WAS DEVOLUTION REPEALED?

Jim Murphy MP has had a little election leaflet dropped through my door. On it he lists his priorities:

• working hard for the young,
  
• protecting child tax credits
  

Fair enough... He then goes on to list:

• keeping East Ren's schools the best in Scotland,
  
• building houses to rent,
  
• free bus travel for pensioners,
  
• policing,
  
• cancer treatment,
  
• NHS,
  
• local school catchment areas
  

Funny that - as far as I'm aware these issues are all devolved to the Scottish parliament - so it seems if we vote Mr Murphy back in he will work on two minor issues while riding on the back of the local MSP's achievements.
Now I know why the man was too busy to help my volcano-stricken family last month.
Mr Murphy - my head does not button up the back!

WHO TO VOTE FOR ON MAY 6

I am a seasoned traveller. I have backpacked round Europe and even NYC alone and with kids and babies for the best part of 25 years so I don't normally find getting from A to B difficult. This time however crossing the 1400km from Copenhagen to Calais via Aarhus with over a million other stranded air passengers was proving tricky and costly. I didn't for one minute believe my MP (East Renfrewshire's Jim Murphy - Secretary of State for Scotland) could offer me anything I hadn't come up with myself but I wanted him to be aware there were people stranded in Europe for whom a bus in Madrid was not the optimum solution. More for fun, and for want of something better to do given the vacuum of information we were facing in Northern Europe, I decided to tease him with the following email first thing on Monday morning:

Hello Jim
I am one of your constituents living in Newton Mearns. This morning I had to ring all three of my children's schools to explain I, my husband and my 5 children are currently stranded in Europe unable to return home because of the Volcano. I was told many children and teachers are in the same situation.I find it interesting that no one is coming up with any solutions to get us home. Flying is a cheap form of transport these days - being able to fly to Europe doesn't mean you have enough money to finance endless nights in unbooked hotels, meals in restaurants or buses, trains and ferries across Europe. I simply cannot afford to come home by means other than budget airlines.

Today I was utterly dismayed to hear Gordon Brown on BBC world coming up with a plan to repatriate people in the US via Spain not even mentioning people stranded in Europe itself. I was due to fly from Copenhagen last Friday morning. I have tried overland and managed to get as far as Hamburg where the trains are now so full I cannot proceed given I have 2 babies with me. I am being offered 5 hour waits between train connections in the middle of the night in the middle of Germany and they are estimating 2 days overland to Calais where I might get a boat and then try to find my way from Dover to Glasgow. Three days overland at huge expense, with 5 kids between 12 weeks and 12 years is unaffordable.

Apart from Mr Brown no politician seems even to have noticed the crisis. I will be deciding who to vote for on May 6, depending on who has some real and practical solutions for me and the many families stranded at the end of the Easter school holiday.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions.


Of course I heard nothing back for 48 hours, which had I not had my mother-in-law's flat keys would have cost me another £300 at Danish prices if I had needed to pay two days food and two nights in a hotel at the current exchange rate. So 2/10 for a speedy reply for starters.
Then suddenly this afternoon I received this reply from one of his minions - I will copy it for you verbatim:

Thanks for emailing Jim, he has asked me to respond on his behalf.

Several constituents have contacted Jim about the terrible disruption that the volcanic ash has triggered across the world.

As I am sureyou can understand there is little that individual candidates can do, but please rest assured that the prime minister government is taking the matter extremely seriously and doing all it can to get people home as quicly as possible.

The Foreign Office's current plan for the dealing with UK nationals stranded in Europe can be found here - http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/021-Flight-disruption-help/022-travel-in-europe/

I hope that this is of some use to you and reassures you somewhat.

If there is anything further you would like Jim to do please get in touch.

Best regards

Funnily enough I had actually found the foreign office's page of advice several days ago. What I do find interesting is that when I wrote pointing out crossing Europe to Calais or Madrid was too expensive and impractical with small children and the crowds currently on the trains and asked if Jim had any more helpful advice or suggestions, his second in command simply sent me an email full of spelling and grammatical errors linking me to the foreign office page that tells me to make my way either to Calais or Madrid after checking with my airline. Let's have a big round of applause for that one!

So I will sit here till Friday and if my flight is cancelled again, I will make my own expensive way to Calais (£500) and as a thanks for the 'prime minister government' sending all the buses he could find to Madrid rather than various centres around Europe, I will make a point of making sure I do not vote for Mr Murphy and his crew on May 6.

THE NAME ISSUE AGAIN

I have been watching the election campaign on the TV and, as a woman, I am finding the media's interest in Sarah, Samantha and Miriam more than a little nauseating.
Firstly, I am not in the slightest interested in who made their clothes or what shade of nail varnish they are wearing. If these women in any way pertinent to the campaign, it would be from a policy point of view, and given they have certainly all been gagged so as not to cause their partner to lose any points in the polls, they are irrelevant. I find it more than a little patronizing too that they are all assumed to be supporters of their husbands' parties. For these three, it does seem to be the case but I can imagine a marriage or partnership where two people love each other but actually don't agree politically, and for that reason, again, their presence in the campaign is unwelcome. Imagine a situation where two of the three support their partner's partner, and the third doesn't? How would the media deal with that?
I would have loved to have seen Hillary become president last year simply out of curiosity to see if the media would have dared to ask Bill for his best apple pie recipe, or to hear how his suit compared to the designer gear of Mrs McCain, but I'm off on a feminist tangent.
The one thing that is niggling me most is the mainstream media's almost blanket insistence on calling Miriam González Durántez Miriam Clegg. When I first married back in 1991, the registrar said 'Sign the certificate here using your maiden name for the last time'. It was taken for granted that I would change my name to my husband's. That was then, but this is now. I, like a growing number of UK women have chosen not to change my name. Whether Miriam has chosen not to become Clegg for UK or Spanish reasons is irrelevant. The fact is that she goes by the name Miriam González Durántez, so how dare the media rechristen her to suit their antiquated ideas? It should be her choice, and hers alone, to change her name.

WHAT RECOVERY?

So Brown still claims we're on our way out of recession? Can me sceptical but I did work in shops over Xmas as a student. This is not the length of queue I would expect ten days before Xmas in Glasgow's largest shopping centre for Santa's grotto. Granted, it was taken on a weekday, though given it is aimed mainly at under-school-age kids, that shouldn't matter. But in saying that I was in Silverburn last Saturday at 3pm and the queue was a mere three people longer.
Certainly, when Marcel and Lots were tiny, Santa queues could take more than an hour to move into the grotto. This one patently wouldn't! I suppose the politicians think we aren't noticing these small details.

SCOTLAND'S NEW LICENSING LAWS

What were the SNP trying to do with this new piece of nonsense they brought in on September 1?
Apparently it is now illegal to buy alcohol in Scotland in your local supermarket between 10pm and 10am. I can just about get the 10pm bit as that always was the cut-off but the 10am bit puzzles me. If you have a serious drink problem, you will still be unconscious from the night before at 10am so I can only assume the new law is aimed at pissing off anyone who takes the opportunity to buy their dinner on the way past ASDA when doing the school run. If I am out already at 8-30am to drop kids at school an obvious time to pick up some steaks is once I've offloaded all the little people. I do not however want to sit in my car in ASDA car park from 9-10am just so I can buy the wine to go with them at the same time. I wish the SNP would take their annoying, parochial, wee-free ideas back up north and leave us lowlanders in peace.

MORE BULLSHIT FROM BROWN

Once again we are subjected to the usual government unemployment bullshit. What I would really like to see rather than figures for those signing on, are the figures of those who have lost their jobs but not signed on. Unemployment benefit in the UK is so low it is aimed solely at the poorest in society. This is a new type of recession, where middle earners are losing their jobs right, left and centre. There is no way people like Thomas or I could fail to make what we'd earn on the dole every month just by doing some sort of freelance from home, and therefore there is simply no point in signing on, but that means people like us (and there are thousands of us, if what I hear at the school gate is true) are suddenly earning a fraction of what we once did, thus having very little money to plough back into the failing economy, but we are not showing up in any of these statistics that are proposing that things will soon be on track again in the UK. Make no mistake, anyone who thinks that everything will be going back to 2006 after a year or two's hardship is living in cloud-cuckoo land.

DRIVING

I hear were all to get EU driving licences from 2013. Sounds fine to me given how often I hire cars in Europe and how annoying that ridiculous piece of paper the UK currently insists on us carrying along with our credit card licence is. Foreign car hire places almost always look harassed when confronted by this crazy halfway measure of a credit card that the info isn't stored on coupled with an old-fashioned printout with the info (that anyone with a home printer could copy themselves!) I wonder however if they are going to make the driving test in all countries the same to go with the issuing of the same licence. That would be an interesting one, given the huge national differences in the test itself! I guess whichever state has the easiest/cheapest test will see a huge surge in driving tourists from then. But of course, as always the Brits will have to contend with the disadvantage of having learnt on the wrong side of the road as usual. Why didn't we swap when we still could have?

MOAT BUILDING

 Culzean, Ayrshire Originally uploaded by PhylB

My kids had great fun yesterday building a moat on the beach at Culzean. It's a pity I'm not a Tory MP or I could have quickly put in an expenses claim to have it cleaned. That would definitely have covered our mortgage payments for the next few months ;-)

MPS

There is, of course, so much that could be said that a book rather than a blog posting should be written but two things keep running through my mind.
Firstly, their attitude that all will be well again if they just pay it back. I don't get that. If I had billed my ex-employer for expenses for 10 flights to London then I accidentally actually forgot to go on the trips, I imagine, looking at my old contract that that might have been construed as gross misconduct and I'd have found myself out of a job faster than an MP could claim £20k. And if I had stolen a leg of lamb out of ASDA and been caught at the door, I'm not sure 'Don't worry I'll just pay for it now', would have got me off scott free.
Secondly, and this really sticks in my gut, if these grubby-pawed crooks have a spare £20k sitting in their bank accounts to just pay expenses back at the height of the worst recession in 100 years when the rest of us are losing our jobs then their salaries are more than adequate. Let's face it - they won't find a bank to lend them their overpayments at the moment, will they?

UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES - WHO'S KIDDING WHO?

So there are suddenly 2.1 million people unemployed in the UK... come on now - who are the government trying to kid?
When Thomas is made redundant on Friday, he won't be going to the job office on Monday to sign on unemployed - there is no point because the way unemployment works in this country doesn't cater for management and professional people. Your £60 a week wouldn't even cover the council tax in East Renfrewshire so although he is a victim of this recession and the current governmental cock-ups, he quite conveniently falls outside their radar by being forced to either work freelance or try to create his own company whether or not it turns out to be successful. He and thousands like him are simply non-statistics.
Standing in the queue today at nursery to get in and pick up Pudge, the woman in front of me mentioned to her friend that both she and her husband had lost their jobs in the past 2 months and were of course going to 'try contracting - it's all you can do these days' - her friend replied how surprising her news was given she and her husband found themselves in a similar situation. Imagine their joint shock when I added the same story to their list. I reckon there are at least as many people 'ununemployed' as unemployed that the government is happily ignoring.
It's truly pathetic.

A WEE EUROPEAN RANT

lego europe
Originally uploaded by cemre

I've been listening to all this protectionist nonsense since last week and it's starting to piss me off. We are EU citizens and as such we all have equal rights to work wherever we want within the EU. It's hardly Europe's fault if we are to stupid or too stubborn.
Tonight I'm fainting in shock at the realization that I am in agreement with that Mandelson slimeball for the first time in my life. (Isn't it nice to live is a country where you have freedom of speech ;-) ). First of all, I think retaining the jobs for British workers is bad for business. If Brits know their employer can't go out and hire people more capable of a job because they are forced to use locals whatever their qualifications, where is the incentive for the Brit to learn how to do the job well and to work hard? Secondly, given the poor state of the education system in many areas, you'd be hard pushed to find someone qualified to do a specific job at times. Of course as soon as we ban the Italian workers, they ban ours and so on till the economy is unworkable...
(As an aside I have to laugh at the whole story that started these strikes in the first place - Total (a French company) is employing Italians in Linconshire. Maybe they would be happy if Total withdrew from England altogether and moved the oil plant to say Lorraine instead - they have been hard up for industry there too since the mines closed down? In fact maybe Nissan, Toyota and the likes should also move their plants back home so they can employ their own locals??? Just a thought...)
Anyway the reason the whole thing is infuriating me so much is because it is a question of language of course. Five years ago many Poles came to Britain because our currency was worth more than theirs. Young educated Poles came here and took on menial jobs until they mastered the language well enough to work in the area they were qualified to. They worked hard, sent some money home, saved for a better life and either stayed or went home again. I presume some families were separated for a few years while one member worked here to send money home too. This is a horrible thing to have to do but they did it for a better life. What makes us believe we are better than them? Our young people sit here whinging they can't get a job but they can't speak any foreign languages. Are we too good to go and clean the Dutch equivalent of Waterstones or stack the Portuguese Tesco's shelves until we master their language enough to get the job we are qualified for? Our currency is now the underdog. Our young people should be jumping at the chance to rush out and earn some Euros. The big problem of course is that learning a new unknown language is 100 times easier than learning a first foreign language. The other Europeans pick up English better and quicker because they are experienced language learners. We are abysmal at language teaching and should be making an effort to prepare our young people for the work place of the future instead of assuming arrogantly that we have no need to learn languages or ever work abroad.

NEVER THOUGHT I'D AGREE WITH HIM

Gordon Brown - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2007
Originally uploaded by World Economic Forum

I never thought I'd agree with Gordon Brown but the Tories have dug up a quote from Gordon's shadow chancellor days and I couldn't have said it better myself: 'a weak currency is a sign of a weak economy, which is the sign of a weak government'. Hmmmm, makes you think...

EVEN WORSE THAN THEY'RE LETTING ON

Here's a photo of Glasgow's Buchanan street in December 2006.
At the tail end of the last recession, when I was still a student, I worked in H Samuel over Christmas. Sauchiehall street looked the same back then. I had to fight my way through queues of shoppers every time I tried to go behind the counter after my lunch break.
Realizing that Friday is the last posting date for EU countries Thomas went Christmas shopping straight after work yesterday. All the big shops in town are now open till 8pm for Christmas. The out-of-town malls are open till 11pm or midnight. He went in around 6-15pm and wandered around till 7-45pm. All the shops were full... of goods, not people. He was alone in Waterstones and Tk Maxx.
I guess we should be out there taking advantage of the current prices in shops because let's face it - when we import the next batch of toys, TVs, CDs and everything else, it'll all cost us 25% more given the fall in the value of the pound.
I hear the Tories are clapping their hands that the falling pound will be great for exports. Emmmm???? Pity the UK doesn't really make anything for export any more. Last time I looked my TV, fridge, washing machine, power tools, car, toys, couch, play station etcetcetc were all imports. Oh so they all just went up 25%. Great - a big round of applause for our wonderful ex-chancellor who forgot to join the Euro when the pound was worth something.
It's nice to know the country is in such safe hands, and that the alternative is equally capable. I'd advise my kids to immigrate when they get old enough, if only I thought I'd have enough money to visit them elsewhere. If it wasn't for my current custody agreement, I think I'd be on the lookout for a oneway ticket to the sun too.
I suppose I should look on the bright side. At least this didn't happen a decade ago. There is no way Thomas, or anyone like him, would have come to the UK if the pound had been worth this little then. Like all bright, educated foreigners with something to offer he'd simply have looked for a job in the Eurozone where his salary would have better matched his value, and would not have risked being devalued with a currency.
So we can look forward not only to all the bright young graduates deserting the UK imminently but also the cream of the rest of the world avoiding us like the plague...
Ho hum

A WINNER?

I don't usually blog at 2-27am, but it looks like Obama has won!

JEDE ENTSCHEIDUNG IST EINE SCHEIDUNG

Fame at last!
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Well what can I say? For 18 years I have driven into HarperCollins to write them dictionaries. It's been fun for the most part. I think I am quite good at it - word analysis, structure, the bilingual element. But for some reason this country's economy is senseless. Publishing pays less than an average wage, though you have to be a university graduate to work in it (note that - anyone who assumes they'll ever pay off their student loan one day working in publishing!) To go back to work I would need to pay 2 private nursery places - I don't think having two pre-schoolage kids is that unusual in the Western world, but two nursery places (once you add on the petrol to get to work) actually means you work for nothing - nada, niente, zilch! So my 5 years of university education, my Master of Arts degree, and my 18 years experience in lexicography are to be shelved for want of a nursery place I can afford. Gordon thinks I'd be better staying home hoovering and wiping bums - sad, really.
Anyway, I guess like many before me I will now try to work as a freelance lexicographer from home, adding in a bit of photography and painting the odd kiddie mural to make ends meet. Isn't it just a crazy way to run a country, though!?

UK CHILDCARE - HOW IS IT SUPPOSED TO ADD UP?

I'm getting more and more annoyed trying to work out how a family is supposed to operate in this country. I have just enquired how much 2 nursery places will cost when I finish maternity leave. I spoke to an average-priced private nursery in the suburbs, not an expensive city one. You can only use private nursery as state nursery only offers a session from 12-45pm - 3-45pm for a 3-4 year old and a place 9am-12pm for a 4-5 year old. That doesn't fit in with any job in this country. So there we have it. I can either have 2 full time places costing £1270.80 a month or 2 morning places (8-30am - 12-30pm) costing £677 a month. Work that one out - either £15249.60 a year or £8125 a year. The diesel I use in my car to get to the office and the nursery is now costing me £1.26 a litre (it was 92p a litre when I stopped for maternity leave 5 months ago). I use on average 160 litres a month, so add £201 a month to the nursery bill (that's assuming diesel doesn't go up at all in the next 6 months, which I guess is unlikely given it's gone up more than 30% in the last 6). If I decide to work full time, I need after school care and holiday cover for Marcel and Charlotte at an average cost of £470 a month for 2 places, ie £5651 a year. So to work full time my annual outlay for just childcare and diesel at today's prices is £23312 after tax. That means to cover just childcare and petrol I need a gross income of £35k+ to break even. Add to that an average £150k mortgage at £900 a month and food and I am left wondering where you get a job you can live off, even as a couple.

DARLING NO MORE

This made me smile today - I wonder if there is any mileage in barring him from the petrol stations too?

THANKS A BUNCH GORDON AND CO

So, their tails between their legs, they have U-turned on the taxes, but of course I am still in that tiny little minority that is getting shafted. Because I work part-time (just mornings), I don't earn more than the £18K you need to not get screwed. Today they decided to give money back to the over 60s that had lost out and to the under 25s with no kids because they too are losing. What gets me is that my group is meant to be covered by child tax credits, but because of my partner's earnings I don't qualify for those - despite the fact that three of my kids are not my partner's dependents. There is a crazy situation in this country where those who are on a low or part time income have their partner's income taken into account when they apply for tax credits. The upshot being that new partners end up having to take on the financial responsibility for their partner's children from previous relationships. And the government is still surprised when people in my situation claim to be living as a single parent instead of declaring their partner. I wonder if it is too late to hide Anna under the bed and pretend that I am Thomas's lodger ;-)
It is intersting actually. Watching Newsnight at the moment and the Labour spokesperson keeps discussing how the taxes affect specific 'households'. I think that has put the finger on what is wrong. In my parents' generation people thought of taxes a couple thing, or a household thing but these days people think of themselves as individuals. Couples often have separate bank accounts so taking £200 off the woman, and in some cases (again, not mine) giving the £200 back to the man is still not seen fair. Labour needs to stop thinking in these old-fashioned terms. Households change too often these days to operate in those terms.

IMPRESSIVE

Apparently the pound has now fallen more under Brown than it did on Black Wednesday. What an astoundingly impressive politician! :-\

NAUSEATING MAN

I just recognised Gordon stopped his fish gasping for oxygen……well anyway I cannot stand this puppet who bites his fingernails and picks his nose…
Originally uploaded by jl7887

I guess poor Gordon was upset today then ;-) especially if he really is claiming Gazza's goal against Scotland was one of the highlights of his life. No wonder he didn't call an election if he is coming out with comments like that, that could lose him every single Scottish vote - he is truly vomit-worthy at times!