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GUARDIAN Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:59:01 GMT
'I became an expert in abduction law and discovered that my chances of getting Jobe back were slim'
It was a day like any other. I got back from work, called out my wife's name, Kim, and waited for my little boy, Jobe, then two, to come running up to me as usual. Nothing happened; the house was silent. The washing was still on the line, so I assumed they'd popped out.
Day turned into night and I began to worry. Kim wasn't answering her mobile and by the next morning I was frantic. Then she left an answerphone message saying she had Jobe and would be in contact. I knew something was seriously up.
I had met Kim when I'd been on holiday in Thailand three years earlier. As far as I was concerned it was love, and we married four months later. I did wonder whether I was being daft – was it just a holiday romance? But lots of people marry quickly and live happily ever after.
She came over to the UK and when our baby son arrived, I was blissfully happy. I had an older son from a previous marriage, so I had thought my fathering days were over – Jobe was a lovely bonus. Kim made a lot of friends here and often went out on her own, but it soon became clear she wasn't happy.
Our marriage deteriorated further and when she began staying out overnight, I suspected she was having an affair and started proceedings for divorce.
A few days after their disappearance, another phone call from her revealed that they had gone back to Thailand. I contacted the police, but they were powerless – British law has no sway overseas, and abducting a child isn't a criminal offence in Thailand. It was down to me to get Jobe back. I became desperate and begged Kim to let me collect him. She stopped answering my calls. Then her phone went dead and I had no way of contacting her.
As the weeks became months, I grew frantic. I didn't know if Jobe was still alive. I became an expert in abduction law and discovered that my chances of getting him back were slim. I went to court to get legal custody.
Deeply afraid for my son, I hired a private investigator to check out the address Kim had given me in Thailand. It was a derelict house.
I hit rock bottom. I had spent £40,000 of borrowed money, given up my job to look for him, and still nothing. I was reduced to surfing the internet for clues as to his whereabouts. Then, unexpectedly, I discovered Kim on Facebook. I knew I had to tread carefully. I created a false identity – Matt Young, a handsome American millionaire – and contacted Kim this way.
She accepted me as a friend, which meant I had access to other friends of hers. I contacted two male friends; one sympathised with my story and told me where I could find Jobe. He was with Kim's relatives in a remote village. Gathering all the legal documents I had, I flew to Thailand, and the police took me to Jobe's village. We stopped outside a hut on stilts. Kim had been told I was coming and was there on the balcony. She just pointed to a door, so I walked up the ladder to her room. There in the corner was Jobe. I got on my hands and knees and said, "It's Daddy" and he slowly came over to me. I picked him up and held him. I couldn't believe that I'd finally found him – it had been six months since I'd seen him. He had chipped teeth but was otherwise healthy.
Kim was emotionless, silent. I was terrified she'd run away with him again. Instead she accepted that I had legal custody of Jobe, and let me take him back.
When Jobe and I returned to the UK, he was withdrawn and disoriented, but as soon as he realised he was home, he ran up to his room to play with his toys.
I was so happy Jobe was with me but the following weeks were extremely hard for both of us. He was too traumatised to speak and I had to sleep with him on the sofa. I felt very anxious, too, that he would be taken again, and was beside myself one time when he went running off in the supermarket.
Slowly, though, he has returned to the normal, loving boy I knew and, now a year has passed, he has....
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GUARDIAN Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:22:00 GMT
Alan Connor turns the tables on the torturers. Under the spotlight this week is Sarah Hayes, aka Arachne, who is 'keen to hear the views of solvers'
Arachne - known in the non-crossword world as Sarah Hayes - sets cryptics and quiptics at the Guardian and barred puzzles for the Inquisitor, Listener and Enigmatic Variations. Since August, she has also set cryptics in the Independent as Anarche. Her puzzles are beguiling, droll and at times provocative.
Among the Arachne/Anarche clues we've looked at here are a cheeky route to BONKERS, some indirect rudeness in a clue for MASTITIS, references to Ban Ki-moon and the Birther movement and our very first Clue of the Week.What is it with spiders?
When I had my first puzzle published I was an enthusiastic amateur weaver ("good at looming", a friend put it), so I took my name from Arachne in Greek mythology. She had the temerity to challenge Athene to a weaving contest, which got her changed into a spider - a bit headstrong, then.
I also like the image of slightly nervous victims becoming entangled in the web. Some of my best friends are spiders and every corner, cornice and light fitting of my house is bestrewn with cobwebs as it seems churlish to sweep them away. I work at home, surrounded by dusty books, and tend to resemble Miss Havisham's older sister or one of the less palatable senior members of the Addams family.
Anarche is, of course, an anagram of Arachne. I pronounce it with three syllables, and it may or may not be appropriate. I couldn't possibly comment.What's your favourite of your own clues or puzzles?
I can't remember most of them. (Strange fact: once I've had a few days to forget the answers I can't even solve my own clues. I'm a terribly bad solver.) But a few bits and bobs stick in the memory, and my favourite puzzle, by a country mile, was Listener 3460, called Web, which was in the shape of a spider's web and had a wee drawing of Arachne the Spider in the middle.
As a cricket fanatic I was pretty pleased with a simple Quiptic clue from a few years ago:
13ac Batsman's smashing cricket shot (11)
Marcus TRESCOTHICK is still playing smashing cricket shots for Somerset. I'm a Lancashire girl, myself.Here's a thing: not being a member of the MCC in the 1780s, I don't want to say 'I see you're a woman', but it's certainly the case that the world of setters is dominated by males.
People do occasionally notice that I'm a woman, and sometimes kindly point it out when they meet me. As a setter I didn't consider gender an issue until two years ago when a clue I wrote caused a bit of a hoo-ha:
24ac Woman in charge of automobile club (6)
As you can see, it's a simple double definition of DRIVER. But a dispiritingly large number of (mostly) male Guardian readers were flummoxed and looked high and low for explanations of the word "woman" - was I perhaps making some occult reference to Minnie Driver, or even Betty Driver? - and, worse, continued to feel affronted when it was pointed out that women do sometimes drive cars these days. Since then I have made a particular effort to use females in clues.When did you get the crossword bug?
Rather unoriginally, at my father's knee. He didn't solve during the week, but we'd tackle the barred puzzles in the Sunday broadsheets - just the two of us and a copy of Chambers. The perfect Sunday afternoon.
It taught me early on that it's possible to solve a really good clue from its wordplay even when the answer is so obscure you've never heard of it. To my shame, until earlier this year I was only solving barred puzzles at weekends, but I'm now getting huge pleasure from discovering the work of my brilliant colleagues in the daily papers. Do you remember the first clue you solved or wrote?
The first clue I solved was back in the Precambrian era, so I can't really remember it. But I do remember with clarity and pleasure my first published puzzle.
I had sent an unsolicited crossword to the late and much missed Harold......
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GUARDIAN Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT
Because today is my birthday ... !
The end of January is probably the most depressing time of the year. It's the dead of winter, all the beautiful white snow is now yellow-and-brown slush, most New Year's resolutions have already been broken, the bills from the recent holiday spending orgy have arrived in the mail so money is tight, and rent is due and, and ... oh yeah, today is my birthday.
I've never been very eager to mention it to anyone because, well, my birthday has nearly always been quite depressing (or completely overlooked), particularly when I was a child. But I still had secret birthday wishes anyway. If I could have anything as a gift, I once again am wishing for a visit to New Guinea -- a visit that should, ideally, last at least a few weeks (and should, ideally, require one year of preparation, I think). However, as always, a visit to New Guinea is rather unlikely, so I have an alternative birdday wish. Even though I am not a fan of cakes (I prefer pies), as soon as I saw this video documenting the making of a very special cake, I was instantly enchanted: creating this would be the most perfect birdday gift for this (or any) evolutionary biologist, don't you think?
Of course, I'd just have to help create this cake (because that's 9/10 of the fun, of course!) and then I'd need three or four dozen of my bestest friends in the whole wide world to help me eat it!
Visit Acidgeologist's YouTube channel [video link].
Mmmmmmmmmarzipan! Mmmmy favourite!
Some of the essential ingredients for this cake:
32 eggs
3 kg of marzipan
7 people
30 hours
1 fantastic cake
Now tell me; what is your secret birdday wish?
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GUARDIAN Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:03 GMT
Male self-objectification has perhaps gone too far – but the compulsory self-loathing that came before was worse
Back in the early 90s, when Loaded magazine and footie were conquering the culture, making it untuck its shirt, admire its beer belly and leer at "babes", I foolishly predicted the future of men was metrosexual.
No one believed me, of course. Everyone was in New Lad denial. It wasn't until the noughties that the world was ready to discuss what was happening to men and why they were spending so long in the bathroom. And of course the footie that New Lad fetishised for its manly "authenticity" went most flamingly metrosexual of all.
But for all my Cassandrine prophecies, no one is more surprised than me by just how tarty men in the post-metrosexual teenies have turned out. Or to put it in more "sociological" language: how readily they objectify and commodify themselves and one another.
In the last few months the newspapers have told us that men now take longer getting ready than women, and are more likely to take travel irons, hairdryers and straighteners on holiday. And this month a widely reported "Body Talk" survey by the YMCA and Bristol University claimed that men were now more body-conscious than women.
A third of those surveyed said they thought about their appearance more than five times a day, 18% were on a high-protein diet to increase muscle mass, and 16% on a calorie-controlled diet to slim down. A Faustian 35% claimed they would happily trade a year of their life if they could have their ideal body weight and shape. Probably because they hoped the years would be sliced off the end of their lives – when they're old and crumbly and not very likely to appear in a spray-on vest on the "straight" dating show Take Me Out anyway.
Some were reportedly undertaking "compulsive" exercise, strict diets, using laxatives or making themselves sick in an attempt to lose weight or achieve a more toned physique. And although the survey didn't cover this, other reports suggest a surprisingly large number of males are also taking steroids, growth hormones and other prescription drugs to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing appearance. To be "hot".
Which generally means tits and abs. Men's main preoccupation, the YMCA survey suggested, was their "beer belly" and lack of muscles, with a whopping 63% saying they thought their arms or chests were not muscular enough. And people never believe me when I tell them that while some women are size queens, all men are.
All surveys should be taken with a shovel of salt, of course – particularly the YMCA study which seems to have had a rather higher ratio of gym-goers than the general male population. Perhaps the most reliable source of information on the rise of male tartiness is the evidence of your own eyes.
A glance at the newstand, the billboard, the telly and the queue at the bus stop will tell you that with many young men the desire to be desired, the driving force of the metrosexual revolution of the last decade or so, has taken an increasingly physical, sensual form. Lovingly, painstakingly sculpted, shaved muscles decorated with those elaborate designer tattoos. OK, I admit it, I've done a bit more than glance.
It's clear those Men's Health front covers promising bigger arms, pumped pecs and ripped abs by teatime tomorrow, laughable and repetitive as they are, must be tapping into 21st-century man's deepest, darkest and beefiest desires. A couple of years ago Men's Health replaced FHM as the best-selling men's magazine. Men have become their own "high street honeys".
Turn on the telly this week and you'll see the return of the shameless, busty male hussies of Geordie Shore and the preening boys of The Only Way is Essex. And also the launch of an ad campaign by the sporno star who has taught this new generation of metrosexy males everything they know about self-objectification and commodification. David Beckham's H&M commercials will feature him shoving his.......
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GUARDIAN Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:59:00 GMT
The government's £26,000 benefit cap will hit large families hardest. Here, readers tell us of their experiencesMaelon
I grew up in exactly the kind of family the government reforms are targeting – I'm the eldest of nine, with parents who've never worked in my lifetime. We were always poor: Christmas presents were from Poundland, we never had holidays and yet neighbours would always parrot tales from tabloids about "scroungers" with satellite TV and expensive clothes, as though we were covertly living a life of luxury. Our benefits would be stopped several times a year due to administrative errors, and we'd be left with hardly anything to eat. One of my earliest political memories is being told that the fact we'd only eaten school meals for a week was because of John Major, and the fact that his party hated families like us.
My brother is disabled, and my mother cares for him round the clock. He often has to be taken from school early, and rarely sleeps through the night. She's been unemployed since leaving school, and has no work experience. She managed to study for a teaching degree when we were growing up, but hasn't been able to find a teaching post. I'm often asked why my mother had nine children, as though our existence is an affront to society. I've heard many people express support with the government's benefits cap plans, and when I've challenged them, I'm always told my family are "different". They're not – but it's easier to monster large families if you view them as feckless, and take umbrage with the right of everyone to have children. I find it genuinely terrifying that the government are happy to put children below the poverty line to "punish" their parents for choosing to have them.Glyn Reed
I grew up in a large family of seven children. We lived behind our shoe shop in Salford, where we had two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and sitting room plus an outside toilet. Our income was meagre, but my parents managed amazingly on what they had. We lived in a proper community back then, until the late 1960s brought "slum clearance" – the eradication of networks of terraced houses and the closure of many factories in the area. My dad's shop went down the pan along with other local businesses, and he took a job as a long distance lorry driver. My mum eventually took a job in a Manchester department store. We all managed to get reasonably good educations and careers.
As we grew up we never looked to our parents for funds. If we wanted extras like school trips, we got jobs doing paper rounds. Back then such jobs were plentiful and allowed. There was a stigma attached to signing on back then, and having a large family was also frowned upon.
I know that it is hard bringing up a large family today on limited means, but you choose how many children to have. Housing benefit is a good thing but I think it is a bit excessive to assume that children should not share rooms and therefore the state must provide large houses for large families. What on earth is wrong with sharing if that is the only option? A sense of victimhood is positively encouraged these days. It's nonsense. Life is tough for a lot of people in Britain today, but it is nothing in comparison to the way the majority of people in the world have to live. How we have taken it all for granted.Chilly1408
I am a 40-year-old housewife with four children. I met my husband after my boyfriend left me with my eight-month-old baby. We fell in love and decided to have more children – my husband was working and earning a decent wage. In 2002, my husband was diagnosed with acute glaucoma and lost most of his vision. Not being able to accomplish everyday tasks, he lost the job he loved. He is now seriously depressed and legally blind.
We live in a four-bedroom house in south London, which costs £1,450 a month. We receive £305 a week from income support and child tax credit, £60 a week child benefit, £300 a week housing benefit and £156 a month from disability living.....
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GUARDIAN Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:45:01 GMT
Even a vibrant Conservative MP such as Louise Mensch can't avoid the fact that austerity is stripping us down to very old gender roles
"Women taken seriously shock!" No, not a headline from this week, but a response to the four women who spoke at the Leveson inquiry about how the media portrays us. Anna van Heeswijk (from Object), Jacqui Hunt (Equality Now), Heather Harvey (the rape charity Eaves) and Marai Larasi (End Violence Against Women) made their case with quiet assurance, and were listened to with courtesy. Their evidence, shockingly enough, was deemed worthy of censorship and could not be shown to the sensitive souls of the inquiry, even though the images of women they had gathered came from mainstream papers that any child can buy in any newsagent. This is as good as it gets. You don't challenge Page 3 or they do to you what they did to Clare Short.
Rebekah Brooks, of course, did not ban Page 3 as editor of the Sun; she embraced it. Is she one of the women in high positions who do not encourage other women, who want to be "alone of all her sex"? It's the new USP: the sisterhood is fantasy. I don't want to burst your bubble but women, like men, are all different. Clearly the words "feminism", "equality" and "women's rights" are interpreted differently in different contexts. It is certainly possible to make alliances over particular issues. And we do. It's called politics.
Here at the inquiry was one such issue. Leveson listened as he was told systematically what we have known for years. Rape, abuse, violence and the murder of women are often reported in a sensational and titillating way. The victims, even when they are children, are often held somehow to blame. Pictures of semi-naked women whose bodies are up for scrutiny have become our societal screensaver. This is but a side-issue for Leveson, one of many, for why did he not discuss "sexism" with male editors or with Richard Desmond, whose media business is founded on porn?
Another issue beyond Leveson's remit is that of women as consumers. There is not a newspaper or a TV show that is not chasing the female pound right now.
Commercially and politically, I can see that pulling away from victimy and drab feminism in favour of being chic and individually entrepreneurial – the new, fun kind of feminism that can't get enough of men or makeovers – works. So again up pops Louise Mensch, rebranding feminism in her own image: hip, uplifting, go-getting. It's all cool except don't mention the C-word. Class. Or that downer thing, victims. Some women don't see themselves as victims. They are victims. They are beaten and abused, they don't vote and gasp (!) don't have their own small businesses. Sometimes collective politics means simply looking out for the weakest rather than pushing oneself up to bellow with the strongest.
The Mensch way, though, is apparently Tory "feminism". Ed Vaizey, one of the good guys who, as Mensch says, "has our backs" (as opposed to our fronts?) is going to broker a meeting between Nadine Dorries and influential people in the media. Lovely, if not the teensiest patronising?
Where Tory feminism makes possible sense is on this issue of sexualisation. For there is a mish-mash of freemarket fundamentalism but a coyness around the "flaunting" of female sexuality. Even Cameron realised that the Squeezed Middle/Mumsnet/Hardworking Whatevers do not like padded bras for eight-year-olds or to see women in fake lesbian poses when buying Monster Munch.
This is uncomfortable territory for the Tories because if everything is left to a deregulated market, then everybody is up for sale. This hypersexualised culture is not new, but its means of transmission are. What initially drove the Suffragettes was widespread prostitution and venereal disease. This was the price poor women paid to uphold "Victorian values". The early suffrage movement wanted to protect women as well as give them a modicum of power. Emmeline Pankhurst joined the Tories herself,......
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GUARDIAN Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:00:08 GMT
The question of moral courage – and whether you can get better at it – has stayed with me ever since I was shot at by Israelis
OK, we all get it. Captain Francesco Schettino was a coward. Sinking the Costa Concordia was one thing – a mistake, even. The running away bit, though: that's a different order of moral failure. But how do we know what sort of person we would turn out to be in such circumstances? Hero or villain?
Years ago I was shot at by Israeli soldiers on the Gaza/Egypt border. Bullets kicked up a line of dust a few feet to my right. Despite being in the company of a dozen Palestinian children, I ran and hid. Sick with adrenaline, I cowered behind a block of flats for a good 10 minutes. To be fair on myself, we all did, and that may well have been the only thing to do. Nobody got hurt. But the question of moral courage has remained with me ever since: in particular, the question of how those who do this sort of thing, day in day out, build up the emotional resources to confront danger with bravery. Is courage something you are born with; or can you get better at it?
"Each of us has a bank of courage," explains Peter de la Billière, a former commander of the SAS. "Some have a significant credit balance, others little or nothing; but in war we are all able to make the balance last longer if we have training, discipline, patriotism and faith." This feels so much like the advice of a bygone age. For these are values whose stock has not fared well in the latter half of the 20th century and beyond. Indeed, those of us who at school learned by heart the war poem Dulce et Decorum Est have come to associate a whole cluster of courage-based values – valour, sacrifice, etc – with what Wilfred Owen called "The old Lie". For these were values so soaked in blood, so purloined for the purposes of militaristic propaganda, that their rehabilitation remains problematic, even now.
But the idea that courage requires discipline and training needs a fairer hearing. For at least since Aristotle there has been an important strain of moral thought that has recognised human virtue not as some innate given, but rather as something that one can prepare for, and indeed get better at. The reason the soldier strips and re-strips his weapon a thousand tedious times on the parade ground is so that he can do it, without thought, when he hasn't slept for days and the bullets are pinging about his ears. Over time, it becomes a matter of instinct. And the advice of the modern army is that the same is true of courage. If you rehearse "doing the right thing" enough, you are much more likely to do the right thing when terrified or confused.
This sort of advice is not peculiar to the army. Alcoholics Anonymous has the phrase: "Fake it till you make it." If you want to become a different sort of person, first act like you are, and the acting will eventually transform you. Pretend to be the person you want to be and you will end up becoming more like that person. This cuts right against the grain of familiar assumptions that moral change comes from within, that the most important thing is expressing who you really are – "To thine own self be true", as Polonius puts it in Hamlet. From this perspective, an honest confession of our own weakness – our lack of courage, for instance – becomes the only real expression of virtue. In other words, an emphasis on authenticity can easily become an alibi for a refusal of character development.
While awaiting execution in Flossenburg concentration camp for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an extraordinary poem entitled Who Am I? that dramatised the gap between his outward display of courage and his inner fear. "I stepped from my cell's confinement … like a squire from his country house"; and yet inwardly he was "faint and ready to say farewell to it all". Which is the real me, he ponders. "Am I both at once?"
Courage isn't about not being afraid. Indeed, not being afraid in...
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GUARDIAN Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:46:48 GMT
A website campaign wants the government and manufacturers to recommend rear-facing car seats for children beyond the age of one. What do you think?
Should parents in the UK be encouraged to keep their children in rear-facing car seats for longer? Yes, according to a campaign launched by Motors.co.uk.
It is calling on the government, retailers and manufacturers to make it easier for parents to research and buy rear-facing seats for children aged one and over, which it suggests are "up to five times safer" than the more popular forward-facing versions. The headlines from this research do suggest that rear-facing seats are the safest option.
In the UK, group 0 and 0+ seats for babies up to the age of 18 months or 13kg in weight will be rear-facing, but most of the larger seats on the market are forward-facing. Many large retailers do not stock rear-facing seats for older children, and parents who do buy them tend to have gone out of their way to do so, seeking out specialist sites such as the In Car Safety Centre.
When Motors.co.uk spoke to parents, 52% said they would buy a rear-facing car seat for their child if they were more widely available in the UK, while 43% called for the UK government to officially advise parents to keep their child in a rear-facing seat until the age of four.
I'm slightly sceptical about this. When I attended a fitting day in October as part of our car seat campaign, I found that parents were keen to get their children into forward-facing seats as quickly as possible, with some moving them up before the child turned one. Most seemed to think their children were bored with looking at the back seat.
Yet elsewhere parents use rear-facing carseats for much longer. In some European countries parents are advised to use them until a child is four years old, while guidance in the US suggests using rear-facing seats until a child turns two. And most of the manufacturers we are familiar with in the UK are making these seats for the overseas market.
So why don't we use them? Road safety expert Julie Dagnall has seen rear-facing seats as part of her job with Wirall council. She says part of the problem is that many of them do not fit the kind of cars we drive in the UK, and a lack of availability means they are more expensive. She adds: "You're still going to do very well with a forward-facing seat if the seat is fitted properly and the child is fitted properly in it."
However, she thinks the campaign is right to suggest that parents do not always get the advice they need to make an informed decision. As Which? recently discovered in a mystery-shopping exercise retailers are not always giving the best advice, and while new parents are inundated by sponsored leaflets on subjects from nappy rash to weaning, most are given very little on car seats.
But there is information out there: the website Rear Facing has links to reports and research, plus information on where you can buy the seats – but parents do need to actively seek it out.
What do you think? Should more information on rear-facing seats be made available? If you are a parent who is about to buy a child car seat would you consider a rear-facing one? Do you think parents should be forced to do so? If you already use one – in the UK or overseas – is not being able to see your child's face an issue?
Child car seats
Motoring
Parents and parenting
Family
Hilary Osborne
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GUARDIAN Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:00:00 GMT
The proposed distribution of universal credit reflects outdated prejudices of breadwinning men and homemaking wives
The Women's Budget Group (WBG), a thinktank of academic economists and other policy specialists that assesses the gender impact of government policy, has urged members of the House of Lords to support amendments being moved on Monday evening to prevent the government's welfare reform bill having yet another unwelcome impact on women's financial independence.
Under universal credit, the proposed single means-tested benefit that will replace nearly all existing benefits, women already stand to lose financial independence. First, many women whose husbands are in work will find the gains from staying in employment greatly reduced. Giving up employment will reduce their financial independence within their existing relationship and their future ability to support themselves. Second, by reducing the scope of individual non-means-tested support, universal credit will make everyone previously entitled to benefits in their own right more dependent on their partners.
However, less well known are the effects that government plans will have on couples' management of their internal financial affairs. Under universal credit, couples will receive a single payment once a month to just one person in the couple. Couples will not be able to decide to have it paid more frequently, or to split to whom it is paid in any way.
These amendments may be the last chance to stop this.
Why does this matter so much? First, it may leave some people without any income at all and thus totally dependent on their partner. Others could receive a far less equal share than they do now. The current system, although untidy, at least ensures that there are different bits of income coming in at different times, usually some paid to the man and some to the woman. If either partner, for whatever reason, does not manage their money well, the whole family is not left destitute. Nor does either partner have to keep asking the other for money.
Second, it ignores research that shows that to reach children most effectively, money should be paid to those taking the main responsibility for their care. For this reason, existing tax credits and money for childcare costs are currently paid to the main carer in the family, as family benefits increasingly are throughout the world. When these payments are replaced by universal credit, either the family has to agree that all their universal credit is paid to the main carer, or the main carer will receive none of it.
Further, requiring one partner to be dependent on the other will increase the risks involved in embarking on committed couple relationships. For a lone parent moving in with a new partner, the new rules could mean losing direct access to most of her income for herself and her children. Similarly, for existing couples, unequal financial say may lead to tensions and possibly relationship breakdown.
The government is insisting on universal credit being paid to one person, because it wants payments to reflect what happens with wages. But it is entirely outdated to assume that only one person in a family would receive wages. The government would like recipients of the credit to model themselves on families supporting themselves by their own earnings alone. Nearly all households that earn enough to do that have more than one earner; that is how they manage to stay out of poverty.
The only choice couples will have is to which of them universal credit is paid. The government says that it does not want to impose on people how they run their household finances. It is therefore particularly ironic that what is being prevented is the choice to operate as most families do now.
The government's proposals seem to reflect outdated prejudices, giving the impression that the goal is a world of breadwinning men and home-making wives, when in reality we have already moved on to a more equal world. Turning back the....
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GUARDIAN Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:05:00 GMT
Are you part of a large family who will be hit by the proposed £26,000 benefits cap? Are such families being unfairly targeted?
Large families are once again in the spotlight as the £26,000 annual benefits cap proposed by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith would hit them the hardest. Tim Leuning explains on Comment is free:
"The worst hit, of course, are large families in the south-east, where rents are higher. Even in Tolworth, described by the Evening Standard as the 'scrag end of Kingston borough', a four-bedroom house will give you little change from £400 a week. Cutting housing benefit to £100 a week – which is broadly what the cap means if you have four children – makes life impossible. After rent, council tax and utilities, a family with four children would have 62p per person per day to live on. That is physically impossible."
The draft has been criticised by Liberal Democrat and crossbench peers and religious leaders; Church of England bishops are pushing for child benefit to be excluded from the cap so as not to penalise large families.
As part of our People's panel series, we'd like to ask Comment is free readers who come from, or currently have, a large family to weigh in on the issue. Why did you or your parents decide to have a large family – four or more children? Do you think that large families are being unfairly targeted, both by the government and the media? If you had many siblings, do you feel that you have missed out on some advantages because of your family's size (or did you find there were benefits in having many bothers and sisters)? Do you think it is right that poorer families should be presented with disincentives to keep the number of children they have down? Should parents make sure they can provide for their children before planning to have others?
If you would like to participate, email Jessica Reed (jessica.reed@guardian.co.uk) before 12pm on Tuesday 24 January, with a contribution of about 200-300 words. Please include your Comment is free username, your real name and a number we can contact you on. We'll pick four entries for publication.
The subject line of your email should be "People's panel" and you should include an element of comment – your opinion on the issue being debated. If you object to having your real name used, mention this; if not, we'll publish it.
Welfare
Child benefit
Family
Housing benefit
Communities
Housing
Benefits
Iain Duncan Smith
Poverty
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