Paid Parental Leave – A highly flawed concept
Gordon Brown uses some plain provincial speaking to deride the poster child for picking the pockets of taxpayers for paid parental leave:
Ultimately though, this debate comes down to the highly flawed concept that somehow, the rest of us have to pay women for having babies. It’s their choice, surely? It seems not. Once again, we are being flogged by some for not doing enough for working women.
One Sunday paper even had the issue as a lead story on the front page and used the example of a journalism graduate who now had a 15-month-old child. The poor dear was complaining that the entry-level pay wasn’t enough to make it worth her while to actually get a job, what with the cost of childcare.
Somehow this was the Government’s (our) fault. Naturally there was no mention of a dad or a partner – she was “on her own”.
She also said she got pregnant (despite the free contraception we supply) while studying journalism, so presumably that wasn’t in the plan. It’s only a short leap of logic to imply that that would somehow be the Government’s (our) fault as well. Maybe there could be a work scheme for the unemployed so that someone could actually get the pill from the packet, get a glass of water and administer it to those poor dears who can’t manage it for themselves?
