I won't be voting Labour because

[PanicMode]

next year they will be spending more on debt repayments than education, and that's just one example.

From a £6bn deficit in 1997 to £167 bn now....

Oh, and the only new idea (reduction of stamp duty) came from the Tories in the first place.

All those thinking of voting Labour, please read Squandered or The Rotten State of Britain before letting these financially illiterate numpties back in.

Do you think we get money randomly therown at us Alou?

I promise you not.

I've spent the last 6 years fighhjting for disability provision X 2 and really can assure you that.

I donb;t know anyting about Scotland as I said, never even been there. Ido think the devolved system here seems to work better than teh system in England and whilst I think a Union ois a good thing I would think an English Assembly is a good idea too. I really do appreciate free rpescriptions for all (when Dh wand I were bothw orking in England there were timeds when to pay thebills we didn;t get medicines)- why shouldn't net contributord get those? earning is no guarantee of affluence. Equally though I do balk at the whole I pay for / my money- we apid for twenty years so i won;t feel guilty (much) about the littlke we need when life has thrown us a run of bad luck (4 years ago- ds1 dx'd with asd; 18 months ago- ds2 dx'd with asd; lasy year- DH amde redundant, I call that a pretty impressive run!) though equally we do pride ourselves on paying every bit of tax we should and doing our best to make as much as we can so we balance out out give over take as much as possible.

I think it is about ethics. If someone is doing their best tehn I have always been happy fo r them to get help from what we have given. I understand anger towards those who do not contribute in any way. Even if you don't work it is s till possible top contribute after all. it might be reading with the school, offering to clean teh village ha;lll, taking alls for Samaritans- but I think everyone should make sure they give back in some way or another.

And sorry at SSD and spend

I have never had any input from a SW. Ever. I will be carer un til the day I die or become infirm. I don't know what they spend it on, it isn't the famillies on the front line. our provision went like this:

So ds1 is exttremely violent? yes I can see your bruises. Would you like a morning a week for him with someone with no asd experience where there are toddlers? you are kidding right? your only option then is to report him as abusing you and we can do teh CP thing (no.).

'Oh its OK I have an MA in asd I can see he isn;t autistic (child was almost 5, alrgely non verbal and hadnt acknowledged the SW in any way at all) (I ahve hal;f MA now in ASD, all DX module, and they can't teach you that at all.)

i;d love to know where the money ends up, I suspect petrol bills for travellinga orund Powys and the really sapced outa reas: it is not here.

But that doesn't explain why Scotland and Wales get all this extra money!

I'm not talking about everyones individual circumstances but the general England/Scotland/Wales division.

The money all goes into one big pot in the name of fairness then it's doled out geographically.

Makes no sense whatsoever.

Ah yes, we are in caerleon.

We stayed ehre after I graduated becuase what we pay in private rental here is ar less than it would cost in England. Dh worked in Bristol so we were equidistant from both and even with bridge tolls (!! expletive!!) we were better off. Coping well, even. Coping is good.

Mind I bet there's be a few Welsh people on ehre with views about the fact that my entire street is Englaish people who move here and use the services usually after retirement so paying far less tax...

And no there aren't any jobs, sadly. Will be OK for Dh as he has an inetrnet store / will be contracting out anywhere i UK but in industries such as it was- even if tehe company survived they shifted to avoid bridge tolls.

I'm angry because it's wrong to allocate money on the basis of geography!

Alou I have no idea: I did explain that I am English, I am not an expert on Wales at all.

I know that wehnI worked in the sector things like surestart were allocated on the basis of big piles of satst covering everything from average birthweight of a baby to employment and the like. Can't tell you about outside that though.

Individual circumstances may not matter but individual experiecnes can tell you about the reality of something. So for example it may be that things like providing a rural service means that it just costs more to run. But if I were feeling ahrd done by I would be interested to know that people weren't getting more than me in the way of services. it outs a human face on the stats.

and i'm angry because there will be very little money to go anywhere after the election whoever gets in and its because the current Government have been profligate in their spending.

It is up to the Scottish Government to decide spending priorities within the budget allocated by Westminster. The current SNP government has decided to reduce the cost of prescriptions (not free yet), stop hospitals charging patients/visitors for parking, provided money for extra Police and Primary teachers, abolished bridge tolls. In order to make these improvements they have had to cancel e.g. various road and rail projects and we do not have e.g. surestart centres. The budget MUST balance. Unlike Westminster the Scottish Government has no power to borrow on its own account. The capital projects put forward to re-ignite the economy are, as far as I am aware, all in England. No equivalent extra capital has been allocated to Scotland for infastructure projects e.g. the much needed new Forth Bridge.

The drugs issue has to do with a quicker, more straightforward approval system, not funding.

And in response to another inaccuracy Bank of Scotland was a wholly owned subsidiary of Halifax = HBOS and was therefore headquartered in Halifax. I do not think you can blame the people of Halifax or the people of Edinburgh (RBS) nor even the residents of 'the City' for the financial debacle we have seen.

but I will be voting labour

That's your choice eatsushi - but I won't - another 5 years of this lot? No thanks.

Granny23 - It was liabilities taken on by BoS before the merger that caused the problem though ;)

It is a rather facetious point though.

Clarissimo;

No, I haven't been anywhere near a SureStart centre...I managed to have 4 children with needing that facility..

...I took my kids to the beach and the park...

..Cost nothing and they learnt more.

I worked at ojne but you know that isn't available to everyone (beach etc)- if ytou don't have a car for example, or are in a wheelchair.

A lot of teh stuff we did wasn't even related to leisure. For mexample we had a specialist HV who coudl pick up the workload of teh health centres in the area (badly needed) and focus on such things as Sn, running bf support etc. We ahd a nuresery on sit e that took part social services funding and aprt self paying- seemed a very good facility.
Family workers who introduced new mums to the services in the area, bult links etc and quite often picked up those who would fall through HV gaps.
A garden that was used to teach people to grow their own- damned fine use IMO, a good skill.
I ran a aprent group and there were a couple others run by the different HS workers and we had a palyworker each thatbwould take the kids so parents could talk, get information etc.

I raised all mine as well without needing a family centre but I tell you what, if I had one now we are more isoltaed and on our uppers-ish I would be amazingly grateful. The people who used the centre were all walks- I remember a mum palced there with 5 kids after being house froim a refuge and unable to contact any family or friends dure to risk of violence. IIRC the surestart manager was even her birthing partner. people with the usual PND, mild LD etc. Mums of twins or more. i remember a few Dads as well where Mum had died or was dying. And the teenage dad programme was great too.

I felt really rpoud of where I worked. Now, other people tell me the one near them was pretty shit and I have no reason to disbeleive them. rather than scrapping it though, look at the ones that worked and learn from them.

The city enar us is building a chidlren's centre atm. Am hoping to get access to a free room to run a support group for the siblings of autistic children. HAd I needed tor enta room etc it couldn't have happened. yet clearly those kids deserve a break and a bit of support. And that's the sort of thing we were doing. In fact that is what sure start is supposed to do- rather than prescriptive services, fill the gaps where they are.

No problem if these centres are being used to support families with SN children...they need a bit of extra help.

Don't know if you saw the link I posted, it was about a SS centre closing because not enough Turkish families were using it....sorry, but what's that all about..????

Didn;t see that DP and I know that wasn't how we operated.

we did have to hit tragets though maybe it was that? say if you need to access 45% of the local area and it's a very turkish area so without them you cannot do it?

but that's off top of my head, no idea in RL.

The centres are supposed to su[pport all famillies and get people mixing. The hope we had was that links amde and skills learned would support people to help tehmselves long ter,m. Obviosuloy no area will gete verybody self sufficient (tehre will always be soem people wfor whom that is a big ask for one reason or another) but pretty much we made it. it's down to whoever runs it i think, I thought our manager was great but crusially she ahd the right background (she was former aprent support worker for a charity) adn knew what she was doing

get in a pen psuher and you are stuffed

Hmmmm....Do you ever wonder how people managed before all this crap....?

(I used to work in politics y'know...you can tell by my brilliant questioning techniques)

So the tories get in with a healthy majority that allows them to subject us to their completely ill thought out "ME ME ME" policies, completely fuck the country up AGAIN, and are consigned to the bin of history forever.

oh because i work for a private medical insurer. tories getting in would be a great thing for us. we can see a very healthy pot at the end of the rainbow as another few decades of under investment in the health service bring it to its knees..

I find it very strange people are so vocal about thinking the tories will take away "everything". If their cases are genuine, why on earth would this be the case? It defies logic. Nobody, but nobody (I've said this before) would want to take away benefits from those who truly need them.

daftpunk 4 children who didn't need surestart? How will those poor wee mites ever learn to express themselves via the medium of dancing with pinecones?

Someone earlier in the thread said that perhaps these Surestart schemes would help the "next generation" to not be as feckless as their parents. How's that working out since 1997? Let's take for example that gang who stabbed that kid at the station last week. D'you think they were unaware they could've been doing pottery? All that's happened is that this "underclass" has grown. Throwing money at the feckless has helped nobody.

Problem with Surestart is that getting used to the government providing something isn't going to help people to help themselves.

The government supporting existing local provision would have made it accessible to more people and the community would have remained responsible - actually helping themselves.

But no, now we have loads of people relying on the government to provide free or subsidised activities and lots of people who were providing the same thing independently in the community will have given up because they can't compete with FREE even when the free sessions have a 7 month waiting list.

And people are scared that funding will be cut. Children's services departments have to pay for social services, supporting children with SEN and 'looked after' children in school, for supporting children with serious disabilities at home as well as Sure Start.

Some childrens centres do exactly what they are supposed to - they do reach the groups who need real support. They should remain fully funded. If a centre isn't reaching them they should only be partially funded.

There isn't unlimited money. Would you rather pay a few pound for a few weeks of baby massage or music or whatever - or have to fight the LA for years when it turns out your child has SEN and needs support in school and there isn't any money for it? Or if not your child, then your neighbour's or a family member - surely its a far more socialist view to accept that you pay for what you can so that those in need get what they need, than it is to promote universally free provision of certain unessential services?

The problem with Labour is that they seem to have programmes instead of policies - properly thought-out policies that involve good decisions and good lawmaking.

On the Vote for Policies site you can tell the Labour "policies" a mile off because they're just littered with programmes with Big Names. The BNP and UKIP sections are short on detail as you would expect, but the Lib Dem, Green and Conservative sections, while obviously differing in content and approach, are similar to each other in style - i.e. not government by Big Programme.

Oh skihorse, I have been in constant turmoil over this, will my dc be at a permanent disadvantage because they didn't dance around with pine cones at a SureStart centre?...I fear they might be....

..I have tried to compensate by reading passages from the Fabian societies handbook at the dinner table, to explain as they drift off to sleep how Tony Blair re-wrote Clause 4...I just pray it's enough

daftpunk I'm praying for their little souls. I just hope you haven't been filling their sweet, innocent heads wiv reading, riting and riffmatic and such nonsense. You'll probably just say that you take them on bike rides and identify ducks or collect shells at the seaside or some other such gumph.

ho ho