I would use a similar argument re. lower paid and part-time workers - myself and others like me worked bloody hard to achieve a decent income, possibly moving around the country (at our own expense) for promotion, losing out on our social lives etc. Yet 'Ms. Smith' down the street works 16 hours a week and is pulling in 35k gross.

We need to encourage the younger generation to want to work for a living and the way forward is to make cuts to benefits, however unpalatable this will be.

Boffy, have a look here.

"Right now, 500,000 families stand to lose their homes. Others will become imprisoned in them. Half a million will lose their disability allowance, including disabled children. People with terminal illnesses will be forced into work, and 3.2 million will be put through cruel tests that are pushing some to take their own lives. Millions of people ? pensioners, low waged workers, the disabled, sick and unemployed ? will fall deeper into poverty.

"The government?s excuse for all this? The deficit, of course. Yet it continues to turn a blind eye to the £25 billion in tax dodged by corporations and rich individuals every year, a sum greater than the projected savings of the entire Welfare Reform Bill. Vodafone?s brand new £2bn tax dodge alone could pay for all of the cuts to Disability Living Allowance, which affects 500,000 people."

This is not rhetoric, the data is hard. Links on the page I've quoted.

OK, plan for this: You are in a couple. You are the main earner, you earn £50Kpa, you are buying a house, you have insurance to cover every imagined eventuality, and you have managed to squirrel away £20K savings for a rainy day. Your DP has dyslexia, and some other issues, and he earns roughly £12K. You have 2 dc and are pregnant with your 3rd.

Two weeks after your 3rd dc is born, you are diagnosed with epilepsy. Having never had a CLUE that you were going to develop epilepsy in the future. Your £50Kpa job is one of the few that are BARRED TO YOU BY LAW if you have even ONE seizure after the age of 5yo. So you can't go back to work. And you can't afford to retrain when surviving on an income of just £12K. And your Neurologist signs you as unfit for work.

You try to claim on your insurance. They tell you that your previous depression symptoms were obviously undiagnosed epilepsy symptoms, which means that your epilepsy was a pre-existing condition (that you didn't know about ), and they won't pay out.

Two weeks later, your Health Visitor tells you that she thinks your 4yo DD has Autism. THEN two weeks after THAT you find out that your newborn baby has a severe muscle problem.

A few months down the line, your £20K savings run out, because you have been paying your mortgage with it, as your partner's £12K salary doesn't cover it. Then your partner gets made redundant.

You can't pay your mortgage. Your beautiful house gets repossessed. You go into temporary homeless accommodation (with all 3 of your dc, and you and your partner, in one room that you can only occupy between 6pm and 10am. Even though 3 members of your household have newly-diagnosed disabilities)

You finally get a Housing Association house. After 2 years in one room. But your dc are allocated a school that isn't within walking distance when yours and your dc's disabilities are accounted for. But isn't FAR enough away to get free transport for, because the LEA free transport ONLY takes disabilities into account if the dc attends a 'special school'. Which haven't got enough places. So your dc is in mainstream with support. So you end up paying £52 a week bus fares.

Why am I telling you this? To illustrate how EASY it is for even those of us who feel that we have prepared well for all eventualities to get shafted by real life. NO-ONE would predict that they would be diagnosed with a disability that stops them from doing their job, THEN be told that their 4yo needs to start the assessment process for Autism within two weeks of that and THEN to be told two weeks after that that your 4 week old baby has a severe muscle problem and may never walk.

Do YOU think that all those things are likely to happen to you? Could YOU cope if they did? Within 4 weeks of each other? And how long would your savings last you?

And I can't be arsed to argue with someone on the frothers thread about it - if I want argument, or to waste my time trying to educate the unenlightened, I go to a benefit bashing thread. If I want to find out how to help FIGHT the cuts, I come to the frothers thread.

Yes, I was fully prepared as well. Funny how leaky those expensive lifeboats turn out to be. My story here, hope Hunty's going to add hers too.

People really need to get that - unless they are at least multi-millionaires, literally - any feeling of security they have is now false.

There would be more frothing if this were better understood.

Ha ha - just seen that someone on here called me 'that nutter on the other thread'!!

Now you're here, hope you get clued up.

Well, Boffy, you know what they say about eavesdroppers.

And I agree with Hunty. If you want argument I can do that on one of the dozens of benefit bashing threads. Take it back there, if you wouldn't mind.

Boffy, I'm off to work very soon, so can't hang around to help explain why the cuts are viscious, inhumane and far more to do with political ideology than saving money. They won't save money, by the way.

I'm sure my fellow Frothers will try to enlighten you though. Bless them.

Lovelies, I'll pop back much later. Have a good day

Boffy, that was me. I stand by it. Your shockingly inhumane comments were some of the most appalling that I read on MN. I should find them ridiculous, but I actually think you believe it.

You know social cleansing has been done before, it is never good.

I have posted a new 'blog' The Shocking Truth About David Cameron

Had an idea, maybe Garlic or one of the techy folk can help.

Could we do a Summary Page where we highlight the main issues with links to blog posts - so that anyone looking for posts about DLA can find them quickly, with a short summary.

eg.

DLA -

FrothingAngry explains what DLA is and how the cuts affect it.

MmeLindor introduces the Spartacus Report

Mouseface's story of what DLA means to her

Em explains how cuts to DLA would affect her family

Diddy explains about the DLA and carers.

etc etc.

I know it is a lot of work but we could do it gradually, adding a couple of links a day and once it is set up we can just add to it when a post is published.

Or is that too much work?

I find it difficult sometimes to find a particular post, if I cannot remember the title. Is there a search function? I have never been able to find it.

Particularly the 12 days of Xmas cause you cannot see the rest of the title when searching through the posts.

Ratherbe
Lots of RTing action going on with the Truth about DC.

Marvellous!

The Shocking Truth about David Cameron

Right, need to get on!

MmeL - that sounds a very good idea, but it does sound a lot of work. Did I see that there are 50 posts now? It would certainly be useful to categorise them for ease of use, because at the mo all you can do is search a keyword or trawl the list. And that will only get longer.

Right have done the Today at HOL post serperately because I liked DPiggle on it's own

Except it seems to be stuck half way through publishing. Hmm

Right, please can we talk about this: message from the invisible protest THIs saturday - I didn't want to publicise it until we knew more about it, but it's been in the guardian now so I assume it is legit. Can we post about it tomorrow - a real physical protest is always more some people's kind of thing than lobbying.

I am on a blogging roll this week, after a few weeks of not knowing what to write about.

Perceptions of benefits brought on by a poster telling THC to turn the heating off to save money.

Okay it's up now. so if people come to the blog to see the shocking truth and then check out the blog today's actions will be the first post.

Morning everyone. I feel a bit of a fraud on here TBH. I have never experienced anything as traumatic and ongoing as most of you. I've had quite a nice life.

I guess I feel so strongly about it because I've seen friends have similar experiences and I'm aware that if I hadn't had money in the bank I'd have ended up with a very different life to the one I have now. When I ran away from walked out on my violent XP I technically became homeless. I had my 4-month-old twins with me and he wouldn't let me back even to get their clothes or milk. BUT, I had a wonderful friend who took us in with open arms, an understanding boss who allowed me time off to sort all the logistical things out, and money in the bank that allowed me to buy new stuff, including a house for us to live in.

That's down to luck, nothing else. I didn't deserve that good luck any more than the next single mother. But if I hadn't had it, I'd have lost my job, had to go to the council, ended up in a crummy b&b somewhere, been put on benefits and probably been unable to find a job that would fit around all that and got further and further into a downward spiral of debt and hopelessness

I am in awe of some of the resilience many of you have shown.

Just wanted to say that.

Don't feel like a fraud sunshine - the worst we've ever had was a few months on unemployment, given that we were able to stay in our own home and keep going more or less as before (just looking for work obviously and making big use of our overdraft). So really not that bad.

I'm in awe of anyone who leaves abusive partners! I think it's great you had a friend who took you in, it still must have been very difficult to leave, and emotional impact shouldn't be dismissed just because you can't see it physically.

Being compassionate is a quality anyone can have.