Radio 4 Woman's Hour

At 10am today, there'll be a piece on childcare on BBC Radio 4's woman's Hour programme.

I hear there will be a phone-in, so be prepared for the programme's typically entitled listeners complaining about how we're robbing them blind.

OTOH there’s a sympathetic piece on the BBC News website this morning about how the 30 hour scheme is forcing nurseries out of business. The Beeb frequent use 'news' items as little more than trailers/primers for some of their tv and radio shows, so it’s just possible this might set the tome for the radio slot.

I think I read elsewhere that woman's hour had been requesting nurseries that had/we're closing to contact them to be part of the discussion.

The phone-in will be at 1215 on another Radio 4 programme, Call You and Yours.

The Woman's Hour piece was more about the wider travails of working wimmin. (The show does seem to have a very narrow demographic.) At least we are now only partly to blame, but we're still obviously cashing in on these poor, helpless mums who don’t appear to have any choice about having children, who are clearly such a benefit to society that everyone else should be paying for them. :p

One scary statistic from the show: the proportion of nurseries who are running at a loss or break-even is now 75%. That has risen very rapidly from the 50% when the 30 hour scheme was launched (figures taken from PLA research.) I found the 50% figure frightening enough at the time, but 75%........!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by bunyip

The phone-in will be at 1215 on another Radio 4 programme, Call You and Yours.

The Woman's Hour piece was more about the wider travails of working wimmin. (The show does seem to have a very narrow demographic.) At least we are now only partly to blame, but we're still obviously cashing in on these poor, helpless mums who don’t appear to have any choice about having children, who are clearly such a benefit to society that everyone else should be paying for them. :p

One scary statistic from the show: the proportion of nurseries who are running at a loss or break-even is now 75%. That has risen very rapidly from the 50% when the 30 hour scheme was launched (figures taken from PLA research.) I found the 50% figure frightening enough at the time, but 75%........!!!!!!

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The surprising thing I got from the phone-in was the way in which some parents now seem to recognise that the blame for this fiasco lays with the government.

The Tory spokesperson was selling the usual line of what a "huge success" it is. He was clearly riled that mums who had experience of using the scheme refused to accept it is truly "free", and instead constantly referred to it as "subsidised childcare".

They did manage to find one mum with a huge 'entitlement attitude' who was appalled at having to pay nursery for meals. Fancy expecting mums to actually pay to feed their own children!

Who’d of believed you’d have to pay for your own child’s food:laughing: