Preparedness for when

1Tonsil

It seems we have worries on many fronts..... one of the disputed areas is the area off Corfu.... http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/albania-oil-idUSL5N0Y92MK20150518 ...they have a visit by Merkel and an investment of millions this week...

[Deleted User]

We had 2 children, we had them because we wanted children and we supported both of them right throughout their lives until they had jobs and could support themselves, other than the family allowance we've neither one of us claimed any benefits at all. Things have been tight at times and I've had to make a shilling do the work of two but they were and are loved and cherished and our world would be a hollow place without them. It isn't a crime to have a family, it's a choice and one that we made willingly. I don't look at people who have chosen not to have a relationship or a family and feel they made the wrong choice, I don't expect anyone else to look at me (or any other responsible parents) and feel that I have made the wrong choice. Life is what you make it, your choices are either your successes or your failures, but you make them and it's not for the rest of the world to make you feel wrong footed about making them in the first place!

GreyQueen

My parents had us two and never had any public support beyond child benefit either, Lyn. We were pretty damned poor, but my parents' earning ability wouldn't have run to keeping more than two, possibly three (the third planned pregnancy ended in miscarriage, unfortunately, I have a missing younger sibling).

If you have children and support them, that's lovely. If you choose to have anything from double to quintuple+ the usual family size and can't/won't support them, the children are also lovely and worthy, but other people are having to fund your lifestyle choices. There has to be a degree of personal responsibility in all things, which includes family planning, I think.

moneyistooshorttomention

Fully agree re the personal responsibility element of people funding their own choices in life and not expecting other people to do so for them.

Re money for children - I think my father was probably rather against claiming child money for his two (ie my brother and myself), but got over-ruled by my mother. He always felt strongly that we were his responsibility and it was up to him. But there was some reason behind it then - as mine is the last generation that wasn't voluntarily chosen basically, so it could be argued that the community should help one section of the community back then.

Any children that my generation downwards have are, in the main, voluntarily chosen and therefore Personal Responsibility very much applies. Hence why I've been expecting this sort of move since the 1970s and wondering why it took so long.

But, as said, we will have to agree to disagree on that one.

I must admit an aspect of this that had never crossed my mind prior to moving is that I am watching a couple in my own generation that had more children than they could afford and its still impacting on them at my sort of age and they are trying to transfer some of that impact onto other peoples shoulders now by looking for excuses to get other people to "pay their way for them" (despite those children having long since grown up). It never occurred to me that anyone would do so.....

GreyQueen

:eek: Heads up, preppers, something has broken the Noo Yawk Stock Exchange. All trading down for 2 + hours and United Airlines and Wall Street Journal also co-incidentally having severe problems.

It isn't a cyber-attack, apparently. Ho-hum. Not that they'd tell us if it was, in real time, at least.

Doveling

I didn't press any buttons!:eek: Honest!

GreyQueen

Doveling wrote: »

I didn't press any buttons!:eek: Honest!

You sure?! It wasn't me, honest.

My spidey-sense is tingling................

mardatha

Been watching that for an hour or so and thinking the same GQ

[Deleted User]

mardatha wrote: »

I wouldn't believe that shower if they told me the world was round!

It's not.

It's an oblate sphere.

[Deleted User]

On the back of an enormous turtle standing on 4 enormous elephants and it's disc shaped with a counter continent............