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February 12th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
By
Suzanne Moore
Last updated at 2:02 AM on 12th February 2012
Gosh, Cameron is considering tax breaks for the ‘help’. Finally I can have the butler I hanker after, although I have no idea what butlers actually do. But I have seen enough Upstairs Downstairs-type scenarios to imagine we all need a tall, whispering man in our lives. Or is that a valet? Or do only men have valets to get them dressed, as if they were giant babies?
Still, Cameron has been sneered at for floating an idea that he picked up in that bastion of conservatism, Sweden. He noted that in Sweden there are tax breaks for domestic help, from cooks to gardeners, cleaners to nannies, and this may be enabling more women to work.
Critics immediately labelled this a Downton Abbey dodge, of benefit only to posh women. How could he suggest such a thing when tax credits to the working poor are being cut alongside child benefit?
Upstairs Downstairs: The housemaids of Downton Abbey
This is something of a knee-jerk reaction which, as usual, ignores the reality of the lives of many working women, a large number of whom are struggling. Most women who work cobble together a patchwork of childcare, some paid, some not. I have worked ever since I had children, and even when on low wages I still paid for childcare. I never found that elusive job that would fit in with school hours, starting at 10am and ending at 2.30pm.
Women often sell each other down the river on this one, lapping up stories from Hollywood stars who claim to do it all. Show me a successful woman and I’ll show you a complicated team effort or a supportive spouse behind it. Why pretend otherwise?
If having a cleaner is class treason, I plead guilty – but I do not feel guilty. I have been a cleaner. My mum was a cleaner. I know what exploitation is when I see it and I have seen it most in agencies, which take huge cuts of a cleaner’s income. Live-in help in the form of au pairs was the cheapest and best solution when my children were small. Apart from one short-lived escapade – a girl who got herself involved in a Christian cult and tried to convert us – and a strange interview where a forthright young Dutch woman told me that she hated children and getting up before noon and asked whether I could find her a boyfriend, the experience was positive on all sides. Both the young women who lived with us many years ago went on to do degrees and settle here.
Judging women for having cleaners or au pairs keeps a system in place where somehow childcare, whether paid or unpaid, remains entirely a female issue. Men presumably have children too but they are not derided for having personal assistants or chauffeurs, both of which are tax-deductible.
It is madness to consider childcare a form of decadence. Without it, I would neither have studied nor worked and paid tax all my life. Going to the hairdresser’s, having the car washed, getting a manicure, having a meal out – all these things are services that people choose to pay for. The servicing of men is taken for granted but when women pay other women, mostly out of necessity, we are seen as spoilt and neglectful.
Surely, though, if looking after children was considered important and was properly paid and did not get by on random and cash-in-hand payments, we could grow some jobs too. Yes, these tax breaks may benefit self-employed and entrepreneurial women, but to pretend we don’t need such people right now is ludicrous. The real issue is one of pay and respect.
Most men do not write of their domestic arrangements. They are sorted out by paid and unpaid female labour. This is the can of worms where sex and class wriggle all over each other.
New Labour’s drive to increase nursery places was not simply about enabling women to work, but often a way of trying to instill some basic parenting skills. Of course this must remain a priority. But the great majority of childminders are not employed by hugely wealthy people. The basic question remains: should childcare be tax-deductible? Indeed it should. That this turns into a row about manservants is a sign that as long as childcare remains purely the responsibility of women, women of every class get a raw deal.
Gillian Anderson appeared in the BBC’s adaptation of Great Expectations
She doesn’t look that old to me, Mr Thompson
The director-general’s belated apology about the BBC’s treatment of ‘older women’ was rather peculiar.
Mark Thompson mentioned Gillian Anderson, right. Break it to him someone – her role as the spinster Miss Havisham in the recent Great Expectations was acting! She is only 43. He also mentioned Sue Perkins, again in her early 40s, and the talented new political editor of Newsnight, Allegra Stratton, who is in her 30s.
There seems to be some confusion between older women and er… any old woman. Still, Anneka Rice, 53, is to be resurrected, so all is well.
Thompson’s mea culpa seemed to miss the point, as does his support for Miriam O’Reilly’s charity, which campaigns on this issue.
Do we need a charity to raise the visibility of older women? If so, can I donate my licence fee?
No end to implant racket
As so many medical practitioners, from doctors to midwives, point out the flaws in the NHS and its drive towards outsourcing everything to private companies, it is worth looking at the PIP breast implant scandal.
Protesters gather on Harley Street, London, to call for private clinics to replace PIP breast implants for free
Private clinics are not only charging to remove these dangerous implants but ‘cross-selling’ further operations at the same time. Combining the removal with further surgery is risky and may lead to even more complications, yet they are pushing an operation called a ‘mastopexy’, a breast uplift.
There is nothing uplifting about this cynical and unethical racket.
The annual love-fest of Valentine’s Day is upon us: cue lots of couples sitting silently in restaurants with special offers. Though for an austerity Valentine’s, you can do it all for a tenner – the meal and wine – according to Asda. Romance is not dead, but flogging it this way does make it look remarkably cheap.
Is this news? Fabio Capello’s resignation may have been huge for many, but for others it was merely something to fill the bulletins
The world is pretty quiet right now. There is not a lot happening in the Middle East. The Greeks are coming to terms with their situation . . . well, not exactly. So what makes the headlines? A football manager’s resignation!
I accept that football is, for some, a faith, through which emotions I can only dream of are expressed.
I have read of Capello’s ‘cultural disconnect’, which didn’t stop him connecting with millions of pounds, but for those of us who blasphemously regard football as a mere sport, the cultural disconnect is now ridiculously huge.
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