Dave's cuts are going be deep and they will hurt

[FellatioNelson]

I've been hearing this all day on the radio. I can't take the suspense any longer. They are going to affect the lives of 'every one of us'

I feel like a person wincing and clenching my teeth in anticipation of the big fuck-off needle the school nurse is wielding, and I'm next in the queue....

Come on then, what's it going to be?

Goldman Sachs as a firm is a cheat and a liar and exploits its own clients and the rest of the economy.

And they can only do that whilst people are greedy enough to want to share the financial gains by investing in them.
The banks are a disgrace and again I would say which government bailed them out ?

' It's allowing people to apply an instant gratification logic to babies. 'I want one now, I'll have one now, I'm entitled, and I'll rely on the state to take care of the boring details, like where we'll live, and who will pay for us'.

Yup. Deferred gratification isn't widely seen as a good thing now. In fact you are penalised for waiting until you're mature and settled in a relationship to have a baby, saving for your retirement, working hard.

Goldman Sachs as a firm...exploits its own clients and the rest of the economy.

This is what a company is meant to do.

They went way beyond making a fast buck. Companies are entitled to increase their profit margins, but must act within the law, rules and regulations.

Fellatio, I don't think you know much about council housing waiting lists if you imagine it's easy to have a baby and waltz into a flat. Or much about single parents if you imagine they are typically teenagers. Most are adults in their 30s who were once married or in stable partnerships.

Your dh may indeed be hardworking and clever ? presumably some of his success is down to looking up the facts before making sweeping judgments? (And while we are about it, there are plenty of hardworking, clever people paid far less than him.)

I've heard that breakfast clubs and afterschools clubs money in schools aren't going to be protected anymore so schools can choose to have them or not and spend the money on other things (probably to prop up other areas of cuts). I can't see how I can continue to work without these vital services

Ah, but then the Tories will be able to blame YOU for not working. It'll be all your own fault for being lazy. And nothing at all to do with the government taking away a vital service that parents actually pay for.

You'll manage Mumzy the same way everyone who has never had these clubs in the first place manage.

I have no idea if they did or did not break the law regulations etc. but it's unfair to castigate them for profiting from clients and the wider economy as that is their purpose.

Fellatio, I know where you're coming from. I left school at 16 to work in a factory but did A levels and distance learning to qualify as a lawyer in my spare time.

DH was in and out of care, looked after his little brothers overnight from when he was 8, lived in a council house with no cooker, phone, tv or w/machine.
He's now a VP in one of the 3 biggest companies in the country, having worked 14 hour days 7 days a week, much as your dh has done. Also did a MBA in his spare time etc.

It IS possible to make your own future and your own luck if you have some drive and gumption, and I agree that it's patronising to assume that people who are born in rough areas with no parental expectations can't achieve anything.

edam, I know more about the harsh reality for single mothers than you realise. It's not because I read about it in the Daily Mail. It's because I am the daughter of one.

I think you are deliberately cherry-picking from my posts to suit your own agenda. I've made it more than clear that I am not generalising. But if that is what you want to hear, then that is what you will hear. Makes no difference how many times/ways I say it.

I never suggested my DH had the monopoly on brains or work ethic. Only that he wasn't given special access into some secret club that other equally clever people are not equally entitled to go. He chose banking. others didn't. What can I say?

Wow, mumblechum, bloody well done! (hope that didn't sound patronising)

I think that if you scratch the surface of a lot of successful people you can see where their drive comes from.

Being brought up in a cushy environment doesn't seem to spur people on to great things.

Which begs the question where is the next generation of driven captains of industry going to come from, if people don't have to fight their way up the greasy pole. I suspect we all need to learn to speak Chinese urgently.

Sorry Hijack, Riv I resent stuff y'day, let me know if you didn't get them. MC

It is just really worring times, i am a local government worker and will not get a payrise this year (get around 21,000 a year. My husband has health problems and works 8 hours a week (self employed on minimum wage), so is not eligible for paying tax but he has to pay national insurance, we have 3 children 3,4 and 11yrs.

I would rather not have a pay increase for a couple of years rather than a pay cut, but the thing that worries me most is the reduction in Child Tax Credits and the possiblity of means testing Child Benefit.

I need a car for work but we do not have holidays abroad, as for one we just cant afford it we are lucky to go away for a couple of days in the summer, and the last week holiday we could afford was in 2006 in a tent on the coast.

mumblechum/fellatio - I think you are both in danger of making the assumption that because you HAVE done something that anyone can do it. This is neither true nor desirable (we need people to do all sorts of jobs not just the good ones).

Lot's of people COULD NOT have done what you or your other halves have done whether due to ability, temprement or just plain luck.

I see this error on other boards, where graduates ask for career advice and are told to start their own company - it's not what everyone can do.

I think this is part of a general assumption that you yourself are, to some degree 'average'. So we are all slightly astonished when someone can't do something we can. As, well, I can do that, surely everyone can.

You are right coalition of course but the point is really I guess, ok everyone can't be a millionaire or even maybe live luxury or comfort but does that then mean that nobody should ?
It seems to be that some people get dealt a rubbish hand in life and that's a shame but others make poor choices and those are not my problem nor should I have to pay for them.
It's the age old debate about the deserving and undeserving poor which dates back to Gladstone and Disraeli (sp?) so I doubt we'll get to the bottom of it on mn.

mamatomany - I don't agree that those who make poor choices are not your problem, and that you don't have to pay for them. Society includes everyone - if people make bad choices then they need to be supported and helped to make better ones. Otherwise they will either have to a)starve or b)steal. I don't like either of those options. This is not to say that in some cases the benefits system doesn't make it harder to MAKE 'good' choices.

TCNY I know exactly what you mean - these rousing tub-thumping motivational speeches are all very well, and I do know of people who genuinely seem to think that just because they've managed to work up from nothing, everyone else must therefore be lazy or stupid. I can only assure you that I don't like that at all. But where we have gone wrong, I think, is that so many people feel entitled to have a job that is both lucrative and wildly exciting/fun, with convenient conditions that exactly suit their preferences. Well life mostly isn't bloody fun! Or convenient! It's mostly about slogging away and hoping you can come good at the end of each day. Life is a hamster wheel. Some people hit the jackpot, most don't. It has always been thus.

But if you give people too easy an alternative to a life of hard slog in return for underwhelming reward, why wouldn't they take it? The world needs worker bees as well as drones and the odd queen. To pretend we can survive any other way is madness.

Fellatio - I think that most people who do feel entitled in that way still end up slogging away in some job or other, but in the main I agree.

mamatomany agree about the history of the problem - too complex to try and sort out in this thread, and we are in danger of veering wildly off-topic! This was supposed to be about cuts, not society!

TCNY - you are right when you say that in some cases the benefits system makes it hard for people to make good choices - that was the whole point of my other post some pages back! It's not the people I blame - it's the system that allows them to become dependent in the first place, and then gives them little incentive to change.

Fellatio - so if you know all about single mothers, why are you perpetuating the lie about them all being feckless teenage mums? (As if all young mothers are necessarily bad people, too.)

It's great that some people succeed when the odds have been stacked against them but those individuals are the exception, not the rule. The idea that everyone can be exceptional is a mathematical impossibility and a very old trick - the Romans did it by pretending that slaves could be freed. Kept the slaves in line, hoping for freedom and citizenship that was only every awarded to a very fortunate few. Reality TV and the lottery perform similar functions in our own society.

Capitalism actually requires some people to be at the bottom of the heap. Those who are successful can only be so because there are other people less fortunate or possessing fewer marketable skills around to empty their bins, clean their offices and houses, and in many cases care for their children.

Oddly enough those sections of the middle and upper classes who claim working class = bad parenting are quite happy to farm their own children out to the working classes. (I have nothing against nannies or their employers - I used to be in one of those camps - it's just odd and illogical to sneer at parents who are less well off than you while employing someone less well off to care for your child.)

bugger, 'ever' not every!