It's been quite cold this weekend. I haven't gone outside at all since I got home from work on Friday night and tomorrow morning I have to face the early morning slog of being at the train station by 6.30am.
I think I'm just over having to work for a living and the news tonight was so depressing. One day politicians might figure out that the cost of turning on a light does not somehow magically become more expensive if a child enters the room. I do not trust any political party anymore no matter what my personal leanings may have been.
My feeling is that as a country we have lost our way and I think both the current and previous governments are responsible. We have been sliding down this slope for a decade at more. Politicians are so busy trying to keep happy the 40% of the population who are "working families" because they can influence them to vote as a large block, that they've lost sight of the other 60% of us who are now actually financing the country.
They have set up new social divides, and that a time is coming when singles, childless couples, self funded retirees and pensioners are going to become a force to be reckoned as we are tired of being the cash cow that funds the rebates and handouts for "working families".
We are not as advanced as we think we are as a country we are because business thinks they can pay the average wage earner a pittance then moans and whinges when no one has money to spend on their products, yet they can't see why there is no money. That tax money is wasted in ways that are morally bankrupt. That inequality in pay between men and women is going to see larger numbers of women living in poverty in the next 20 years and more.
Monday is depressing enough each week, and even more depressing to live in country with so much potential yet divided and ruled by idiots. And by rule I include those in opposition as much as those on the government benches as they provide no viable alternative or leadership either.
Now I've had my vent, I am going to take myself to bed, because I don't believe that there is yet a tax on body heat under a doona, and it doesn't increase the electricity bill.
I know what you mean about all the people who aren't a family. The only extra thing ever was the stimulus package money for most. Hope Monday Morning was not so bad.
ReplyDeleteThanks, it was better than I hoped for a Monday morning.
ReplyDeleteThe stimulus money got me so riled. The young couple in the next flat had a second baby about 2 months before the stimulus, and with the baby bonus, the stimulus per child and for each of them, plus that tax time when they got all the family tax rebates back, they got back over well over $12,000 handed back to them within a 4 month period. Guess who could then suddenly afford to put down a house deposit? I may as well have just shoved my tax money in a brown paper bag and left it on their doorstep for all the value those taxes brought me. Grrr.
I think I need to take my happy pills and go to bed again!!
No, that is awful. One of my friends says that if you turn on a light as a single person, it costs a lot of money, but if a child turns it on in a family home they probably get a family rebate!! I think 30-40% of Australians live alone in their house/flat now. I think TPTB should take more notice.
ReplyDeleteIt's very true, I say the same myself and so do a lot of other singles I know. I'd love to know why a light bulb costs more to run as soon as a child sits under it.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of singles out there. More than they think and I read recently that the number is set to increase markedly by 2020. The problem is it's a diverse group. Some are elderly widows/widowers and some are young can could yet pair up, and others are like me, long term single. It's so easy for politicians to pick one demographic that can win or lose and election for them and stuff the rest!
I was mucking around with the Spotlight thing on the census site and pretended to be me and a few other people, and for each age I tried, there were about 2000 more women than men! So assuming that a few who might actually be in same-sex relationships, it still means that statistically, there is either a lot of polygamous relationships out there we don't know about, or a heck of a lot of single women with no partner.
I get so mad with this goddess on a pedestal who is a mother thing that society deems women should be. From working in education, I know there are many women who should just should not have ever had a child, they are so bad at parenting.
Sure, I could have had kids too, I could have ignored the fact that I didn't meet Mr Right, or even Mr Half Right! I could slept around, had a few kids to a few different fathers, there were a few Mr Toads and Mr Snakes who could have donated their.....time, and I'd probably now be rolling in clover, with my own home and with taxpayers funding my life.
I'd be earning more than I do know slogging it out in a 9 to 5 job. Instead I chose to stick with my morals, and work and my reward?
I watch the politicians promise more and more to those with a child, my retirement age is being pushed out more and more towards 65 and life is not looking so rosy.
I'm also yet to figure out this one. Join Health Fund of choice. Let's say single pays $1000 and gets to claim for one person. Family joins and pays $2000 but can claim for two adults and three or four kids. So who is really financing whom?
Also Medicare "Safety Net".
What's the current mark you have to reach? $1000? A single has to be so very sick to spend past that mark. But get a family with half a dozen names on the one card and what's their mark? Oh look! It's $1000 too. So a single has to be as sick as an entire family to reach the same mark. Is that fair at all?
Maybe we need to start a Single Women's Party lobby group and start giving TPTB a good pasting.
Okay, I'm over my rant now!! :