21 May 2013

What makes married men flirt ?

Woman who don’t or can’t keep them satisfied !

Woman with children who have all they want !

No further need for the “father” !

Believing the grass is greener on the other side !

In the West, a meal cheque at divorce !

All this adds up to selfish women

Whose own interests out weigh all others including their children.

The result is they are not a fit parent !

Men only flirt to get their partner to pay more attention to them.

So read this from the top

The story goes round and round.

  

Radical

Attendance allowance:

the £200-plus a month many elderly people miss out on

It is a tax-free benefit for ill and disabled over-65 – but many either do not know about it or are unsure about claiming

• Jill Papworth
• The Guardian, Friday 30 September 2011 12.13 BST
•  

Tom McLeod, 90, says attendance allowance makes it possible for him still to live on his own.

Many ill or disabled people over the age of 65 are missing out on getting attendance allowance, worth up to

£73.60 a week for the most severe cases, because of misconceptions about the entitlement conditions,

according to leading charities.

Attendance allowance is a tax-free benefit paid to people over 65 who need help to look after themselves

because of physical or mental disability.

But don't be put off applying if you don't receive help from a carer; the allowance is based on the help you need,

not the help you actually get, and you can get it irrespective of your income.

"You don't have to have someone caring for you in order to claim, and you can spend the money however you

want," says Age UK. "It does not matter if you live alone or with other people, or whether you have a carer – what

matters is that you need help with personal care, supervision or watching over.

Whether you are actually getting any help is irrelevant."

Age UK views AA as a well-targeted benefit which helps many older people with disabilities stay independent in

their own home for as long as possible.

"Many older disabled people could be missing out on this allowance and we are keen to encourage those in

need to put in a claim," says Age UK's charity director, Michelle Mitchell.

Currently claimed by nearly 1.8 million people and costing around £5.4bn a year, AA is designed to help with the

extra costs of disability; take-up is strongest among older people on lower incomes.

The benefit is not means-tested, so it is not affected by any savings or income you may have, and receiving it will

not reduce other benefits you may receive.

You may qualify for AA if you are over 65 and have a physical disability (including sensory disability, such as

blindness), a mental disability (including learning difficulties), or both and your disability is severe enough for

you to need any of the following:

• Help with things such as washing (and getting in or out of the bath or shower), dressing, eating, getting to and

using the toilet or communicating your needs;

• Supervision to avoid putting yourself or others in substantial danger, for example needing someone to keep an

eye on your medical condition or diet.

AA is paid at two weekly rates: £49.30 if you need help with personal care or supervision during the day only or

during the night only; or £73.60 for those who fulfil both the day and night condition.

Just over a million current claimants get the higher rate while just under 800,000 people get the lower rate.

You can get a claim form by calling the benefit inquiry line on 0800 88 22 00 (textphone: 0800 24 33 55) or

download a form or start a claim online.

You need to describe on the form how your disability affects you; a medical examination should not normally be

necessary.

A government spokesman said AA is not one of the state benefits currently under review, but organisations such

as Age UK would like confirmation that its availability will not be adversely affected by proposed welfare reforms.

Mitchell said: "This non-means tested cash allowance gives people independence. At a time of spending cuts

and tightening eligibility criteria to access local authority social care, attendance allowance is something that

older disabled people can depend on at a time of great need."

What do people spend attendance allowance on?

An Age UK survey of 700 older people claiming AA showed that the majority (60%) spent it on help in the home,

for example on cleaners and gardeners. Just over 27% spent it on household repairs and decoration and 25%

used it to buy care services.

Of those surveyed 46% spent extra money on heating their homes, 36% spent it on more or better quality food or

food relating to a special diet or having pre-prepared or cooked meals delivered.

Some 14% used the money to buy clothes and shoes and 13% also spent some on travel, for example, a mobility

scooter or adapted car, paying petrol money to people who gave them lifts and hiring taxis when public

transport was not an option.

Under 30s rely on parents for cash, support and even help with DIY

Survey of young adults finds that debt is becoming a normality –

even with rising withdrawals from 'Bank of Mum and Dad'

• Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 May 2013 07.00 BST
•  

Young people are growing into their 20s without a fear of being in debt.

The under-30s are struggling to break free emotionally and financially from their parents and even rely on them

for basic, practical help with cleaning, DIY and transport, according to a new report.

Research by the Co-operative Group has identified a 'lost generation' of 18 to 30-year-olds in the UK for whom

debt is normality – a so-called debt-eration – and who are finding it hard to become independent in the UK's

challenging economy.

More than eight out of 10 (84%) young adults in the UK admit to having received financial support from their

parents since "coming of age".

Young adults in the 18-30 age range have asked their parents for financial help for a range of things from food

shopping costs (43%) to holidays (36%) to debt payments (16%) and house purchases (8%).

Even beyond financial support from the 'Bank of Mum and Dad', a high proportion of young adults (80%) still rely

heavily on their parents for help with basic tasks and decision-making.

The most common areas for support including transport (40%), chores such as cleaning and ironing (34%) and

help with finding a job (27%).

The traditional pattern of youngsters leaving home when they go to university has made way for a new

generation of those staying near or at home for their higher education and then staying put.

The research highlights that money is an issue for young adults, with nearly a third (31%) not feeling financially

independent.

The report has identified a "debt-eration", with nearly two thirds (60%) of 18 to 30-year-olds admitting to having

debt.

The findings reveal that for this generation debt is normal, with 77% not alarmed or worried by it.

Yet, despite parents and guardians helping their offspring repay debt, nearly a third of young adults are hiding

their debt from their parents, amounting to an average burden of £3,579 of secret debt.

The main sources of debt for this age group are: student loans (63%), credit cards (31%), personal loans (23%), overdrafts (19%) and money borrowed from parents (18%).

In addition, the group's earning expectations do not live up to reality.

Over two-fifths (41%) earn less than they thought they would in relation to their age and education level and, on

average, people aged 18-30 take home £7,187 less than they thought they would.

Also, according to the findings, more than a tenth (16%) of 18 to 30-year-olds do not feel they have a job that

matches their qualifications.

On broader issues, the report found that two-fifths (40%) are dissatisfied with their lives so far.

The main stress for this ambitious age group (40%) is a feeling that they should have achieved more in their

lives.

Other significant stresses include not having enough money to buy luxuries (38%), weight anxieties (33%) and

lack of sleep (32%).

Martyn Wates, the Co-operative Group's deputy group chief executive, said: "The findings of our study into 18 to

30-year-olds living in Britain today offers a unique insight into their view of the world and their prospects for the

future.

It should not be forgotten that it is these young adults who are ultimately going to shape the future of Britain for

years to come, so they need support and encouragement to thrive."

Psychologist Donna Dawson added: "In order to help this generation to cope better, parents should encourage

independence, initiative and self-sufficiency.

This in turn will generate the self-confidence needed to tackle work and money issues, as well as help them to

develop a more realistic outlook during an uncertain economy."

• The research was conducted by ICM in March questioning 1,500 British adults aged 18-30 in a nationally

representative sample

Aims of Families Need Fathers

 

http://www.fnf.org.uk/

Families Need Fathers is a registered UK charity which provides information and support to parents, including

unmarried parents, of either sex.

FNF is chiefly concerned with the problems of maintaining a child's relationship with both parents during and

after family breakdown. Founded in 1974, FNF helps thousands of parents every year.

The annual subscription costs less than a few minutes of a solicitor's time, and gives access to a wide range of

information and support that is beyond the scope of some lawyers.

What we believe

• Children have a right to a continuing loving relationship with both parents
• Children need to be protected from the harm of losing contact with one parent
• Both parents should be treated equally and shared parenting should be encouraged
• Each parent has a unique contribution to make to their children's development
• The Family Courts should be backed by a nationally funded mediation service
• Litigation is not the preferred route for resolving post separation children's matters

What we do

• We work to increase awareness of the problems of family breakdown
• We produce booklets, leaflets, a website and a regular newsletter
• We hold local self-help branch meetings throughout the UK
• We provide support to members through our internet forums
• We operate a national helpline as a member of the Telephone Helplines Association
• We have a network of volunteer telephone contacts
• We run Parenting Support workshops
• We provide speakers and case studies for the press and media
• We participate in family policy forums and seminars
• We respond to government consultations
• We lobby Parliament and the legal profession
• We collate and promote relevant research information

26 April 2013 | By Sofia Lind

Being judged by

your colour.

  

Racism is racial discrimination, discriminating

against you or bullying you because you’re a

different colour, religion or because you don’t

come from their country.

  

Racism is like, making fun or

not liking other people’s faiths

because it’s different to your faith.

  

 Racism is anything to

do with calling people

offensive things.

Cost of cuts: Austerity's toxic genetic legacy

• 10 April 2013 by Andy Coghlan
• New Scientist

 

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Better off on benefits?

The benefit cap will leave some children living on just £2.20 per day.

 

 I live in Croydon - one of the four London boroughs (the others are Bromley, Enfield and Haringey) that since

yesterday is piloting the benefits cap, before the national roll-out on 15 July.

This policy means that no household - no matter how many people live in it, and no matter their situation, can

receive more than £26,000 per year in benefits.

The Work & Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith MP, says: 

"It’s sheer madness that people on benefits can be getting as much as a higher-rate taxpayer earns.

We need a welfare state that acts as a safety net and encourages people back to work, not traps them in out-of-

work dependency." (reference)

He says this without presenting any evidence, and it is loyally parroted by his backbench MPs - including

Croydon Central's Tory MP, who says:

Gavin Barwell MP        ✔ @GavinBarwellMP

.@InsideCroydon But on this issue I often meet constituents who are fed up paying for

others to have a better lifestyle than themselves

8:28 PM - 01 Apr 13

 

So is it true - and how could it be? Let's try to calculate.

Let's start with three variations of a two parent family of three (all figures rounded to nearest £; tax credits figures

via HMRC Tax Credits calculator).

Firstly where one parent works and the other doesn't (assume the youngest child is under 3 and the second

parent is caring for them). To make work as low paying as possible, let's put that parent on the minimum wage of

£6.19 per hour.

If they're working a full-time job (37 hours per week).

So here is their annual income:

Wage: £11,910

Child Benefit: £2,449

Child Tax Credit: £94

Working Tax Credit: £27

Total household income: £14,480

Secondly, where both parents work.

To make work as low paying as possible, let's put both parents on the minimum wage of £6.19 per hour.

One working a full-time job (37 hours per week) and the other part-time (21 hours per week).

So here is their annual income:

Wage: £18,669

Child Benefit: £2,449

Child Tax Credit: £94

Working Tax Credit: £21

Total household income: £21,233

Finally let's have a household where neither parent works.

Both are claiming Jobseeker's Allowance:

Wage: £0

JSA: £5,795

Child Benefit: £2,449

Child Tax Credit: £94

Working Tax Credit: £0

Total household income: £8,338

So where's the benefit in not working?

Really I'm at a loss to find it.

What about more unusual households?

Just to give the Daily Mail a chance, let's re-run the out-of-work household with eight children:

Wage: £0

JSA: £5,795

Child Benefit: £5,933

Child Tax Credit: £242

Working Tax Credit: £0

Total household income: £11,970

So even with eight children our unemployed household still only has an income equivalent to one adult working

full-time on the minimum wage - and that's split between ten people - each living on the equivalent of £23 per

week.

That is the reality of our generous benefits system.

Politicians add in what I call 'landlord subsidy' (officially known as housing benefit).

This of course does not make the family 'better off'.

The transaction is between the state and the private landlord - the family sees none of the money at any point.

If rental prices dropped they would see no money, if rental costs rise they see no less.

According to the Rightmove website, the cheapest five-bedroom property (the bare minimum for a family of 10) in

Croydon is £1500 pcm or £18,000 p.a. 

Added to the total household income that makes £29,970 pa - over the £26,000 benefit cap. So the household

income through social security will be capped at £8,000 instead of £11,970.

This means each of the ten people in the house (2 adults and 8 children) will be living on just £15.38 per week or

£2.20 per day.

This is the brutal reality of the benefits cap: £2.20 per day to eat, pay the bills, and buy clothes.

This is why the Child Poverty Action Group calculates that an additional 200,000 children will be living in poverty

this year, rising to an extra 1 million by 2020.

Posted by Andrew at 16:33 3 comments:  

Women initiate 70% of divorces.

What does this say about women as a sex?

  

Greed comes into it, so does selfishness, and self before any children.

But vituperation accounts for the psychological violence,

which often leads to a physical response.

  

However this comment must be addressed.

They are victims of misandry..
 

Yes, sexism hurts us all.

Feminism devolved into misandry.

Misandry And Misogyny Are Wrong Because They Are Both Hatred

 “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.

Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the

ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.” Martin Luther King Jr.(MLKJ)
 

Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Misandry is the hatred or dislike of men or boys.
 

Information on misogyny is widely available but often of little value due to its widespread adoption as

propaganda to promote hatred.

The inappropriateness of misandry is every bit as unacceptable up as the inappropriateness of misogyny.

As MLKJ said, both values and objectivity are destroyed by hate.

This makes societies vulnerable to manipulation through propaganda.
 

“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. ” Joseph Goebbels.
 

These are commonly repeated statements made by misandrists that reflect their values and objectivity, or lack

thereof.

Such statements are clearly designed to incite hatred:
 

"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." -- Catherine MacKinnon
 

"The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race." -- Sally Miller Gearhart
 

"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience." Catherine Comins
 

"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." -- Andrea Dworkin
 

These statements constitute hate crimes. Sections 318 and 319 are the relevant sections of the Canadian

Criminal Code.

The Criminal Code of Canada says a hate crime is committed to intimidate, harm or terrify not only a person, but

an entire group of people to which the victim belongs.

The victims are targeted for who they are, not because of anything they have done.

A hate crime is one in which hate is the motive and can involve intimidation, harassment, physical force or threat

of physical force against a person, a group or a property.

In Canada it is also a crime to incite hatred. Propaganda, like the misandrists statements above, is information of

a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

27 March 2013

How to manage your sex life

Mens Health

If there is a vacancy for Ms Right in your love life, or if you need a painless exit strategy, then welcome to MH's

sexual HR department. We've used the principles of hiring and firing to help you find the most talented candidate

(and avoid any nasty grievance claims)….

1. Advertising the role

If you're recruiting someone in your love life, use the rules of business to land your perfect partner. After all, headhunters have refined the art of finding the person you really want.

“Clients may think they have an image of their ideal candidate and go to the market looking for exactly that, but we tell them all the time, ‘I don’t think that’s what you want,’” says recruitment specialist Charlie Ryan.

Scrutinise the rationale behind your list of ‘need-to-haves’ and ‘nice-to-haves’. If you’ll only consider 5ft 10in blondes with a penchant for high hemlines and loose morals, you’re not necessarily wrong. But you’ll see far fewer applicants sashaying through your door. And you’ll have to do the job yourself in the meantime.

2. Attracting candidates

Sometimes, outstanding talent knocks on your door unsolicited. But even if you’re not currently in the market for a new girlfriend, it’s worth being open to her overtures. You never know when a vacancy might arise, after all.

Recruitment consultant David Chappell says: “We tell our clients to keep their eyes and ears open to anyone making waves in the industry,” he says. “If someone’s stock is on the rise, make sure you get in there first.”

Once you’ve introduced yourself, watch how she reacts. “If she creates situations for you to help her – holding an empty glass, say – she’s hinting that she’s interested,” explains Dr Max Blumberg, a psychologist at Goldsmith’s University. What better excuse to keep a close eye on her body language?

3. Screening applications

According to a 2011 survey by research consultancy Inventium, 68% of us stretch the truth in interviews in order to portray ourselves in a better light. Equally, when it comes to confessing her level of experience in the bedroom, she is likely to be sugar-coating her past.

“Most women are excellent at hiding their sexual history because they perceive that guys prefer non-promiscuous women,” says Blumberg. “Generally, they are right.”

If this is a concern, speak to a male friend of hers before things get too serious. “Men are more likely to understand what information you’re after and will be far more willing to pass it on than her female friends, who will be inclined to paint her as a paragon of virginity.”

4. Probationary period

Of course you enjoyed the first few months and all the strings-free sex that came with them. But occasionally it doesn’t work out. Even those burning brightest with potential and initial energy to blow all your performance targets can lose their lustre.

“If you’re just after a sexual relationship and she’s not, it will be over the moment you tell her. Therefore, if that’s your intention, you’re probably better off not saying anything,” warns Blumberg. On the other hand, if you decide not to take things further and you don’t want to put your reputation on the line, then at least lie about your real reasons for ending things.

“Tell her that you don’t feel good enough for her or that you’re still not fully over an ex,” says Blumberg. “She’s won’t believe you of course, but it’s a hell of a lot better than telling her she’s not worth more to you than sex.” And, whatever the circumstances, give her a good reference – bad-mouthing her won’t reflect well on you.

5. Appraisals

Give the right feedback at the correct moment and you will be rewarded with more of what you want, exactly how you want it. “The best time to schedule in a performance review is immediately after a good performance,” says management consultant at HSBC Lewis Guest, who specialises in risk analysis.

In the 60 minutes after sex, her system is flooded with oxytocin, the hormone that promotes human psychological bonding. That’s your cue to tell her what she’s doing right and what you’d like to try in the future.

“She will link positively-phrased feedback with the longevity of your relationship as a result of her hormonal levels, making her more invested in meeting your requests,” says Blumberg. Remember that your ‘afterglow’ lasts five minutes or less, so fight the urge to postpone the appraisal until after some refreshments

 6. Grievances

It can start with something seemingly trivial – a sarcastic aside about her BFF, or a casual quip about her choice of attire. But once she’s upset, things can quickly escalate. Major companies enlist the help of third party professionals, such as mediator David Liddle, whose clients include BT and M&S. Not yet at DEFCON 5? Follow Liddle's 'triple-D' strategy to put an end to grievances without the need for any written warnings.

DISTRACT “Break the cycle of attack and counter attack by making a cup of tea. First, it gives you both breathing space to reflect. Then when you sit down to talk, you’re at eye level. It all helps the adrenaline to dissipate.”

DEBRIEF “Give her a jolly good listening to. Then start to reframe negative language into positive. If she says, ‘This won’t change,’ ask what she needs to happen differently for her to feel better. It’s a simple but crucial psychological trick.”

DEPERSONALISE “Concentrate on the issues – or, in football parlance, play the ball, not the man. Once you’ve tackled the problem at hand, make a positive move such as taking her out for dinner or to the cinema.”

7. Firing

In employment law, you need to offer your employee the chance to rectify a situation before you can sack them. And while we’re not suggesting a full-scale disciplinary hearing in your relationship, this can be a useful strategy when trying to assess whether or not you can work through a problem. If you do decide you’ve got to let her go, use employment law consultant Tara Daynes’ advice to make sure the end is as painless as possible.

Don't even think about constructive dismissal
Trying to manipulate her into leaving of her own volition is cowardly. “That’s when you end up with messy claims of unfair dismissal. Some people will give up and go quietly, but some won’t go down without a fight.”

Do expect at least one more convesation
“She probably won’t take in most of what you say, so wait until she’s calmer before going into more detail. It’s about making sure she’s got realistic expectations – and that one of them isn’t that you’ll take her back.”

Don't give her false hoope about the future
“Give a reason: she’s not right for the role, you don’t work well together. Make it a statement of fact: then there’s less scope for a discussion because it’s much harder for someone to challenge your position.”

8. Holiday entitlement

Just as you get 25 days’ leave from work, you also need time out from your relationship. Social psychologist Dr Terri Orbuch followed 373 married couples over a 25-year period and found that, where they were unhappy, the reason was twice as likely to be lack of time alone [11.5%] as a poor sex life [6%].

A ‘holiday’ from a relationship is key: “When partners have their own set of interests and friends, it makes them happier and less bored,” she says. The trick is in how to ask for it, without triggering any paranoia. “Don’t just say, ‘I need space’. Be specific – tell her why more space will make you happy. Don’t keep secrets, enjoy the time and don’t feel guilty.”

9. Bonuses

Performance-based bonuses are always well-received, but if you pay out too much there’s a risk that the supply of Louboutins will be all she’s interested in. Instead, think on an emotional level, not a financial one.

“It’s good for someone senior to be seen going out of their way now and then,” says Guest. It’s exactly the same at home. “Doing something for her that you don’t particularly like doing is a combination of effort, selflessness and forethought.”

Not a keen cook? An impromptu meal will work wonders. “It might feel mundane, but it stimulates the same psychological region that makes a woman flirt with you in the first place,” says Blumberg. Save the new heels for 14 Feb.

10. Promotion

Finally, if you think she has the right skill set to keep your love and sex life in profit for years to come, then consider making her a permanent offer. “High-level employees generally receive years of screening,” says Newberry. “But firms should be assessing a candidate’s ability to move to the top from the very first interview.” It’s worth considering advancing her sooner rather than later.

Married men earn 22% more than single colleagues according to a Virginia Commonwealth University study and experience faster promotions at work. Research in The Lancet found that married couples have more sex, too. Which, all things considered, is an investment worth banking on.

 

Elsewhere the Metro reports that suicide is now the biggest killer of young men in Britain.

According to a report from the Campaign Against Living Miserably  (CALM), three young males take their own life every day.

The charity blames the recession for many of the deaths, which rose significantly in 2011, to 4,552 men. 

Most are in the age group 33-44 years, in which suicide now reportedly accounts for more deaths than road

accidents, murder and HIV/AIDS combined

Why does society treat old people so shabbily?

The Daily Mail asks us if we are in ‘drink denial’ as reports show that millions of adults drink too much alcohol

yet barely a quarter admit to doing so.

Researchers at UCL found a huge mismatch between the amount of alcohol we say we are consuming and

what is actually being bought. 40% of sales are unaccounted for when the two figures are compared.

The study suggests that around half the adult population are binge drinkers, drinking more than six units once

a week for women and eight units for men.

However, only 13% of women and 22% of men admit to being in this category.

Researchers used a computer model to estimate the true amount being drunk - basing it on the Health Survey

for England and the General Lifestyle Survey.

They found that 43% of women and 51% of men were binge drinkers, though the latest figures from the

Government found only 13% of women and 22% of men drank more than the recommended amounts.

The researchers concluded that many people completing the official surveys underestimate, forget or even lie

about the amount they drink, and drastically underestimate their intake as a result.

Sadie Boniface, lead author of the study and based at the department of epidemiology and public health at

UCL, said: ‘This study was conducted to show what alcohol consumption would look like when all of what is

sold is accounted for, if everyone under-reported equally.

‘What is seen in the surveys and sales potentially has enormous implications for public health.’

Why have the white British left London?

The consequence, as revealed by the latest census, is that white Brits are now in a minority in London, making up just 45% of its residents.

So where have they gone to - and why did they leave?

I've been analysing and mapping the census data, and what emerges is a much more positive story than some headlines would make you think.

The movement of the white British is often characterised as white flight - the indigenous population forced out of their neighbourhoods by foreign migrants. That may be part of the story, but I think the evidence suggests it is also about working class aspiration and economic success.

Trying to track internal migrants is never easy. Just because the population of one place has fallen and another has risen does not mean residents moved between them. But there are some clues as to where London's white British migrated to between the censuses of 2001 and 2011.

While the capital's white British population fell by 620,000, the white British population in the rest of England and Wales increased by 220,000. (The overall fall of 400,000 is explained by a low birth rate and emigration.)

These maps show the change to the white British population in local authorities in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011. (Click between the three headings to see how the white British population is seemingly shifting around the country.)

London's dramatic loss of white British residents is represented by a splash of yellow and orange. Outside the capital, the dominant blues tell a story of an increasing white British population. In some places the rise is quite marked.

The dozen authorities with the highest percentage increase in the white British population are almost all found in eastern England. Only mid-Devon falls outside a horseshoe of largely rural authorities extending south and east from the Fens.

It would appear that, in the first decade of the 21st Century, the dream of escaping to the country became a reality for tens of thousands of urban white Britons. But did they leave willingly or were they forced to move?

To find out, I have been to Barking and Dagenham, a London borough which has seen a phenomenal change in its cultural make-up over the past decade or so. In 2001, the census records that more than 80% of residents were white British. By 2011, it was statistically in the minority - just 49% of people in the area described themselves as white and British.

The story of Barking and Dagenham is the story of the white working class EastEnders. In the 1920s and 30s, tens of thousands of families were moved out of the inner city slums and into the huge council estates which had been built in the borough.

The 27,000 houses on the Becontree estate were described as homes for heroes, often allocated to the families of World War I servicemen. Another wave of Cockney sparrows built their nests in the area, having been bombed out of the East End during the Blitz in WWII.

This was a real step up for many families. Their new homes had indoor toilets and often a small garden. When Ford opened its giant plant at Dagenham in 1931, tens of thousands of jobs provided income security in the midst of profound economic depression.

Although Barking and Dagenham's population declined slightly in the 1960s and 70s, the last years of the 20th Century saw it rise again. Many families took advantage of the right to buy their council house at 30% of its market value - at least two-thirds of the Becontree estate was sold to the private sector.

In 2000, the borough was among the very few places in Greater London where you could still buy a three-bedroom house for under £100,000. The capital's buoyant property market meant that anyone who got on the housing ladder would see their home become a valuable investment during the first 10 years of the new millennium.

The decade also saw the Ford plant contract and ultimately the company announced it was closing down. The economic engine of the borough was being switched off, leading many of the local people to think about their future. In the first 10 years of the new century, the number of full-time jobs in Barking and Dagenham fell by a quarter.

For many white British households, the 2000s had left them without a job but with a sizeable chunk of capital in their home. Some had also benefited from redundancy pay-outs and pension deals offered by Ford. It was a cue for the families who had left London's East End in the middle of the 20th Century to move on again at the start of the 21st.

A closer look at London reveals how many neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs have seen significant falls in the white British population - Newham, Brent, Haringey, Enfield, Ealing, Hounslow, Merton and Lewisham almost form a ring around the capital. Only the affluent boroughs of Richmond and Kingston along the river to the west prevent the completion of the orange doughnut.

Inner London saw some places losing the white British population, but quite a number - coloured blue - bucked the trend and recorded an increase.

Even central boroughs that experienced a decline in white British may have seen an increase in the number of white residents. Kensington and Chelsea recorded 17,300 fewer white British residents but the category "white other" now makes up 28% of the local population. The immigrants here are rich white Europeans and Russians.

It is a different story in Barking and Dagenham.

The people moving into the borough tend to be of black African heritage. I was introduced to Victor and Victoria, whose parents came to Britain from Ghana in the 50s. He works for London Transport and she is a nurse in the NHS - typical of the professional black families who've arrived from inner London to take advantage of available housing as the borough's white residents leave.

With a time-lapse camera, it would appear that London is pulsing as generations and ethnic groups move up and move out.

On Dagenham's main shopping street, I met a number of white locals who were planning to leave the borough. One male pensioner was hoping to relocate to Clacton - a seaside town on the Essex coast now nicknamed Little Dagenham. A local councillor told me how his parents had sold up and bought a large cottage with a quarter-acre of garden in Lincolnshire. Another woman says she had her eyes set on a little cottage in Leigh-on-Sea near Southend.

Leigh is a particular favourite. Many residents from Barking and Dagenham will have taken the train along the Thames Estuary towards Southend on a work excursion - the old beano to the seaside. Some still do, looking out of the window as the industrial landscape gives way to green fields and open wetlands teeming with birds.

Over the past decade or so, towns along the railway line between Fenchurch St and Shoeburyness have seen significant increases to the white British population. In Westcliff, part of Southend, I met a family who recently cashed in their three-bedroom house in Barking for a six-bedroom home by the sea. They keep bumping into old school friends, realising that they were joining a sizeable population of migrants from the borough.

The years between the last two censuses have witnessed significant cultural change in London, particularly in the outer boroughs. Some white British may have moved because their neighbourhood has been culturally transformed, the tea rooms and restaurants replaced by takeaway chicken shops and halal supermarkets serving the new arrivals.

But there is also a story here of white working class families that escaped from the slums and bombed-out East End in the middle of the last century, found new opportunities in London's outer boroughs and then, in the past decade - often having prospered from the housing boom and the capital's economic growth - cashed in their assets and bought themselves that little cottage in the countryside or by the sea.

It is a story of aspiration. It is a story of success.

Social care plan lacks sufficient funding

 

to make a difference to people’s lives

Posted on February 12, 2013 by admin

Britain’s biggest pensioner organisation, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) has described the

government’s plan to reform social care funding as “about as credible as a Findus Lasagne” because it lacks

sufficient funding to tackle the problems that pensioners face.

Dot Gibson, NPC general secretary said:

“The social care system needs urgent and radical reform, but these proposals simply tinker at the edges.

The current system is dogged by means-testing, a postcode lottery of charges, a rationing of services and poor

standards and nothing in the plan looks like it will address any of these concerns.

Setting a lifetime cap on care costs of £75,000 will help just 10% of those needing care, whilst the majority will be

left to struggle on with a third rate service.

The government needs to be much braver and bolder if it is really going to sort out the problems – otherwise in a

few years’ time we’ll be back again having another look at the issue.

Using inheritance tax or money saved from the state pension system simply won’t raise enough money to bring

about the change that’s needed. It’s time we merged health and social care and had a truly integrated system

which was funded through general taxation – like the NHS – rather than put all the responsibility on pensioners

and their families.

Getting older and needing care isn’t a lifestyle choice – so why should the cost of care not be shared by society

as a whole? Frankly, the plan as it stands is about as credible as a Findus Lasagne.”

ENDS

A detailed briefing paper on the Government’s proposals can be downloaded here.

NPC research entitled The Politics of Care, has analysed the issues facing existing and future generations and found:

·              An unfair postcode lottery of charges for care at home

·              Inadequate standards of care in both nursing and domiciliary care and a lack of robust and effective regulation

·              Lack of adequate training and qualifications amongst care staff, linked to poor terms and conditions

·              Little support for family carers, leading to inadvertent neglect

·              A false separation between NHS funded medical care and means-tested social care, which has removed thousands of frail elderly people from receiving free care

Below are five ways that women unwittingly sabotage their marriages,

along with the proven remedies for restoring the love and closeness you once shared.

1. Rejecting his efforts to make you happy

Husbands and wives bring different strengths and desires to marriage.

For women, feeling cherished and desired is vital.

For a man, respect and sex are of utmost importance.

Men also have a powerful drive to make their wives happy -- it contributes to their feeling of success.

You might think that your husband is the exception -- that he doesn't care about delighting you -- but he may just

be discouraged because he doesn't feel that he can please you.

You have the power to transform your relationship by becoming pleasable, which means showing appreciation

for his efforts instead of rejecting or dismissing them -- and by extension, him.

When you reject his efforts because they aren't what you had in mind (e.g., a present that isn't what you want,

cleaning that's not to your standards, or a compliment you don't agree with), there's nothing he can do to

improve the situation, but there is something powerful you can do: receive graciously.

Remedy: Try an experiment for the next two weeks:

However small or imperfect his efforts, receive what your husband offers when he is trying to please or help you.

Thank him for his thoughtfulness.

Notice how quickly this creates more intimacy as you practice the skill of receiving graciously.

2. Taking the same approach at home as you do at work

We women can create a gratifying culture of intimacy, if we know how.

If all we've ever been taught is how to get ahead in school and career, but not how to foster intimacy, it's pretty

hard to change hats when the work day is done and we want a loving, supportive home.

At work we have to manage projects and staff, move the bottom line and get that promotion.

At home the goals are different; we want to feel appreciated and wanted and get more help around the house.

But if you treat your husband like an employee, he will rebel.

Respecting your husband by saying what you want instead of telling him what to do gives him the opportunity to

make you happy in a way that no amount of managing ever will.

Remedy: For two weeks say what you want, but not what he should do or how he should do it.

Be patient and allow him to find his own way of pleasing you.

Remember, he wants to.

Let him, and he will.

3. Withholding sex

Most men need sex more than women to feel intimate.

You are his only source for that vital form of connecting, and when you withhold -- whether to punish or because

you're exhausted -- you miss a chance to receive the intimacy that you both crave.

Remedy: Over the next two weeks as you start experiencing more intimacy, consider making yourself available

for sex at least once a week in support of your mutual goal of connecting.

4. Initiating divorce when the problem isn't insurmountable

Women initiate between 66% and 90% of all divorces.

You might think that's because men do things to make marriage untenable -- like cheat or hit them -- but I hear

about women divorcing because he didn't help with the baby, he was emotionally unavailable, or because they grew apart.

Countless women tell me they divorced because their husbands weren't capable of meeting their needs.

When the women I work with learn intimacy skills, it changes the way they see a previous marriage.

Some women tell me that they realize they were married to a good guy, but divorced because they lacked the

skills to have a happy relationship.

Sometimes it causes them enormous grief.

It is heartbreaking to see marriages end because of a simple lack of skills.

It's no different than seeing someone try to drive a car without a single lesson: A crash is inevitable, but it's preventable.

Remedy: Consider taking divorce off the table just for the next two weeks, keeping in mind that intimacy needs

safety to thrive. In my experience, any woman who has a good guy can bring her marriage back from the brink of

divorce and transform it into a happy, loving relationship by practicing the intimacy skills.

You can do the same.

5. Waiting for him to improve

You might wonder why there's no article for men explaining what they can do to improve their marriages. Even if

there was, you couldn't make your husband read it or do what it says.

You can change yourself, and he will respond to you differently.

Remedy: Instead of pleading, criticizing or demanding that your husband change, try the remedies above for two weeks.

Although the idea of the industrial reserve army of labour is closely associated with Marx, it

was already in circulation in the British labour movement by the 1830s.

The first mention of the reserve army of labour in Marx's writing occurs in a manuscript he

wrote in 1847 but did not publish:

"Big industry constantly requires a reserve army of unemployed workers for times of overproduction.

The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour

as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible

in relation to the demand for it, i.e., when the overpopulation is the greatest.

Overpopulation is therefore in the interest of the bourgeoisie, and it gives the workers good advice which

it knows to be impossible to carry out.

 Since capital only increases when it employs workers, the increase of capital involves an increase of the

proletariat, and, as we have seen, according to the nature of the relation of capital and labour, the

increase of the proletariat must proceed relatively even faster.

The... theory... which is also expressed as a law of nature, that population grows faster than the means of

subsistence, is the more welcome to the bourgeois as it silences his conscience, makes hard-

heartedness into a moral duty and the consequences of society into the consequences of nature, and

finally gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction of the proletariat by starvation as calmly as

other natural event without bestirring himself, and, on the other hand, to regard the misery of the

proletariat as its own fault and to punish it.

To be sure, the proletarian can restrain his natural instinct by reason, and so, by moral supervision, halt

the law of nature in its injurious course of development." - Karl Marx, Wages, December 1847

Our Society - Rotten to the Core?

Those who

 ‘always talk of the misery of spouses bound to each other

against their will’:

 

They think only of two individuals and forget the family.

They forget that nearly every dissolution of a marriage is the dissolution of a family and that the children and

what belongs to them should not be dependent on arbitrary whims, even from a purely legal point of view.

If marriage were not the basis of the family, it would not be subject to legislation, just as friendship is not

 

Karl Marx

WHY AREN'T DIVORCED FATHERS MORE INVOLVED

WITH THEIR CHILDREN?

 

So if most fathers have much to offer and since most dads are so upset about being separated from their

children, why do many men spend so little time with their children after divorce?

The answer seems to lie in five areas:

(1) Our society’s attitudes about fathering;

(2) the ways in which we idealize mothers and motherhood;

(3) the legal system’s treatment of divorced fathers;

(4) differences in the mother’s and father’s parenting styles; and

(5) the mother’s attitudes and behavior.

 

Societal beliefs about fathers and fatherhood

While we chastise fathers for not being more involved with their children, we simultaneously promote

beliefs that make it more difficult for many fathers to be as close to their children as are most mothers -

especially after a divorce.

 

Among the most insulting and damaging are that men are “naturally” or “instinctively” inferior to

women when it comes to caring for and raising children and that fathers are far less interested in and committed to

their children than mothers. Indeed while many of us are offended if someone claims that certain races are

genetically or “instinctively” superior to others, we often seem to accept the assertion that men are genetically or

“naturally” inferior to women as parents

 

(Farrell. 1994; Fine & Kurdek. 1994; Griswold. 1993; Lamb. 1997; Osherson. 1995;

Parke. 1996; Pittman. 1993; Warshak. 1992).

 

Moreover, the assumption that men are inferior to women as parents is not supported by the research.

To begin with, most of what women know about mothering is learned, not instinctive -

as is true for men and fathering.

And there are human mothers who do not love, bond with, or take care of their children

 

(Allport. 1997; Blakely.1994; Eyer. 1994; Parke. 1996; Parker. 1996; Thurer. 1994).

 

Likewise, among other mammals there are mothers who

ignore, abandon and even kill their young, while the fathers take charge of the feeding and nurturing

 

(Redican. 1976;Tavris. 1992).

 

More to the point, how human fathers and mothers relate to their children is heavily influenced by what

their particular society and their ethnic culture at a particular time in history has taught them.

For instance, in colonial America fathers were generally considered more important than mothers when it came to

the moral, religious, and intellectual upbringing of children.

As a result, most books and advice on child rearing were addressed to fathers, not to mothers.

But as our country became more industrialized, most fathers and mothers were no longer able to work in

or near home providing equally for the family’s economic needs.

As most men were driven further from home into salaried jobs, most women were gradually left at home in charge

of the children.

But the tide changed again during World War II when mothers were needed in the workforce.

Only when returning veterans needed their jobs back were we told that “good” mothers should not be employed

and that “good” fathers should provide 100% of the family’s income.

Yet even during this brief period of the 1950s, only 60% of all parents were able to achieve this

concept of “good” parenting

. By the 1960s the majority of fathers and mothers once again returned to our traditional

definitions for the “good” family - a family where both parents provided for the family’s economic needs.

But the point is that the way fathers and mothers relate to their children is heavily influenced by what they have

been taught- not by their genes or by instincts

 

(Coontz. 1997; Griswold. 1993; Marsiglio. 1995; Parke. 1996; Pleck & Pleck.1997; Thurer. 1994).

 

Neither is it true that most fathers are less interested in and less committed to their children than are most

mothers.

First, many fathers resent having to be away from their children so much because of their long work hours

and the demands of the job

 

(Barnett & Rivers. 1996; Coltrane. 1996; Gerson. 1993; Griswold. 1993; Larson. 1993;

Levant & Kopecky. 1995; Osherson. 1995; Pleck. 1997).

 

Second, when both parents are employed full-time, fathers and mothers generally do similar amounts of

housework and childcare

 

(Deutsch. 1993; Pleck. 1997).

 

Third, many Divorced dads fathers are more stressed and more worried about their children than about work-

related problems.

As experts who have reviewed the research put it:

“It is simply not true that a job is more important to a man than his family”

 

(Barnett & Rivers, 1996, p. 56).

 

For example, many fathers suffer from just as much separation anxiety as do mothers when

leaving their young children in day care

 

(Deater, Scarr, McCartney, & Eisenberg. 1994).

 

Fourth, when given equal time with their children and when not having to shoulder the family’s financial burdens

alone, fathers are generally just as nurturing, attentive, and involved with their children as are mothers.

So although most men interact differently than women do with children, fathers are not inferior parents

 

(Barnett & Rivers. 1996; Bozett & Hanson. 1991; Coltrane. 1996; Feldman. 1990; Griswold. 1993; Lamb. 1997; Marsiglio. 1995; Osherson. 1995; Parke. 1996; Shulman & Collins. 1993).

 

When it comes to the commitment of divorced fathers, two other findings are worth noting. First, divorced

fathers who give their children lots of time and attention seldom receive much credit or public recognition

 

(Teachman. 1991; Van Wert. 1992; Warshak. 1992).

 

Second, when a couple is having marital problems, the husband often reacts by spending less time with the

children and less time at home; while the wife often does the reverse

 

(Belsky, Youngblood, Rovine, & Volling. 1991; Cummings & O'Reilly. 1997; Cowan & Cowan. 1992; Hinde &

Stevenson. 1995; Pleck. 1997; Scarf. 1995).

 

So in some cases where it might seem as though a father is losing interest in his children prior to divorce, he may just be reacting differently than the mother does to their marital stress.

Finally, upper and middle class white beliefs about motherhood can make it more difficult for fathers to

remain closely bonded to their children after divorce.

Compared to other races and to lower income groups, these white mothers are less likely to believe

"it takes a whole village to raise a child."

That is, the white mother from a middle or upper class background is the most likely to be too possessive and

uncooperative when it comes to sharing “her” children with other adults, including their own father

 

(Ahrons. 1994; Bell-Scott. 1991; Crosbie-Burnett &

Lewis. 1993; Debold, Wilson, & Malave. 1992; Reddy, Roth, & Sheldon. 1994).

Protection from a Depressed Mother

 

Having a close relationship with their father can also be a protective buffer for children whose mother is clinically

depressed or has extremely depressed ways of thinking and behaving.

In such cases the father can teach the children less depressive, less self-defeating ways of thinking and behaving

 

(Buchanan & Seligman. 1994; Downey & Coyne. 1990; Seligman. 1991; Waxler, Denham, Iannotti, & Cummings.

1992).

 

The father can also help to counteract the overly indulgent,

lax parenting that is common among depressed mothers

 

(Ahrons. 1994; Chapman, Price, & Serovich. 1995; Cummings & O'Reilly. 1997; Downey & Coyne. 1990;

Hetherington. 1991; Hops & Biglan. 1990; Rubin, Lemare, & Lollis. 1990; Silverstein & Rashbaum. 1994).

 

Staying involved with his children after a divorce can also be especially beneficial because a depressed mother

tends to relate to the children in ways that interfere with their social skills and self-reliance

 

(Ahrons. 1994; Bassoff. 1994a; Gottlieb.1995; Harrington. 1994; Hetherington. 1991; Karen. 1994; Miller. 1994; Pittman. 1993; Scarf. 1995; Wallerstein &

Blakeslee. 1989).

 

The father might also be the only parent who can help the children recognize and deal with their

Divorced dads own problems because a depressed mother often ignores or denies whatever problems her

children are having

 

(Ambert. 1996; Block. 1996; Downey & Coyne. 1990; Dreman & Aldor. 1994; Pittman. 1993; Radke-Yarrow. 1991;

Scarf. 1995; Silverstein & Rashbaum. 1994).

 

For example, depressed mothers whose sons continue to have serious psychological problems as adults often

claim that there is nothing wrong with their sons other than being “shy and sensitive” or “needing a little more

time to grow up”

 

(Block. 1996; Silverstein & Rashbaum. 1994).

 

A depressed woman is also the least likely to get remarried after her divorce -

which is unfortunate for her children, for reasons we will soon discuss

 

(Ambert. 1996; Chapman, Price, & Serovich. 1995; Dreman & Aldor. 1994; Emery. 1994; Garvin,

Kalter, & Hansell. 1993; Hetherington. 1991; Wallerstein & Blakeslee. 1989).

 

 Sadly too, the depressed mother is often the least willing to share her children with their father after the divorce

 

(Ambert. 1996; Downey & Coyne.1990; Pelham. 1993; Radke-Yarrow. 1991; Todorski. 1995).

 

In the words of one depressed mother,

“I can’t bear the thought that anyone else can do as good a job parenting my children as I can”

 

(Hass. 1994).

 

In any case, a close relationship with their father can be a special blessing for children whose mothers are

depressed or chronically unhappy and discontented with their lives

Self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-motivation

 

In most families it is also the father who contributes most to the children’s becoming self-reliant,

self-disciplined, and self-motivated.

For instance, teenagers of divorced parents say it is their father who gives them the best advice,

who teaches them the most, and who pushes them more to do their best

(Munsch, Woodward, & Darling. 1995).

 

And after parents divorce, those girls who live with their unmarried father have higher educational goals and

higher achievement test scores than girls who live with their unmarried mother

(Downey & Powell. 1993).

 

Although most teenagers talk more to their mother than to their father about their social lives, they usually turn to

their father to solve other problems, to get advice on education and jobs, and to get encouragement for self-reliance

 

(Almeida & Galambos. 1993; Hosley & Montemayor. 1997; Larson. 1993;

Montemayor, McKenry, & Julian. 1993; Parke. 1996; Shulman & Klein. 1993; Snarey. 1993; Welsh & Powers.

1991).

 

 So although teenage children might see their father are more demanding or more judgmental than their mother,

those who remain close to their father often end up being the most self-reliant, self-disciplined, self-motivated,

academically and vocationally successful, and achievement oriented

 

 

(Coulter & Minninger. 1993; Downey & Powell.

1993; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan. 1997; Hosley & Montemayor. 1997; Lamb. 1997; Minninger & Goulter. 1993;

Marsiglio. 1995; Parke. 1996; Pittman. 1993; Pipher. 1994; Secunda. 1992; Snarey. 1993; Warshak. 1992).

Dating, Sexuality and Social Maturity

 

Children who are able to maintain a close relationship with their father also tend to be more socially mature and to

have fewer problems related to dating and sexuality -

particularly if their divorced mother has not remarried

 

(Bassoff. 1994a; Bingham. 1995; Caron. 1995b; Debold, Wilson, & Malave.

1992; Flaake. 1993; Glickman. 1993; Hirschmann & Munter. 1995; Maine. 1993; Mens-Verhulst, Schreurs, &

Woertman. 1993; Thompson. 1995; Tolman. 1991).

 

For example, many daughters who live with an unmarried mother and have little or nothing to do with their father

either tend to grow up too fast by dating, having sex, or getting married at an early age or behave as if they are

afraid to grow up and are extremely uncomfortable with dating and sexuality

 

(Aquilino. 1991; Debold, Wilson, & Malave. 1992; Hetherington. 1991; Maine. 1993; Minninger &

Goulter. 1993; Pipher. 1994; Secunda. 1992; Tasker & Richards. 1994) .

 

Generally though, the son seems to pay a greater price than the daughter when he has little or no relationship

with his father after divorce.

Usually those boys who live with their unmarried mother and see little or nothing of their father are more socially

immature, aggressive, delinquent, defiant, and psychologically or emotionally disturbed than other boys their age

 

(Baker. 1992; Blaise. 1993; Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch. 1997; Biller. 1993; Cherlin

& Furstenberg. 1994; Corneau. 1991; Emery. 1994; Furstenberg & Cherlin. 1991; Guttman. 1993; Hetherington.

1991; Hetherington & Jodl. 1994; Kalter. 1990; Lansdale, Cherlin, & Kiernan. 1995; Parke. 1996; Scull. 1992;

Wallerstein. 1991; Thomas & Forehand. 1993; Weiss. 1994; Zimiles & Lee. 1991

Blackadder preserves our right to be insulting:

 

Ministers agree to amend laws

 

after campaign led by Rowan Atkinson

• Home Secretary says the government will ditch contentious words from the Public Order Act
• Comedian Rowan Atkinson led a coalition of campaign groups complaining about the legislation

By Tim Shipman and James Slack

UPDATED: 01:35, 15 January 2013

•  

'Outrage industry':

Comedian Rowan Atkinson blamed the law for creating a society of an 'extraordinarily authoritarian and controlling nature'

Ministers agreed to scrap a law outlawing ‘insulting words or behaviour’ last night after a campaign led by

comedian Rowan Atkinson.

Home Secretary Theresa May announced a dramatic U-turn yesterday saying the government would ditch the

contentious words from the Public Order Act amid fears that they are strangling free speech.

The Blackadder and Mr Bean star led a coalition of campaign groups complaining that the legislation has been

abused by over-zealous police and prosecutors to arrest Christian preachers, critics of Scientology, gay rights

campaigners and even students making jokes.

The government caved in yesterday after suffering a humiliating defeat in the House of Lords before Christmas.

Mrs May told the Commons that the word ‘insulting’ would be removed from Section 5 of the Public Order Act, as

part of the Crime and Courts Bill.

She told MPs: ‘Looking at past cases, the Director of Public Prosecutions could not identify any where the

behaviour leading to a conviction could not be described as “abusive” as well as “insulting”. 

'He has stated that the word “insulting” could safely be removed without the risk of undermining the ability of the

CPS to bring prosecutions.

‘We will issue guidance to the police on the range of powers that remain available to them to deploy in the kind of

situations I described, but the word “insulting” shall be removed from Section 5.’ 

The climbdown was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners.

Tory MP David Davis said: ‘I welcome this sensible decision by the Home Secretary.

The only effect of this law was to chill public debate and depress freedom of speech.’

Reform Section 5 campaign director Simon Calvert said he was “very pleased” by the Government’s statement,

adding:

‘This is a victory for free speech.

People of all shades of opinion have suffered at the hands of Section 5.’ 

Nick Pickles, director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said:

‘It should not be the police’s role to intervene when someone feels they have been insulted and the Home

Secretary and her Coalition colleagues should be applauded for accepting this important change.’ 

Comedian Rowan Atkinson blamed the law, introduced in 1986, for creating an ‘outrage industry’ and a society of

an ‘extraordinarily authoritarian and controlling nature’.

The Daily Mail has repeatedly highlighted the most egregious abuses of the old law.

A sixteen-year-old boy was arrested under the legislation for peacefully holding a placard that read ‘Scientology is

a dangerous cult’, on the grounds that it might insult followers of the religious movement.

In 2005, an Oxford student was arrested for saying to a policeman:

‘Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?’. 

Thames Valley Police said the arrest had taken place because he had made ‘homophobic comments that were

deemed offensive to people passing by’.

Gay rights campaigners from the group Outrage! were also arrested under the Act when they protested against

supporters of the Islamist fundamentalist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was calling for the killing of gays, Jews and

unchaste women.

In a victory for the Mail, the Bill also contains a commitment to shake-up Britain’s lopsided extradition laws.

The legislation says there will be a so-called ‘forum bar ‘which means more suspects are likely to face trial in

the UK - rather than be packed off to America.

A hearing will take place before a judge to examine the details of any offence which the Americans want to end in

extradition.

If prosecution is possible in both the UK and abroad, the courts will have the power to bar prosecution overseas.

This will be done of it is ‘in the interests of justice’.

Supporters believe that - if the ‘forum bar’ had already been in place - Asperger’s sufferer Gary McKinnon could

have been spared his decade-long fight against extradition.

He was only saved, in October last year, after the Mail’s lengthy Affront to British Justice campaign.

 

Depression, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders

 

Teenagers and young adults who have close relationships with

their fathers are less likely to become clinically depressed,

to develop eating disorders, and to develop anxiety disorders

(Caron. 1995b; Cooper & Cooper. 1992; Putallaz & Heflin. 1993; Scarf. 1995; Silverstein & Rashbaum.

1994; Steinberg & Steinberg. 1994; Warshak. 1992).

 

So for example, teenage girls often become less clinically depressed

after they start spending more time with their divorced fathers

 

(Bassoff. 1994a; Maine. 1993; Pipher. 1994).

 

And since depression is much more common among girls than boys, especially during adolescence,

having a close relationship with her divorced father might be especially important for a daughter

 

(Brown & Gilligan. 1992; Ebata,

Petersen, & Conger. 1990; Gilligan, Rogers, & Tolman. 1991; Harrington. 1994; Nielsen. 1996; Orenstein. 1994;

Pipher. 1994).

Channel 4 Dispatches Sharing Mum & Dad

Repeated Thursday 01.35

Introduction

Today, one in three children in the UK grow up in a home with only one parent.

 But are we doing what's best for the children of separated parents?

Dispatches follows presenter Tim Lovejoy, a divorced father of two, as he investigates the current

situation surrounding shared parenting following divorce or separation.

Tim speaks hears a wide range of voices and explores the psychological effects of parental separation

on children, talking to teenagers about their personal experiences.

The programme investigates the roles of mums and dads in 2013, asking whether current legislation in

this area is up-to-date with the way in which modern families operate, and exploring different ways

of sharing parenting post-separation.

Tim uses social media to generate debate, much of it incorporated into the film. And, in a first for

Dispatches, Channel 4 is showing behind-the-scenes clips of the production process online, to help

inform the debate

Comments :-

: Most fathers do not get a choice in the matter, it is often made impossible for the father to fight such a biased system.

The pain of trying to fight the system and the costs emotionally and financially become all to much.

So the blame game is on the mother's side and they should be ashamed of their blackmailing and abducting ways, it is immoral.

Denial of contact = emotional abuse of a child = child abuse. Why do the UK courts sanction child abuse by

failure to enforce court ordered contact, or by ordering no contact?

-----------------------------------------

Why do I have to prove my worth as a father but the mum doesn't.

Why do I have to be assessed as safe but mum (and new partner dont).

Why do I have to pay unaffordable maintenance payments even though I provide a loving home 3 nights a week.

Why do I have to fight the legal system to get shared residence of my 3 children.

Why does the law actively exclude me from key decisons like education.

Why does Great British family law and the welfare state demonise dads, alienate their children and promote single parenting.

Put your answers on loo roll (not used preferably) and flush anyway.

In generations to come historians will look back and mock this nations governments for leading it to an

uncontrolable "human crisis" of fatherless fathers and mothers and so it goes on.......

------------------------------------------------------------.

The problem behind all this are the lawyers.

When I got married there were no lawyers present.

When my kids were conceived there were no lawyers present.

When the marriage broke down guess who were there - yes the sponging lawyers prepared to make my life a misery purely because I am a father.

To quote the first so called 'family lawyer' I saw "don't bother trying to get custody of your children.

Nine times out of ten the custody is granted to the mother".

The system is firmly biased towards mothers and the legal gravy train make millions out of our misery.

No surprise they dont want things changed.

It is not about the childrens best interest but about lining the lawyers pockets and their best interests!!

I have full custody of my daughter.

She has contact with her mum every other weekend.

She lives with me because her mum messed up as a parent.

If that was the other way round, as a father, i would have a lot more to prove.

Mother and fathers make mistakes as parent.

But there is a social stigma where fathers have a lot more to prove

----------------------------------------------------------------

great show which has stirred up a lot of emotion in me. social services recommended in a section 7 report that my son resides with me.

having been shipped from school to school by his mum the judge based his decision not to allow him to reside

with me due to the fact he was settled in a school for a couple of months.

you can make your own mind up if the court favours the mother or the childs schooling. social services did but

it still made no difference.

now the child is being used as a weapon by the mother who fails to allow any phone contact and makes sure

the child is ill when it is my contact weekend. call the system fair? not me i'm afraid

------------------------------------------------------------

      The law is wrong. Moreover it is manipulated by women and the legal system that      makes money out of it.

It will either change or we will find another way.

If you examine the situation it is a violation of human rights.

Single-parent families so common in today's Britain

that couples are now a minority

• Seven constituencies in the country constitute more single-parent families than couples

• Britain has highest proportion of single parent families in Europe

The Radical-

Society and the Law have gone mad ! -

1. Women with children who ask for a divorce should be listened to by Solicitors and the Courts and sent away for Counselling. The Men too! The Children rights and opinions in the matter should be paramount.

2. Divorce Settlements are given for those who have children, so give the financial settlement to the children,not the Parent,through a legal guardian if underage. Has a Study been done on what Women spend their divorce settlement on ? ---100% it is not only the children !

3. The presumption of custody should be a central issue in any divorce case and a presumption made that women, with children,who apply for a divorce are the unfit parent ,until proved to the contrary.

4. Unreasonable behaviour ? Who is being unreasonable ? That should require concrete evidence and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

5. The legal presumption that when a divorce is applied for the marriage has broken down

makes the Law the Ass !

6. Too many Solicitors put profit before people !

Has a Study been done into Divorce costs to show who benefits most ?

 

By Daniel Martin

| UPDATED: 23:55, 3 August 2012

Single-parent families are now so common that couples living with their children are the minority in some parts of the country.

Data shows there are seven Parliamentary constituencies where single-parent families make up the majority of households.

There are close to 2million single-parent families in the UK and we have the highest proportion of children

brought up in one-parent families of any major European country.

The seven areas where single-parent families are the majority are in the urban hearts of London, Liverpool,

Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

In one constituency, Lewisham Deptford, 58 per cent of households with children are headed by lone parents.

At the other end of the spectrum, in the rural district of South Northamptonshire just one in every 20 family units

is headed by a single parent.

The figures, from a Freedom of Information request to the Office for National Statistics, were greeted with concern yesterday.

Jill Kirby, a social policy expert and former director of the Centre for Policy Studies, said: ‘Children need input

from both parents in order to thrive.

‘Research shows children growing up in fatherless homes are much less likely to do well at school and are at

twice the risk of getting into problems with drink or drugs, or involved in crime.

The UK welfare system has been partly to blame, by providing a substitute breadwinner rather than encouraging

parents to stick together.’
 
Two years ago a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which represents

industrialised nations, exposed Britain’s shocking record on broken homes.

It found we have more children living in one-parent families than any other European country and more of our

single mothers are unemployed and on benefit than anywhere else on the Continent.

The study revealed 23 per cent of British children up to the age of 14 live in single-parent families, behind the US

on 26 per cent. And 48 per cent of single mothers in Britain are unemployed, the highest rate in the OECD apart from Turkey.
 
Britain's broken families

The Parliamentary constituency with the highest proportion of lone-parent families is Lewisham Deptford in

South East London, which includes such places as New Cross, Brockley and Honor Oak.

There are around 8,000 lone-parent families in the seat – represented by hard-left Labour MP Joan Ruddock –

making up 58 per cent of the total.

Next comes Lewisham East and Liverpool Riverside, both on 56 per cent. Manchester Central and Vauxhall are

on 54 per cent, while Birmingham Ladywood and Leeds Central are on 53 per cent.

The area where children are most likely to live with two parents is South Northamptonshire, which covers small

towns such as Brackley and Towcester.

Just 5 per cent of families in the seat, represented by the Tory Andrea Leadsom, are headed by a lone parent.

North East Hampshire and Wycombe are next on 7 per cent, while Devizes and South Norfolk are on 8 per cent.

The Benefits of Fathers versus Mothers

Divorced dads

The belief that children benefit far less from a relationship with their father than with their mother can also

be demoralizing to divorced fathers.

Moreover, this demoralizing belief is not supported by our best and most recent research on child and

adolescent development.

The Emotional Impact of the Divorce

A number of us -

including the millions of children whose parents are divorced -

also do not seem to understand that fathers suffer as much or more emotionally as mothers after a divorce.

Indeed it seems as if people more readily envision the divorced father as a carefree “swinging bachelor”

rather than as a depressed, lonely, disoriented human being.

Many children, therefore,

might be surprised to learn that men are more likely than women to become depressed,

commit suicide, or develop a stress-related illness after their divorce.

Most divorced fathers are extremely lonely, overwrought, and disoriented - mainly because they have lost daily

contact with their children.

Unlike mothers, almost all fathers are essentially rendered childless as soon as their marriage ends.

In part because men are so reluctant to let people know how miserably unhappy and depressed they are or to

ask for help, many people -including their own children -

do not appreciate the extent to which most men suffer after a divorce

(Beer. 1992;Bender & Brannon. 1994; Buehler & Ryan. 1994; Depner & Bray. 1993; Flynn & Hutchinson. 1993; Kitson &
Holmes. 1992; Kruk. 1991; Pledge. 1992; Pruett. 1992; Warshak. 1992).

Men, Women and Adultery

Still another way in which divorced fathers can be demoralized and demeaned is through our misconceptions

about divorce itself - misconceptions which must surely have a negative impact on many children’s views of

their fathers.

For example, do you believe that men are more likely than women to leave their marriage because they have

fallen in love with someone else?

And do you believe that men are generally the ones who initiate divorce?

If so,you’re wrong.

In reality 75% of all divorces are initiated by the wife.

And though in many cases the wife initiates the divorce for such reasons as the husband’s alcoholism or

physical abuse, in many cases the wife wants the divorce because she has fallen in love with someone else or

because she does not feel emotionally fulfilled enough in the marriage.

Indeed women are now almost as likely as men to commit adultery and are more likely than men to get

divorced because they have fallen in love with someone else.

Some women also leave their husbands for a man with whom they have had little, if any, actual sex.

So while claiming that they did not technically “commit adultery”, these wives have nonetheless betrayed and

been unfaithful to their husbands (Adler. 1996; Pittman. 1990).

As one such divorced fathers explains: “ She would tell me about her boyfriend to impress on me that she didn't love me.

I just couldn't take it anymore, so I finally had to move out" (Vaughan, 1990, p. 175).

In any event, the point is that less often than his children or the general public might assume, the divorced father

is often not the person who was unfaithful or who caused the divorce due to such serious problems as alcoholism or abuse (Adler. 1996; Berman.

1992; Braver, Whitley, & Ng. 1993; Flynn & Hutchinson. 1993; Gigy & Kelly. 1992; Gottman. 1994; Kincaid &
Caldwell. 1995; Kitson & Holmes. 1992; Pittman. 1990; Reibstein & Richards. 1993; Ripps. 1994; Vaughan. 1990

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT DIVORCED FATHERS

Financial Support:

Deadbeat Dads

Contrary to the popular image of "deadbeat dads", 75% of divorced fathers are fully meeting their financial

obligations to their children.

Four million fathers are paying 12 billion dollars a year in child support.

Moreover, those divorced men with the highest incomes are usually paying for most, if not all, of their children’s expenses

- especially when the mother did not work full time outside the home throughout their marriage (Artlip, Artlip, &

Saltzman.
1993; Farrell. 1994; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan. 1997; Sheehy. 1998).

And when the mother grants the father some voice in how his child support money is being spent, the father

rarely fails to pay and often pays more than is legally required of him (Arditti. 1992; Bender & Brannon. 1994;

Depner & Bray. 1993; Blau. 1994; Dudley. 1991;
Kelley. 1995; Maccoby & Mnookin. 1994; Mandell. 1995; Parke. 1996; Pasley, Ihinger-Tallman, & Lofquist. 1994;
Seltzer & Brandreth. 1994; Teachman. 1991).

The one million “deadbeat dads” who create such a negative image of divorced fathers are usually the most

poorly educated men with very low or no incomes and men who never married the mother of their children (Arditti.
1992; Pettys. 1993).

This isn’t to say that because a man is poor or because he never married he should be allowed to

abandon his children financially.

We might, however, wonder why poor fathers are legally required to pay child

Divorced dads support whereas poor mothers are not required to pay anything when the children are living full-

time with the father
(Meyer & Garasky. 1993).

It’s also worth noting that some fathers who refuse to send any more money to their exwife

for child support have their children living with them more than a third of the year, and have an ex-wife who

lives with the man she committed adultery with while married (Mandell. 1995). In any case, official government

statistics underestimate how much money most fathers actually provide because only court-ordered child

support is documented and because the money that fathers give voluntarily for such things as college is not recorded at all
(Arditti. 1992; Cohen. 1994; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan. 1997; Teachman. 1991).

Moreover, a father is often required to pay much more in child support than he would have been spending on the children if he was still married
(Bender & Brannon. 1994).

Another potentially damaging misconception is that divorced fathers are enjoying a much higher standard of

living than the children and divorced mother.

But in reality most mothers lose about 20%-25% of the income they had access to before their divorce, while most fathers lose 10%-20% (Stroup & Pollock. 1994).

Also 80% of women remarry within a few years and regain a standard of living at least equal to what they had before their divorce
(McLanahan & Sandefur. 1994; Maccoby & Mnookin. 1994).

In contrast, most divorced men who remarry can not provide their new family with as high a standard of living as they gave their former wife and children (Artlip, Artlip,
& Saltzman. 1993; Bender & Brannon. 1994; Ganong & Coleman. 1994)

Yet despite these realities, too many children are still operating under the assumption that after their parents’

divorce their father “got everything” while they and their mother “got nothing” (Beer. 1992; Blau. 1994; Einstein. 1994; Frieman. 1994; Ganong & Coleman.
1994; Jones & Schiller. 1992).

Fathers finally get equal access rights to children.

So why now?

At last we are moving towards a better domestic world where fathers and mothers are

equally supported by the state

Radical-

Financial settlements are made to support children -

So the money should go to the chidren - in trust if necessary. -

Why? Equality !

The Divorced father gets no financial state support, so why should women get it ?

All the support (including State support ) should go directly to the Children through a "Guardian"if necessary

Settlement money to support the children is abused by Women.

Support does not necessarily have to involve paper money either.

Think on that ! 

• Jack O'Sullivan
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 17.25 BST
• // http://resource.guim.co.uk/global/static/file/discussion/5/fill-comment-counts-swimlaned.js', dataType : 'script', type : 'get', crossDomain : true, cache: true }); }); // ]]>  

The right of divorced fathers and mothers to see their children is to be enshrined in UK law for the first time as

part of changes to family justice.

The glaring injustice suffered by many children and (principally) their fathers when paternal relationships are

destroyed without a murmur from the state has been obvious for decades to anyone who cared.

Yet this seems an unlikely moment for the government to attempt to enshrine in law the rights of both fathers and

mothers to see their children after separation.

True, the fathers' rights movement has been vociferous at times, but latterly it has been relatively quiet and

seemed politically marginalised.

No apparent groundswell of pressure for change has come from the voluntary sector, rather the opposite –

plenty of negative reaction from some children's charities and from Labour to the government's proposals.

So why is this change happening now?

Perhaps, most simply, because it appears to be common sense to both Tory and Liberal Democrat ministers.

Male Conservative MPs are typically highly privileged with a background in business and the professions.

They are used to exerting control over their own lives and over others.

They do not expect to find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

So when they and their colleagues go through divorce, it is a shocking and unfamiliar experience for them to feel

semi-criminalised as fathers and to be blocked from being with their children.

Changing the law likewise seems to make sense to the straightforward values of gender equity held by Lib Dems.

Like the Tories, they are led by a privileged public schoolboy, who can't understand why he can run the country

but, if things got difficult with his wife, he might not be able to see his own children.

Behind the scenes, the fathers' rights movement, ranging from the highly visible Fathers4Justice to the more

measured Families Need Fathers, which has campaigned for 30 years as a self-help group for separated fathers

and built the arguments that have demonstrated the depth of the crisis, worked conscientiously on the Tories

before the general election.

It received a sympathetic hearing in numerous meetings with people such as the then shadow children's

minister, Tim Loughton, who fashioned the party's children's and family policy in opposition.

In contrast, Labour has never got to grips with the tragedies of separated fatherhood.

The party has been keen to support fathers' rights in the workplace, with enhanced paternity leave to level the

gender playing field at work and enable dads to support mums getting back to work.

But Labour's key concern in all of this was women and, as a result, it was not interested in championing fathers' rights in the home.

So Labour was never going to take this step, certainly not while it was led by fathers with antiquated parenting

styles such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. In contrast to them, Cameron and Clegg, despite the workaholism

of the political breed, look modern and engaged with parenting.

There will over the coming months be lots of kicking and screaming about the proposed change in the law.

But the significance of this equalisation does not really lie in what happens in the courts.

That probably will not change a lot. But changing the law will send out a message to fathers that the state is not their enemy.

It will no longer ignore the dismantling of relationships with their children.

This will give confidence to the thousands of fathers who never go to court but just accept what they are given in

terms of paltry time with their children because they fear no one will support them in seeking a better settlement.

This is indeed a monumental moment.

For decades, the state has rightly been tackling inequality in the workplace and patriarchal abuses in the family

by confronting, for example, domestic violence and ensuring that mothers have sufficient income after divorce.

But this is the first time the state has come forward to challenge matriarchy in the family and its abuses with

respect to access to children.

We are moving to a better domestic world where paternity, not patriarchy, is supported and, where maternity, not

matriarchy, is equally supported.

I expect many worrying and apocalyptic warnings about the risks to children of this legislation.

Amid the noise and resistance, we should remember gender equality is now one of the key values of the public working world.

We should not tolerate anything less in the domestic, family arena.

• This article was amended on 14 June 2012.

It originally referred to Families Need Fathers as Fathers Need Families.

This has now been corrected

Divorced dads

Disenfranchising, Demeaning, and Demoralizing Divorced Dads :

A Review of the literature
Dr. Linda Nielsen

Journal of Divorce & Remarriage - 1999, vol.31 pages 139-177

More information on this topic can be found in Dr. Nielsen’s book:

Embracing Your Father: Strengthening Your Father-Daughter Relationship (McGraw Hill, spring 2004)

In our country today only 50% of children under the age of 18 live in the same home with their biological
father.

Roughly 15% live with their mother who has never been married; 15% with their divorced mother who has

not yet remarried, and 18% with their mother and stepfather.

Only 2% live with their father and stepmother.

By the year 2000 it is estimated that only 25% of white children and 10% of black children will live in a home with

their father until the age of 18, while 40% will end up living with their mother and stepfather.

Put differently, within the next few years the majority of fathers will not be living in the same home with their

children - and even now, the majority of fathers and teenaged children are not living together (Cherlin. 1992; Furstenberg. 1994).

Sadly most fathers see very little of their children after divorce.

Only 8% of divorced fathers get to live with their children for as much as a third of a year.

For example, only half of the 2200 children in a survey from the late 1980s had seen their father in the past year and only 15% had seen him once a week (Furstenberg & Cherlin. 1991).

On a happier note, compared to 20 years ago, almost twice as many divorced fathers now legally arrange for their

children to live with them part-time (Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch. 1997; Guttman. 1993).

Still, when parents divorce, most fathers end up “childless” and their children end up "fatherless" in many ways (Blankenhorn. 1994;

Cohen. 1994; Cooney & Uhlenberg. 1990; Depner & Bray. 1993; Friedman. 1994; Hoffman. 1995; Warshak. 1992).

Although researchers and the general public have been quite focused on those fathers and mothers who

never get married and on divorced mothers, much less attention has been given to divorced fathers (Bender &

Brannon. 1994; Blankenhorn. 1994; Cohen. 1995; Depner & Bray. 1993; Flynn & Hutchinson. 1993; Lamb. 1997;

Mandell. 1995; Pruett. 1992; Warshak. 1992).

Even school counselors and therapists working with children usually exclude and ignore the divorced father,

acting as if the children only have one parent - their mother (Blau. 1994; Butler. 1995; Caplan. 1990; Feldman.

1990; Frieman. 1994; Lazar, Sagi, & Fraser. 1991; Phares. 1997; Tillitski. 1992).

The good news is that some younger, recently graduated therapists with non-sexist views about men’s and

women’s roles are making an effort to include fathers in their children’s therapy (Lazar, Sagi, & Fraser. 1991).

Nevertheless, as one of the leading experts puts it: “It is time that clinical researchers and clinical therapists stop

serving as gatekeepers who prevent the father’s involvement in research and therapy” (Phares, 1997, p. 283).

In an effort to demonstrate the ways in which many of us unintentionally disenfranchise, demean, and

demoralize divorced fathers, let us examine:

(1) Some common misconceptions about divorced fathers

(2) Reasons why divorced fathers do not have closer relationships with their children

(3) Ways in which divorced mothers influence the father-child relationship and

(4) Characteristics of mothers who are the most supportive of fathers after their divorce

Third of children never see dad after a divorce

By Daily Mail Reporter

UPDATED: 09:11, 16 November 2009

More than one in three children never see their father again after their parents split up,

research into family breakdown shows.

And nearly one in ten is so traumatised by the separation that they have considered suicide.

Children are often used as ‘emotional footballs’ and left feeling ‘used, isolated and alone’, with many turning to

drink, drugs and truanting.

The pain of divorce:

Many children never see their father again

Sandra Davis, head of family law at Mishcon de Reya, which carried out the survey of more than 4,000 people,

said: ‘This research highlights that despite their best intentions, parents are often using their children as

emotional footballs.

‘They can be seen as tangible objects.

There has to be change to give our children a voice that’s meaningful.

‘The process now encourages an adversarial approach, but it needs to be about communication between the parents.

‘Therapeutic input, not litigation, is the answer and will reduce the emotional and financial cost of separation.’

For 38 per cent of children, separation meant they never saw their father again.

Although 70 per cent of parents said their children’s welfare was the most important factor in a divorce, a quarter

of children said they had been forced by one parent to lie to the other.

Some 15 per cent had been asked to spy on one of their parents

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1228144/Third-children-dad-divorce.html#ixzz2HVYBz7Ql

Sexism or ignorance?

Men who fail to do housework often don't see the need

Female breadwinners who do most of the housework have to ask

themselves why they don't talk to their other half about helping out more,

writes Louisa Peacock.

 

By Louisa Peacock

12:04PM GMT 09 Jan 2013

A friend of mine once played a game with her husband.

Well, it was more of a test.

She said to herself that she wouldn't empty the kitchen bin for a while, to see how long it

would take for her other half to do it.

Not surprisingly, the kitchen bin was brimming full by the end of the week.

It had got to the point where you had to stuff a tea bag down any old nook and cranny in the

sack full of rubbish.

Still, her husband didn't notice the overloaded bin.

He happily stuffed tea bags and empty cartons in there, until one day, he realised it was full,

emptied it and carried on as normal.

Apart from being a hilarious interlude to the daily grind, this little series of events suggested

something about the male psyche.

It's not at all the case that this man was sexist or

expecting his wife to do the chore; simply that he didn't think it needed to be done until it

really needed to be done.

It is funny then, that a new study makes much noise about female breadwinners still doing

most of the housework.

The research, based on 30 cohabiting but unmarried couples, found that where women were

the primary earners, they also ended up doing most of the household chores.

Men still left the majority of housework to them, the study from the University of Indianapolis

found.

It would be easy to jump to conclusions that the men in the study expected their wifey to do

the cleaning for them; that it is a woman's job.

It would be easy to moan about how career women are expected to do it all at home, be good

mothers and homemakers. In some cases, this may be true.

But actually, this study could reflect the simple sentiments of my friend and her unknowing

husband. It turns out that one man in the study said he just didn't see the dirt – "I just don't

see that it needs to be done," he said.

None of us, men and women, enjoy doing housework, so leaving the chores until the last

possible moment it needs to be done is not such a bad strategy.

It has nothing to do with sexism.

Just because the man isn't the main breadwinner doesn't mean he hasn't also had a

challenging day, and prioritises the sofa over emptying the bin.

As long as couples talk about what's expected of both of them, regarding the household

chores, I don't see why this should be a problem.

I'm sure in my household that my other half would also fail the bin test.

But he'd excel in other areas.

I walked in last night, late from work, to find my husband mid-cooking.

He'd also tidied the lounge.

The clue to what really might be going on in this study is this: the women who earn more

than men but still did most of the house chores had "essentially given up" trying to get their man to do his fair share.

This is downright outrageous.

Does she actually talk to him about this?

Does she ask him to help?

Perhaps he just forgot.

Of course there will be some men set in their ways and who truly believe housework is a woman's role.

They may have been brought up that way; no one may have ever challenged them on their belief.

But the chances are if that particular bloke is living with a woman earning more than him,

he's already accepted that traditional societal expectations are no longer the norm.

A recent study found that women spend half as much time on housework today compared to

the 1960s; suggesting times have changed and expectations have changed.

Where couples talk through the sensitive matter of the daily dishes, they can come to a

compromise about who does what based on realistic expectations.

That's what relationships are all about. Not just assuming that the other one knows what they

should/ shouldn't be doing around the house.

The study calls for more open conversation too:

Amanda J Miller, one of the researchers, highlights "how important it is to talk to your

partner before you move in together".

Of the couples she studied "very few sat down and had a conversation about who was going to do what and when".

This had led to one primary-earner woman doing all the chores to "avoid arguments".

Perhaps it is naive of me, but so many of these silly domestic arguments could be sorted by

a quick, open chat about who does what around the house.

There's no point assuming your partner will do something you think he should do.

I for one would vote for the sofa any time over emptying the bins - so can you really blame

him for doing the same?

Record numbers of men are being hit

by their stressed-out wives and girlfriends

'I went frantic, punching him'

By Sophie Goodchild , Chief Reporter

For centuries, women have been stereotyped as the passive victims of violence and aggression.

Yet experts are now warning that record numbers of men are being physically abused by their stressed- out wives and girlfriends.

New figures show that the number of calls to domestic violence helplines from male victims has more than doubled over the past five years.

And now one of the world's leading feminist journals will investigate the issue of male abuse for the first time in its

history: the Psychology of Women Quarterly will devote a whole edition to research on violent women and their behaviour towards men.

Until now, domestic violence has been seen by police and ministers as an issue which blights the lives of women rather than men.

Their policies are based on Home Office figures, which show that one in four women suffer abuse in the home compared with one in six men.

Incidents such as the arrest earlier this month of Rebekah Wade, the editor of The Sun, after an alleged assault on

her husband, EastEnders actor Ross Kemp, are generally treated as trivial and a source of amusement by social watchers.

However, experts say that although attacks by men are more common and extreme, there is increasing evidence

that women are lashing out and adopting behaviour traditionally associated with men.

This trend is fuelled partly by an increase in binge-drinking and drug- taking among women as well as the pressure

of juggling motherhood and career success.

ManKind, an organisation which campaigns for equal rights for men, receives more than a thousand calls a year to

its helpline from male victims of domestic violence as well as from doctors worried about patients they suspect are

being abused by their girlfriends and wives.

The charity Snap, which runs a gender-neutral helpline, says it receives up to 25 calls a day from battered men.

There are only four places in the country which offer shelter to male victims of domestic violence, which men's rights campaigners say is not enough.

"The ones who are the perpetrators are in the caring professions - social workers, nurses, carers," said Anne Harris, a spokeswoman for Snap.

Research to be published next year will also show that more men report being victims of domestic abuse - and

fewer women - in countries where there is greater gender equality.

Based on an analysis of UN data on gender equality, the study by the University of Central Lancashire will show

that more women carry out attacks on their male partners in Western nations such as Britain and the US compared with countries such as Pakistan.

Professor John Archer, an expert on both male and female aggression, who carried out the study, attracted huge

controversy with a report five years ago showing that women were likely to lash out more frequently than men during rows.

He says that battered men are treated as figures of fun by society and that policymakers must treat domestic abuse against both men and women with equal seriousness.

"There is a strong cultural ethos drummed into men from an early age that it's wrong to retaliate but these attitudes

are not drummed into women," said Mr Archer, Professor of psychology at the University of Central Lancashire.

"The Rebecca Wade case was treated as a joke which typifies the differences in attitudes.

The male victim is seen as a subject of fun."

But Professor Sylvia Walby from Lancaster Uni versity, who has carried out extensive research on domestic

violence, says that women are still overwhelmingly the victims and suffer far more than men.

"Women are far more vulnerable because they do not have the same financial security as men and they are the

ones who suffer more severe and far more sustained attacks."

Dr Malcolm George, an expert on the brain and human behaviour, says there is evidence that "husband abuse"

dates back to Elizabethan times. Historical records that he has unearthed show that men who were beaten by their

wives were publicly humiliated in a special ceremony called a "skimmington procession", named after the ladle

used to skim milk during cheese making.

"No one disputes the fact that there is a group of men in society that are highly violent," says the retired lecturer in

neuroscience at London University.

"But it's nothing new for women to be violent and aggressive- it's just society considers it a travesty of femininity

for women to be violent so they get stereotyped as passive victims."

Claire Stewart is one of a growing number of women who are seeking professional help to manage their anger.

The nursing student, 37, from Leicester says she has head-butted Graham, a builder, tried to strangle him and

thrown furniture at him.

Their relationship has always been confrontational and at one point they split up.

Mrs Stewart believes her problems stem from not coming to terms with the death of her father.

"Having spoken to professionals, I think the anger goes back to my dad dying when I was 11," says the mother-of-

four, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

"I was brought up to believe that if you cry it's a sign of weakness.

I am booked in to start cognitive behaviour therapy. I think in the end we will get through.

When the couple got back together, she says that she felther life had fallen apart. "Our relationship had always

been a bit up and down but I thought it would stop when we got married," she says.

"When he came back I felt like he was laughing at me. I completely lost it. I went frantic, punching him in the head and body.

I head-butted him and tried to strangle him.

I only stopped because my eldest daughter came in and shouted at me to stop."

The people behind the prejudice

As part of Red Pepper's special issue on migration,

Guy Taylor tells some stories of migrants' real lives

Montage: Louise Thomas

UK mainstream politics presents a gruesome prospect for would-be migrants.

The driver of immigration policy is not human rights or economic concerns but the desperate need to please the anti-immigration lobby.

The coalition government’s approach to immigration can be summed up thus: be tough, be seen to be tough.

Labour’s approach in the current climate is to have no specific policies but attack the government for not being tough enough.

The Liberal Democrats have a policy of saying nothing about the laws and rules they are helping to implement under Cameron and Clegg.

This sorry state of affairs has effects on real lives.

Meet Everton. Everton is eight. He’s having a tough time at school at the moment.

He comes from the Caribbean but is trying to get a visa to stay in the UK while his mum works here; she has

permission to do so until the end of next year.

He is distraught as his dad is in the UK’s armed forces, stationed abroad, and he desperately wants to stay with

his mum for as long as she is working here. He doesn’t want to live with his elderly grandparents any more, and

they are getting to the stage where they are unable to care for him properly.

The good news is that a judge of the first-tier tribunal has ruled that Everton can stay with his mum – for slightly more than a year.

The bad news is that the Home Office is appealing against that decision.

The expense of appeal, the work involved and the turmoil caused to this little boy has been deemed justifiable by

the Home Office, all in the interests of keeping a schoolchild out of the UK for 13 months.

The driver is the coalition’s promise to reduce net migration to ‘tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands’.

Another person you should meet is Jemma. Jemma works in a well paid job (she pays a higher rate of tax) and has no financial issues.

She wants her elderly father to join her in the UK as he has no other family at home in Australia.

She is a British citizen.

There’s no likelihood of her father being dependent on benefits if he were to come here; Jemma is even happy to

sign a document declaring that she will provide for his every need.

But the new rules brought in by home secretary Theresa May in July insist that if Jemma’s father is capable of

dressing himself, washing and cooking, he cannot come to the UK.

If he has any other family in Australia he cannot come to the UK.

If Jemma can pay for his care in Australia, he cannot come to the UK.

In fact, Home Office staff have been unable to outline which, if any, circumstances would fulfil the criteria needed

to get a visa for her dad.

Good and bad immigrants

Perhaps the most obvious measure to discourage people from coming to the UK is the attack on the ability of

universities to recruit outside the EU, as in the case of London Metropolitan University (see page 22).

In this dreadful example of the collective punishment of more than 2,500 students for what is essentially a

disagreement between the UK Border Agency and the university administration, those students had their studies,

their livelihoods and their prospects thrown into uncertainty.

There is now a clamour from the academic world to discount students and boarding school pupils from the immigration figures.

This may seem tempting to the government as it struggles to meet its ‘tens of thousands, not hundreds of

thousands’ target, but it would also set up a divide between ‘good’ migrants (so good, in fact, that they’re no

longer migrants) and others.

Least desirable of all are foreign-national prisoners.

It is policy to consider any prisoner serving a term of 12 months or more for deportation after the sentence has been served.

But a large number of such offenders were brought up and schooled in the UK and may have spent most of their lives here.

How can it be right to doubly punish such people?

While ministers and tabloids like to focus on the spectacular and high profile cases, I’d like to introduce you to WM.

WM came here at the age of one to join his father, a refugee, in London.

He suffered abuse, got taken into care, and is very much a product of the UK care system. He has learning difficulties.

He’s 24 now. He got caught up in a robbery.

Although he wasn’t the one holding the knife he got an 18-month spell inside.

He’s now being considered for deportation to the Ivory Coast.

He only speaks English and has no relatives or friends there, but Theresa May has a need to be seen to be tough.

Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, has been saying to anyone who will listen that Labour used to

deport more foreign national prisoners and that the current government should raise its game.

These stories, real stories of real lives, are not how the home secretary prefers people to think about immigration.

For her it’s a matter of using extreme examples to justify extreme measures in what is primarily a numbers game.

Liberal dressing

Sometimes there is a liberal dressing for some of the measures.

The English language requirement for spouses and civil partners, for example, brought in two years ago, is

claimed to be in the interests of integration and as a measure against the isolation of, especially, women in family homes.

Ministers are keen to tell you what a low level of English is required to satisfy the requirement.

But having had Skype conversations with one of the repeated failures, those with far more than a smattering of

English are liable to flunk that test.

The UK Border Agency insists that it only wants to test an applicant’s listening and speaking capabilities, but the

majority of the tests it recognises to demonstrate these also test reading, writing and computer literacy.

Two years after the introduction of the language requirement, it is astounding that the Home Office has not

provided one standard test that people can take.

Meanwhile, the UKBA is getting tougher when it comes to raiding workplaces.

Its newsfeed provides a constant stream of stories reporting the arrest of irregular migrants.

In October six were arrested in Blackpool, nine in Brighton and Hove and two in Sittingbourne.

Obviously numbers like these are going to make little difference to an estimated 700,000 irregular migrants

currently in the UK, but the consequences for employers are getting more severe with larger fines being handed

out to those who employ people without the right documentation.

These measures will drive irregular migrants even further underground, into sex work and criminal activity as

established employers refuse to employ them.

Human rights

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has long been a proponent of a human rights-based approach to policy making.

When people are given the facts about the reality of immigration into the UK, and about the proportion of the

population made up by migrants, fear and concern are significantly allayed.

Such an awareness would provide the space to implement a rights-based approach whereby those coming to the

UK would be recognised as real people with real lives and real rights, not a burden to be tolerated by the host population. The contribution of immigrants to the economic and cultural life of the UK is immense.

But there are some that would have you believe the opposite is true.

Which brings me to introduce to you one more character.

Mark is a government minister and an MP. He represents the Forest of Dean, not an area known for its large numbers of migrants.

He got the job of immigration in the last reshuffle.

He spins the truth like a seasoned Tory might be expected to: ‘We want to ensure that taxpayers aren’t footing the bill for immigrants who bring their families into the country.’

Mark, a man who lives a different world to the people we’ve met so far in this piece, might do with checking out

what the words ‘no recourse to public funds’ actually mean.

He might then discover the current reality of immigrants and their relationship to the welfare benefit system.

Guy Taylor is campaigns and communications officer at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants

Cold Christmas for 300k more families

'We are waiting for old people to die',

says Rowan Williams in his last speech as Archbishop of Canterbury

By Niamh O'doherty

UPDATED: 09:00, 15 December 2012

The Archbishop of Canterbury has appealed for an end to damaging stereotypes of older people, which he says have created a climate in which they suffer abuse.

In his final speech in the House of Lords, Dr Rowan Williams said attitudes of 'contempt and exasperation' towards the ageing population were contributing to a range of abuse, from patronising and impatient behaviour to physical mistreatment.

He referred to estimates that a quarter of the older population experience elder abuse in some form and called for the Government to appoint a national Older People's Commissioner, the Independent reported.

Dr Williams, who will step down from his role at the end of the year to be replaced by the Bishop of Durham, Justin Welby, said:

'Too often we want to rush children into pseudo-adulthood; too often we want older citizens either to go on as part of the productive machine as long as possible or to accept a marginal and humiliating status, tolerated but not valued, while we look impatiently at our watches, waiting for them to be "off our hands".

'We tolerate a very eccentric view of the good life or the ideal life as one that can be lived only for a few years between, say, 18 and 40.

'It is assumptions about the basically passive character of the older population that foster attitudes of contempt and exasperation, and ultimately create a climate in which abuse occurs.'

The public are becoming 'dangerously used' to speaking and thinking about the ageing population as a burden on both public and private resources, he added, despite half of over 60s carrying out volunteer work worth the equivalent of at least £50billion.

He believes expecting and valuing their continued contribution to society will end damaging stereotypes and older people will no longer be viewed as dependent on the state, their families or their neighbourhoods.

 There are one million people over 65 living alone in the UK.

Last week, a study by the Friends Of The Elderly charity showed that half a million elderly people will spend Christmas alone this year in Britain.

Throughout the year, one in six of senior citizens hear from family and friends barely once a week, and for one in ten it’s less than once a month.

The Friends Of The Elderly survey showed that despite 87 per cent of people feeling it is the responsibility of family to look after older relatives, worries about the financial burden (19 per cent), being too busy (45 per cent) and living too far away (36 per cent), mean that almost half of those surveyed (47 per cent) are dreading the day their grandparents or parents need to be cared for.

Richard Furze, Chief Executive of Friends of the Elderly, said: ‘We can all make a special effort at Christmas and it will make such a difference, not just with our relatives but with older people in our communities. 

'Our Christmas campaign “Friends Open Doors” is focused on encouraging people to show a simple gesture to older people, such as simply checking in on an older neighbour regularly, popping a card through their door or having a chat with an older person at the shops. 

This can be enjoyable for both young and older people, only takes a moment and can make a real difference.

'If you live far away or can’t afford to travel to see an older relative regularly, a phone call can really make the difference for those who live on their own and can’t get out as much as they would like.'

The survey results also showed that 47 per cent of people feel local communities should take more responsibility for looking after older people.

Almost half of those surveyed believe people in the UK should have a legal responsibility for looking after their parents in older age, as they are in France, while 27 per cent of people think it is down to the Government to take care of the elderly

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248520/We-waiting-old-people-die-says-Rowan-Williams-speech-Archbishop-Canterbury.html#ixzz2FC6SBrNu

What is a disability?

A disability may be generally defined as a condition which may restrict a person's mental, sensory, or mobility functions to undertake or perform a task in the same way as a person who does not have a disability.

It does not mean that a person with a disability is unable to perform all the important requirements of a job and exceed the expectations of their employer.

Disabilities affect people in different ways.

Many people associate the 'disabled' with someone who is in a wheelchair, or who is blind or deaf.

They have the attitude that people with a disability are totally different and therefore need to be treated differently. Unfortunately, this kind of stereotyping is in itself a form of discrimination.

People with a disability come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colours, sex and cultures - just as we all do.

The only thing that separates a person with a disability is that, for one reason or another, they are unable to do certain things in the same way as the mainstream of society.

They may require some form of adaptation or alteration to assist them to overcome the effect of their disability.
A person's disability is always specific to that person.

A Disability is generally a condition either caused by accident, trauma, genetics or disease, which may restrict a person's mental processes, senses or mobility.

A Handicap is a physical or attitudinal constraint imposed on a person regardless of whether or not that person has a disability.

In the context of employment, someone may have a disability, but it may not be a handicap to them performing the job.

Types of disability

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) identifies and defines the following categories of disability:

• Physical - affects a person's mobility or dexterity

• Intellectual - affects a person's abilities to learn

• Psychiatric - affects a person's thinking processes

• Sensory - affects a person's ability to hear or see

• Neurological - results in the loss of some bodily or mental functions

Also included are disabilities resulting from physical disfigurement or from the presence of organisms causing or capable of causing disease in the body.

We should not equate a disability with poor health.

Remploy - end of an era?

23rd November 2012

As part of a series of features for Disability History Month, Val Graham, LRC National Committee member and Remploy campaigner, looks at the history of the Remploy factories

Remploy, derived from re-employ, was set up under the 1944 Disabled Persons Employment Act by Ernest Bevin, then Minister of Labour. It formed a plank of the welfare state.

A ‘land fit for heroes’ could not contemplate a repeat of the street scene after the First World War, when limbless soldiers played mouth organs to support themselves.

Originally the Disabled Persons’ Employment Corporation, the first factory opened in 1946 in Bridgend, Wales and the brand name Remploy was soon adopted.

Remploy was welcomed by disabled people who wanted to work and be active economically and in their communities.

The first factory manufactured violins and furniture and many employees were disabled ex miners. Remploy enjoyed both government and community support.

At its height, Remploy had around 100 factories spread across England, Scotland and Wales and employed over 10,000 disabled workers.

A wide range of goods and services was produced and Remploy workers were skilled in many sectors from textiles to motor components.

A Tory Government with its privatising agenda, struck the first blow when, in 1994, Minister Michael Portillo ended a scheme whereby Remploy was guaranteed priority for government contracts and compulsory competitive tendering was imposed.

Within 18 months, the value of contracts into the textile sector alone had dropped from £18 million to £3 million.
Calls from the Tory benches for Remploy to be privatised began.

The trade union consortium representing Remploy Workers lobbied successive governments concerning the management of Remploy.

Since 1995 the number of disabled workers employed had fallen to 2,500 in 2011 with only 54 factories still working.

Yet the number of senior managers had grown from 250 to over 400 while their pay and bonuses escalated, and perks such as private healthcare, cars and allowances were introduced for all senior managers.

The average differential between disabled shop floor workers and senior managers had increased from £18,000 to £35,000 per annum.

The trade union consortium put forward proposals which would have saved millions of pounds over the years.

Opportunities were lost such as when a manager in Cornwall objected to the relatively small set up cost of fulfilling a contract worth £1 million to make T-shirts for the Glastonbury Festival.

Activism in defence of Remploy was born: workers and supporters mounted a successful campaign in 1999 against closure and merger of factories.

But managers failed to make use of the opportunity for one reserved public contract and the decline continued.

A renewed campaign greeted the 2007 announcement under Labour of factory mergers and closures.

Teams of activists travelled the country by coach to every site on the hit list, from Inverness to Cornwall.

Yet 30 factories closed and 2,500 workers lost their jobs.

Many took voluntary redundancy and after three years 85% had not found other work.

Labour’s Peter Hain effectively put Remploy on notice and it is arguable that the Tories see themselves as finishing what New Labour started as with so much else they have done.

Their ideological hatred of the welfare state was however, in this case, masked in the rhetoric of progressive ideas and practice.

As Owen Jones points out, they are clever in a very manipulative way!

The new coalition government commissioned Liz Sayce from the disability charity Radar to review employment support for disabled people.

She concluded that Remploy was not efficient and the subsidy should not be renewed but directed to supporting disabled workers in mainstream employment. Remploy factories were presented as ghettoes, a barrier to inclusion.

In my opinion, some disabled activists have been equivocal about supporting the Remploy Crusade because of their support for inclusion.

Disabled workers at Remploy have nothing but contempt for the six disability charities which supported the Government’s decision to close Remploy.

They believe that these charities have a vested interest because they want to compete for a bigger slice of Access to Work funding.

For the King’s shilling, they have been prepared to see disabled workers   thrown on to the dole, facing a lifetime of poverty and bullying by the DWP and Atos.

This funding increase is not guaranteed and an Access to Work grant is only of use to a disabled person if they have a job and an employer who will match fund.

Remploy workers know they will be at the back of the queue for any job going and that subsidising their employment costs a lot less than benefit and lost tax revenue.

Inclusion should be a right not a stick with which to beat disabled workers, especially at a time when unemployment is high, public expenditure is being slashed, and all workers rights are under attack.

The Tories who bay for an end to supported employment are the first to be outraged when the closure of special schools is mooted.

When I was collecting money for Remploy, many of the givers were the parents of children with a disability who feared for their future after school.

At Whittington Remploy, some workers had tried mainstream employment.

Others were there because they needed a sheltered environment to recover from mental health problems.

There was a deaf community using sign language and non deaf employees had learned it too.

Remploy workers had exercised a choice for sheltered employment and now most of them are on the dole with only 18 factories left operating.

Given this government’s cruel, vicious, ideological and material attacks on disabled workers, unemployed workers and those whose disability or limiting health condition prevents them from working, it is not surprising that Iain Duncan Smith arouses such hatred.

The DWP is getting away with its welfare cut because welfare has been discredited in the popular mind, but it has also largely succeeded in destroying Remploy against the tide of public opinion.

The fact that the sale of Chesterfield and Springburn factories has been put on hold while serious questions are answered may be a candle in the wind but it is the flame that two disabled working communities will warm their hands by this Christmas after their first strike in 65 years.

Thanks to Remploy activists – especially Bombastic Spastic – and to the GMB for the information on Remploy’s timeline.